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Shunned by the City

While the snow in front of student houses in Burleith and West Georgetown has built up into slick sheets of ice and nearly every street is glazed in a brownish mix of slush and dirt, the alleyway behind Riggs Bank on Wisconsin Ave. has remained pristine, as if snow had never fallen. At the end of that alleyway sits an overloaded shopping cart covered in plastic tarps. If you look closer, though many don’t, you can see the outline of a bundled-up old man leaning against it. His name is Nathanial Ust, and he prides himself on keeping his home clear of snow.

Sports

Sports Sermon

With the Nova Nation looming at my back last Saturday, I happily played the unbiased journalist in the press box and hid my Georgetown T-shirt under a neutral sweater. Down by double digits early and grossly outnumbered, I wasn’t about to be a hero. But as Jesse Sapp let fly from 60 feet at the first-half buzzer and found nothing but net, I leapt out of my seat without thinking and exposed my allegiance to the hundreds of Wildcats behind me.

News

Jack and Laura talk Africa

University President John J. DeGioia and First Lady Laura Bush recognized the role of religious institutions in combating the African malaria crisis last Thursday. Their remarks came during a panel discussion at the United States executive offices next the White House.

News

Saxa Politica: Sex and the University Health Center

Georgetown’s Student Health Center can irrigate your ear, freeze your warts, or remove your ingrown toe nails. But when it comes to a more pressing concern for the student body—sexually transmitted diseases—the Center is sadly lacking.

News

Dorm-bound freshmen to choose new rooms this Saturday

This Saturday a majority of the freshman class will decide, based upon personal preference and, more importantly, lottery numbers, where they will live next year. Apartments and Copley suites have already been meted out to a lucky few, but the rest will have to decide between Southwest Quad, LXR, Village C East and Copley doubles.

News

GW Student Senate passes pro-pot resolution

Marijuana legal reform has reached an all—time high at George Washington University.

News

Three D.C. women killed by buses, drivers will face new training

Metro buses killed three people last week, prompting the Metro Area Transit Authority to institute a retraining program for all drivers.

News

Campus relays for life

The Lombardi Center isn’t the only on-campus organization working to cure cancer this spring. Three weeks into its fundraising efforts, Georgetown’s Relay for Life has surpassed expectations and raised almost $60,000 for the American Cancer Society.

Voices

Carrying on: A glimmer of red-carpet glamor

I love the Oscars. I love the predictions, the ballots and the “May I have the envelope, please?” I love seeing who brought his mother—Clint Eastwood—and who brought his terribly young, terribly attractive date—Ian McKellen. For one night only, I love Joan Rivers. Every year, I am in front of the television when the countdown begins and the only one still excited when the Best Picture is named four hours later.

Sports

Blood Sport

In ancient civilizations, sports and death were often interchangeable—the less skilled of the Roman gladiators paid for their poor performances with their lives. Most archaic customs as brutal as gladitorial combat have long since vanished, contained now only within the pages of history books. But in a recent trend, American teenagers have revived the brutality of ancient sports in a way that is even more disturbing then their ancient predecessors.

Voices

To the North and back again

No one is born looking and acting like a Georgetown student. Regardless of where you come from, you have to lose a bit of your identity in order to assimilate to life here. After a few weeks here you realize that your collar has crept up and you’re talking like your new friends from New Jersey.

Sports

The real muscle of the Hoyas

It’s 7:30 on a Tuesday morning, and while most Georgetown students are still snuggled in their beds, the football team has already been training for an hour and a half. The varsity weight room at Yates is a sea of blue-and gray athletic attire, each of the 80 players sporting a unique combination of standard-issue gear for his own look. Players grunt in encouragement and pain, a sound that combines with the nearly-constant dropping of heavy iron to create an organic soundtrack—pure manmusic.

Voices

Blue glitter and black Sharpie

I never knew what to write in people’s yearbooks in high school. I wasn’t eloquent enough to state my feelings plainly and I was afraid of the alternatives: overly-sentimental messages that made me cringe or vapid goodbyes that made me question the strength of my friendships. But when my friends always finished their messages in my yearbook and could only wait for so long, I’d scribble something along the lines of “Remember the night we…” or “I could not have asked for a better roommate” and hand the bulky yearbook back, feeling fake.

Voices

The woes of Western Sahara

In the vast expanse of the Algerian desert, a hundred thousand refugees from the Western Sahara languish because of Moroccan imperialism. Exiled from their homeland 31 years ago, they wait while the international community averts its eyes from their travesty. As human rights abuses increase inside occupied Western Sahara and a food shortage in the Algerian camps becomes critical, the Western Saharan people need self-determination more than ever before.

Corrections

CORRECTION: Natsios speech article

An article published on Feb. 8, 2007 in the Voice entitled “Natsios on Darfur: not genocide” contained three significant errors.

Corrections

Editorial note: errors in Natsios speech article

An article published on Feb. 8, 2007 in the Voice entitled “Natsios on Darfur: not genocide” contained three significant errors.

Page 13 Cartoons

The Captain

One day, while I was cleaning my dorm room, I found a tiny pirate. I looked inside a gym bag I hadnÂ’t used in a while, and there he was.

Features

One of your friends has an eating disorder. Have you noticed?

Eating disorders at Georgetown are all about what you overhear, and what you don’t hear at all. They’re about what you thought you heard in the girl’s bathroom on your freshman floor after dinner one night. They’re about the rumors you hear of the dining hall lettuce being sprayed with protein. They’re about the quiet conversational asides and the quieter stigmatization of conditions like anorexia and bulimia, about the snap judgments and misconceptions that discourage sympathy and stifle awareness of the real issues at hand.

Voices

Monologues counterproductive

I would like to thank Jessica Bachman (“Censure for a Censor”) for raising important questions about my not funding subsidies for tickets to the Vagina Monologues in my role as Faculty in Residence for the Culture and Performance Living and Learning Community (CPLLC). I would also like to thank her for writing a balanced article, even though the editorial staff of the Voice cut out most of her quotes of my substantive arguments. (I’ve seen the original form of her piece, and it is much better and fairer than what the Voice published.) I would, nonetheless, like to respectfully disagree with Ms. Bachman’s opinion that my conscientious decision not to subsidize tickets to the Vagina Monologues was religious discrimination against the students who wanted to see it. My current policy is to personally match the price of each ticket purchased by a CPLLC member with a donation to My Sister’s Place, the charity that the Monologues support. I feel that this is a reasonable compromise between either subsidizing the tickets or not subsidizing them.

Voices

Carrying on: A desperate woman knocks

My dad and I had just sat down to a spaghetti dinner when the pounding on the door began. It was furious and incessant, as if someone were trying to knock the door down. My dad hurriedly shuffled to the door and opened it a crack. A screaming woman forced her arm through the opening and the rest of her body followed. Someone, she said, was trying to kill her. Running over, I caught a glimpse of the snowy moonlit expanse outside the front door. There, wild, noble-looking and gray, stood a Siberian Husky. The door slammed shut, and my dad twisted the deadbolt into place.

Voices

From D.C. to a dung hut

If you had predicted freshman year over dinner at Leo’s that I would join the Peace Corps, I would have laughed till ginger ale shot out my nose. Then I would tell you about a trip my family took to Kenya when I was seven. I ate gazelle, chased baboons, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. But, visiting a Masai village, my brother pointed at the walls of the dung huts and told me just what dung was. Shit? I was in the Business School freshman year, and though I didn’t know what I wanted to do after, my plans in no way included a dung hut in Africa.

Voices

You say tomato, I say you’re wrong

“Can I get a glass of water?”

“I’m sorry, a glass of what?”

“Water.”

“No, you said ‘wooder’. In the rest of the country, we pronounce it wa-ter.”