Opinion

Thoughts from the Georgetown community.

Voices

In 2012 presidential race, our last hope is Leslie Knope

No currently airing television show highlights the tedium and frustrations of government bureaucracy with comedic ease quite like NBC’s Parks and Recreation. The show’s popularity and comic brilliance is assuring to viewers, especially those who double as voting citizens, that government officials like the Deputy Parks Director of the Pawnee Parks Department, Leslie Knope, exist. Sadly, however, it seems characters like Knope only occupy in the fictional sphere.

By February 2, 2012

Voices

The gender spectum spans more than just pink and blue

A few years ago, when I was coloring with my nephew, he asked me which crayon I wanted to use. I chose purple, saying, “It’s my favorite color.” He picked up pink, and said “I love pink, it’s my favorite color.” Unconventional, but who really cares? Two weeks later he came back, and reported that pink was no longer his favorite color. Only girls like pink. That particular wavelength of light had been designated effeminate.

By February 2, 2012

Voices

Carrying On: A pirate’s life for me

In the war against online copyright infringement, the Stop Online Piracy Act—better known as the reason you couldn’t use Wikipedia two weeks ago—represents something in between a scorched earth policy and the Death Star’s destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars. The problem with the bill is that its definition of piracy is so general, and its enforcement mechanisms so extreme, that it could require the shutdown of large swaths of the Internet (including pretty much any site with user-generated content). Under SOPA, everyone would be a pirate.

By February 2, 2012

Voices

Obama’s courageous plan to steady the cost of college

During his State of the Union address last week, President Obama proposed a plan to slow increases in college tuition. His strategy calls for steering federal dollars to colleges that keep tuition low while cutting federal support to colleges that continuously raise price of attendance. Focusing on campus-based aid programs that go to university administrators instead of the much larger federal grants that go directly to students, Obama’s plan places the incentive to keep costs down squarely on the universities themselves, which ultimately have the power to prevent future increases in tuition.

By February 2, 2012

Editorials

Leo’s protest exposes broken Hoya values

Last Thursday, the Voice’s blog, Vox Populi published an article on a lunchtime protest held by Georgetown food service workers with facilitation assistance by Georgetown Solidarity Committee. While the inspiring demonstration in Leo O’Donovan’s Dining Hall lasted about two minutes, what followed in many of the comments below the piece amounted to nothing more than a despicable display of ill-informed, amateur economics, elitism, and disregard for the interests of the working class that this campus should be looking to leave behind.

By the February 2, 2012

Editorials

District residents need their right to choose

A new bill proposed by Arizona Republican Congressman Trent Franks, the “District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” aims to prevent women in D.C. from getting abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, claiming that after that point fetuses can feel pain.

By the February 2, 2012

Editorials

Right-to-Work lowers wages with no reward

Yesterday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law legislation making Indiana the first Right-to-Work state in the industrial Midwest. While Indianapolis union members protested the bill for over a month, it took a speedy route through the Indiana House of Representatives and its Republican-controlled Senate.

By the February 2, 2012

Voices

Tucson, one year later: A painful call for understanding

A little over one year ago, Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people were shot at a constituent meeting in a grocery store parking lot in Tuscon, Ariz. 13 of the victims were injured, and six died—nine-year-old Christina Green, Superior Court judge John Roll, Giffords staffer Gabe Zimmerman, and retirees Dorwin Stoddard, Dorothy Morris, and Phyllis Schneck.

By January 26, 2012

Voices

Liar, adulterer, and the Republican Party’s last resort

“A few days ago, Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary.” It seems like a perfectly simple, ordinary sentence at first—it has a subject, a verb, even a neat little appositive phrase. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that the repercussions presented by the content of the sentence are far from simple.

By January 26, 2012

Voices

Carrying On: America’s aggressive TV ads

Normally, I can’t sit through an entire NFL game unless my team is playing. Despite there being just 60 minutes of actual gameplay, contests are often drawn out beyond the three hour mark, as the sport’s stop-and-go nature allows frequent commercial breaks. At times, watching a game becomes altogether tedious, as networks try to squeeze in every possible second of advertising, regardless of how much time has passed since they last cut to break.

By January 26, 2012

Voices

Teenage years in Switzerland spent drinking, not driving

I am 19 years old, and I don’t know how to drive. Gears are mystifying. Internal combustion engines? I know they exist, but don’t even get me started on the indecipherable rules of the road. The point is I just don’t know how. So why, in the years since I could legally drive, did I never get a license to do it? How did I miss out on the quintessentially American rite of passage of learning to drive?

By January 26, 2012

Editorials

Obama too cautious in State of the Union

On Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama began his election year State of the Union address with a war metaphor, comparing the unified American military to the dysfunctional Congress. Unity and cooperation proved to be the big themes for Obama in this speech, and correspondingly he proposed mostly moderate policy changes in an attempt to build an electoral base and appear above the fray of squabbling legislators. It was an all-too-cautious approach from the President at a time when the nation needs dramatic and immediate change.

By the January 26, 2012

Editorials

GUSA strategy plays to University’s hands

The passage of yet another round of Student Activity Fund Endowment reforms this week begs a question about how the Georgetown University Student Association manages its relationship with University administration. A vote for SAFE reform this time around is surely a good one, but it is also a stinging reminder of what could have been.

By the January 26, 2012

Editorials

Private contractors poisonous in drug war

Academi, the military contracting firm formerly known as Xe and Blackwater Worldwide, was recently awarded a contract by the Pentagon to contribute to the “War on Drugs.” The company is notorious for scandals in Iraq and Afghanistan while providing auxiliary forces to the United States military, including the killing of Iraqi civilians and withholding of information regarding deaths of Blackwater’s own employees. Now, according to the BBC, it will be “providing advice, training and conducting operations in drug producing countries and those with links to so-called ‘narco-terrorism’ including Latin America.”

By the January 26, 2012

Editorials

NDAA an inexcusable violation of civil liberties

On December 31, President Obama signed into law the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, one of the most constitutionally questionable bills in the history of the United States. The law broadens the definition of the “War on Terror” and legalizes the indefinite detention of foreign nationals and American citizens. While the President issued a signing statement promising to disregard this final provision, one ought to remain intensely skeptical of this claim—indefinite detention, while not yet officially applied to American citizens, is already regularly practiced abroad, and Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t change that it is now part of official law.

By the January 19, 2012

Editorials

GSC holds Georgetown to its Jesuit values

As the only campus organization dedicated to the needs of workers, the Georgetown Solidarity Committee plays a uniquely vital role on Georgetown’s campus. Although the University administration is nominally committed to the Jesuit value of social justice, many of the subcontracted workers on campus, including Leo’s workers and custodial staff, work long hours for meager wages, all while receiving inadequate healthcare services.

By the January 19, 2012

Editorials

Extra funds best applied to public schools

Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and his administrative staff rang in the new year by doling out the $42.2 million that D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Natwar Gandhi, projected as a surplus from initial predictions for fiscal year 2012’s revenue. Gray allocated over half the funds—$21.4 million—to D.C. Public Schools. The announcement stood in stark contrast to the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula used in the Per Pupil Funding Analysis in the Mayor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, which established a requirement for public and public charter students to be funded equally.

By the January 19, 2012

Voices

American system fails to provide educational equity

Isaac Newton, one of the all-time greatest minds in the field of physics, touched upon a fundamental truth when he humbly admitted that “if I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Because knowledge is a global public good, as philosophers almost universally agree, Newton was entitled to the combined wealth of human knowledge accumulated before him; accordingly, his addition to this wealth became the right of all men after him.

By January 19, 2012

Voices

Canada autism registry: Safety at cost of sensitivity

Recently, the city of Ottawa, Canada formed a child autism registry. A collaboration between the Autism Organization of Ontario and the Ottawa Police Department, the registry allows 911 dispatchers to respond to emergencies involving children with autism spectrum disorder. The two organizations argued heavily for the formation of the registry, saying that it would help these children receive optimal emergency care.

By January 19, 2012

Voices

Carrying On: Politics beyond the Hill

A few nights a week, I run roughly two miles to the White House and experience a brief moment of awe that, despite all that has happened during my time at Georgetown, the white walls still stand—untarnished, opaque, and foreboding. Every so often, I like to remind myself that I live in a city where leaders make decisions that resound further than a few city blocks. I will be the first to admit that I haven’t paid as much attention to the decisions made within those walls as some of my peers have. What I have paid attention to, however, is the image these leaders have constructed—who it is they wish me to see beyond the walls, rather than who they are within them. Just last week, I found myself lingering in front of the White House as men dressed in orange jumpsuits piled into a makeshift prison in the middle of the sidewalk clutching “Close Guantanamo” signs through the bars, in response to a promise made during Obama’s campaign that will likely go unrealized.

By January 19, 2012