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.

Page 13 Cartoons

Mumbai bombs felt 8,000 miles away

Never was I more certain of how powerless the innocent are during acts of terrorism until, from thousands of miles away, I saw my own city under fire.

By December 4, 2008

Voices

Tears, vomit, strippers and love in the New South jungle

As a sophomore I learned that being a Resident Assistant in New South is a lot like sipping the bitter nectar of new parenthood: vomit cakes the bathrooms and hallways most weekends, screams rebound unflaggingly ‘til dawn’s first light, and torrents of tears make Justin Timberlake’s “River” seem like a tributary.

By December 4, 2008

Voices

A Plebeian Guilt Complex

Susan B. Anthony once said, “If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools, they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.” Much like the famous suffragette, I used to be a public school diehard who believed that no thinking person could in good conscience attend or send his or her children to a private school, while pretending to care about the quality of public education.

By December 4, 2008

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Cold-weather holidays

Babar’s No Good, Very Bad Day Virtually every kid has one stuffed animal that equals, in importance, at least 80 percent of a human sibling. For my little sister, it... Read more

By the December 4, 2008

Voices

1, 2, 3: it’s not as easy as A, B, C…

When I say I am bad at math, I don't mean bad in the modest Georgetown "I didn't get a 5 on the AP subject test" sense. I mean bad as in sometimes I find myself wondering how many quarters are in an hour, before I remember that quarters go into dollars and minutes go into hours. It's difficult to explain that you're late for class because you confused cents with minutes.

By November 20, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Proposition 8 allowed hate to dominate

On November 4, Proposition 8 amended the California state constitution to define marriage as something solely between a man and a woman. Hate, intolerance, and willful ignorance wrote discrimination into... Read more

By November 20, 2008

Voices

The other fútbol’s crazier fans & wimpier wages

Flags erupted out of a sea of black and red as already-hoarse voices roared their approval. Even the enormous flags, the drum of creaking metal and a haze of smoke couldn't obscure the fact that D.C. United was now up one-nil, though I could only see the scoreboard if I bounced especially high off the rolling grandstands. It was my first experience at an MLS soccer game, and I loved every minute of it. That's why when I read an article on the area blog DCist last week outlining the laughably low wages earned by a majority of MLS players, I was outraged.

By November 20, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Facing sexual harassment on the subcontinent

In rapidly modernizing India, eve-teasing has emerged as a popular form of social control of women. The Eve-teasing Bill, which the Indian government passed in 1984, defines it as “consisting of the following actions: when a man by words either spoken or by signs and or by visible representation or by gesture does an act in a public place, or sings, recites or utters any indecent words or song or ballad in any public place to the annoyance of any woman, he may be arrested.”

By November 20, 2008

Voices

The unbearable decisions of being (a senior)

When confronted with decisions I’m like an ostrich with its head in the sand. I sense the danger of the open-ended environment around me. Time lurks nearby, hunting me down... Read more

By November 13, 2008

Voices

I’m glad my president will be smarter than I am

With Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States, a recent trend among American politicians has been broken: the election of “average joes” to the presidency, and that’s a good thing. Do you really want an average American running our country? I know I don’t.

By November 13, 2008

Voices

Does your beard hang low?

There's one question that I regularly encounter in Morocco with my newly-grown beard. "Are you Muslim?" the vendors ask in Arabic. I've come to realize that in Muslim countries, a beard carries a specific meaning, or at least something other than, "I'm too lazy to shave."

By November 13, 2008

Voices

Think Prop 8 is bad? Wait till you see Act 1

As I scrolled through the election results on CNN.com, I felt like I was being punched in the gut with gray clouds closing in on my Democratic euphoria. "Ban on gay marriage in Arizona"-CNN predicts "yes." "Ban on gay marriage in Florida"-predicted "yes." "Ban on gay marriage in California"-still counting, but looks like a yes. Again and again, rights denied, unfair divisions imposed, equality rejected. But the one that hurt the most was a measure I hadn't even known was on the books. Act 1 in Arkansas, "Ban on gays adopting children"-called as a "yes."

By November 13, 2008

Voices

My Catholic catharsis

My name is Chelsea Paige and, until recently, I was scared of Christianity. For about one-third of the world's population, Jesus is numero uno. But for that largest of religious diasporas, the Jews of the New York metropolitan area (or the ones I know, at least), Jesus was altogether foreign-a vague, amorphous being who lay at the core of the religion which brought us the Crusades and the Inquisition. Oddly enough, my visceral reaction to Christ stemmed from silence rather than any anti-Christian propaganda: my teachers failed to mention him once during my fourteen years of Hebrew school.

By November 6, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

MUN: Kicking ass, and taking Ivy names

Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service is one of the leading undergraduate schools for the study of international affairs, and Georgetown is located in the nation’s capital. One would assume that Georgetown should naturally dominate the collegiate Model UN circuit. Unfortunately, until two years ago, we didn’t.

By November 6, 2008

Voices

50% Austrian, 50% South African, 100% American

I understand why my parents came to America. Where else can two fresh-off-the-boat, kiss-strangers-on-both-cheeks-in-front-of-the-local-blue-collar-bar foreigners eventually become locals? In the late 1970s, they stepped off a plane in appallingly-polyestered Kennedy International Airport as outsiders and by the grace of the American experiment, they now celebrate Thanksgiving, watch college sports, pay taxes, vote, do yardwork, have potlucks, and cheer for U.S. Olympians alongside Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution. They criticize this country, but they always acknowledge that in no other place in the world would the union of a South African daughter of a pogrom survivor and an Austrian son of a Nazi ambulance driver have been possible. I accept this, but even so, I've always wished I had not been born in America.

By November 6, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

The tea party’s over: the plight of India’s workers

Because of the expanding tea industries in both Kenya and Sri Lanka and the overall decreased demand for tea in our coffee and latte-chugging world, the tea industry is facing a downward spiral in India. Plantation after plantation has had to shut down, especially in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal. While many plantations are still pulling in a substantial profit, the owners are not reinvesting their profits back into their plantations and their workers. Instead, they are putting their money into other industries and failing to adjust their laborers' salaries to inflation in the market.

By November 6, 2008

Voices

National Coming Out Day—a time to just be yourself

On a night like many other during my freshman year, I sat in the Leavey Center’s big comfy chairs and pretended to do homework with friends from my floor. But on this night, my friend took me and another friend aside and said that she had something important to tell us. I had no idea what it could be, but after she started to say what was on her mind, stopped, and tried again in a different way, I realized that whatever it was, it was big and daunting for her. We encouraged her to just get it out there. “I think I might like girls,” she finally said. “You might?” my naïve self asked, not quite grasping what she was trying to tell us.

By October 30, 2008

Voices

Dude, you’re getting a Dell? Sucks for you, dude

I awoke on the morning after my 22nd birthday to learn that I had been dumped. After fourteen months of love, laughs, and tears, my Dell Inspiron 130B laptop had left me-and he'd taken all the files on my hard drive with him. Apparently all those long nights we spent together in the basement of the library didn't mean anything. And all those ignored error messages, well, they did.

By October 30, 2008

Voices

Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something fair to eat

Never, in all my years of torturous trick-or-treating, did anyone ever drop a bar of Scharffen Bergen or Green and Black's chocolate into my plastic jack-o-lantern. Considering the incredible cost one would incur giving that stuff away for free, who could blame them? Most Halloween booty-M&M's, Hershey's, Reese's, Kit Kats-excite my taste-buds just as much as they aggravate my conscience. All chocolate is not made equal. Aside from the variations in taste, there is also the moral consideration of where it comes from and how it gets to us.

By October 30, 2008

Voices

This just in: Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with

In these days of Kanye West’s superstardom and “Lil’ Wayne for President” t-shirts, rap as a genre needs little defense. During our generation’s coming of age, hip-hop was brought out of the streets and onto the airwaves, but it gained the same cookie-cutter commercialism and predictability of pop music, even if it is more edgy and profane. So next time you hear T-Pain robotically whining about throwing money at strippers, remember the time when rap was dominated by the gritty beats and crazy characters of the Wu-Tang Clan.

By October 30, 2008