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

How to fulfill a service requirement

You could easily waste a week questioning the merit of mandatory community service. While this may satisfy some deep philosophical need, it is a waste of time. The nuns will not back down. You might as well get it over with. First and most importantly: Get a friend in on it, preferably one with a good sense of humor.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

I hate ‘Kumbaya’

I got a letter in the mail the other day. Usually, seeing my name on an envelope is like my birthday and Halloween all in one, but reading this particular letter was punishing, mean, even degrading. I, after all, was the one who had written it. When I wrote that letter, Father Pat promised me two things.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

Earth-shattering epiphany

Who would have thought that a single color could be so loaded? Sure, plenty of colors mean something, make instant connections in your mind, but those tend to be cursory. Green, blue and yellow may mean something, but they don’t make a statement about you.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

Get out that Starter jacket

I got it in my head that I had to look north as I decided where to attend college last year. As I explained to distressed parents and pets alike, “It’s just not cold enough for me in D.C.; I need sub-zero temperatures and blankets of snow from the second week in October to the last week in April to function.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

I kid you not

This past weekend, as I was standing behind my apartment and staring up at the trees that laid bare by the winter’s cold, I came to an important understanding about my life: I cannot have children. This sudden awareness of my procreational limitations was not an epiphany gained from watching the neighborhood squirrels.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

My new weather control device is unstoppable

My new weather-control device is unstoppable. After years of top-secret research and development and months of focus-group testing on Kurdish tribesmen, I have tasted the succulent nectar of world domination just days before your President begins dropping bombs on my swimming pools.

By the February 20, 2003

Voices

How to make Hoya love

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I make the ladies sweat. That’s why the Voice begged me to write this article. What, the editors wondered, can we find out about “the life of love” from the hottest thing to hit the Georgetown campus since Tabasco and Jesuits? Plenty, I say.

By the February 13, 2003

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

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

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

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