Archive

On the Record: Sivagami Subbaraman

Sivagami Subbaraman is the first director of Georgetown’s new LGBTQ Resource Center. Raised in India, she came to the United States to study English and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Before coming to Georgetown, she worked as the associate director of the University of Maryland’s Office of LGBT Equality.

By Will Sommer August 22, 2008

City on a Hill: Performance pay for DCPS

The announcement yesterday that the Washington Teachers’ Union has filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Public Schools for the allegedly improper dismissal of more than 70 teachers confirms that things really are getting ugly on the D.C. school scene. DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee heated things up earlier with the announcement this summer of a tiered pay proposal, which would introduce merit-based pay and extra bonuses for teachers willing to give up tenure for a year of probation.

By Molly Redden August 22, 2008

Chernobyl’s concrete ghost town

Several miles, two passport checks and one release form later, I stood 500 feet from the reactor—known as The Sarcophagus—that released uranium dioxide into the bodies of 50,000 people in fewer than 36 hours.

By Chelsea Paige August 22, 2008

Traveling through history with colors and shapes

“The significance of a project such as this rests, I think, on its educational value.” So Jacob Lawrence wrote in the outline for his Migration Series before he started work on it in 1940. His goal, he wrote, was for Americans, black and otherwise, to learn something about the historical movement known as The Great Migration, when blacks from the South moved North in great numbers during the years following World War I. The Phillip’s current exhibition of the series he eventually painted underscores the difference between art and education, between portraying information and conveying feeling, between a timeline and a story. Even if he set out to educate, Lawrence also produced amazing works of art.

By Shira Hecht August 22, 2008

New DPS head has checkered past

Controversy hounded Jeffrey Van Slyke, Georgetown’s new Director of Public Safety, while he was the head of the University of Texas’s police department. He reacted flippantly to a racial profiling accusation, was charged in a sexual assault suit settled out of court, presided over the infiltration of a campus group, and armed his police with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles. Van Slyke’s past was first covered by the Voice’s blog, Vox Populi.

By John Cooke August 22, 2008

Steak Out: a bi-weekly column about food

Newton vs. Leibniz. Itchy vs. Scratchy. Disraeli vs. Gladstone. Michael Scott vs. Toby. The writer Elbert Hubbard once said that rivalry is the life of trade, and if you take a look at the local Georgetown food circuit you’ll see that he was right.

By Michael Keller August 22, 2008

DPS retools for fall

In response to numerous assaults and robberies, some armed, that occurred in LXR and Henle at the end of last school year, Department of Public Safety officers are now armed with batons and pepper spray. The University has also installed louder door alarms in East Campus and replaced the doors in Henle.

By John Cooke August 22, 2008

Best of the Summer

We here at the Leisure section sincerely regret the standard school schedule that prevents us from being able to tell you what to like and dislike over the summer months. To that end, we’ve compiled a collection of some of our favorite movies, music, and shows from the summer, in the hopes of allowing you to catch up on the culture you may have missed. Quick, catch these while the last rays of summer still shine and before those silly classes start.

By the Voice Staff August 22, 2008

New ANC kid on the block

Aaron Golds (COL `11) has always thought about running for public office. On November 4 his name will appear on the ballot—as a candidate for Georgetown’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission.

By Juliana Brint August 22, 2008

Editorials

DPS needs to regain students’ trust

It will take a vast overhaul, one which DPS seems to be committed to making, for the University to regain students’ trust and make them once again feel safe on campus.

By the Editorial Board August 22, 2008

Critical Voices: The Walkmen, “You & Me”

No, the Walkmen did not hang up their sneakers after everyone declared “The Rat” to be one of 2004’s best singles. And yet, when they came back in 2006 with the wildly underrated A Hundred Miles Off, nobody seemed to notice, probably because there was nothing like “The Rat” there. There is nothing like “The Rat” on their latest release, You & Me, either. The Walkmen have evolved, mellowed, even—gasp!—matured.

By Justin Hunter Scott August 22, 2008

First summer for Fellows

“Well, I got to work a murder case. I got to canvass a crime scene, which meant taking pictures and interviewing possible witnesses,” Natalie Punchak (COL ’11), who interned for the Public Defender of the District of Columbia this summer, said. Punchak’s work often took her to Southeast DC. “The funny thing is, people kept asking us if we were lost.”

By Molly Redden August 22, 2008

Editorials

Down with the national drinking age

Georgetown demonstrated a commitment to addressing the problem of binge drinking on campus last year when it enacted the one-keg-per-party limit, the party registration rules, and harsher penalties for alcohol infractions. It’s time for Georgetown to reaffirm that commitment by signing onto the Amethyst Initiative.

By the Editorial Board August 22, 2008

Editorials

Baby steps for GUSA and its fellows

Dowd managed to get the GUSA Summer Fellows program up and running by the start of the summer, giving five students with unpaid internships free Georgetown housing for the summer. It’s an encouraging sign from the usually ineffective GUSA.

By the Editorial Board August 22, 2008

Critical Voices: Brian Eno and David Byrne, “Everything that Happens Will Happen Today”

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today doesn’t have nearly the same coherence as its distant predecessor. Eno approached Byrne a few years back, expressed dissatisfaction with a set of songs he had been working on for “up to 8 years,” and eventually asked Byrne to write lyrics and sing over the music. In other words, the collaborative starting point of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was “salvage Eno’s botched tunes”—a far cry from the ambitious raison d’etre of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

By Daniel Cook August 22, 2008

Carrying On: Plumage Pilgrimage

I didn’t know it before I took the job, but the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge where I worked sees 325 different species of birds throughout the year. As a result, it’s a world-famous birding site, drawing visitors from allover the globe. Late spring though August is the prime time for migratory birds, and the number of birders following them made it feel similar to what I imagine it must be like to work in Mecca during the Hajj (that is, if Mecca were visited primarily by upper-middle-class, middle-aged white couples).

By Dan Newman August 22, 2008

War is Hell

Tropic Thunder surprised me. The trailer and ads had me braced for a classic screwups-in-peril format: hopeless incompetents defeating death with liberal doses of slapstick and potty humor. In that respect it didn’t disappoint, pouring on sight gags and classic slap in epic proportions. But the real reason to see Tropic Thunder is its razor sharp satirical dissection of the Hollywood hit machine.

By Anna Hunter August 22, 2008

Culottes for you lots: a bi-weekly column on fashion

It sounds very third grade of me to say so, but I love back-to-school shopping. I can’t resist the earth-toned window displays, and every year I buy corduroy that I never end up wearing. There are still a few humid weeks of August left and nary a leaf has fallen, but I’ve already cast my summer wardrobe aside and am imagining crunching through leafy drifts in knee-high boots and a navy blazer. I’m getting giddy just thinking about it.

By Katherine Norton August 22, 2008

Pride of the People’s

In the last two weeks I have heard the Chinese national anthem more times than I have in the rest of my life put together. Although I’m sure any avid Olympics viewer is starting to become familiar with the song, being in Beijing this summer means that those notes follow you everywhere. Not only is every television in the city tuned into the Olympics, but the new buses, subway stations, and subway cars are all equipped with TV screens so you won’t miss a single moment. Montages of gold medal moments air in between all programming, so in a given day I could see the same flag rise at least twenty times. It’s gotten to the point where I saw a group of inebriated Germans singing the Chinese national anthem on the Olympic Green and wasn’t surprised that they hit all the right notes.

By Vivian Chen August 22, 2008