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Voices

Blackwater in hot water in Iraq

Most people have not heard of Blackwater USA, a “professional military company” located in the countryside of North Carolina, where the landscape is dotted with tanks, helicopters and firing ranges. Today it, along with Haliburton, is one of the largest private contracting firms operating in Iraq. Hired by the U.S. Department of Defense, its employees play a vital role in military operations, fulfilling positions ranging from bodyguards to mechanics. Oversight of these contractors, however, is severely limited. Not part of the military chain of command, and outside governmental disciplinary procedures, their presence in the combat zone can be extremely disruptive.

Voices

Chillin’ with my faux Jew ‘fro

I hate yarmulkes. They mess up my hair. And because they cover up the spot on your head where men typically begin balding, I used to think that they make you go bald.

Sports

Trash Talking

This goes out to all you Hoya fans who can’t stand that classic fight song of ours. Sure, you’ll take your love of Blue and Gray to the grave, but that age-old tune just doesn’t have the sauce to get you pumped during the last two minutes of a Big East basketball game.

Voices

Censure for a censor

Believe it or not, there is a group of Georgetown students who would rather spend their Friday nights baking bread from scratch or watching King Richard III at the Shakespeare Theater than competing in beer-pong tournaments. These students live on the Culture and Performance Living and Learning Community (CPLLC), a unique outlet for creative Hoyas. But when the CPLLC refused to subsidize its members’ tickets to the University-sponsored production of Eve Ensler’s the Vagina Monologues, I was confronted with the sad reality that even Georgetown’s more progressive institutions are unable to escape censorship and discrimination.

Leisure

Say ‘bonjour’ to good taste!

Dapper French gentlemen clad in smoking jackets, their cigars sending smoke spirals up to the ceiling. Portraits of deceased royalty hanging demurely on the walls behind velvet drapes. An aging poodle curled up by the fire. The only thing needed to complete our scene is that Gallically-accented post-consumption treat: the digestif.

Leisure

Critical Voices II: Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City, Wichita

HATES IT

The British music mag NME called Bloc Party “uncategorisable.” While that isn’t a real word, the point was clear when the magazine used it to describe the band’s debut, Silent Alarm. Though it didn’t necessarily deserve that label, the group distinguished itself from the pack of poppy post-punk peers with lead singer Kele Okereke’s heartfelt lyrics and sometimes overly emotive vocals.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City, Wichita

LOVES IT

Despite what detractors may say, “Hunting for Witches” is hardly the sole highlight of A Weekend in the City, Bloc Party’s lastest release.

Leisure

Giving to get some

What do you call that girl you make out with on the weekend but whose hand you have yet to hold in public? More than friend or less than girlfriend, the correct sociological label is irrelevant—this Valentine’s Day only one tag matters: gift-recipient.

Sports

Hoyas extend win streak to six

The Georgetown men’s basketball game against Louisville may have been considered an opening act to the following UNC/Duke match-up, but Roy Hibbert and Jeff Green did their best to make sure the nation took notice of their play with a big 73-65 win during ESPN’s Rivalry Week.

Leisure

Punk Love sticks it to the man

In D.C., politics are inescapable—even in music. But when the founding luminaries of Washington’s famously close-knit, activist music scene came together in Georgetown last Friday, it was to praise, not preach.

Sports

The Sports Sermon

College basketball has reached that point in the season when historic foes do battle for the invaluable prize of a year’s worth of bragging rights. Yes, it’s rivalry week. In the spirit of this week-long sports holiday, it is important to consider the art of the rivalry and its role—not just in sports, but in every day life.

Sports

Lady Hoyas let pivotal game slip

The Georgetown women’s basketball team was unable to capture a much-needed conference win on Tuesday night against the Pirates of Seton Hall. The Lady Hoyas’ stifling defense helped them snap a six game slide against conference rival Villanova on Saturday, but they could only match that defensive intensity for one half in Tuesday night’s 71-67 loss.

Leisure

Pole dancing: not just for strippers

My arms ache and I can already feel the bruises on my inner thighs as I try to crawl sexily on all fours. The music switches to “Fergalicious,” and that’s my cue to shimmy up the chrome pole. Holding on with my left hand, I move with the music, strut my stuff for a few beats and slowly turn a full body roll into the fireman spin.

Features

True Life: So You Want to be a Priest

The National Seminary of Catholic University, is a quiet gray building separated from the iconic dome of the National Basilica by the busy traffic of Michigan Avenue, which casts a flickering neon glow on a statue of the Virgin Mary on the front lawn. Inside, though, all is serene. A renovation in the 90s left the interior gleaming with tasteful iconography and soft light. Bulletin boards are sparse and symmetrical, with white flyers advertising sign-up for Solemn Holy Hour—a far cry from the frenetic visual overload of Red Square.

It is to this building that Dan Hill came after two years at Georgetown. Rather than graduate with the class of 2008, he chose to pursue a lengthy course of study, at the completion of which he will be ordained as a Diocesan priest. It’s an unusual—perhaps even a shocking—choice in today’s culture, as seminary display cases containing the photos of each graduating class attest. The 1953 class portrait showed 37 newly collared men; 2003 had just seven.

But the shrinking size of Catolic’s Theological College is hardly an anomaly. Nationwide, the number of priestly ordinations dropped from 994 in 1965 to 431 in 2006, even as the number of American Catholics jumped from 45.6 million to 64 million in the same time period. The current generation of American youth is markedly and actively religious, but poverty, chastity, and obedience simply aren’t lighting its collective fire. Even at Georgetown, where about half of the student body is Catholic, a life wholly committed to the Church isn’t an option most consider—the Career Center certainly doesn’t hold information sessions on the priesthood. Still, there exists a subculture, exceptional even within the most dedicated Catholic students, of a small number of students undegoing the process of discernment—that is, figuring out whether God has called you specifically to the clergy.

Leisure

When you gotta go…

Based on an aversion to dirty, shared restrooms, I have developed a rubric that I use to judge them. Recently, I decided to evaluate the facilities at Georgetown.

Leisure

Antigone is a tragedy

I’m going to do what Jean Anouillh’s Antigone should have done and get right to the point. This is a bad play, mediocrely acted. The set and costumes are pretty.

Leisure

Aspargus fritter and ice cream, please

Fusion has become a trendy label, with everything from French-Indian fusion at IndeBleu to Asian tapas at Raku. But ‘fusion’ is a vague term, used to describe a wide range of the marriages of many different techniques, ingredients, and flavors.

Leisure

Lez’hur Ledger: Shivering for Sufjan

Sure, the scene was familiar enough: nerdy white boys in fraying women’s jeans skulked around, talking music and secretly tallying the hipster points they earned each time they said “crescendo” (I think I’ll use that word on my Live Journal!). This wasn’t going to be my normal weekend –instead of being cramped inside the cloudy confines of the Black Cat, I found myself camped outside the Kennedy Center at 10p.m., waiting to receive free tickets to Sufjan Stevens’ Feb. 5 performance with the Center’s Opera House orchestra.

Leisure

Jasper Johns: not just flags, guys

Under every picture-perfect surface dwells a host of contradictions and realities. Bubbling under the facade of the happy, down-home, meatloaf-eating American Dream was the Civil Rights movement, McCarthyism and the Cold War. It was during this increasingly unsteady time that Jasper Johns grounded the theoretical rebellion of his art.

News

Bay breakdown

When it comes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, it would be a gross understatement to say that we’ve missed the target. The arrow hasn’t even left the bow—and the archer has taken several large steps backward trying to take aim.

News

Roots of conflict

Mushahid Hussain, a Georgetown alumnus who is now a Pakistani senator and a member of the Pakistan Muslim League, spoke in ICC yesterday about the challenge of reconciling the Islamic and Western worlds, saying that the conflict is more political than religious.

News

Campaigning with the boys on the GUTS bus

“Just because we take the issues seriously doesn’t mean we have to take ourselves seriously,” Ben Shaw (COL ‘08) explained as he and his running mate Matt Appenfeller (COL ‘08) filmed their video “Vote in a Box” as part of their Student Association election campaign.

News

Freeway fight

Proponents of tearing down the Whitehurst Freeway scored a victory this month when the Georgetown Business Association voted to support plans to remove the road.

News

RIP Fr. Drinan

Rev. Robert F. Drinan, S.J., the first Catholic priest to be a voting member of Congress died on Sunday at the age of 86. Drinan was a member of the Georgetown Jesuit community.