Opinion

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 Jasdeep Singh November 6, 2008

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 Simone Popperl November 6, 2008

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 Sarah Marie Ryan November 6, 2008

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 Sara Carothers October 30, 2008

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 Sarah Harman October 30, 2008

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 Sadaf Qureshi October 30, 2008

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 Sean Quigley October 30, 2008

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 Editorial Board October 30, 2008

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 Editorial Board October 30, 2008

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 Editorial Board October 30, 2008

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 Editorial Board October 23, 2008

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 Editorial Board October 23, 2008

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 Editorial Board October 23, 2008

In the Middle East, far from the Situation Room

It was already 12:58 a.m., and my friend and I only had two minutes to find the right channel before we missed the beginning. “Oh, stop,” I said as I... Read more

By Dan Newman October 23, 2008

Inciting racism is a move for morons, not mavericks

In a country already extremely sensitive to matters of race and religion (especially Islam), the McCain campaign is actively encouraging people to question Obama’s identity in an attempt to build a severely distorted narrative about him. When their own vice presidential candidate is saying Obama is friends with terrorists and implying that he harbors intense resentment for America, what does the campaign expect their middle and southern American base to do?

By Brendan Brown October 23, 2008

In financial crisis, taking public transit pays

If there is any time to encourage the use of public transportation, it is now. With ridership at an all time high, the focus should be on keeping these new transit riders out of their cars, not encouraging them to return to their old ways. Plus, an investment in the nation’s crumbling transportation infrastructure will provide jobs in the short run and would encourage development in the long run, alleviating the effects of the economic downturn.

By Dylan Richmond October 23, 2008

Everything I needed to know about college admissions I learned from Machiavelli

Perhaps this new emphasis on college is the continuation of the American emphasis on meritocracy, the idea that by working hard in high school you can pull yourself up to Ivy League prestige. As another sixth grader told the Times, ‘’With the Ivy League schools, my dad always says that to get into them, it’s like a race. Let’s say we could put the whole grade in a race. People have to fall. People have to stop to tie a shoe. But if you keep getting good grades, you race and race to the top.” This survival of the fittest mentality may be brutal, but at least achieving the best is earned.

By Rebecca Abelman October 23, 2008

Employees of the Corp gotta get paid

Flexible hours, great parties, opportunities for advancement, a tight community of coworkers: what’s not to like about working for Students of Georgetown? Their wages. Entry-level Corp employees earn a meager $7.55 per hour—D.C. minimum wage. That’s fine for some students, but too low for others struggling to pay their tuition and living expenses. While the Corp embodies their mission of “Students serving students” in nearly everything they do, they should make paying their employees a decent wage a priority in addition to their outside philanthropic endeavors.

By the Editorial Board October 16, 2008