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

The benefits of a full-on homestay

I was supposed to leave for England later this month in order to begin a year abroad at St. Peter’s College, Oxford. Yes, I was mere weeks away from gowns, tea, cake, cloudy weather and all of the other attendant debauchery of the U.K. experience when I made my decision to cast it all aside in favor of other pursuits, the first of which is a few weeks abroad at a little place called my parents’ house in Denver.

By the September 12, 2002

Voices

Oh my god! We’re seniors!

Oh my god you guys, I can’t BELIEVE we’re seniors! This is going to be the best year of our lives, I swear. You’re all, like, my best friends, and there’s seriously no one I’d rather have fun with. And there’s so much fun to be had! I mean, senior disorientation is coming up.

By the September 5, 2002

Voices

Letter to the Editor

Ben’s Chili Bowl: A Taste of the Real Washington?

Upon reading your year-opening spread on leisure in D.C. (“New in Town?” Aug. 22), I became a bit disenchanted. Although eye-opening and consistent in format, many of the paragraphs written about local venues were written from an angle often less taken.

By the September 5, 2002

Voices

She works hard for the money

Have you ever had a real job? I mean, an honest-to-goodness clock-in-clock-out here’s-your-company-polo-shirt job? I don’t think you have. I’m disappointed in you. I was hard-pressed to put my finger on it at first. We all look pretty similar. Yet still, I found some subtle difference between myself and most of the people I knew back in the day?high school?and my new companions.

By the September 5, 2002

Voices

Requiem for The Madness

The infectious strain of Nicely Nicely Johnson’s solo from Guys and Dolls wafts haphazardly about the dusty attic of my addled thoughts. Driving nine hours straight. I cough uncontrollably for 15 seconds, gasping for breath and frantically searching my pockets for my inhaler.

By the September 5, 2002

Voices

Letter from the Editor

It is a classic trap that we all fall into: Working hard on day-to-day tasks, with our vision steered toward the future, we forget why we are doing what we are doing. We remember the past only casually, having noted our successes and our failures, what has worked and what hasn’t.

By the August 29, 2002

Voices

Holly: Best in show

Sometime before my brother and I were born, my parents made a pact that our family would never have a pet. They were too much trouble, my parents reasoned, and kids never took care of them even if they promised that they would. It always seemed so out of the question that I never pushed the issue.

By the August 29, 2002

Voices

A healthy portion of denial … on the side

As much as I would like to think that I’m not a fan of sappy movies, I am. Granted, my dad usually finds in me a willing movie-buddy when a new action film comes out, but I’d just as soon watch a Meg Ryan chick flick (well, maybe not Kate and Leopold). So imagine my glee this summer when I learned that my friend had never seen When Harry Met Sally.

By the August 29, 2002

Voices

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?

It was three o’clock in the morning, and after having spent hours conversing in French and sipping French wine with other students, my words in French were leaving my mouth in much the same fashion that boulders leave mountains. That’s when I decided it was time to go to bed.

By the August 29, 2002

Voices

Youth is wasted on me

To an objective onlooker, it would seem that I am turning into an old man. Don’t get me wrong, my wardrobe, in response to nearly eight weeks of indentured servitude in the foreign policy community, resembles that of a misguided eighth grader/rave hooligan (I don’t know which is worse).

By the August 22, 2002

Voices

For your entertainment

“You have to promise me that you won’t get six more earrings, an eyebrow ring or anything like that,” the store manager of the f.y.e. chain music store at my local mall said as she was about to hire me for the summer. “Sure,” I said smiling, picturing Ozzy Osbourne’s gratuitously tattooed forearms.

By the August 22, 2002

Voices

Misleading the American public

Cut to an an 18-year-old girl with a pale complexion. She says, “I helped kill a judge.” Cut to a young dark-skinned girl aged no more than 15. She states: “I help blow up buildings.” Cut to yet another girl who looks about 20 years old. Very proudly and without any sign of remorse, she says, “My life, my body.

By the August 22, 2002

Voices

An American renaissance

In light of the War on Terrorism and growing socio-political cynicism, it’s time for our nation to embark on a cultural and political renaissance to recapture the rich tapestry of human creativity within American society. The noble quest to elevate the public’s understanding and appreciation of its particular heritage is not novel.

By the August 22, 2002

Voices

Worth a thousand words?

Somewhere in the bowels of my parents’ basement squats a large, plastic Tupperware-esque tub. It isn’t labeled; so if my parents ever make good on their threat to donate all their unclaimed junk to the Purple Heart, some stranger is going to become the proud owner of the collected memories of my life since age 12.

By the April 25, 2002

Voices

Dead rock stars

So, the corpse of Layne Staley, former lead singer of Alice in Chains, was discovered decomposing in his bathroom. I’m pissed off. Not because I harbor some sort of deep nostalgia towards the grunge scene, but because of my tortured love tetrahedron with Alice in Chains and the brothers McMillan.

By the April 25, 2002

Voices

Letter to the Editor

When I saw the pro-Palestine protest on Friday, April 12 around the John Carroll statue, I thought it was great. I was impressed that our campus, often quiet, even passive in comparison to other universities, was making a statement and that it wasn’t the same annoying GLBT charade for the third or fourth weekend in a row.

By the April 25, 2002

Voices

Correction

In “Look for the union label: Georgetown’s wage gap” from April 11, the Voice incorrectly referred to Cesar Buenaventura as Cesar Lopez.

By the April 25, 2002

Voices

Lions and tigers and lesbians, oh my!

For our fall vacation, which South Africans refer to as simply “vac,” two friends and I went to Kruger National Park in the northeastern part of the country, right next to Mozambique. I never thought I would go on anything called a “vac,” let alone be able to tell people so nonchalantly that I was “right next to Mozambique,” as if it were the same as saying “right next to Burger King” or “right next to that bald man in sweat pants.

By the April 25, 2002

Voices

Sleep junkie

The alarm begins its discordant wake-up call. Snooze. I realize that I have a paper to finish. Snooze. It needs to be done before I go to class at noon. Snooze. I have already gotten eight hours of sleep. Snooze. 10 a.m. seems like a perfectly reasonable time to get out of bed.

By the April 18, 2002

Voices

What senior life means to me

Seniors typically write their final pieces about what it means to be graduating, what they’re most going to remember about college, how they’ve changed, what it feels like to be entering the real world, how they’ve learned from their friends and what they feel like using their $150,000 brains for after getting their diplomas.

By the April 18, 2002