Voices

Voices is the Op-Ed and personal essay section of The Georgetown Voice. It features the real narratives of diverse students from nearly every corner on campus, seeking to tell some of the incredibly important and yet oft-unheard stories that affect life in and out of Georgetown.

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

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

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

Voices

Counterculture condemns copulation with contraception

In modern media, sex is often portrayed as a tool for pleasure. The cast of Jersey Shore doesn’t show love or commitment to each other, and Cosmopolitan only monetizes and sells sex as recreation. Instead of signifying a unique relationship, intercourse has been reduced to the simple sharing of a sensation. Even hundreds of years ago, philosopher Immanuel Kant recognized the negative ramifications of this most basic, hedonistic use of sex: “Sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite; as soon as that appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry.” According to Kant, those who engage in casual sex are reduced to mere objects and insatiable animals.

By January 19, 2012

Voices

Even Georgetown students struggle with mental illness

As Georgetown students, we pride ourselves on being accepting of all those who study and work at our school. To most students, the days of widespread institutional racism, classism, and heterosexism are gone. Bureaucracies have been established, policies enacted, and we all live thinking that justice has overcome bigotry. And, in many ways, it has—when I’ve encountered racism, it has been with my distant, parochial relatives, not with my classmates at Georgetown. But while students would camp out in Red Square, stage protests, and hold rallies against a racial or social injustice on campus, no one will venture to openly discuss issues of mental illness.

By December 1, 2011

Voices

Faster-than-light particles may contradict Einstein himself

It was rumored that only three people in the world have understood Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it,” physicist Niels Bohr once said. Quantum theory is now recognized as the most significant advancement in physics of the last century, yet recent experiments in Europe suggest that neutrinos can travel faster than light, in seeming violation of quantum theory and Einstein’s equations.

By December 1, 2011

Voices

Carrying On: An N64 to fall back on

Over Thanksgiving break, my roommates sent me home with a request. Actually, it was more like an order: “Don’t come back unless you bring your Nintendo 64.”

By December 1, 2011

Voices

Political correctness muddles discussion of race on campus

A few years back, several incidents pushed issues of race and diversity at Georgetown to the forefront of the campus’s mind. In 2007, the attack of a gay student on campus prompted the formation of the LGBTQ center at Georgetown. In the same year, some criticized the priorities of Georgetown students when a protest on the alcohol policy received more attention than a vigil for the Jena Six that was held on the same day. In 2008 and 2009, students protested the Hoya and the Georgetown Heckler for publishing satirical articles that they found insensitive toward minorities and women who had faced assault.

By December 1, 2011

Voices

We’ve got 99 problems, but income inequality ain’t one

Everyone is painfully aware that the proportionate income of the richest Americans is growing. Like a cancerous tumor, the wealth of America’s elite threatens to envelop us all. As their collective fortunes reach critical mass, the moral fabric of our society will tear apart, fire and brimstone will fall from the sky, machines will rise up against the human race, and Nicki Minaj will be the last cultural legacy of humanity. Or maybe not. Unfortunately, the dystopian visions enthusiastically broadcast from Zuccotti Park by the Occupy Wall Street movement present a distorted picture of this economic trend. True, the income of the top one percent has increased steadily from roughly 10 percent of the total national income in 1985 to 17 percent in 2009.

By November 17, 2011

Voices

Teach for China crosses the Pacific, chalk in hand

At first the books came individually, and then there was a flood of them. After Tim Worm (SFS ’10) posted a message on RenRen, China’s equivalent of Facebook, pleading for help in procuring English-to-Chinese dictionaries for his class of more than 50 students in rural China, the result was a deluge of packages and messages. “I got a bunch of friend requests, with everyone saying ‘Thank you so much for helping us out,’” he said. While he and his fellow teachers at the middle school were amazed at the kindness and generosity of strangers, the feeling was very much mutual. Worm’s new RenRen friends appreciated graduates from top-flight institutions in China and America who were spending two years of their professional lives at rural schools in the Teach for China program.

By November 17, 2011

Voices

Respectful mayhem: a night at the helm of SafeRides

John briskly stopped the van in the middle of the road, allowing me to swiftly unbuckle my seatbelt and exit the passenger-side door of the vehicle. I raced out of the van toward the two huddled bodies lying on top of each other in the middle of the black concrete on P Street and screamed, “Is everything alright?” The first body looked up and made eye contact with me. “Yeah, he’s my roommate,” he responded. “We’re just … uh … wrestling.” The roommate verified the claim. It’s not every night I witness an impromptu drunken wrestling match in the middle of the streets of Georgetown. Then again, it’s not every night I volunteer in the SafeRides van.

By November 17, 2011

Voices

Occupy Towne

Whipped cream-flavored Burnett’s vodka in hand, two Jane Hoyas approach the cashier at Towne Wine and Liquor on Wisconsin Avenue and engage in familiar debate about splitting the bill—“I’m out of money … Buy you a fro-yo at Sweet Green tomorrow?” “Perf!” Unfortunately, the situation was not perfect. With $13 in hand, the thirsty ladies thought they had enough cash to pay for the vodka, but they forgot about one of D.C.’s more sinister institutions—alcohol taxes.

By November 17, 2011