Features

Oyster School

When you walk inside the Oyster school, you see a big banner from the Department of Education hanging from the ceiling in commemoration of the school’s No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon award, which the school received in 2006 for its outstanding test scores. Bulletin boards display student projects, featuring work half in English, half in Spanish. On the loudspeaker, a woman makes an announcement in Spanish. There is no translation. A few minutes later, another voice makes a different announcement in English.

By Keenan Steiner April 19, 2007

Features

Stop Requested?

Darrel Evans’ nightly tour of two D.C. universities begins late on Thursday evening when he swings his bus past the corner of P Street and Wisconsin Ave. There he picks up a loquacious Howard University student named Takeisha Carr (HWD ‘09), then rumbles down the uneven pavement towards Dupont Circle. The evening glow of orange street lamps reveals a cross-section of Northwest: of quaint Dupont row-house mansions and ugly lots on 7th Street, the beautiful but barred front doors in the Shaw neighborhood and finally, the looming brick complex of Howard University.

By Chris Stanton April 12, 2007

Features

Spring Fashion ’07

Oh the pleasures of womanhood!

Girls, it’s the anxiously awaited season! Time to tan your legs and brush the mothballs off that most important of seasonal rights—the spring dress. If you don’t have one, or you’re sick of your old one, or two or three or seven, we at the Voice recommend several Georgetown boutiques that you should visit.

By Mary Katherine Stump March 29, 2007

Features

D.C. Through Its Stomach

It’s six o’clock on a Monday at Soviet Safeway and the place is packed. Sandwiched between a pretty residential street and the subdued bustle of 17th street, the undersized Dupont Circle grocery store is crawling with the neighborhood’s young professionals and older long-time residents, all there to pick up that gallon of milk, can of cat food or roll of paper towels that’s been missing from their shelves.

By Sam Sweeney March 22, 2007

Features

Meet Joe Hoya

“What are you going to call the story? How about, ‘Who is Fritz Brogan?’ People on campus sometimes wonder who I am—I look like I’m 40.”

Francis ‘Fritz’ Brogan III (CAS ’07) does not look 40. He looks a youthful 30. Brogan is 22, but has an older face and thinning hair, but before you notice Fritz’s age, you register how big Fritz is—6 feet 6 inches, 275 pounds, a looming figure. And as you’re noticing how big he is, his hand—adorned with a half-dollar sized monogram ring—is engulfing yours in a strangely loose shake, gripping, grinning and greeting.

By Tim Fernholz March 15, 2007

Features

The Hoya Hood: Trashy and classy on the same block

A few years ago, Perrin Radley was awakened at three in the morning by a chorus of screamed obscenities outside his window on R Street. “Go home!” Radley shouted to the students. At the same moment a cab driver pulled up, and the young men shouted racial slurs and “all the expletives you can imagine” at the driver. Concerned that the fight would escalate into violence, Radley went outside and insisted they disperse. In response, one of the students took off his pants. Uncomfortable voicing the vulgar specifics out loud, the retired Episcopalian priest paused for a moment.

By Kate Mays March 1, 2007

Features

Shunned by the City

While the snow in front of student houses in Burleith and West Georgetown has built up into slick sheets of ice and nearly every street is glazed in a brownish mix of slush and dirt, the alleyway behind Riggs Bank on Wisconsin Ave. has remained pristine, as if snow had never fallen. At the end of that alleyway sits an overloaded shopping cart covered in plastic tarps. If you look closer, though many don’t, you can see the outline of a bundled-up old man leaning against it. His name is Nathanial Ust, and he prides himself on keeping his home clear of snow.

By Michael Bruns February 22, 2007

Features

One of your friends has an eating disorder. Have you noticed?

Eating disorders at Georgetown are all about what you overhear, and what you don’t hear at all. They’re about what you thought you heard in the girl’s bathroom on your freshman floor after dinner one night. They’re about the rumors you hear of the dining hall lettuce being sprayed with protein. They’re about the quiet conversational asides and the quieter stigmatization of conditions like anorexia and bulimia, about the snap judgments and misconceptions that discourage sympathy and stifle awareness of the real issues at hand.

By Chris Norton February 15, 2007

Features

The Jesuits’ Slaves

“Can a man serve God faithfully and posess slaves?” Brother Joseph Mobberly, S.J. asked in his diary in 1818. “Yes,” he answered. “Is it then lawful to keep men in servitude? Yes.”

By Kathryn Brand February 8, 2007

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.

By Noreen Malone February 1, 2007

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.”

By Anna Bank January 25, 2007

Features

Mapping the Atlas District

A three-block stretch of H Street in Northeast might be D.C.’s new haven for nightlife refugees from Adams Morgan seeking lower rents and less vomit on the sidewalk. But you’d never know it peering through the blinds of a shuttered bar on a Tuesday night, while your cabbie yells to get back in the car before you get shot. The so-called Atlas District, located about a mile northeast of Union Station, has been in total disarray since the riots after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, but the area is now being claimed and renamed by a few forward-thinking scene-builders who know how to squint with the right kind of eyes down the wide, empty H Street Corridor and see a renaissance in utero.

By Chris Norton January 18, 2007

Features

Top 10 Albums and Films of 2006

1. Clipse:Hell Hath No Fury

Clipse’s sophomore release, Hell Hath No Fury, comes a full four years after their debut, Lord Willin’. The sibling pair of Pusha T and Malice comes roaring back, delivering the year’s most consistent and confrontational hip-hop album. With Pusha T’s confidence and Malice’s ambition, it’s clear the duo isn’t going to disappear. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that they’re backed by the best beats of the year, a bleak, sparse set arranged by the Neptunes. “Trill” and “Chinese New Year” are particularly strong, though the album’s most impressive characteristic is its utter lack of filler. Hell Hath No Fury never falters, hitting with a tightness seldom seen in modern hip-hop.

By the Voice Staff January 11, 2007

Features

Flerbis

Georgetown Voice Short Story Contest 2006 Winner

The oldest of Tessa Riley’s sons was fourteen when she started shaving her children’s necks. Every morning she lined her children up from oldest to youngest: Jacob, Jordan, Justin, and Jessica. They sat side by side in a row on wooden chairs that earlier in the morning had surrounded the breakfast table.

Tessa sat behind them in her rolling, leather desk chair and worked her way down the line, gliding across the tiled kitchen floor, quickly but carefully trimming the extra hair on the back of their necks.

By Alex Koplow December 7, 2006

Features

Back to the books: Rigors on the other side of the desk

After studying at an institution that encourages the Jesuit tradition of volunteerism and service, many students wish to donate a few years of their time to a worthy cause upon graduation. After living in an environment which mandates achievement and success, it is no wonder that many students wish that their donation be both prestigious and practical.

By Kent Elliott November 30, 2006

Features

Ladies First: Female professorship at Georgetown

Long before women donned power suits and took over corner offices across America, the fairer sex was firmly in control of one profession: teaching. Though the image of schoolmarms in high-necked shirts and sensible shoes is long gone, the tradition of women in education remains strong. According to the National Educational Association, only nine percent of elementary school teachers today are male, meaning that women tower over men in this crucial area of education. But the tables turn drastically when it comes to education at the university level, where men overwhelmingly dominate teaching positions.

By admin November 16, 2006

Features

George Washington & Georgetown: Universities in flux

What do students at Georgetown and students at George Washington have in common? They both got into George Washington. That’s the joke, anyway, but in many ways it’s becoming a relic of a bygone era. Georgetown isn’t on the decline, but it suddenly leapt into the upper echelon of respected global universities under the guidance of President Timothy S. Healy, S.J. in the ‘80s and has basically stood still since.

By Michael Bruns November 9, 2006

Features

Stuntin’ like their daddies

When the Georgetown men’s basketball team tips off its season against Hartford, the program will be entering its 100th season. Georgetown boasts one of the nation’s most storied college basketball programs, which began in 1907. If the Hoyas are going to throw any kind of birthday party this year, you can expect it to be a dance party, just like the ones that have become a staple of Midnight Madness at Georgetown.

By Mike Kuebler November 7, 2006

Features

The grass is always greener

Caitlin Pedati (NHS ’07) said that when she moved into her house on the 3300 block of Prospect St. this summer with five other girls, dead roaches littered the floor and the interior needed cleaning and repainting. “I don’t think the house was safe when we moved in,” Pedati said. “I easily put a grand into cleaning and fixing up things.”

The girls found paper towels under a radiator and cracked or missing tiles on the kitchen and bathroom floors. There were no ground wires for electricity, and none of the fire alarms worked. The only fire extinguisher downstairs was “ancient,” Pedati said. “It’s been an absolutely miserable experience. “

By Austin Richardson November 2, 2006