Features

A deep dive into the most important issues on campus.



Features

Higher education: GU and GWU’s drug policy divide

On the night of September 8, 2009, George Washington University Police Department officers responded to a suspicious odor coming from freshman Simon Abrahms’s dorm room.

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Chiming in: When you’re a Chime, you’re a Chime all the way

Last Saturday night, the audience in Gaston Hall erupted in laughter as a nearly unintelligible cacophony rang out. On stage, an unlikely cast of characters—a bourbon-drinking Jesuit, Jersey Shore’s the Situation, and Midnight Madness toilet-shooter Alex Thiele, to name a few—sang out simultaneously.

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Pride and Prejudice: LGBTQ at Georgetown

“I came out the day after the election—November 5, 2008.” After spending eleven months working for John McCain’s presidential campaign, Carlos Hernandez (SFS ’11) was exhausted.

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The Marshall Plan: a charter across the Anacostia

Although some successful businesses have recently opened on the street, space on Anacostia’s Martin Luther King Avenue SE doesn’t exude status like a K or M Street address does. It’s in Ward 8, the city’s poorest ward. With 43 homicides in 2009, it is also the city’s most violent.

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A new Hoya Paranoia: the lady Hoyas’ transition game

Last Saturday afternoon in McDonough Arena, the Georgetown Chimes walked out to midcourt to belt out the National Anthem while the Georgetown women’s basketball team prepared to take on last year’s national runner-up, Louisville.

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The Best of 2009: Movies and Music

1. Inglourious Basterds A Spaghetti Western set in Nazi-occupied France and directed by Quentin Tarantino—it’s difficult to think of anything that could improve upon the sheer awesomeness of the concept.

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Growing Pains: The University’s plan to expand and the neighbors’ struggle to stop it

On Tuesday in Copley Formal Lounge, the architects of Georgetown University’s 2010 Campus Plan presented to the campus community the tentative blueprint for the next decade of the University’s development. The presentation was attended by about 20 staff and faculty, and hosted by five top University administrators. Halfway through the presentation, only two students were in the audience.

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D.C. Gets Real

For those of you who have neither the time nor the inclination to untangle the sprawling web of Twitter feeds, blogs, and forums devoted to the upcoming 23rd season of “The Real World,” set here in Washington, D.C., but still want the inside scoop before the show premiers on December 30, let me save you some trouble.

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Men’s Preview: Hoyas get physical

John Thompson III had never been in this position before. Standing in Waco, Texas, the head coach of the Georgetown men’s basketball team watched his players surrender a ten-point lead to Baylor University, losing in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. The hallmark of Thompson’s Georgetown teams had been their ability to thrive in the clutch, but “clutch” was the last word someone would have used to describe the any of the Hoyas that day. After limping to a 16-15 record, and missing the NCAA tournament for the first time in three years, it’s time for the Hoyas to start moving on—though the specter of last season lingers.

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Six feet under GU

In 1931, construction on Georgetown’s newest dormitory, Copley Hall, hit an unexpected roadblock: workers who were clearing a heavily overgrown area 100 feet north of the planned residence hall had uncovered a long-forgotten cemetery.

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What’s a Hoya? Jack DeGioia

At 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning early last April, seventeen Georgetown students gathered in the ornate Hall of Cardinals on the Healy Building’s second floor for an intimate meeting with a man whom most of their peers had only ever seen from a distance. Following greetings from an uncomfortable-looking Daniel Porterfield (COL ‘83), Georgetown’s vice president for strategic affairs, the students—representing campus groups dismayed by the content of The Hoya’s recent April Fools’ Issue—sat down and waited to be joined by the man they were there to see, Georgetown University President John DeGioia.

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A History of One Night Stands

Midway through Vagabond Improv Comedy’s show on October 18th, the stage in Bulldog Alley in the Leavey Center has turned into utter pandemonium. One performer is beating his chest and hurling another performer onto the floor, while a third is whirling around dizzyingly on one foot, and a fourth is obliviously tying his shoe. It is one of those bizarre, spontaneous scenes that can’t be replicated, a had-to-be-there moment, and the audience is eating it up. For the remainder of the show, students clutch their sides and roar with laughter. By any standard, the performance is a success.

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Balancing silent days and noisy nights

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer During a typical afternoon in the Atlas District, the businesses along H Street NE are closed, windows shuttered, and doors locked. The only crowds... Read more

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Fall Fashion 2009: Punch with Color

This fall, get off the ropes and into the ring with vibrant pieces that pack a visual punch. Bright tights that show off your shapely stems will catch people off... Read more

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“I had never intended to get involved in the election.”

Voices boomed from the rooftop on the drive to the Tehran airport. “Allah Akbar (God is great)! Death to the dictator! Death to this government that misleads people!” As we drove farther into southern Tehran the voices continued. My grandmother whispered to me, “This was how it was like at night in the months leading up to the Revolution.”

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Georgetown’s finances find solid footing

Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) was on the warpath. In 2008, Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, had perceived a disturbing trend in higher education: colleges and... Read more

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Playing hard on and off the field

Last Saturday night, dozens of freshmen packed into a house on 36th Street for the first of the many parties that the men’s rugby team will host this year. Within the house were friends of the team and about fifty energetic rugby players, especially boisterous after enjoying an afternoon of violent sport. The testosterone-laden hosts introduced their guests to rugby chants and traditions, in a scene probably resembling Animal House more than anything the freshmen had seen in their short time on the Hilltop. In the end, freshman likely came away with an impression that Georgetown’s rugby players are all play and no work.

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Freedom of the Press: The Hoya’s struggle to buck the University

On March 31, the day before April Fools’ Day, Max Sarinsky (COL ’09), then chair of The Hoya’s Board of Directors, received an e-mail that his newspaper had been awaiting for over five years and dreaming about for decades more. Meeting in two days, it read. Bring your pens. Let’s make a deal.

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From dry to debaucherous: Georgetown through the ages

It was late August, and students returning to Georgetown from their summer vacations were shocked to find that the campus party scene had become the polar opposite of what it had been only the previous spring. The administration had introduced a new drinking policy, eliminating the tacit approval that students had long felt they had received from the school to work hard and party harder. Suddenly, Georgetown students faced keg limits, party registration deadlines, and ominous sanctions against anyone who facilitated underage drinking. Student resentment grew as campus security gained notoriety for party-busting, and the party scene languished, culminating in student protests. The administration, students felt, hadn’t just made it harder for underage drinking to take place—the administrators had violated Georgetown’s very culture.

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Be Cool.

If you’re the kind of freshman that we once were, then by the time you read this, you’ll already have committed at least one faux pas that you’re desperately trying... Read more