Archive

A fan’s eye view of the first ever D.C. Cup

When Tropical Storm Hanna left the D.C. area this weekend, she did so in style. After a long, gray day filled with constant rain, the Sunday sky was blue and cloudless. There was nothing to impede the midday sun from lighting up Howard University’s Greene Stadium, where two of the area’s most storied schools met on the gridiron for the first time in history. The scenery, the history, and the blinding sun were so powerful that they threatened to obscure one of the day’s most important truths:

By Anthony Francavilla September 11, 2008

DC get’s a bowl game

At a press conference held yesterday, Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) and other D.C. officials announced the city’s newest sporting event: the EagleBank Bowl. The game is one of two new post-season college bowl games approved by the NCAA for 2008.

By Caroline Kuehn September 11, 2008

Roger’s back

When he bowed out to Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open, they attributed it to mononucleosis. When he lost to Rafael Nadal in three dismal sets at the French Open, they said he wasn’t the same anymore. When Nadal conquered him again on his own turf—the fabled lawns of Wimbledon—they said he was done. Washed up. A month ago, on the eve of the U.S. Open, Roger Federer relinquished his number one ranking to Nadal, and it looked as though the sun had set on his tennis empire.

By Walker Loetscher September 11, 2008

Sports Sermon: the EagleBank Bowl

In case you haven’t been paying attention to D.C. sports in the last few weeks, the hot topic in town is college football relevancy. This past weekend saw the first time in history that the District’s only two Division 1 programs, Howard and Georgetown, ever met on a football field. Yesterday morning, Mayor Adrian Fenty and a team of D.C. officials, including Councilmembers Jack Evans and Vincent Gray, officially announced the creation of the first ever college bowl game in the District: the EagleBank Bowl.

By Anthony Francavilla September 11, 2008

Fast Break: Men’s Soccer

The Georgetown men’s soccer team continued its early-season streak of shut out victories on Thursday afternoon, besting Stony Brook 1-0 on Kehoe Field.

By Jeff Bakkensen September 11, 2008

Who you gonna call? SafeRides?

Two Georgetown students were robbed while walking home alone late at night this past week—one was held up at gunpoint, and the other was suffocated. While city dwellers have to accept certain risks, including the possibility of muggings and worse crimes, these two incidents had one disturbing aspect in common: the victims were within the limits of the Department of Public Safety’s SafeRides service, which was designed to prevent exactly these kinds of attacks from occurring.

By the Editorial Board September 11, 2008

Georgetown becomes totally RAD

Potential attackers, muggers, and ne’er-do-wells, beware: the women of Georgetown are about to take matters into their own hands. Last week, Director of Public Safety Jeffrey Van Slyke announced that, beginning this semester, Georgetown will offer classes in Rape Aggression Defense Systems (RADS) to interested female students. RADS, the preeminent self-defense program in the country, has been taught to over 300,000 women since the organization was founded in 1989 and is offered at schools across the country, as well as at nearby universities such as Catholic University, George Mason, and Johns Hopkins. Female students at Georgetown should take advantage of RADS classes offered at Georgetown as a means of protecting themselves against potential threats and taking control of their personal safety.

By the Editorial Board September 11, 2008

7” of rain and barely a wet vac in sight

When it rains, it pours. And when Tropical Storm Hanna finally hit the District of Columbia late into the night last Friday, Georgetown, along with the rest of the District, got drenched. Hanna’s seven inches of rain cut off roads, broadened the muddy Potomac, and flooded the apartments and townhouses of unlucky Georgetown students. According to University Spokesperson Julie Green-Bataille, Facilities prepared for the storm as it slowly made its way up the coast toward the Hilltop, gathering sandbags, pumps, wet vacuum, plastic sheeting, and tarps, and putting extra staff on duty on Saturday. Unfortunately, their preparations proved no match for Hanna, leaving many students to fend for themselves as they waited for ultimately unsatisfactory assistance. The next time it’s faced with a storm of Hanna’s magnitude—a rare occurrence, but a dangerous once nonetheless—Georgetown should do more to protect itself and its students from the fallout.

By the Editorial Board September 11, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Give me liberty or give me death?

The poverty-stricken masses of Cairo are fed-up with an oppressive government that doesn’t care, a supposedly “grand America” that supports this negligent regime, and a city that doesn’t offer so much as clean air. “Religious” leaders seeking power use the compelling context of Islam to attract these people and to convert them into devotees. These figures augment their status in relation to the government and obtain a personal following. They promise a sanitized political system and a chance for people to have greater ownership over their own lives. Social services, like the hot meal that government welfare rarely provides, entice the average person to keep coming for more.

By Mark Lerner September 11, 2008

A side of this, a side of that

With its bright cerulean walls and lemon trim, Glover Park’s Surfside is an oasis in a desert of gray concrete buildings. Which is fitting, because the month-old Surfside is attempting to pass as a transplant straight from the West Coast. While the decorating scheme (complete with colorful chalk boards, a butcher-block counter, rooftop seating, and a mural of the beach) looks like it was lifted from the boardwalk, the food is far from sandy hot dogs and cherry slushie.

By Vivian Chen September 11, 2008

Frustrated by faith, a labor of love

Two women holding hands, deep in prayer, their faces digitally blurred, star in the opening scene of A Jihad for Love. Filmmaker Parvez Sharma’s documentary gives these and other gay and lesbian Muslims a chance to tell their stories, though a majority of their faces remain covered out of fear for themselves and their families. This gripping film takes place in twelve different countries and nine different languages. From drag queens in North India to a young Egyptian refugee in France, the stories are all different, but none can avoid the grief and frustration that arises from the conflict between sexual orientation and religion.

By Alexa Defazio September 11, 2008

Critical Voices: Okkervil River, “The Stand Ins”

Will Sheff of Okkervil River has nearly perfected the pop song. His melodies, which underlie the strength of his heartfelt crooning voice, are immediately noticeable on The Stand Ins, the sequel to 2007’s acclaimed The Stage Names, which was originally planned to be a double album. While still displaying Sheff’s distaste for pop culture, The Stand Ins also deals with the ideas of both conceit and faltering love in great detail, while simultaneously orchestrating memorable moments of pop bliss.

By James McGrory September 11, 2008

Critical Voices: Brian Wilson, “That Lucky Old Sun”

It’s fitting that Wilson is now mixing the style he perfected with the group’s early lyrical themes. His latest release, That Lucky Old Sun, features lush symphonics, another well-developed song cycle, and a nostalgic view on Wilson’s long-time home of California.

By Matthew Collins September 11, 2008

Water Polo? Seriously?

The Georgetown gallery scene doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, but gems are ready and waiting to be unearthed for those industrious enough to pick up a few brochures. But first, a brief lesson in jock culture: because the bodies of water polo players are submerged in water, the helmets players wear serve the same identifying function as jerseys do in other sports. John Trevino, a D.C. based artist and Howard University professor, has taken this idea and run with it in “What Comes Next,” an exhibit of portrait photography at District Fine Arts (DFA) on Wisconsin Avenue. The portraits, photos of black men and women in cartoon water polo helmets, ultimately fall short of their aim to “examine dreams and memory created as the residual of human interaction.”

By Katherine Norton September 11, 2008

By any means necessary

In case you didn’t know, the Internet is a remarkable source for learning about music and finding that music for free. While many collectors are in the habit of finding full albums to add to their libraries, casual downloaders are often in search of single songs.

By Justin Hunter Scott September 11, 2008

Just one more night in Bangkok

“The work is steady, the money’s good, but it’s not for everyone,” says Nicolas Cage’s assassin Joe at the beginning of Bangkok Dangerous. He’s describing his globe-trotting, gangster-murdering job, but he could just as easily be describing Cage’s career. The actor has delivered reliably decent performances in action movies for years, sometimes giving the impression that he worked harder on a single scene than the screenwriter did for the whole movie.

By Will Sommer September 11, 2008

The shorter the better

It’s that time of year again! No, not “International Housekeeper’s Week,” although I’m sure everyone’s super excited about that. This bit of news is just as good; District’s very own DC Shorts Film Festival is back for the fifth year in a row, starting on Thursday, September 11th.

By Scott Munro September 11, 2008

Doomsday drinks

If you’re reading this, then you know that the world did not come to an end on September 10, 2008 at 4: 27 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. At that moment, a group of European scientists under the city of Geneva, Switzerland, flipped the “on” switch of the Large Hadron Collider, a massive proton accelerator whose essential purpose is to recreate the Big Bang on a miniature scale.

By admin September 11, 2008

News

Crime wave

A series of crimes hit Georgetown last week when two students were violently robbed, one at gunpoint, and a woman was sexually assaulted by a man who may be a suspect in three other Northwest D.C. sexual assault cases.

By Molly Redden September 11, 2008

M St. water woes

Last Sunday at around 6:30 a.m., a fire hydrant burst on 33rd Street, closing a busy stretch of M Street and flooding Starbucks, Qdoba Mexican Grill, and the apartments of some Georgetown students.

By Sarah Hunter September 11, 2008

News

Ten more years

Imagine this: a library that can handle the masses of students who descend upon it during finals, a walk to Leo’s for lunch that does not involve constantly dodging vehicles left and right. These ideas could become reality if included in Georgetown’s next ten year campus plan, which will dictate how the University will grow over the next decade.

By Dylan Richmond September 11, 2008