Features

A deep dive into the most important issues on campus.

Features

Come Hear the Music Play

In the last of the New South rehearsal rooms—past the 40 or so students practicing an Indian dance in a line; in the next, some 20 boys and girls watched another student show them where to put their hands to waltz—Lucy Obus (COL ‘11) slipped in her socks while strutting towards a collection of chairs and falls hard on her side. “Whoops!” she called before scrambling to her feet—“I’m ok! Let’s do this!” Mady Greene (COL ’10), started the song for the 15th time, the girls straddled their chairs, and dance rehearsals for Cabaret continued.

By April 10, 2008

Features

D.C.’s Ticket Exchange

Opening night at Washington Nationals’ ballpark was cold, and I couldn’t find any scalpers.

Fans stood, alone and in pairs, on the red carpet outside the Navy Yard Metro stop, fingers held in the air as signals—two tickets? Three?—even as thousands of other fans, already ticket-holders, flooded Half Street. Beneath red-white-and-blue balloon bunting, they flowed toward the center field gate. An older man, two fingers up, stood next to a young boy clutching a mitt and a bag of peanuts.

By April 3, 2008

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The Fall and Rise of Trinity Washington University

One cold Saturday morning in March, Trinity Washington University was hosting an Open House. But I couldn’t see any signs or volunteers showing the prospective students where to go, and on the first day of spring break, the campus was eerily quiet. After walking past the shining new gym, accidentally entering the deserted dining hall and wandering through a handful of gardens that were empty save for miniature statues of the Virgin Mary, I finally spotted a woman carrying a coffee urn and asked for directions.

By March 27, 2008

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Take Me Home

“I remember people would say … ‘What if you never do that again, what if the songs aren’t hits?’ I don’t have time to think like that. So I never had a plan B. And I still don’t.”

By March 13, 2008

Features

Foreign Policy Maverick

Irving Kristol, a founder of neoconservatism, once said that a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. At Georgetown, we have Raymond Tanter, a conservative who’s had his bike stolen.

As the president of the Iran Policy Committee, a non-profit organization that promotes using Iranian oppositionists against Iran, Tanter is a tireless booster for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an armed group of Iranian exiles that seeks to overthrow the Iranian government.

By February 28, 2008

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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 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 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 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 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 January 24, 2008

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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 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 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 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 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 November 8, 2007

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“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 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 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 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 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 October 4, 2007