Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.



Editorials

Worth it for the parking alone

With a potential $323 million budget deficit on its hands, the D.C. Council is looking for new ways to increase revenue. What better way to bring the city money then by raising parking fines? Well, how about expanding the city’s free parking privileges to include even more District employees at the same time?

According to the Washington Times, more than 1,000 city employees now enjoy parking perks.

Voices

The Manassas diaries

There were four of us that early Monday morn, four sad bastards facing futures without certainty. There was Redding, the erstwhile philosophy student from Georgia who owned one too many scarves. There was Mike, a sexual deviant from Arizona with a quick wit and a goatee.

Voices

Letter to the Editor

I read with interest your editorial “Time to ask and tell” (Oct. 10, 2002). There are real costs to integrating the openly gay into the ranks. This is not to say that those costs may not be worthy of the goal, but let’s fully understand the ramifications of what you are advocating.

Voices

Now back it up

You might have heard of “Minnesota Nice,” but as far as I’m concerned, it stops right where my personal bubble starts. Throughout my childhood, I didn’t like to touch people in public. I’m not talking about regular public displays of affection, although I rarely support that either.

Voices

We fear evil, for the Lord is not with us

They say we are given to experience God’s will only in very small ways. Well, dude, I ain’t feeling it at all. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that the will of God is entirely absent from my Henle home. No, I have not found Jesus, and I doubt he would dare set foot in my apartment, for the good Lord would shudder at the crime against nature that is Georgetown’s housing arrangements.

Editorials

Fair Trade, fair choice

In the past five years, coffee prices have plummeted 70 percent, plunging 25 million Third World coffee farmers into poverty. Small farmers, unable to transport their own coffee, are forced to pay exorbitant amounts to middlemen. As a result, farmers who should be receiving a fair “living wage” of $1.

Editorials

Time to ask and tell

On Oct. 4, more than 100 students and faculty members at the Georgetown University Law Center gathered to protest the presence of Judge Advocacy Group representatives at the annual Government Interview Week. The demonstrators argued that the presence of the group, which discriminates against homosexuals in the form of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, violates University anti-discrimination policy.

Editorials

Voting rights for all

Mayor Anthony Williams said at a news conference last Monday that United States citizenship should not be the standard for voting in municipal elections in Washington, D.C. He hopes to enfranchise all taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia. In 1991, Takoma Park, Maryland became the first municipality to allow immigrants to vote in local elections.

Voices

Straight from the child’s mouth herself

Stepping off the plane in Dallas last Friday amidst cowboy hats and wide-open spaces, I was immediately thrown into the pulsating mixture of my relatives?great aunts from California, second cousins from Oklahoma, parents from Missouri?all in Dallas to celebrate my great-grandmother’s 90th birthday.

Voices

Most likely to secede

Last spring, I was abroad in Santiago, Chile, and while I was there I dated a television producer. He was then working on a WWF-style wrestling show, the first of its kind to air in Chile. One night, during a pretty intense argument, he told me that as a television producer surrounded by beautiful people, he had options?he could date girls 10 times better looking than I was.

Voices

Red dragon, yellow news

On Monday morning, Oct. 7, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the chest as his mother dropped him off in front of his middle school in Bowie, Md. The boy was the eighth victim in a series of sniper-style shootings that have left six dead and two seriously wounded in the suburbs of our nation’s capital over the past week.

Voices

In defense of IMF/World Bank protesters

The recent editorial, “Leave the McDonald’s alone,” (Sept. 26, 2002) is yet another instance of the biased, close-minded and poorly reported media representations of anti-corporate globalization protests that have dominated coverage since 1999. The editorial consisted of nothing but fabrications, counterintuitive inferences and baseless accusations, while managing to ignore completely any of the real issues.

Editorials

A stink in New Jersey

On Monday, Senator Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) announced that he would no longer seek re-election to his senate seat. He was formally denigrated by a bipartisan Senate ethics committee this summer for accepting illegal gifts and contributions in his 1996 election campaign.

Voices

Flight of faith

There was a time in my life when I harbored serious disdain for those who catered to their own irrational fear of flying in airplanes. Indeed, what could be safer than an airplane? Trains derail, cars crash, pedestrians trip on curbs or get hit by said cars.

Voices

A broad at home

Every day can be a miracle, if only we let it. Of course, wallowing in self-pity and indulging our victim mentality, is so much easier, so much saucier. Who doesn’t want to deny the silver lining, the pleasant surprise that may lurk behind a failure? After all, embracing it could lead to a certain degree of happiness.

Voices

Confessions of a communications director

I’ll admit it: I was the one who suggested the classy-sounding titles. It was my feeling that the more seriously we took the Georgetown University Student Association campaign, the more important we could pretend it was. To avoid internal struggles, the candidate did not want to designate a “Campaign Manager.

Voices

Correction

The Georgetown Voice takes mistakes seriously. We will correct all mistakes of fact in our stories and publish appropriate clarifications as soon as possible. ? The Sept. 26 article “Protests may snarl downton D.C.,” incorrectly referred to the targets of last weekend’s protests.

Editorials

There are disabled Hoyas, too

Most Georgetown students are not at the mercy of broken elevators, sullied ramps, unmarked paths or complex directions when going to classes, dorms or the cafeteria. Physically disabled students shouldn’t be either, but the University’s record of providing adequate accessibility for mobility impaired students is mixed, if not dismal.

Editorials

MPD: Only half right

This past weekend, an estimated 2,000 demonstrators descended on Washington, D.C. to protest the scheduled meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In the weeks leading up to the protests, Washingtonians voiced their concerns about the safety and security of their city, citing rioting at previous gatherings in Seattle, Milan and here in the District.

Voices

Exterminators of the world, unite!

I used to pride myself on thinking that I didn’t hate anything. Were there things that I strongly disliked? Of course. I could rattle off a somewhat excessive list of what I abhorred, detested and generally despised with little prompting. But I did not hate.