Editorials

Opinions from the Voice’s official editorial board.


Editorials

DPS, spread your wings

The D.C. City Council is scheduled to vote next week on a bill that would allow extended cooperation between campus police and the Washington Metropolitan Police force. The bill would potentially allow the Department of Public Safety to extend its patrol to areas outside of campus that are heavily populated by students, such as Burleith and West Georgetown.

Editorials

Unfriendly borders

Exactly one year after the attacks of Sept. 11, the federal government has inaugurated a new, more stringent system for screening immigrants at some ports of entry to the United States. Immigration agents must now fingerprint and photograph foreigners who fit certain criteria for potential terrorist activity, criteria that the Justice Department refuses to disclose.

Editorials

Where are we GOing?

The promise of the Georgetown One Card was enough to make all Georgetown students salivate. Finally, there would no longer be a need to carry a separate laundry card, printing card and ID card, to get a stick-on barcode to check out books from the library, and to use a University ID number, which happened to be most people’s social security number, for Munch Money purchases.

Editorials

Wanted: police protection

On Sept. 25, thousands of protesters are expected to flock to the District to protest the latest round of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings. In the past the city has responded admirably, providing enough police officers to create a safe environment without being threatening or constricting.

Editorials

This joke is played out

Poverty and homelessness are a major problem in the District. According to the D.C.-area non-profit group Help the Homeless, as of 1999 almost one-fifth of the city’s population lived in poverty. Nearly one-quarter of the city’s renters could not afford a one-bedroom apartment.

Editorials

A poor first impression

It’s 7 p.m. You’re meeting your friends for dinner and you need cash for a cab. You go to Leavey to use the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union’s Automated Teller Machine, but it is down. You run to New South, but that ATM is not working either.

Editorials

Deputizing the media

At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, a bomb exploded, killing one and injuring more than 100. A hero was quickly made?a security guard who quickly led people away from the suspicious backpack containing the bomb, preventing further injury and death, was hailed and interviewed on several television networks.

Editorials

Did you get that memo?

Twenty-four Metro police officers have been suspended as part of an ongoing internal investigation into a slew of offensive e-mails sent between squad car computers in 1999 and 2000. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer was quoted in The Washington Post as saying that the messages included comments such as ”’Let’s go punch this person,’ or, ‘Let’s go stop this person’ based on their race or gender or sexual orientation,” and that many others included vulgar or sexual banter.

Editorials

Uproar in North Carolina

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was sued this summer for assigning 4,200 incoming first-years and transfers a book on the Koran as part of its First Year Book program, where students write an essay about a text and participate in a group discussion.

Editorials

Gimme a U, gimme an I …

To most incoming first-years, the shiny new iMac computers in Sellinger lounge and on the lower floors of ICC represent one of the many novelties of university life. They inspire a vision of grandeur: They are part of an institution on the cutting edge of technology that constantly provides up-to-date means for carrying out a quest for knowledge.

Editorials

Asking to be written off

To the majority of Americans, talk of Washington, D.C. politics conjures one name?Marion Barry?and that name represents almost comical levels of corruption and mismanagement, overshadowing sometimes-great accomplishments. These days, Barry has for the most part left public life in the city he ran for nearly two decades, but events this summer proved his specter remains in the worst ways.

Editorials

Credit trouble

By unanimously passing Student Activities Comission Chairman Matt Connolly’s (CAS ‘04) resolution to abandon the current SAC funding system in favor of a new and supposedly more efficient system, GUSA has voted in a potential disaster.

Currently, clubs are supposed to keep money they receive from SAC and money they raise independently in University accounts.

Editorials

Le Pen is not an option

Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the xenophobic Front National party, has placed second in the the first round of the French presidential election. This was a stunning blow to Socialists and a triumphal moment for the right-wing extremist who campaigned on an anti-immigration and anti-European Union platform.

Editorials

It’s hotter than hell in Yates

You step inside and hand your card over to the Yates Memorial Field House staff member. Then it hits you. The sweltering air overwhelms you. It’s damp. It’s humid. It’s as hot as hell. Maybe even hotter. It continues as you take your first step down the stairs, and sweat already starts beading on your forehead before you’ve even lifted a weight.

Editorials

A drinking solution?

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism released a report about the alcohol culture at U.S. colleges last week. The statistics show that 1,400 college students die each year from alcohol-related injuries and that 70,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date-rape each year.

Editorials

Not good enough

The Georgetown University Student Association has agreed to a trial run of the USA Today Readership program. Through the program, copies of USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post are now available to students for no charge in their Residence Hall Offices.

Editorials

The coup that wasn’t

Political opponents ousted Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez from power last Thursday. Ch?vez’ attempts to replace the executives of the state-owned oil monopoly, in conjunction with a series of labor strikes and protests, convinced an alliance of military and business leaders that he was unable to rule the country effectively.

Editorials

Don’t wash my square

Red Square’s “free speech zone” designation has been an easy way to foster debate on campus. Give students the freedom to voice their views, and they will usually take care of the rest. But the system does require a few controls. Otherwise, Red Square’s various capacities as message-board, canvas, stage, stump, science-fair-project-presentation area, etc.

Editorials

Why can’t we stay?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Although the good doctor was most certainly not referring to Georgetown students right to live in high-priced community housing, the point still stands.

The West Cloisters Homeowner’s Association voted Wednesday on a measure to prohibit more than three unrelated individuals from living in a Cloisters residence.

Editorials

The darker side

On March 28, D.C. Inspector General Charles Maddox released a 514-page report detailing a series of fundraising inproprieties in the office of Mayor Anthony Williams. According to the report, mayoral aides tapped the accounts of local nonprofits for events and programs that were often politically beneficial for Williams and vigorously solicited donations from organizations with a business interest in the District government.