Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.



Voices

Take me back to the coke orgy!

Well, seniors, we’re almost there! I can’t believe it’s been four years already! Can you? Why, it seems like only yesterday that I was standing in a stuffy and humid New South dorm room, shaking hands with a complete stranger with whom I was about to spend the next nine months.

Editorials

Why can’t we stay?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Although the good doctor was most certainly not referring to Georgetown students right to live in high-priced community housing, the point still stands.

The West Cloisters Homeowner’s Association voted Wednesday on a measure to prohibit more than three unrelated individuals from living in a Cloisters residence.

Voices

In defense of John Walker Lindh

After the attacks of Sept. 11, the rhetoric used by American leaders would lead one to believe that those responsible were attacking freedom and democracy, liberty and justice, ideals theoretically intrinsic to an American ideology. The truth is that the terrorists were attacking reckless American hegemony and economic and cultural imperialism.

Editorials

The darker side

On March 28, D.C. Inspector General Charles Maddox released a 514-page report detailing a series of fundraising inproprieties in the office of Mayor Anthony Williams. According to the report, mayoral aides tapped the accounts of local nonprofits for events and programs that were often politically beneficial for Williams and vigorously solicited donations from organizations with a business interest in the District government.

Editorials

Marijuana: Why not?

District of Columbia voters will have the chance to vote, perhaps as early as November, on the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes following a March 28 ruling by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.

Sullivan overturned a federal law known as the Barr Amendment that forbade the District from placing the question on the ballot, decreeing that the Barr Amendment limited free speech and he judged that “the Constitution does not allow Congress to pre-clear acceptable viewpoints for public debate and expression.

Editorials

Crack kills

Show us an efficient super-criminal with civic aspirations, and we’ll show you a way to get this city running tight as a drum. Unfortunately, all anybody’s been able to show us is last week’s Metro section story in the Washington Post detailing former D.C.

Voices

Trials and tribulations in Chilean Patagonia

My friend Helen and I are studying abroad in Santiago, Chile. During Easter, we decided to visit the Torres del Paine national park, which includes the longest vertical drop in the world. The park is extremely remote, requiring a plane trip and four buses to arrive.

Voices

Alpha males, alpha problems

Spring Break at Georgetown always conjures up demons, and the most recent “week of vice” was certainly no exception. As of January, reports filtered in from Hoyas near and far who were planning strange and inadvisable outings. One small band apparently flocked to the Florida Everglades for the world crocodile wrestling championships, only to head on to the body-wrestling haven of Key West-Georgetown.

Voices

Asking for a definition

Things couldn’t get much worse for the Catholic Church. In the past few years, a spate of scholarly books have taken the ecclesiastic hierarchy to task for its abominable treatment of European Jewry during the Holocaust; similar tomes have unraveled the manufactured mythology the Church used to quell critics past and present regarding its collaboration with Italian and German fascism.

Editorials

How are we doing?

As part of the reaccreditation process by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Georgetown last month released a self-study report that looks into various components of University life and offers over 100 specific recommendations for suggested improvement.

Voices

Letter to the editor

I am writing this letter in response to the Mar. 21 article, “Finding a place in Asian-America” by Andrew Lin. In it, Lin derides the Asian-American youth scene in Los Angeles and describes his (unsuccessful) attempt to escape it by enrolling at Georgetown.

Voices

Finding a place in Asian-America

I hail from the Los Angeles megalopolis, a region renowned for its Californian sunshine and super-sized East Asian population. While in high school, I used to detest this sad fact. No, I did not have yellow fever, and the Asian-American youth scene was rather despicable.

Voices

Ending on a positive note

Second semester senior stress? Is this actually happening? It’s always been ingrained into my head that second semester seniors and stress went together like Georgetown men’s basketball and the NCAA Tournament. Seniors told me last year that no one studies second semester, no one worries, no one stresses and everyone just kicks back with a beer or 10, ticking off the days until graduation.

Voices

Letter to the editor

If cities truly exist to “poison and mar their surrounding environment,” as they do according to Ian Bourland, then the question “Why rate a city?” in his diatribe “Philadelphia does not deserve to live” (March 14, 2002) quickly becomes all the more puzzling.

Editorials

A black and white issue

Georgetown has a reputation as an African-American-friendly school. Surveys in Black Enterprise, movies such as Boyz N’ the Hood and Georgetown’s stories basketball program have created the popular image of an institution that is open and welcoming to black students.

Editorials

Too much compromise

In a letter to the campus community released Tuesday, Vice President for Student Affairs Juan Gonzalez detailed his proposed compromise on the issue of a resource center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. This compromise represents an important step forward for the University, but it raises questions about the administration’s decision-making process.

Voices

On the comedy of a century

If I were to write a novel, it would definitely be set in the 19th century. Because, as I think we can all agree, the 19th century is the most hilarious century of them all. Of course, I wasn’t the first person to figure this out; popular culture today is replete with references to this age.

Voices

Letter to the editor

It’s rare that a single off-the-court decision can end two decades of consistency, undermine the legacy of recent players, send one of the school’s best players out on a sour note, alienate fans and harm the current players’ chance for future success. Skipping the NIT manages to accomplish it all.

Voices

Kaap Stad

“Kaap Stad, brotha?” the toothless man in the window asks as the minibus slows down to the curb. “Yeah.” I hop in to the crowded taxi and fork over two-rand-fifty for the ride into town from Mowbray, my neighborhood. That’s less than 25 American cents. The vehicle is crowded, as they usually are.

Voices

Philadelphia does not deserve to live

I am one of the few, the proud transplants from the western United States to Georgetown. Upon my arrival two years ago, I was confronted with a host of perplexing new experiences: subways, stupid accents and, most amazingly, condensed travel time. The rapidity of, nay, the existence of interstate train travel allows one to traverse the Eastern Sea Board in the time it takes to drive to many of the respective state lines west of the Mississippi.