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

New York City, my Jerusalem

I stepped out of the bus into cold rain in Chinatown, New York City at 11 p.m. Friday night. It had already been a long night—six hours on a bus that had more rows of seats crammed into it than it was supposed to. All I wanted to do was get on the Q train, sit down in a place where I could move my legs, walk the six blocks to my row house in Brooklyn and get some sleep.

By the March 6, 2003

Voices

Home for the holidays

I have always looked on a bit surprised as those around me triumphantly declare that they are going home over a given weekend. I have never really felt comfortable at home—odd, given that home is supposed to be subjectively defined as where one is most comfortable, safe, familiar.

By the March 6, 2003

Voices

What would Jesus do?

Millions of dollars have been made from selling T-shirts, wristbands and bumper stickers inscribed with the letters “WWJD” short for “What Would Jesus Do?” A recent ad campaign aimed at curbing the use of gas-guzzling SUVs implied that Jesus would drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle out of his love for the environment and rhetorically asked, “What would Jesus drive?” Since the American public and marketing firms have poured millions of dollars into the idea of what Jesus would do, it is sensible to explore this question when we stand at the precipice of a major war led by a self-proclaimed Christian whose outbursts of evangelicalism are more frequent than Bob Dole’s erections.

By the March 6, 2003

Voices

Playing though the pain

I rotate writing this personal column with a senior in the college, Peter Hamby. He is my closest friend at Georgetown. Last spring, his brother Patrick died in a car accident. Peter’s never written a column about what happened. That’s because what he has to say is too overwhelming to fit into half a page.

By the February 27, 2003

Voices

They will like us when we win

Recently I have found myself arguing with my parents about the situation in Iraq. They believe that the Bush Administration is being too aggressive, and that France, Germany and Russia are taking the right approach. As a result, I find myself leaning toward supporting war solely out of spite.

By the February 27, 2003

Voices

Finding myself, between the sheets

Back in one of my high school English classes we read the great American novel, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby isn’t just any book to Manhasset, the town I grew up in. The novel takes place on our shore and surrounding locations. Seventy-eight years after its publication, the social mores of the novel survive.

By the February 27, 2003

Voices

Track 03–The Scientist

Snow means real life is paralyzed; the only way to spend a day pent up inside your house, because you can’t open your front door, is doing nothing at all. I watched Empire Records, and it was phenomenal. I’d forgotten how much I love AC/DC and Coyote Shivers, the flannel shirts and long greasy hair.

By the February 27, 2003

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

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