Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.

Editorials

Get on your feet

As part of Georgetown’s increased security efforts in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a Department of Public Safety vehicle has been stationed at University entrances, Healy Gates and Reservoir Road, 24-hours a day. While the car adequately addresses campus traffic control, it has not been as successful at policing crimes occurring near campus: On Feb.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

My new weather control device is unstoppable

My new weather-control device is unstoppable. After years of top-secret research and development and months of focus-group testing on Kurdish tribesmen, I have tasted the succulent nectar of world domination just days before your President begins dropping bombs on my swimming pools.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

How to make Hoya love

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I make the ladies sweat. That’s why the Voice begged me to write this article. What, the editors wondered, can we find out about “the life of love” from the hottest thing to hit the Georgetown campus since Tabasco and Jesuits? Plenty, I say.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Kickin’ it in the badlands

I think my erudite and well-read English professor should start pronouncing Gustav Flaubert’s name in a cheap, Americanized fashion: Flaw-burt. He should continue his French literary name-dropping as usual but just mispronounce Flaubert’s name on purpose: Bordieu, Foucault, Sartre, Flaw-burt.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Just four rugs?

“Excuse me, is this your child?” the waiter asked. We must have been an odd sight—an American couple dining at a Dallas family restaurant with what appeared to be a gangly six-year-old Brit. After being assured that I was not, in fact, the victim of an elaborate trans-Atlantic kidnapping scheme and that we had just lived abroad for a while, he left us alone without informing the police.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

As members of Advocates for Improved Response Methods to Sexual Assault (AFIRMS), we applaud the Georgetown Voice for its endorsement of our proposed changes to the sexual assault policy. The editors have clearly examined our reports carefully with the interests of students in mind.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

Mike DeBonis’ column (“Trash Talk,” Feb. 6) was reasonably well-written, which is to be applauded. However, the sanctimonious attitude he exhibits is not. The article ends with the paragraph, “Do yourself a favor if you’re a talk radio junkie or a HoyaTalk regular: Break out of the cycle and take a few minutes to get the real story.

By the February 13, 2003

Editorials

Free and anonymous

Unfortunately for students, on-campus HIV testing is neither cheap nor anonymous. Currently, the Student Primary Care Clinic does offer testing, but a recently proposed plan would have made it both free and anonymous for students. However, once again the University proved itself incapable of meeting student needs by denying funding for the plan yesterday.

By the February 13, 2003

Editorials

An inexcusable mistake

On Feb. 5, students were unable to access their Georgetown University e-mail accounts for approximately 14 hours. The administration shut down GUMail in order to remove a message sent out to the University community, which contained confidential and sensitive information about three students.

By the February 13, 2003

Editorials

Better than hydro

In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush explained his National Energy Policy, an energy plan which breaks definitively with Republicans of the past who have not advocated environmentally-friendly policies. Bush claims that he has presented an energy plan that is environmentally sound and progressive in the development of “technology and innovation,” citing his effort to earmark $1.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Delicious any way you pronounce it

“Koichi, could you read the following passage to the class?” Every new semester, my professors find a new way to say my name. For just a second, I think about correcting the mispronunciation, but my instinctual unwillingness to stir the pond takes over. As the situation continues, some classmates shoot me half-embarrassed glances as they uneasily wait for my reaction.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Kiss those group projects goodbye

MOB. MOC. MIS. No, they’re not airport codes or even covert military operations. They are the links that comprise a backbone of BS, a.k.a. the MSB. My failure to understand the McDonough School of Business does not stem from COL pride. Hurt pride, perhaps, but had it not been for the confessions of MSB students themselves, I would still be in the dark about Georgetown’s business program and consequently, the invalidity of its very existence.

By the February 6, 2003

Editorials

Change the sexual assault policy

On Jan. 22, the Advocates for Improved Response Methods to Sexual Assault (AFIRMS) group released an analysis of Georgetown’s sexual assault policy and adjudication process to more than 30 student affairs administrators. AFIRMS puts forth a series of valuable recommendations for altering the University’s Student Code of Conduct, adjudication system and disclosure policy and the administration should give them serious consideration.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Detached, ironically

If college is a part of my formative years, then it is safe to say that I am still developing the basic paradigms through which I view the world. I don’t just mean my stance on political systems such as representative democracy or bureaucratic authoritarianism, or how to choose an appropriate theoretical economic framework with which to analyze the Mexican debt crisis of 1982.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

I appreciate your article about ANSWER (“In the Anti-war Movement is Only One ANSWER Right?” Jan. 30). While it is nice that there is such a large organization opposed to war, it is not the only movement. I am a member of the Libertarian Party, a group you would find holding “Starbucks in Iraq” signs before any sort of Marxist Revolutionist propaganda.

By the February 6, 2003

Editorials

It starts from the top

Georgetown University Athletic Director Joe Lang’s comments in the Washington Post last week defending embattled men’s basketball Head Coach Craig Esherick angered many Hoyas fans. Amid criticism following embarrassing losses to St. John’s and Seton Hall, Lang praised Esherick for averaging 21 wins in his three full seasons as head coach, extolled the team’s high graduation rate (84 out of 86 players on Esherick’s watch) and argued that it is “unreasonable” to expect the Hoyas to reach the NCAA tournament every year.

By the January 30, 2003

Editorials

Image isn’t everything

In response to complaints of a lack of police presence, last week D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey ordered all police cruisers to flash their blue and red rooftop lights at all times, the first mandate of its kind in the United States. The idea came from Ramsey’s recent trip to Jerusalem to observe the anti-terror tactics used by its city police, which include using police car rooftop lights in a similar fashion.

By the January 30, 2003

Editorials

Look who’s talking

Georgetown is too often knocked for its “pre-professional” orientation: So it goes, students here would rather press flesh and pad resumes than learn without a motive or ambition in mind. Still, many of us are ready to wait in excessive lines to hear top speakers, class credit be damned, and over the past months, students have had more reasons than ever to stand in line, thanks to a wealth of fine speakers on campus.

By the January 30, 2003

Voices

Thinking about the way he lived it

I think of my dad and Ronnie, little boys in Bayonne, chasing the ball in the street, watching the boats arriving at the docks and the boats departing, watching the water wash ashore and then recede; two boys marveling with child-eyed wonder at life’s comings and goings.

By the January 30, 2003

Voices

My parents never told me about that

When I was 12 years old, I had my first and last conversation about sex with my mother. She and I were walking to the back of a drugstore to pick up a prescription, and we happened to walk down the “Family Planning” aisle. I stopped in front of the massive wall of prophylactics, turned to my mother and said, “I think it’s time you bought me some condoms.

By the January 30, 2003