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

Let’s hope it’s genetic

Every summer, my family, including my aunt, uncle and two cousins go on vacation for a week in August. While there are usually eight travelers in all, my mom and my aunt, affectionately called “the Pearson twins,” in honor of their maiden name, run the trip with an iron fist.

By the August 21, 2003

Voices

Discouraging lunacy

In 1973, New York University professor Oscar Newman published a book called Defensible Space, in which he analyzed the spatial layout of a number of housing projects, mostly in New York City, and compared their designs with their crime rates and their level of safety as perceived by residents.

By the August 21, 2003

Voices

Not Nirvana, just clarity

I cried the day that Kurt Cobain died. That night, nine Aprils ago, friends and I lit candles and listened to “Pennyroyal Tea” as a meaningful, if juvenile tribute. I cried the next year too, playing my guitar as my mother consoled me, even though she had until that spring disdained Nirvana and their lyrical content-unsettling material for an impressionable nine-year-old, I understand.

By the April 24, 2003

Voices

My 20 Years with the Voice

All good things must come to an end. Today, The Georgetown Voice publishes my byline for the last time. My first byline ran when I was a first-year, in the fall of 1983. Or was it 1982? No, it had to be 1983 because the theme for my senior prom was “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and I don’t think Culture Club was too popular in the spring of 1982.

By the April 24, 2003

Voices

Letters to the Editor

Abortion satire “fell short” I just wanted to write to express my disappointment at the section on Pro-Life fliers in the Leisure section (“Coat hangers & pacifiers,” p. 11, April 10). I appreciate the attempt at humor and satire, but I think it fell a bit short.

By the April 24, 2003

Voices

Correction

In “GUSA passes sex assault resolution unanimously,” (p. 6, April 10), Kate Dieringer should been attributed as NHS ‘05, not CAS ‘04.

By the April 24, 2003

Voices

Going to the chapel

My cousin got to stand in the middle of the couch and sing the solo in the Bonnie Raitt song “Something to Talk About.” We have it on tape. I was incensed. She is four months younger than me and is always getting the better end of the deal. She’s getting married in a month.

By the April 24, 2003

Voices

Adjust your clocks to hippie time

I love Georgetown. I am not an anti-establishment whiner who doesn’t appreciate the opportunity I’ve been blessed with for four years. I don’t hate my parents. I got enough hugs. I love America, and I shower with amazing frequency. I’m a big fan of Neutrogena body wash.

By the April 10, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

I almost cried with anger when I read the editorial on how Club Filipino’s event on Mar. 28 attracted more people that the Nappy Roots concert (“I-not So-Weak,” April 3 ). Few people know that the African Cultural Showcase was on the same night. The attendance there was sad, despite the efforts of the African Society’s board.

By the April 10, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

Rape scenes in movies make me think that everyone is insane. I have been raped and do not need to shell out $8 to watch the fantasy of violence unfold before me. I can peruse my own, very solid memories any time I feel like it, which is pretty much never. I was disappointed at Gilbert Cruz’s review of the film Irreversible (”’Irreversible’ unforgettable,” April 3), because I found it decidedly shallow and cavalier in relation to the question of rape scenes in movies.

By the April 10, 2003

Voices

Applauding a bold new foreign policy

Now that the bombs are dropping, it seems that it has become (pardon my French) pass? to criticize the war in Iraq. Both the policies that got us to this point and the President who used the bully pulpit to spearhead the effort are equally off-limits. Supposedly, this rule of etiquette did not go into effect until after the Republicans were done trashing President Clinton’s military efforts while we had troops on the ground in Kosovo.

By the April 10, 2003

Voices

If you’re happy and you know it

My senior year of high school I played the lead role in our spring musical, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I’ll be the first to admit that it was one of my highest moments of dorkdom, but somehow I recovered to become the hip, suave person that I am now.

By the April 10, 2003

Voices

Don’t know why

I met Leslie in biology class our first year. I complimented her on a bracelet that stretched taunt across her thick wrist. She told me her boyfriend had given it to her. I wasn’t really listening, as I tend to do when girls go on about their boyfriends. The way she gushed on about this guy made me think it must be a new relationship.

By the April 3, 2003

Voices

A ten-year plan that makes sense

As I near graduation, I reflect upon what has made these last four years so great: jumpsuits, ‘ludes, makeout sessions with Squid Quinones and a general desire to better myself. But my college career could have been so much better if the administration and my fellow students had offered the rest of us just a few more pleasantries on campus.

By the April 3, 2003

Voices

Real is how I shall keep it

Wow, you guys. Wow. I mean, seriously. Can you imagine that only last year we were freshman, and now we stand on the brink of finishing our second year? It seems like our first half of college just flew by. I think Jerry Garcia put it best when he said “What a long, strange trip it’s been.

By the April 3, 2003

Voices

We have a diverse student body … and toilets

When I was 16 years old, I read a profile in Rolling Stone about a pair of hotel management students on the “seven-year plan” at Florida State University. Written right after FSU had first been named the number-one party school in the nation, the journalist followed the students around their daily life, focusing especially on party scenes.

By the March 27, 2003

Voices

What’s a couple of dirham anyway

My trip to Morocco was motivated by the search for a cheap locale and a slight desire for adventure. I flew to Casablanca via Paris-very romantic, very Bogie. It was obvious that my friends and I are foreign-me not so much, my Aryan-looking roommate a little more.

By the March 27, 2003

Voices

He’s an artiste

Twisting my hair into knots thinking about the 44 drawings I have to do for my drawing class, I feel a presence at my back. I look over my shoulder and saw a small child watching me. Continuing with the improvised “Coconut Still Life” that I am trying to draw in the rapidly setting sun, I wait for him to say something.

By the March 27, 2003

Voices

A hegemony of gluttonous ignorance

As America kicks into the new millennium with war, contradictions that have lurked beneath the surface of our society emerge everywhere, including Georgetown University. The author James T. Farrell wrote that “America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.

By the March 27, 2003

Voices

Hit me dealer one more time

Out of the sun-eaten cotton fields of Mississippi, they rise like beacons of good tiding from the desolation that flanks them. At least an hour from the urban oasis of Memphis and past numerous billboards harkening their splendor, these self-sustaining complexes breathe life into both the agricultural lands that are their nearest neighbors and the myriad visitors that flock to their call every day.

By the March 20, 2003