Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.



Voices

Carrying on: A light in the dark of Darfur

Underneath the Christmas star that seems, in the dark, to float on the Healy building, a small group of students gathered for a candlelit vigil last night. They were members of STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, marking the end of a day of fasting to raise money for refugees displaced by the genocide in Darfur. Far be it from me to inflict a journalistic cliché on you, but as the group worked together to light their candles in the freezing cold while other students shuffled numbly by through the slush, there seemed to be a bit of metaphor in the air. Not a million points of light, but enough.

Page 13 Cartoons

UN needs effective adaptation policy

As representatives from over 180 countries, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and the media fly to Bali, Indonesia for the thirteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference, they prepare for two weeks of what has been perceived as “make-or-break” negotiations on the future of international climate change policy.

Voices

Carrying On

Growing up I believed that there were no parents more conservative about television than my own. I resented the fact that no one else’s parents seemed to frown upon their watching shows like Friends. I can count on one hand the episodes of The Simpsons I saw before college: my parents believe it’s unwholesome.

Then I learned about the Parents Television Council…

Voices

Make space, not flyers

I want there to be less flyers on this campus. I dream, ladies and gentlemen, of pushing a door that is a solid, unbroken brown pane. I dream of bare lampposts, of seeing the actual bricks in the Red Square archway. I want blue electrical tape to be used for … whatever it is usually used for, rather than to outline program board events or dinners. I want some space.

Voices

Georgetown unites against HIV/AIDS

As World AIDS Day 2007 approaches, one of the most serious obstacles to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the stigma around it and the various forms that stigma takes around the world. Students at Georgetown University are not exempt.

Editorials

Colleges should not police downloads

While the Voice does not condone illegal file-sharing, Congress should not be roping universities into the fight against it, and Georgetown should not be diverting any of its limited resources into investigating students’ downloading habits.

Editorials

Improving D.C.’s needle exchange

Five percent of the District’s population has HIV, according to a report released by Washington’s Department of Health, which also found that 13.2 percent of new HIV infections came from injected drugs. With infection rates so high, the city’s lack of support for needle exchange programs is dangerously negligent.

Voices

Remembering the T in LGBTQ

This month, Georgetown University Pride is organizing a week of programming themed issues as well as issues of gender norms and expectations. But why is specific programming necessary for these groups when everything that Pride does is meant to apply to the entire LGBTQ community, which clearly includes the ‘T’?

Editorials

Make Amtrak funding a priority

The federal government should increase Amtrak’s funding in order to give train travel, one of the safest, greenest forms of public transportation, the jolt it need

Editorials

Every vote counts (including yours)

It’s been a couple of years since P. Diddy told us to vote or die, but even without a death threat, it’s time for another stab at the democratic process. If you haven’t already obtained an absentee ballot for the upcoming presidential primaries, pick one up while you’re home for Thanksgiving break.

Voices

This man is living the dream, occasionally

After graduation, I moved to the big city with three friends from high school to play our own radical take on the music we grew up listening to together. Our band was called … let’s just say it starts with L and ends with Zeppelin. Fortunately, one of our members had spent some time touring with the Yardbirds while I was in school, so we were entering the game with a pretty high level of professionalism. Our debut album drew a little bit of noise from the press and the fans alike, we toured here and there, and before you could say “alcohol poisoning” it was all black magic and mud sharks. Then our drummer died in a pool of his own vomit.

Editorials

Let WGTB run its own concerts

GPB should not have control over concerts, especially if groups like WGTB, which has a history of putting on solid shows, go through the trouble of booking the artists.

Voices

I wanna really, really, really, wanna zig-a-zig ha

My most enduring memory of elementary school is not learning how to read or memorizing multiplication tables, but rather my complete infatuation with the Spice Girls. Their first album, Spice, was the first CD I ever owned. Along with my two best friends, I spent most of second and third grades obsessing over the group.

Editorials

Keep athletes safe by fixing Kehoe

A field that is unsafe for visiting varsity athletes is equally unsafe for Georgetown’s club and intramural athletes, and the University should not be this careless about student safety.

Voices

Hey baby, want to run a race?

Once D.C. turns cold, I bring my workout routine to Yates. What I have learned from my time spent there, though, is not the secret to great abs, but rather that Yates is a place of strange occurrences. If you have ever heard the barbaric cries from the varsity weight room or thought a man lying next to you on the mats was dead (is that just me?), you know what I’m talking about.

Voices

Carrying On

Quinn’s criticism is extreme. While the war in Iraq may not be the topic of conversation every day of the week, Georgetown has not forgotten about it.

Editorials

Increase financial perks for filmmakers

The lack of sufficient economic incentives makes it financially unfeasible for most productions to film in D.C. for an extended period of time. The District should increase these incentives in order to give the local economy a boost and let lesser-known neighborhoods get their share of screen time.

Voices

Carrying On

The biggest disadvantage of being raised by my single father was having to eat his cooking. My father and I both viewed cooking as a mysterious, unfathomable process on par with raising a child from the dead or constructing a nuclear submarine using nothing but a hatchet. There was something vaguely suspicious about it, and we avoided it at all costs.

Editorials

Keep the District’s gun ban alive

The Supreme Court should take Fenty’s case and uphold the constitutionality of the District’s gun ban.

Voices

Gyrating hunks, not courtside dunks

My friend didn’t have to work the Championship game and managed to obtain two floor seats. The significance of this game was lost on me. I made other plans. Instead of opting to watch ten tall, athletic men compete in a basketball game, we decided to watch 15 tall, athletic men strip, dance and gyrate like helicopter propellers. I picked my friend up from work and we stumbled out of Madison Square Garden and downtown to Club Avalon, home of the USA Hunk-o-Mania Show. (God bless America.)