Features

Backcourt Backstory: Forming Freeman

Mike Jones is always on the lookout for fresh talent. As the boys’ basketball coach at DeMatha Catholic High School in nearby Hyattsville, Md.—one of the nation’s top high school basketball programs—he’s got to be.

About six years ago, when another DeMatha teacher told Jones about a twelve year-old on his son’s middle school team who was turning heads, Jones went to check the kid out.

By Sam Sweeney February 21, 2008

Features

Cura Personalis in Reverse Overdrive

When Adam Briscoe came to Georgetown in 2003, he took on the ambitious courseload typical of many SFS students, “Chinese and all that.” During high school he had been informally diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder by his psychiatrist, but chose to forego expensive and time-consuming diagnostic testing. Instead, he developed coping mechanisms to help him succeed academically. But by the end of his freshman year, he had “hit it like a brick wall” and was asked to withdraw from the University.

By Juliana Brint February 14, 2008

Features

What Fine Dining’s All About

Nathan Beauchamp and I are in the offices above the 1789 Restaurant, and I’m getting nervous. He, meanwhile, is cool as ice water, and opening up a little more as... Read more

By Mike Stewart February 7, 2008

Features

A Jesuit Past, A Jesuit Future

At a panel discussion about Jesuit identity earlier this week, Father John O’Malley scanned the twenty or so faces in the spacious sitting room in Wolfington Hall. Fewer than half of the faces belonged to students, most of whom drifted out of the room before the discussion was finished.

By Molly Redden January 31, 2008

Features

Pluralism in action?

ROB HURTEKANT SFS ‘08 “It seems silly to even use the word ‘challenges,’” Rob Hurtekant (SFS ’08) said of his experiences in a wheelchair at Georgetown. Hurtekant, an African Studies... Read more

By the Voice Staff January 24, 2008

Features

Georgetown’s Secret Report Card

A confidential report compiled by a group of 13 top faculty members last spring wants to significantly impact your life—how you study, what grades you’ll get, how and when you party, and whether or not you work or have an internship—and its proposals have already begun to make headway. Bad news: The report doesn’t think too highly of most of us.

Click here to download the full 72-page intellectual life report.

By Tim Fernholz January 17, 2008

Features

Top Ten Movies and Albums of 2007

TOP TEN MOVIES 10. American Gangster Based on the life of Manhattan drug lord Frank Lucas, American Gangster is a memorable entry into the gangster film canon. Starring Denzel Washington... Read more

By the Voice Staff December 6, 2007

Features

The Books. The Bar. The Brains.

“I love school. I’m a huge nerd. I love and accept that about myself,” Valerie Sorenson confided across her kitchen table. “I’m not doing this for the grades specifically. Whatever. I just want to know it.”

By admin November 29, 2007

Features

Find Your Place

By 2 a.m., the Blisspop Dance Party had finally fizzled out. Discarded bottles and decorations were strewn across the floor of the 9:30 Club. Weary-eyed concertgoers chatted softly, soaking in the wee hours of Sunday morning as they eyed their watches. Only a few tenacious partiers seemed ready for another round.

By Daniel Cook November 15, 2007

Features

Spotlight on the District

On a quiet Georgetown morning last week, the block of 35th street between M and Prospect, usually packed with cars, was bare. Two men dismantled the street signs at the bottom of the cobble-stoned hill, apparently impervious to the possible consequences. On the other side of the street, three men huddled in front of the former Dixie Liquor, one relating a story that somehow involved Martin Sheen.

Then Hollywood arrived.

Trucks carrying thousands of dollars of camera, sound and lighting equipment rolled in. A crew of camera men, production assistants, electricians and numerous others swarmed the area. Several Metropolitan Police Department cars and officers stationed themselves at the top of the hill to seal off the block and control the crowd. Then, to the crowd’s delight, George Clooney appeared on the set, sweaty and bearded but instantly recognizable.

By Sam Sweeney November 8, 2007

Features

“I have a better story”

Two weeks before Baghdad fell to U.S. Forces on April 9, 2003, Sari Khalil (COL ‘10) heard the American troops arriving. His house was on the western side of the city, smack in the middle of three Iraqi National Guard camps. One of them, Um-Almaank—just four miles from his house—contained not only a camp but also a mosque.

“We could hear the sound of the bombs coming closer, until it was our turn,” Khalil said. “[Um-Almaank] was so heavily bombed [the first] night, that we all knew we were going to die that day. You would hear the aircrafts coming real close; they were so close and so low that you could hear the sound of the missile leaving the plane … and then you would see this quick flash … and within half a second you would hear this huge sound … the whole house was like, broken windows. It was really scary.”

Khalil, his three younger brothers and his parents did survive that night, the “lightest night of the seven nights,” and escaped to spend the last two weeks almost 20 miles away at his grandfather’s house before the Iraqi troops surrendered.

By Kate Mays November 1, 2007

Features

The Thin Blue Line

“I don’t like school papers,” Officer Malcolm Rhinehart told me, minutes after I sat down in his patrol car. Apparently, a past interview had gone awry.

Rhinehart, an unassuming black man with thin frame glasses, a graying buzz cut and short mustache, would spend the next four hours on his evening patrol shift as I rode shotgun, trying to learn something—anything—about what it is to be a police officer in our neighborhood.

As Rhinehart set about police work, from ticketing errant taxi drivers to lecturing a pervert, I wouldn’t find out much about him. But watching him work through situations bizarre and depressing, filing pages of paperwork as he went, it was possible to get the sense that D.C.’s police aren’t just those who arrest Georgetown students for being drunk and disorderly; they’re the people who take care of the District when it sleeps.

By Tim Fernholz October 25, 2007

Features

Georgetown searches for its pride

How September’s hate crime reignited a decades old campaign for LGTBQ integration at Georgetown, and why both stories converge on the two-month anniversary of the assault.

By Tim Fernholz October 18, 2007

Features

Students’ Minors

Between 18 credits, multiple clubs and Congressional internships, most Georgetown students believe they are making the most of life, even at the expense of sleep. Yet it all pales in comparison to a few fellow students for whom extracurricular activities mean something else entirely: Georgetown students with kids of their own.

Mention Georgetown students with kids and the common response is, “Are there any?” Georgetown is not a community where one might expect people to have children, start a family, or settle down. Jennifer Kueler (SFS ‘09), President of GU Right to Life and liaison to the University’s Health Education Services, is not surprised.

“Personally, the sense that I get is that Georgetown is so intense, anything that impedes someone from getting the degree, the internship, etc., becomes very hush-hush,” she said. “Pregnant students don’t fit in the sense that they think that having a family is more important than having a career.”

By Shira Hecht October 11, 2007

Features

Fall Fashion 2007

From runways to magazines, fall fashion is back and now the time (and temperature) has arrived for us to stash away those summer clothes and slip into that comfy sweater dress. This year’s fall fashion offers a fabulous mixture of textures and colors that draw inspiration from the old Hollywood glamour of the early twentieth century.

Those of you who thought gloves were just for winter or old ladies, think again! Many designers, including Prada, have promoted boldly-colored gloves of varying lengths. Other accessory trends include ankle boots, peep-toed heels, unique tights and ankle socks, as well as large, flashy jewelry. For a fresh take on femininity, take a look at Miu Miu’s mixture of classic oxfords and flashier, bubble-gum pink plastic heels.

By Miykaelah Sinclair October 4, 2007

Features

Some Have Forgotten

District revelers on the night of Oct. 22, 1916 must have seen the strange glow emanating from the Georgetown campus. Those closer could plainly see that the source of the glow was in fact a raging inferno, and the audible cries and screams of thousands might have convinced residents that the morning would bring tragic headlines and the smoldering ruins of Healey Hall. But if the bravest had climbed the hill to lend a hand, they would have heard the cries and screams become yells and cheers because the scene through the main gates was anything but tragic.

“The wildest kind of a night was seen at the Hilltop last night. The biggest bonfire Georgetown has ever known was kindled … and at its height was visible for miles into Maryland and Virginia,” the next day’s Washington Times read.

The creators of the growing conflagration were the very same students—some 1,000 strong—who “snake-danced and sang and yelled until the fuel supply vanished and the band lost its breath.”

By Anthony Francavilla September 27, 2007

Features

After School Activities

Students aren’t the only ones who daydream. The droning prof at the front of class is often the last thing on the minds of jaded students. Anything and everything, from chicken fingers to weekend plans, is capable of winning the battle for your attention on a Friday afternoon. But these musings start and stop with the pupil, right? It seems there’s no room for daydreaming in the life of a college professor, so what if you caught your teacher neglecting his own lesson plans to tap out a catchy Caribbean beat with his make-shift, number-two drumsticks? What if, on that never-ending Friday afternoon class, you bolted out of your chair as soon as the professor said “go,” only to watch him slip out just before you?

By Clare Malone and Sam Sweeney September 20, 2007

Features

Unpacking your tuition

The season of inundating the Office of International Programs is upon us. Whether you’re slipping into the office between class hours to browse the program evaluations, haggling with the administration to let you go on an independent study or standing in line for an appointment, daydreaming to the pulse of Euro-tech, there’s one universal truth to study abroad at Georgetown: whatever your plans, they’re costing you (and your parents) a pretty penny.

By Madeline Reidy September 13, 2007

Features

Back on the Market

Eastern Market reeks. One step inside the door and it hits, wafting off of the exiting patrons. Somehow they’ve carried an odor that can only be conjured up by a mingling of distinguishable smelly things. Fish, irises and raw meat lay claim on the nostrils of newcomers.

Then, depending on who walks by, the entering shopper is struck by scents as diverse as the crowd inside. There’s the elderly couple with a bag full of cheese that a virgin nose might tag as goat. There’s a young mother fending off scurvy from her kids with a bundle of citrus and there are the newlyweds with a few links of sausage from Canales Quality Meats for a Labor Day barbecue.

By Phil Perry September 6, 2007