Voices

The pursuit of happiness

I have been told that January 22nd is the most depressing day of the year. Sunlight is scarce, Christmas bills are filling mailboxes and people are coming to the realization that their three weeks of New Years-inspired jogging and Pilates will not actually help them land a model, a professional football player or even a promotion. Forget April, Mr. Eliot; January appears to be the cruelest month.

By admin January 31, 2008

Voices

Buying organic is meating vegans halfway

If you love Mother Earth, good food, animals and being a human, please don’t become a vegan. While adherents to vegetarianism’s extreme cousin claim that their lifestyle, which completely eliminates the consumption of animal products, springs from a concern for animal rights and the environment, a close look at vegan practices reveals them to be largely ineffective in terms of their stated goals. A simple awareness of the benefits of locally-grown and organic food and a dedication to small lifestyle changes is much more beneficial to the earth we all love so dearly.

By Katherine Norton January 31, 2008

Voices

The necessity of idealism

Though it is hard to imagine, I’m sure I’m not the only person who enjoys the Hoya’s bi-weekly exegesis of the ancient philosophers, penned by the legendary Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. Each edition of the aging Jesuit’s Aristoletian discourse is a treat—like intellectual antiquing—but I can’t help but take issue with the latest dispatch from the Hoya’s correspondent in the 1920s, entitled by their editors “Idealism Root of Political Problems.” (Hopefully, next week Fr. Maher will come back with “Open Minds Lead to Strife.”)

By Tim Fernholz January 24, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

The Bush Administration changes course

President Bush’s poor planning and lack of intelligent responses to many issues have spawned anti-Bush blocs in America and around the world. From gay-marriage to Guantánamo, his neo-con positions have drawn criticism from personalities as varied as Tim Kaine and Tim McGraw. But recently, Bush seems to have realized that he does not have to do everything wrong. The administration has careened backwards for six years, but it has accomplished enough in the last year to prove that a turnaround, though it may have come too late in this case, is not impossible. Between election coverage and the press’ prejudice against the administration, most of these accomplishments have been overlooked.

By Dane Cash January 24, 2008

Voices

Students don’t mess about with careers

Like so many Hoyas, I recently braved the mad post-game rush from the Verizon Center, through the Metro and back to Georgetown with a friend from Beantown. We made it to campus in record time, arriving safe and sound at Rosslyn not twenty-five minutes after Roy made that three in the last five seconds of the game. We didn’t make that kind of time by making nice with the other six hundred Hoyas in Metro Center. But when I balked at cutting off a row of students to be one of the last people to board a train, my friend would have none of it. “In Boston,” she explained tersely, “we don’t play.”

By Molly Redden January 24, 2008

Voices

On playing the game and being played

Last week, my life was fantastic. I had just moved into one of Georgetown’s finest townhouses. I was finishing all of my work and getting plenty of sleep every night. Sure, it was only the first full week of the semester, but I was still feeling pretty accomplished.

By Suzy Chen January 24, 2008

Voices

Election ’08: A Democratic change is gonna come

While Republicans continue to squabble over whether they want their old, white, male nominee to be bald or not, Democrats have an exciting and diverse field of candidates to choose from. The Democratic primary is making history, with the top two candidates representing historically underrepresented groups, women and African-Americans. And with plans to combat global warming, provide universal healthcare and implement landmark ethics reform, Democrats are ready to take action on January 20th, 2009.

By Chris Dodge January 17, 2008

Voices

Election ’08: A Republican change is gonna come

There is no doubt that the nation is in need of change. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that the Republican Party is resistant to this idea. In reality, the GOP is not against change and being a Republican does not mean being in favor of the status quo.

By admin January 17, 2008

Voices

Sippin’ on gin ‘n’ juice

The Duchess of Windsor nearly hit the nail on the head when she said, “a woman can’t be too rich or too thin.” Nor, apparently, can she be too muscular. It was surely beyond old Wally’s wildest gold-digging, man-eating imagination to think that a lady would ever seek to cultivate impressive bicep bulges beneath the fluttering sleeves of her newest atelier-made frock. But Janice Dickinson, that interminable pioneer of all things artificial, spoke out last week on behalf of the ladies who lunch … and juice.

By admin January 17, 2008

Voices

Grading the life of the mind

The 2006-07 Intellectual Life Report concludes that Georgetown students party too much, study too little and get too many “A” grades. Like the 1996-97 Intellectual Life Report, which had nearly identical findings, the current Report recommends that faculty assign more work and give out fewer A’s.

By Francisca Cho January 17, 2008

Voices

What we have here is a failure to communicate

“You just don’t have a soul.”

It hurt when she said it, but I understood why my best friend was so upset. Braving arctic January winds, we had hiked a mile from Chicago’s downtown Loop to the only theater in the entire metropolitan area that was still showing Pride & Prejudice. She had spent two months threatening, begging and bribing me to see it, and I had caved. Now we were about to board a Green Line train at 10:30 p.m.—essentially asking to be robbed—all because she had been sure that this movie would finally make me a chick-flick lover.

By Molly Redden December 6, 2007

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Happy Holidays from the Family

This Georgetown Life is a collection of stories written by Georgetown students all based on the same theme. [Cue trendy jazz music.]

By the Voice Staff December 6, 2007

Voices

Carrying on: A light in the dark of Darfur

Underneath the Christmas star that seems, in the dark, to float on the Healy building, a small group of students gathered for a candlelit vigil last night. They were members of STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, marking the end of a day of fasting to raise money for refugees displaced by the genocide in Darfur. Far be it from me to inflict a journalistic cliché on you, but as the group worked together to light their candles in the freezing cold while other students shuffled numbly by through the slush, there seemed to be a bit of metaphor in the air. Not a million points of light, but enough.

By Tim Fernholz December 6, 2007

Page 13 Cartoons

UN needs effective adaptation policy

As representatives from over 180 countries, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and the media fly to Bali, Indonesia for the thirteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference, they prepare for two weeks of what has been perceived as “make-or-break” negotiations on the future of international climate change policy.

By Tian Tian December 6, 2007

Voices

Remembering the T in LGBTQ

This month, Georgetown University Pride is organizing a week of programming themed issues as well as issues of gender norms and expectations. But why is specific programming necessary for these groups when everything that Pride does is meant to apply to the entire LGBTQ community, which clearly includes the ‘T’?

By Jack Harrison November 29, 2007

Voices

Carrying On

Growing up I believed that there were no parents more conservative about television than my own. I resented the fact that no one else’s parents seemed to frown upon their watching shows like Friends. I can count on one hand the episodes of The Simpsons I saw before college: my parents believe it’s unwholesome.

Then I learned about the Parents Television Council…

By Marco Cerna November 29, 2007

Voices

Make space, not flyers

I want there to be less flyers on this campus. I dream, ladies and gentlemen, of pushing a door that is a solid, unbroken brown pane. I dream of bare lampposts, of seeing the actual bricks in the Red Square archway. I want blue electrical tape to be used for … whatever it is usually used for, rather than to outline program board events or dinners. I want some space.

By Shira Hecht November 29, 2007

Voices

Georgetown unites against HIV/AIDS

As World AIDS Day 2007 approaches, one of the most serious obstacles to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the stigma around it and the various forms that stigma takes around the world. Students at Georgetown University are not exempt.

By Liora Ziv November 29, 2007

Voices

This man is living the dream, occasionally

After graduation, I moved to the big city with three friends from high school to play our own radical take on the music we grew up listening to together. Our band was called … let’s just say it starts with L and ends with Zeppelin. Fortunately, one of our members had spent some time touring with the Yardbirds while I was in school, so we were entering the game with a pretty high level of professionalism. Our debut album drew a little bit of noise from the press and the fans alike, we toured here and there, and before you could say “alcohol poisoning” it was all black magic and mud sharks. Then our drummer died in a pool of his own vomit.

By Chris Norton November 15, 2007