Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.

Editorials

In pre-registration, knowledge is power

As anyone who’s preregistered for a class taught by a celebrity professor like Madeleine Albright or Donna Brazile knows, when it comes to picking your courses, you can’t always get... Read more

By the November 13, 2008

Voices

Does your beard hang low?

There's one question that I regularly encounter in Morocco with my newly-grown beard. "Are you Muslim?" the vendors ask in Arabic. I've come to realize that in Muslim countries, a beard carries a specific meaning, or at least something other than, "I'm too lazy to shave."

By November 13, 2008

Voices

Think Prop 8 is bad? Wait till you see Act 1

As I scrolled through the election results on CNN.com, I felt like I was being punched in the gut with gray clouds closing in on my Democratic euphoria. "Ban on gay marriage in Arizona"-CNN predicts "yes." "Ban on gay marriage in Florida"-predicted "yes." "Ban on gay marriage in California"-still counting, but looks like a yes. Again and again, rights denied, unfair divisions imposed, equality rejected. But the one that hurt the most was a measure I hadn't even known was on the books. Act 1 in Arkansas, "Ban on gays adopting children"-called as a "yes."

By November 13, 2008

Editorials

ANC student rep needs to rep students

New student Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, Aaron Golds (COL `11) must make sure that, unlike past student commissioners, he always remembers to represent students and not the wishes of other ANC commissioners.

By the November 6, 2008

Editorials

Ensure the rights of Qatari workers

Georgetown has commendably taken steps to ensure humane working conditions for workers at SFS-Q. The other American universities in Qatar, including Carnegie Mellon University, Texas A&M University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Cornell University, need to follow Georgetown’s example and stand up for workers’ rights.

By the November 6, 2008

Editorials

What’s a fair housing lottery worth?

Housing Services should affirm its commitment to making a fair housing lottery and bring an end to the biannual raffle.

By the November 6, 2008

Voices

My Catholic catharsis

My name is Chelsea Paige and, until recently, I was scared of Christianity. For about one-third of the world's population, Jesus is numero uno. But for that largest of religious diasporas, the Jews of the New York metropolitan area (or the ones I know, at least), Jesus was altogether foreign-a vague, amorphous being who lay at the core of the religion which brought us the Crusades and the Inquisition. Oddly enough, my visceral reaction to Christ stemmed from silence rather than any anti-Christian propaganda: my teachers failed to mention him once during my fourteen years of Hebrew school.

By November 6, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

MUN: Kicking ass, and taking Ivy names

Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service is one of the leading undergraduate schools for the study of international affairs, and Georgetown is located in the nation’s capital. One would assume that Georgetown should naturally dominate the collegiate Model UN circuit. Unfortunately, until two years ago, we didn’t.

By November 6, 2008

Voices

50% Austrian, 50% South African, 100% American

I understand why my parents came to America. Where else can two fresh-off-the-boat, kiss-strangers-on-both-cheeks-in-front-of-the-local-blue-collar-bar foreigners eventually become locals? In the late 1970s, they stepped off a plane in appallingly-polyestered Kennedy International Airport as outsiders and by the grace of the American experiment, they now celebrate Thanksgiving, watch college sports, pay taxes, vote, do yardwork, have potlucks, and cheer for U.S. Olympians alongside Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution. They criticize this country, but they always acknowledge that in no other place in the world would the union of a South African daughter of a pogrom survivor and an Austrian son of a Nazi ambulance driver have been possible. I accept this, but even so, I've always wished I had not been born in America.

By November 6, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

The tea party’s over: the plight of India’s workers

Because of the expanding tea industries in both Kenya and Sri Lanka and the overall decreased demand for tea in our coffee and latte-chugging world, the tea industry is facing a downward spiral in India. Plantation after plantation has had to shut down, especially in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal. While many plantations are still pulling in a substantial profit, the owners are not reinvesting their profits back into their plantations and their workers. Instead, they are putting their money into other industries and failing to adjust their laborers' salaries to inflation in the market.

By November 6, 2008

Voices

National Coming Out Day—a time to just be yourself

On a night like many other during my freshman year, I sat in the Leavey Center’s big comfy chairs and pretended to do homework with friends from my floor. But on this night, my friend took me and another friend aside and said that she had something important to tell us. I had no idea what it could be, but after she started to say what was on her mind, stopped, and tried again in a different way, I realized that whatever it was, it was big and daunting for her. We encouraged her to just get it out there. “I think I might like girls,” she finally said. “You might?” my naïve self asked, not quite grasping what she was trying to tell us.

By October 30, 2008

Voices

Dude, you’re getting a Dell? Sucks for you, dude

I awoke on the morning after my 22nd birthday to learn that I had been dumped. After fourteen months of love, laughs, and tears, my Dell Inspiron 130B laptop had left me-and he'd taken all the files on my hard drive with him. Apparently all those long nights we spent together in the basement of the library didn't mean anything. And all those ignored error messages, well, they did.

By October 30, 2008

Voices

Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something fair to eat

Never, in all my years of torturous trick-or-treating, did anyone ever drop a bar of Scharffen Bergen or Green and Black's chocolate into my plastic jack-o-lantern. Considering the incredible cost one would incur giving that stuff away for free, who could blame them? Most Halloween booty-M&M's, Hershey's, Reese's, Kit Kats-excite my taste-buds just as much as they aggravate my conscience. All chocolate is not made equal. Aside from the variations in taste, there is also the moral consideration of where it comes from and how it gets to us.

By October 30, 2008

Voices

This just in: Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with

In these days of Kanye West’s superstardom and “Lil’ Wayne for President” t-shirts, rap as a genre needs little defense. During our generation’s coming of age, hip-hop was brought out of the streets and onto the airwaves, but it gained the same cookie-cutter commercialism and predictability of pop music, even if it is more edgy and profane. So next time you hear T-Pain robotically whining about throwing money at strippers, remember the time when rap was dominated by the gritty beats and crazy characters of the Wu-Tang Clan.

By October 30, 2008

Editorials

Head over to Yates for your flu shot

The University of Minnesota has thrown down the gauntlet.  Yesterday, the U of M Boynton Health Service set the world record for number of flu shots administered in a single... Read more

By the October 30, 2008

Editorials

The day Georgetown’s fall concert died

Last year, Georgetown’s fall concert was an unequivocal disaster. Barely a quarter of the tickets were sold, the lead singer of the band, Fountains of Wayne, was so sick he... Read more

By the October 30, 2008

Editorials

Bring transparency to SAC’s spending

Ever wonder how that annoying $50 student activities fee is being spent? We do, too—and with good reason. Unfortunately, the Student Activities Commission, the group charged with distributing thousands of... Read more

By the October 30, 2008

Editorials

Representative gov’t: ever heard of it?

The Georgetown University Student Association Senate, for all of its flaws, has one thing going for it: its members are elected by the student body. Call it ineffective or irrelevant or self-important, but at least each Senator represents a constituency of students and is, in theory, held accountable by these students. That’s what makes a recently enacted modification to GUSA’s bylaws that allow a non-GUSA Senator to head a GUSA commission so troubling: it undermines the very foundation of GUSA’s credibility. Getting outside students involved in GUSA is a worthy goal, but GUSA should reverse the change so that they don’t put a non-elected student in a position of power and responsibility.

By the October 23, 2008

Editorials

Raise the bar with tougher tenure

Last year, the Main Campus Executive Faculty wagged its collective finger at Georgetown students, calling student life a “culture of functionality” and “underachievement” with too much partying and not enough academic excellence. The Intellectual Life Report, though not without its flaws, was refreshing in its willingness to unflinchingly scrutinize Georgetown’s academic environment. Today, as the MCEF brings recommendations for stricter tenure criteria before the Georgetown Faculty Senate, the Faculty Senate once again has an opportunity to prove its dedication to improving Georgetown’s academic environment. The Senate should approve the MCEF’s proposal and vote to strengthen the Faculty Handbook’s guidelines for tenure-seeking professors.

By the October 23, 2008

Editorials

GU needs a mail system makeover

If you’re obsessively checking your mailbox for an overdue absentee ballot: don’t hold your breath. At Georgetown, letters can take weeks to arrive when they should take mere days, students’ bills are placed in mailboxes from years past, and missent mail gets held up in sorting for indefinite periods of time or, worse, simply discarded by students who receive mail addressed to someone else. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to the problem of Georgetown’s unreliable mail system: get rid of it. In its place, Georgetown should establish a centralized mail system, with everyone’s P.O. boxes in one building and each student having the same box for all four years.

By the October 23, 2008