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

Kickin’ it in the badlands

I think my erudite and well-read English professor should start pronouncing Gustav Flaubert’s name in a cheap, Americanized fashion: Flaw-burt. He should continue his French literary name-dropping as usual but just mispronounce Flaubert’s name on purpose: Bordieu, Foucault, Sartre, Flaw-burt.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Just four rugs?

“Excuse me, is this your child?” the waiter asked. We must have been an odd sight—an American couple dining at a Dallas family restaurant with what appeared to be a gangly six-year-old Brit. After being assured that I was not, in fact, the victim of an elaborate trans-Atlantic kidnapping scheme and that we had just lived abroad for a while, he left us alone without informing the police.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

As members of Advocates for Improved Response Methods to Sexual Assault (AFIRMS), we applaud the Georgetown Voice for its endorsement of our proposed changes to the sexual assault policy. The editors have clearly examined our reports carefully with the interests of students in mind.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

Mike DeBonis’ column (“Trash Talk,” Feb. 6) was reasonably well-written, which is to be applauded. However, the sanctimonious attitude he exhibits is not. The article ends with the paragraph, “Do yourself a favor if you’re a talk radio junkie or a HoyaTalk regular: Break out of the cycle and take a few minutes to get the real story.

By the February 13, 2003

Voices

Kiss those group projects goodbye

MOB. MOC. MIS. No, they’re not airport codes or even covert military operations. They are the links that comprise a backbone of BS, a.k.a. the MSB. My failure to understand the McDonough School of Business does not stem from COL pride. Hurt pride, perhaps, but had it not been for the confessions of MSB students themselves, I would still be in the dark about Georgetown’s business program and consequently, the invalidity of its very existence.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Detached, ironically

If college is a part of my formative years, then it is safe to say that I am still developing the basic paradigms through which I view the world. I don’t just mean my stance on political systems such as representative democracy or bureaucratic authoritarianism, or how to choose an appropriate theoretical economic framework with which to analyze the Mexican debt crisis of 1982.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

I appreciate your article about ANSWER (“In the Anti-war Movement is Only One ANSWER Right?” Jan. 30). While it is nice that there is such a large organization opposed to war, it is not the only movement. I am a member of the Libertarian Party, a group you would find holding “Starbucks in Iraq” signs before any sort of Marxist Revolutionist propaganda.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Delicious any way you pronounce it

“Koichi, could you read the following passage to the class?” Every new semester, my professors find a new way to say my name. For just a second, I think about correcting the mispronunciation, but my instinctual unwillingness to stir the pond takes over. As the situation continues, some classmates shoot me half-embarrassed glances as they uneasily wait for my reaction.

By the February 6, 2003

Voices

Thinking about the way he lived it

I think of my dad and Ronnie, little boys in Bayonne, chasing the ball in the street, watching the boats arriving at the docks and the boats departing, watching the water wash ashore and then recede; two boys marveling with child-eyed wonder at life’s comings and goings.

By the January 30, 2003

Voices

My parents never told me about that

When I was 12 years old, I had my first and last conversation about sex with my mother. She and I were walking to the back of a drugstore to pick up a prescription, and we happened to walk down the “Family Planning” aisle. I stopped in front of the massive wall of prophylactics, turned to my mother and said, “I think it’s time you bought me some condoms.

By the January 30, 2003

Voices

Letter to the Editor

As a proud Rochesterian, I feel I need to respond to Carlie Danielson’s section of The Voice’s Spring Break article (“Spring Break 2003: Destination America,” Jan. 16). While your first paragraph painted an accurate picture of Rochester’s mundane suburban life, your second paragraph on the so-called “trash plates” was purely blasphemous.

By the January 30, 2003

Voices

Confessions of a lazy mind

Picture this: It’s a little after midnight early Wednesday morning, and you have a column and a three-page thesis outline due later that day. So what do you do? Well, if you’re me, you sit down with your too-often shirtless roommate and watch A Walk To Remember, based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks.

By the January 23, 2003

Voices

Taming old variables

“What if we moved back to New South? Would that be amazing, or just horrific?” asked my roommate one night as we walked back from the cafeteria. Devoted New South ex-residents, we began reminiscing about the fun we’d had there—being thrown in the shower at 2 a.

By the January 23, 2003

Voices

This protest’s for you

Last weekend the traveling protest carnival arrived in D.C. again, and the preemptive analyses of Peter Hamby (Cultural Revolution, Jan. 16) and Scott Matthews (“I love sweatshops,” Jan. 16) were right—dead right. Their light-hearted and entirely uncontradictory essays in last week’s issue of the Voice truly provoked deep introspection amidst the activist community at Georgetown and struck a note of discord within the greater peace and anti-globalization movements, to whom the articles were mass e-mailed.

By the January 23, 2003

Voices

Losing it, whatever it is

The first movie that a friend of mine recalls watching as a child was a gay porn flick. Telling me this story, he remarked that while he had most likely been introduced to Sesame Street before John Holmes, puppets didn’t make quite the same impression. My friend described it as akin to watching Freud’s primal scene with a twist: He wakes up one night and goes over to his door, which is partly open.

By the January 23, 2003

Voices

You stir me up like mayonnaise

Despite all of its advantages, study abroad has the downside of imparting some annoying habits on its participants. Between ridiculous complaints that “I can’t remember what that word is in English” and attempts at adopting the baffling skirt-over-jeans look that is popular in some Latin American countries, it is clear that there are some habits that are better left abroad.

By the January 16, 2003

Voices

I love sweatshops

I love capitalism. And sweatshops—nothing I can get behind more than the exploitation of those less fortunate so long as it saves me some money the next time I visit the Gap or Abercrombie or any of the other trendy, upscale clothing establishments that make me look like an individual (just like everyone else who shops there).

By the January 16, 2003

Voices

“Hey Georgetown, have another drink”

It was so nice to be back home, drinking Smirnoff in my friend’s bedroom while her parents slept downstairs. We bought the liquor with a fake ID, my little brother was lucky enough to be designated driver for the evening and we were playing lame drinking games.

By the January 16, 2003

Voices

Lost in the margin

Last Saturday, Illinois Governor George Ryan emptied the state’s death row, declaring the system “arbitrary and capricious—and therefore immoral.” Governor Ryan commuted 167 death sentences to life in prison. This bold move by the governor came at the conclusion of three years of study of the death penalty system in Illinois that was spurred on by the discovery of 13 innocent convicts in the state’s death row.

By the January 16, 2003

Voices

What do I know?

French has two verbs for “to know,” each with a different connotation. One verb means “to know” in the sense of knowing a fact. The other means the sense of “being familiar with.” In English, we have one verb and are left to find ways to distinguish between its shades of meaning.

By the January 9, 2003