Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.



Voices

Our worsening body image

Cultural elites-and by elites I basically mean yuppies-love to compete. Some might say that’s why they’re rich. You go to Georgetown, so you’ve probably noticed this. They compete for everything. Schools, grades, clothes, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, rings, rocks, cars, apartments, starter mansions, pets, children, and finally schools for their children.

Voices

Dumb and Dubya

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, is not blessed with “darn good intelligence,” and I’m not talking about the CIA reports he was given. That’s right, he is not a smart man. The most common reaction to the above assertion goes something like this: “That’s not true.

Editorials

DPS should patrol off-campus

Crime has recently hit closer and closer to home for Georgetown students. Just three days ago, a student entered her home on 33rd Street to find two strangers rummaging through her purse. Only two blocks from LXR, in an area that still feels much like a part of the student community, her home was the target of a crime.

Editorials

Metro’s NFL woes

“Pay up, or else,” is the message that Metro is sending to the National Football League regarding special service for last week’s NFL Kickoff celebration. So far, the NFL has refused to pay a $57,000 bill for expanded services to accommodate fans heading to the National Mall.

Editorials

Editor’s note

The editorial, “Lockdown: a partial fix,” has been removed from the website due to errors of fact. The Voice will run a correction in next week’s issue.

Voices

Gone and forgotten

Jon Sarasuak kontatzen dizkio Andoni Egan?ari Ixil-en artean bizitako batzuk Zozoak Beleari liburuan. In all likelihood, you do not recognize this language. If you do, you are one of twelve speakers of Itz? left in the world today. The Guatemalan language of Itz? is one of four hundred and seventeen languages classified as nearly extinct.

Voices

Celebrating the return of irony

After Sept. 11 2001, one pundit claimed that the stark presentation of good (courageous firefighters) versus evil (you know who), and its rude reminder of that seemingly forgotten but rather grave matter of “life and death”, brought to America “the end of the age of irony.

Voices

Style versus substance

You’re a little hungry. What’s the first thing you think of? New South, but that was last year. This year’s first-years will never have to experience our spectacular old dining hall with its one-way-in, one-way-out door, long lines and dirty, sticky floors.

Voices

More trite senior nostalgia

VOICES by IAN BOURLAND The rhetoric of official university statements, student-group campaigns and mass e-mails has always tended to ring hollow for me, as my eyes glide uncomprehending past assurances of the strength of our traditions and bonds as an intellectual and interpersonal community.

Editorials

A badly needed facility

Georgetown University is in the process of becoming a very different place. The recently completed Southwest Quadrangle is only one part of a larger University expansion plan, one which will eventually give the campus such badly needed facilities as a performing arts center and an on-campus basketball arena.

Editorials

Health site a strong resource

Today, Georgetown will launch a new website, be.georgetown.edu, which consolidates all University health resources into one website for students. Collectively called the “Safety Net,” these resources address physical and mental health issues ranging from travel medicine to tips for boosting your immunity.

Editorials

Performing better

This summer, Georgetown launched the “Program in the Performing Arts,” a merger of the academic and co-curricular elements of the University performing arts community. It has already resulted in “new energy in the whole program” according to Ron Lignelli, Director of the Program in Performing Arts.

Editorials

A responsible alcohol policy

The current University alcohol policy fails to accomplish its stated goal of ensuring “the most responsible approach for the use of alcohol.” The policy does not afford a reasonable amount of trust to students, resulting in a confrontational relationship between students and the University administration.

Editorials

Advocating for students

In July, Todd Olson became interim Vice President of Student Affairs after Juan Gonzales stepped down to take a position at Arizona State University. Olson brings a fair amount of experience to the job; he served as Associate Vice President for Student Affairs for Gonzales, and has had a great deal of interaction with student leaders.

Editorials

Progress at MPD

Last week, the District’s transgender community suffered a rash of violent crime that left two transgender persons dead and one in the hospital.

On Aug. 16, Bella Evangelista was shot dead by a man who had solicited her for oral sex and later discovered she was transgender.

Voices

The inherent merit of ideas

Consider the word respect. Respect conjures an acceptance of ideas and concepts, of allowing each to share an idea. Likewise, respect entails constructive criticism, even going so far as to (gasp!) say that another’s idea may be wrong. Tolerating respect does not change the veracity of the idea; it merely puts forth another’s opinion of it.

Voices

I pus Saxa Gray

VOICES BY SCOTT MATTHEWS People still don’t believe you when you tell them you go to Georgetown? Maybe it’s the overalls and debilitating overbite, you hick. But anyway, the following list is a steady stream of nourishing conformity that new Hoya pups thirsty for acceptance can suckle (literally) straight from the teat of wisdom that is me.

Voices

Punish me

I used to get in trouble in sixth grade. All of the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t get an interesting reputation for it. I wasn’t the class clown, or one of the girls who got caught trying to sneak a bottle of cooking wine into the Halloween dance, or even the kid that nobody really paid attention to until they were stuck doing a group project with him and he promptly blew off doing his part.

Editorials

A tasteless commencement

The commencement speaker at Georgetown’s college graduation ceremony this May was Cardinal Francis Arinze, a well-known Nigerian prelate who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II. Suggested as a speaker by College Dean Jane Dammen McAuliffe, the Cardinal was expected to discuss interreligious dialogue (he has a great deal of experience with Muslim-Christian relations).

Editorials

Too many buses

When Georgetown University sold the Medical Center to MedStar in 2000 to avoid further financial losses, part of their agreement addressed traffic and parking issues. It was agreed that by 2002, MedStar would control almost 2,800 of the 4,080 on-campus parking spaces allowed by zoning laws—800 more than the hospital could use previously.