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

Our worsening body image

Cultural elites-and by elites I basically mean yuppies-love to compete. Some might say that’s why they’re rich. You go to Georgetown, so you’ve probably noticed this. They compete for everything. Schools, grades, clothes, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, rings, rocks, cars, apartments, starter mansions, pets, children, and finally schools for their children.

By the September 11, 2003

Voices

Dumb and Dubya

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, is not blessed with “darn good intelligence,” and I’m not talking about the CIA reports he was given. That’s right, he is not a smart man. The most common reaction to the above assertion goes something like this: “That’s not true.

By the September 11, 2003

Voices

Gone and forgotten

Jon Sarasuak kontatzen dizkio Andoni Egan?ari Ixil-en artean bizitako batzuk Zozoak Beleari liburuan. In all likelihood, you do not recognize this language. If you do, you are one of twelve speakers of Itz? left in the world today. The Guatemalan language of Itz? is one of four hundred and seventeen languages classified as nearly extinct.

By the September 4, 2003

Voices

Celebrating the return of irony

After Sept. 11 2001, one pundit claimed that the stark presentation of good (courageous firefighters) versus evil (you know who), and its rude reminder of that seemingly forgotten but rather grave matter of “life and death”, brought to America “the end of the age of irony.

By the September 4, 2003

Voices

Style versus substance

You’re a little hungry. What’s the first thing you think of? New South, but that was last year. This year’s first-years will never have to experience our spectacular old dining hall with its one-way-in, one-way-out door, long lines and dirty, sticky floors.

By the September 4, 2003

Voices

More trite senior nostalgia

VOICES by IAN BOURLAND The rhetoric of official university statements, student-group campaigns and mass e-mails has always tended to ring hollow for me, as my eyes glide uncomprehending past assurances of the strength of our traditions and bonds as an intellectual and interpersonal community.

By the September 4, 2003

Voices

The inherent merit of ideas

Consider the word respect. Respect conjures an acceptance of ideas and concepts, of allowing each to share an idea. Likewise, respect entails constructive criticism, even going so far as to (gasp!) say that another’s idea may be wrong. Tolerating respect does not change the veracity of the idea; it merely puts forth another’s opinion of it.

By the August 28, 2003

Voices

I pus Saxa Gray

VOICES BY SCOTT MATTHEWS People still don’t believe you when you tell them you go to Georgetown? Maybe it’s the overalls and debilitating overbite, you hick. But anyway, the following list is a steady stream of nourishing conformity that new Hoya pups thirsty for acceptance can suckle (literally) straight from the teat of wisdom that is me.

By the August 28, 2003

Voices

Punish me

I used to get in trouble in sixth grade. All of the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t get an interesting reputation for it. I wasn’t the class clown, or one of the girls who got caught trying to sneak a bottle of cooking wine into the Halloween dance, or even the kid that nobody really paid attention to until they were stuck doing a group project with him and he promptly blew off doing his part.

By the August 28, 2003

Voices

The she that isn’t me

When summer comes along, temperatures and hormone levels rise and clothing and inhibitions are minimal, which causes a temporary cease-fire in the battle between the sexes. Like many girls, I met a guy this summer, a singer/songwriter who spent his summer living in Manhattan trying to “break into the music business.

By the August 21, 2003

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

Stoking the engines of hate

VOICES BY REV. EDWARD J. INGEBRETSEN, A.C.C. I write this as a priest. It may be that the homosexual is, as Vatican documents repeat, “inordinately disordered.” But what is rarely noted is the surely disordered, even pathological, reaction to the mere presence of the homosexual in Church contexts. In the words of the old curse, dogs bark and people run screaming from the street when the homosexual voice is heard.

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