Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.



Voices

Carrying on: The tale of the enchanted rock

Sometime during my first year in the Boy Scouts, I went on a hike and never came back. I wasn’t alone; perhaps five other kids and an adult scoutmaster set off with me early that morning. It was meant to be a five-miler and we were supposed to be back by lunchtime. I wasn’t found until one in the morning.

Letters to the Editor

Gallaudet article misleading

Your article about Gallaudet University is misleading the public when it says that “Gallaudet University is still suffering from the long-term effects of last fall’s student strike.”

Editorials

Unstrand spring breakers

Returning to the Hilltop from spring break, students get off the Rosslyn Metro stop and gather at the GUTS bus station a block away.

Editorials

Don’t shoot down District’s gun ban

In 1976, the District of Columbia passed one of the nation’s strictest gun laws, prohibiting handguns and severely restricting rifles and shotguns.

Editorials

Adios, Mr. Gonzalez

In early December, seven United States Attorneys were dismissed from their jobs.

Voices

Carrying on: One man plays with his Wii

Back in middle school there was always one kid on the baseball team with gangly legs too long for his body and ears too big for his head: that athletic disaster that you didn’t want to see come up to bat, even though you knew that everybody gets to play in Little League. Remember how that kid didn’t really want to get up to bat either? I was that kid, and I excelled more in the field of videogames than on a physical field.

Letters to the Editor

FELP actually saves GU students money

I read with great interest your January 11, 2007 editorial, “Making Student Loans Easy.” It encourages Congress to provide more money for student financial aid and suggests that the Federal Direct Lending Program is a better method for providing loans than the Federal Family Education Loan Program.

Editorials

Step 1: Give students a box

Though we’re well into the “future,” it still feels like campus mail is stuck in the days of the Pony Express.

Letters to the Editor

Pot endorsed by God

It’s encouraging that students are working to bring sanity to America‘s cannabis (kaneh bosm / marijuana) laws.

Editorials

Don’t make Hoyas’ home nicer

Looking to fund $50 million in renovations to the Verizon Center without opening up his checkbook, Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin did what any sensible man would do: he turned to the D.C. Council.

Letters to the Editor

Voice writer wrong about W. Sahara

I wish to address two points with you regarding this article (“The Woes of Western Sahara,” Voices, Feb. 22, 2007).

Editorials

The Funny Third: JWall for President

Fellow Hoyas, the time has come to ask not what you can do for your basketball team, but to ask what your basketball team can do for you, and that is to overthrow the Student Association.

Voices

The truth about strangers

Unfortunately, it appears that our mothers’ favorite adage about taking candy from strangers is true. Give your amiable bus driver an inch and he’ll take a mile. Chat with the girl beside you in the Safeway line once and she’ll be lying in wait for you by the shopping carts next time you go to buy cereal. Strike up a conversation with the security guard at your office and next thing you know he’ll stop seeing your 30-year age difference as an obstacle to asking you to dinner.

Voices

The roaring bears of Brooklyn

As a National Park Ranger last summer, I was often asked what to do if a bear came into the campsite. This might be a standard question for most park rangers, but I wasn’t surrounded by Yellowstone’s erupting geysers or the rocky majesty of the Grand Canyon, but by weedy fields dotted with occasional clumps of pine trees at Gateway National Recreation Area. The park is Brooklyn’s largest national park, located on the southern tip of the borough. I follow the news pretty closely, but the frequency of the bear question left me wondering whether there was a rash of bear attacks sweeping New York that I hadn’t heard about.

Voices

The rhetorical war against Iran

It has been over five years since George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in which he proclaimed that an “axis of evil” that included the countries of Iraq, Iran and North Korea “threaten the peace of the world.” Bush made it clear that he is willing to take action against such “evil” when he invaded Iraq in 2003, and now there is much discussion about what should be done with Iran and its ambition to obtain nuclear technology. Currently, Americans are being led to believe that Iran is a serious threat to their security (and Israel’s), yet this idea is simply false and based on misquotations and exaggerations.

Editorials

Homeless get no snow days

Roughly one percent of all residents in the District of Columbia are homeless, the highest per capita rate in the country.

Editorials

Unfreeze District’s blood supply

Last Wednesday’s whiteout had more serious effects than keeping a few professors from getting to work. The D.C.-Baltimore area may be wet with winter weather but its blood supply is significantly dried out.

Editorials

Three inches too much for D.C.

We learned this week that there is no better solution to icy roads than warm weather. It’s a shame we had to wait for it.

Voices

The woes of Western Sahara

In the vast expanse of the Algerian desert, a hundred thousand refugees from the Western Sahara languish because of Moroccan imperialism. Exiled from their homeland 31 years ago, they wait while the international community averts its eyes from their travesty. As human rights abuses increase inside occupied Western Sahara and a food shortage in the Algerian camps becomes critical, the Western Saharan people need self-determination more than ever before.

Voices

Blue glitter and black Sharpie

I never knew what to write in people’s yearbooks in high school. I wasn’t eloquent enough to state my feelings plainly and I was afraid of the alternatives: overly-sentimental messages that made me cringe or vapid goodbyes that made me question the strength of my friendships. But when my friends always finished their messages in my yearbook and could only wait for so long, I’d scribble something along the lines of “Remember the night we…” or “I could not have asked for a better roommate” and hand the bulky yearbook back, feeling fake.