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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.

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.

News

A new home for D.C. United

Development in the District is looking like all fun and games since last Saturday, when city officials unveiled a new set of plans to build a D.C. United soccer stadium directly across the Anacostia River from the new Nationals stadium. Washington now has three stadiums in the works.

News

Pro-life activists descend on the District

As Roe v. Wade turned 34 last weekend, pro-life activists flocked to the District of Columbia and to Georgetown to protest the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in... Read more

News

Safeway sells

Students will soon be able to throw a 12-pack into their carts at the Safeway on Wisconsin Ave. This month, the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board granted the store a Class B liquor license, which allows the sale of beer and wine, but not hard alcohol.

Sports

Controversial sign leads to apology

Most of the record number of students who lined up at McDonough Gymnasium earlier this year to collect their men’s basketball season ticket packages hardly noticed the cover. Recent complaints, however, have revealed a sign in the background of the cover that some have construed as homophobic.

Sports

The Sports Sermon

This past Sunday, students anxiously awaiting the first snowfall of the year were finally granted a taste of white weather. From my warm vantage point in a Harbin common room, commanding a view of the entire football field, I was treated with a scene that delighted the sports fan within me.

Sports

Green leads Hoyas past DePaul

The Hoyas recorded an important conference win against DePaul last night at the Verizon Center, a place where they have been less than dominant this year.

Sports

Shooting woes extend Hoyas’ losing streak

The Hoyas came out strong at home against the Cincinnati Bearcats last Tuesday, but despite their efforts the ladies fell into a shooting drought in the first half and never recovered. The Bearcats (12-7, 3-4 BE) defeated Georgetown (11-9, 1-6 BE) by a score of 80-62, bringing the Lady Hoyas’ losing streak to three.

News

HarassEdu

For the first time, the Georgetown University Board of Directors will require all faculty and staff to participate in an online harassment education program, titled “Promoting a Respectful Campus Community.”

Sports

NHL Recount

Rory Fitzpatrick is the kind of hard-working journeyman that is becoming harder and harder to find in the National Hockey League today. He doesn’t have the stats of your typical all-star player. In fact, he isn’t on the official all-star ballot at all. Fitzpatrick has exactly one assist this season and only nine goals after a decade in the league. But that didn’t stop Steve Schmid of New York from starting what has now become a national movement: the Vote for Rory campaign.

News

Library lowdown

Character and Personality is a 13-volume book set, 3 volumes of which presumably contain lithographs of correct postures. Visible from the entrance of Riggs library, it looks like the sort of classy antiquarian series that replaces s’s with italic f’s.

Voices

Pop! goes the femur

I knew that the head of this patient’s femur was going to need to go back into his pelvis. They would drill a hole through the bone and fix it in place to the bed frame until surgery could be performed. I had learned to steel myself for the brutal procedure, picturing it in my head before it actually happened in front of me, like I’d done countless times over the previous six months of my internship in Indianapolis’ public hospital. I remember idly wondering if they would need a spade bit.

News

Nuclear weapons (debate) in ICC

School of Foreign Service Dean Robert Gallucci and Center for Peace and Security Studies Director Daniel Byman went head to head on the danger of nuclear terrorism in a debate last night.

Features

The Science of Research

In a third-floor conference room in Building D on the campus of the Georgetown University Medical Center, Dr. Pedro Jose’s award-winning—and argumentative—research team is gathered around a long table for their weekly lab meeting.

“This is tough,” Jose, a diminutive Filipino-American, explains as I enter the room. “We look at raw data.”

News

Student Association kicks off presidential election

With web sites, Facebook.com groups, a spattering of fliers, and a YouTube video, the Student Association election season is officially underway

Voices

The first snow of the rest of my life

When it is going to snow, you can smell it in the air. There is a cool bite, but not so cold that a deep breath stings going down. Just before the snow is the best time to walk outdoors, look up into an overcast sky and wait with anticipation.

Voices

Hillary and Bill, sitting in a tree

After 227 years of white men in the nation’s highest office, this election has experienced a “surge” in diversity. Among the announced Democratic candidates are half Mexican-American Gov. Bill Richardson, half African-American Sen. Barack Obama, and full Woman-American Sen. Hillary Clinton. Yet while Clinton has the novel opportunity to potentially be the first female politician nominated for the presidency by a major party, her surname will constantly remind us that she is not just any lady.

Voices

Carrying On: Life and death in the fast lane

If you’ve ever fallen asleep at the wheel, you know what a bewildering experience it is to wake up. And if you survive, and bring your car to a safe stop, those moments of terror recede into something between a dream and a memory.

Editorials

Aborting a balanced debate

The Hoya perpetuated the one-sided view of the abortion debate supported by the University and displayed a lack of journalistic integrity.

Leisure

A local artist’s guide to suburbia

As I entered Flashpoint, a modest downtown gallery, I sensed I had unwittingly stumbled into someone’s home.

Editorials

Mis-state of the union: Our response to the president’s speech

Tuesday night our country heard a lame duck quacking, and it was a sad sound.

Leisure

Like Vicodin for boredom: the leisure events calendar

Chinese New Years Event Spectacular C’mon, you probably can’t remember your own New Year’s celebration anyway. All the more reason to do it again, Chinese-style.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Polyvinyl

Far be it from me to speculate on Kevin Barnes’ emotional state, but after listening to the latest Of Montreal release, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, I’d have to say he got burned, badly.