VOICE
the georgetown
Silent No More
Georgetown’s black student
protest movement
By Shalina Chatlani and James Constant
Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w January 15, 2015 w Volume 47, Issue 2 w georgetownvoice.com
the
Jan. 15, 2015
Voice
This week:
Editorial ... Initiative 71: an another case for DC statehood, pg. 3
News ... SFS and MSB create new academic program, pg. 4
Sports ... On the record with Tyler Adams, pg. 6
Feature ... Black student protest movement at Gtown, pg. 8
Leisure ... Nomadic’s new production is Sick, pg. 10
Page 13 ... Je Suis Charlie, pg. 13
Voices ... Fate of Muslims in France post-Charlie Hedbo, pg. 14
Protests on campus
The Voice explores the black student protest
movement on campus.
Last edition’s key:
–Leila Lebreton
This Week’s Horoscope
– Ambika Ahuja & Tim Annick
Capricorns are the typical MSBros. These clever signs could step all over people if they wanted
to do, all in the name of success. Other people are plebeians to them. Their motto is “money
over hoes.” Capricorns live in the extremes. Their Saturday comprises of studying all day in the
depths of Lau and then drinking until their livers fail. This sign is also family oriented. Capricorns
make the perfect husbands or wives. Money and loyalty to family? I’d tap that.
Dayana Morales Gomez
BLOG
NEWS
Editor: Marisa Hawley
Editor: Lara Fishbane
Assistant Editors:
Grace Brennan, Morgan Hines,
Carley Tucker
Assistant Editors: Courtnie Baek,
HALFTIME
Leisure Editors: Erika Bullock,
Graham Piro
Assistant Leisure Editor:
Michael Bergin
Sports Editors: Alex Boyd,
Rob Ponce
VOICES
Editor: Noah Buyon
Assistant Editor:
Leila Lebreton
Ryan Miller
PHOTO
Editor: Joshua Raftis
Assistant Editors: Vicki Lam,
Carolyn Zaccaro
EDITORIAL BOARD
Chair: Kenneth Lee
Board: Chris Almeida, Shalina
Chatlani, James Constant, Steven
Criss, Lara Fishbane, Dayana Morales
Gomez, Ryan Greene, Caitriona Pagni,
Ian Philbrick, Daniel Varghese
Editor-in-Chief
COVER
Caitriona Pagni
Editor: Christina Libre
Managing Editor
Mary-Bailey Frank
General Manager
Maya McCoy
Webmaster
James Constant,
Julia Lloyd-George,
Ian Philbrick
SPORTS
Editor: Joe Pollicino
Assistant Editors:
Isabel Echarte, Kevin Huggard,
Max Roberts
LEISURE
Editor: Daniel Varghese
Assistant Editors: Elizabeth Baker, Dinah
Farrell, Sabrina Kayser
Editors-at-Large
Chris Castano
Contributing Editor
Tim Annick
Managing Director of
Accounting and Sales
Allison Manning
Managing Director of Finance
COPY
Chief: Dana Suekoff
Editors: Lauren Chung, Bianca Clark,
Jupiter El-Asmar, Alex Garvey Rachel
Greene, Madison Kaigh, Michael
Mischke, Suzanne Trivette
Assistant Editor: Megan Howell
SPREAD
Editors: Pam Shu,
Sophie Super
FEATURE
Editor: Ryan Greene
DESIGN
Editor: Eleanor Sugrue
Assistant Editor: Ellie Yaeger
Staff: Caitlin Garrabrant, Johnny Jung,
Erin McClellan
PAGE 13
Editor: Dylan Cutler
editorial
georgetownvoice.com
The georgetown voice | 3
fighting a higher power
Congressional meddling on Initiative 71 another case for DC statehood
In last November’s general election, D.C. voters
overwhelmingly passed Initiative 71, a bill legalizing
recreational use of marijuana in the District. Unfortunately,
even with the majority support of all but one voting precinct,
Congress stopped Initiative 71 from going into effect when it
passed its omnibus spending bill last month.
While Mayor Muriel Bowser and other local politicians
have vowed to defend Initiative 71 and ensure its
implementation, strong rhetoric will not protect the will of
D.C.’s voters. Now, more than ever, is the time to make D.C.
a state and prevent unfair meddling with the city’s budget
and legislative processes from happening again in the future.
Arguments in support of D.C. statehood have long
rested on principle. Statehood supporters point to the fact
that no other territory in the country has its residents pay
federal taxes without having a senator or representative
with voting power, yet a national assembly composed of
representatives from states as far away as Alaska and Texas
directly controls the District’s budget. Congress retains the
right to review all District legislation over a 30 to 60 day
waiting period before they come to effect, a restriction
unique only to D.C.
Since D.C. home rule began in 1971, Congress has
changed the District’s law only on three occasions. The latest
Congressional move against Initiative 71, however, is a concrete
example of why D.C. statehood and budget autonomy are so
crucial to preserving the democratic integrity of legislation in
the District. Members of Congress from faraway places and
with no experience in D.C.’s local affairs can overturn measures
even if a supermajority of District voters support those
measures, effectively giving voters in Alaska and Texas more
sway over Washington’s laws than D.C. residents themselves.
District voters must now give more support than ever
to the D.C. statehood movement. Congress’ interference
with a law as popular and important as recreational
marijuana legalization is unacceptable. Sending Congress
any other message is an invitation for more unwelcome
micromanagement with D.C.’s own affairs.
D.C. statehood would also incentivize students to
register themselves as D.C. voters rather than absentee
voters in their home states. As D.C. voters students can elect
representatives to Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E,
a local government body that the university must consult
and seek approval of in the master planning process, which
determines everything from building new residence halls to
the route of the GUTS buses.
A grand total of 28 write-in votes went to the two
seats reserved for students on Advisory Neighborhood
Commission 2E in November. Such apathy is a different story
from the elections in 1996, when the ANC had pursued a range
of anti-student measures, and town-gown relations hit rock
bottom. A voter registration drive led to more than a thousand
students electing two Hoyas to the ANC for the first time.
Students found and treasured their hard-earned voice in local
politics despite vehement neighborhood opposition, a voter
intimidation campaign, and six years of litigation.
By becoming D.C. voters and even running against
Georgetown residents for ANC seats, students have the potential
to gain a majority on ANC2E and veto the university’s future
campus plans if they do not sufficiently cater to students’ interests.
Ultimately, Bowser, together with other D.C. politicians,
must do more than pledge to make Initiative 71 happen:
they must push for D.C. statehood. Statehood will empower
residents with federal representation and allow students
to play a meaningful role in shaping the District’s and
Georgetown University’s future.
give us this day our daily aramark
a gigabowser’s story
Hoya Court meal swipe program
a win-win for students and university
Practical policies will accomplish
new mayor’s goal to end homelessness
At the beginning of last semester’s finals
week, Georgetown Dining implemented
a pilot program where students with
meal plans could exchange meal swipes
for food at Hoya Court, which Aramark
operates along with Leo O’Donovan Hall
and Einstein Bros. Bagels. The program
was wildly popular with students, drawing
large crowds throughout the duration of
the program. The university should work
towards permanently implementing the
program and liberalizing where students on
a meal plan can eat on campus.
The concept of utilizing meal plans across
a number of campus-wide dining locations
is standard practice at other universities. For
example, students at neighboring American
University are free to use their meal swipes at
their own branch of Elevation Burger, among
other retail locations on campus.
However, this practice, while a viable
financial model at other universities, still
remains largely absent at Georgetown.
In Nov. 2013, Auxiliary Business Services
began allowing the use of meal swipes at
the university’s two Einstein locations, both
of which have limited operating hours.
However, it ruled out expanding the program
to other on-campus restaurants. Given the
success of last month’s pilot, it is clear that
expanding the meal exchange program could
help to address longstanding grievances
students have had about the meal plan’s
limited options. It will also bring Georgetown
Dining closer to the standards that university
undergraduates have come to expect from
college dining services across the nation.
The inequity between the monetary
value of a meal swipe and the quality of dining
hall food drives some upperclassmen to drop
their meal plans as soon as the university no
longer requires them to purchase one. To
convince them to stay, Georgetown Dining
has tried offering prizes to juniors and seniors
who purchase a meal plan, which in recent
years have ranged from computer tablets to,
most recently, mini Wi-Fi routers.
Some upperclassmen lack the time to
cook for themselves or the spare change to
eat out in the neighborhood, which, unlike
other typical college towns, is populated
with expensive and upscale restaurants.
A more flexible meal plan that includes
diverse and high-quality options like the ones
offered in Hoya Court will incentivize such
students to return to the meal plan, providing
Georgetown Dining with added revenue.
With more upperclassmen incentivized
to continue their meal plans, Georgetown
Dining can mitigate the cost burdens of
continuing meal exchange programs with
on-campus restaurants.
Hoya Court employees may be
concerned about the increased crowds that
the pilot program drew, especially because
Hoya Court already caters to hospital staff,
graduate students, and other visitors during
the day. Nevertheless, it remains generally
empty in the evenings, when it has more
operational capacity to serve undergraduate
students. Eventually, the program’s novelty
will wear off; students will incorporate Hoya
Court into their daily routines, and the long
queues seen during the pilot program will
dissipate over time.
Increasing on-campus meal options is
not an impossible endeavor, and Georgetown
Dining need not make upperclassmen
gamble for technology products with
dubious value. Making the Hoya Court
meal exchange program permanent, even if
students were only allowed to swipe at Hoya
Court during the evenings, would increase
the value of a meal plan and bring in more
revenue for Georgetown Dining—a win-win
for both students and Aramark. Ultimately,
no good reason exists for the university
not to let the most exciting thing to happen
to dining on the Hilltop since, perhaps, the
introduction of the Leo’s panini press.
D.C.’s new mayor, Muriel Bowser,
campaigned on a platform that
promised to end homelessness in D.C.
by 2025. A report released last month by
the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, however,
highlights the fact that the District still
desperately needs better infrastructure
for the homeless population. If Bowser
truly intends to reach her goal, she needs
to be more proactive in developing a
practical and comprehensive plan to
accomplish her promise.
The “Report Card on D.C.’s Progress
in Helping Homeless Families” graded
the government based on how well it
fulfilled ten roadmap goals for a “high
quality homeless services system.” The
District had a mediocre performance,
receiving one B, seven C’s, and two D’s.
The grades, which evaluate the
administration of former mayor
Vincent Gray, can give Bowser and her
team concrete goals and suggestions.
If she takes the criticism seriously,
she can make huge improvements
on these scores. In her campaign
pledges, Bowser was right to criticize
the homelessness policies of Gray’s
administration. But her one and a half
page blueprint to end homelessness
in D.C. in ten years feels like a halfhearted effort.
Bowser’s plan outlines short and
long term strategies for eradicating
homelessness. Bowser vows to not
house the homeless in recreation
centers—a violation of the Homeless
Services Reform Act—and instead
pushes for expansion of Rapid
Re-housing and the Local Rent
Supplement Program.
Unfortunately, this plan alone
isn’t going to do anything in the short
term. With temperatures staying
below freezing this calendar year,
the decaying D.C. General shelter
and multiple motels leased by the
District for the winter have been
filled to capacity. Some homeless
individuals are finding themselves
in the recreation centers Bowser
has promised to stop using. The
numbers of homeless requiring the
government’s attention won’t be
decreasing anytime soon.
Rapid Re-housing operates on
the assumption that once-homeless
individuals will be able to pay
Washington-level rents in four months
to a year. Yet, as the report highlights,
“the District has not explored ways for
families to easily re-engage if they fall
into trouble after leaving Rapid Rehousing.” In a tight economy where
prices are skyrocketing and precincts
are gentrifying thanks to the influx of
young professionals, those who cannot
make do without the program’s timelimited subsidy can soon become
homeless once again.
The report card also pushes D.C. to
think more critically about how it finds
funds for projects. It acknowledged that
the government found funding to safely
house families in private shelters during
winters. However, the money came
from an existing federal aid program
called Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families. The District must do more for
its citizens than to simply take funds
from a pre-existing welfare program.
As D.C. continues to endure a
particularly cold and snowy winter,
Bowser’s newly minted administration
needs to reevaluate the government’s
homelessness record and make a
vested effort to come up with a practical
plan of action. District residents should
be keeping a keen eye on what Bowser
and her team do first.
news
4 | the georgetown voice
JANUARY 15, 2015
SFS and MSB collaborate to introduce new Global Business major and fellowship
COURTNIE BAEK
The School of Foreign Service and the McDonough Business
School officially launched the Global
Business Major and Fellowship Program (GBUS) this spring semester.
SFS and MSB students were first notified of the program on Dec. 3.
Student candidacy differed for the
GBUS major and the fellowship. All
SFS sophomores received the application for the Global Business major and
the application for the fellowship was
sent to SFS sophomores and all MSB
sophomores via email on Jan. 5. Decisions were released on Jan. 9.
“Of the 46 SFS applicants, 10 were
accepted for both the major and the
fellows program, 5 for just the fellows
program, and 5 for just the major,”
wrote Mitch Kaneda Director of the
Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service
in an email to the Voice. Additionally,
15 MSB students were accepted for
the fellows program.
“I’m very excited for this program,”
said Ricardo Ernst, a professor in the
MSB who helped shaping and funding of the new program. “[Both SFS
and MSB deans] have been pushing
SFS STUDENTS WILL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THE MSB IS.
for this in the last three years. I think it
puts Georgetown in a very competitive
position throughout the world. I don’t
think there is any other university in
the U.S. or the globe with this type of
sophistication, combining a school of
foreign service and a school of business at the undergraduate level.”
This pilot program allows SFS
students to integrate a basic business education with their political
and economic coursework, advanced language and research skills,
and cross-cultural proficiencies. The
GBUS curriculum is designed to provide students with the multi-disciplinary tools needed to understand
and analyze business entities and
KIRILL MAKARENKO
their behavior in the context of the
global social and cultural forces.
The GBUS requirements include
ten courses in addition to the calculus prerequisite. Students must
take one statistics course, four Business Core courses, one International
Business Core course, and four supporting courses in addition to the
SFS Core Curriculum. Courses offered by the MSB through the GBUS
Core include accounting, international marketing, corporate finance,
and business operations.
Theodore Moran, Field Chair in
International Business and Finance
said, “We’re very sensitive in the SFS
that our majors are quite broad and
interdisciplinary, meaning there’s a
lot of economic, international relations, and ethics requirements. Faculty in the SFS were against making
this a pre-professional curriculum.”
Thus GBUS major differs from
the International Business major in
MSB in that GBUS is not a business
degree. GBUS focuses on the role
firms play in international affairs—
not only in the economic realm,
but also in international development and social responsibility.
“This is a big initiative. I would say
the program is student led—there’s
been a lot of interest in SFS students
to have a major. Parent and Alumni interest in both SFS and MSB plus
[Provost Groves] is urging cross-campus schools to do more together,” said
Moran. “This is a cumulative initiative.
Since higher education is so expensive,
parents and alumni want to ensure
that students at least have some technical skills. It’s a cultural phenomenon
across the United States, I think.”
According to Ernst, the administrative process of creating the new program took initiative from every school in
the university. “To evaluate and approve
this program, we went through the Ex-
ecutive Council where the all faculty vote
and decide whether they want to do it,”
said Ernst. “To fund a program of this nature, we’re talking about an endowment
around ten million dollars.”
For MSB students who may worry about SFS students complicating
course enrollments, Ernst said, “In the
registration process, we modify the cap
of the class student numbers to guarantee students of the fellowship.”
Furthermore, according to Ernst,
no more than 20 students can major in the GBUS and no more than 15
students from each school can participate in the fellowship.
Ernst addressed the allocation
of resources in the MSB and SFS career center. “We don’t know yet, we
are making an explicit effort to help
the fellows to secure jobs [in the
MSB]. For the majors, it’s a little bit
early, but in the spirit of cooperation
we will always try to help them.”
Morgan Kennedy (SFS ’17) was
accepted to the major and fellowship
in the Global Business Program. “I
applied to the Global Business major
because I’ve always been interested in
multi-disciplinary course approach,
but with technical skills,” she said.
Georgetown Athletics creates video to raise awareness about sexual assault
MANUELA TOBIAS
As part of the “It’s On Us”
campaign launched by the White
House in September, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee has produced a video to
feature student-athletes taking a
stand against sexual assault. The
video follows a series of workshops in the Georgetown Athletics department to engage student-athletes on the issue.
First released through the
Georgetown website on Dec. 10,
the 30-second video features
student-athletes urging other students to take an online pledge to
promote bystander intervention.
Produced by Gabriela Elvina (COL
‘17), Megan Schmidt (COL ‘15), and
Brett Treacy (MSB ‘15) in conjunction with the Office of Communications, the video will be shown
at halftime during home basketball games for the remainder of
the season.
Javan Robinson (MSB ‘15), vice
president of the Student Athletic
Advisory Committee, believes the
public stance taken by the athletic
community demonstrates athletes’
awareness and their conviction to
end sexual assault. Elvina, who acts
as visual media coordinator for
SAAC, suggests that those seen by
many as “the big kids on campus”
want to lead by example.
“You see them and idolize
them. So if you see that they’re
supporting this, you want to support it too,” Elvina said.
While the Sexual Assault
Working Group agrees that the
video increases awareness of
sexual assault, representatives
believe the video demonstrates
little more than an outward display of support for an issue it is
unqualified to address.
GUSA Secretary of Student
Health and Safety Nora West
(SFS ‘15), member of the Sexual
Assault Working Group, believes
the video will mislead students
about student-athletes’ understanding of sexual assault. In her
view, athletes’ portrayal in the
video presents them as experts,
resources, or “people who particularly care about the issue.”
“I understand they’re attempting to use celebrity, but what if that
person ends up raping someone?
Or what if any of the people in
that video, someone goes to them
because they did experience sexual assault, and because none of
them have been trained, they don’t
know anything?”
West additionally expressed
concern that taking the online
pledge is an insufficient attempt
to address the issue of sexual assault. Those who take it pledge to
recognize non-consensual sex as
sexual assault, engage in bystander intervention, and support survivors of sexual assault.
“I can take a pledge to anything.
That doesn’t mean that I’m going to
live out those values, whether or
not I’ve taken them on camera for
an athletics video,” West said.
Last fall, the Athletics Department launched the Power Workshops to engage student-athletes in discussions about such
issues as sexual assault, hazing,
and bullying. Every varsity sports
team participated in versions of
the workshop, described by student-athletes as a multi-media
presentation led by Director of
Student-Athlete Leadership and
Development Mike Lorenzen.
“Student-athletes and coaches participated in the workshops,
which were designed to inform
and empower student-athletes
and coaches to discuss how power and privilege can be abused in
both group (e.g. hazing) and individual (e.g. sexual assault and bullying) contexts,” Sports Informa-
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY YOUTUBE
BIG KIDS ON CAMPUS LEAD GEORGETOWN’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST SEXUAL ASSAULT.
tion Director Michael Carey wrote
in an email to the Voice.
Incidents of hazing or sexual
assault particular to Georgetown
were not discussed in the presentations given in December,
though student-athletes responded that they were not aware of any
on-campus occurrences.
“We kept that under disclosure. It was kind of like, no one
said anything. [Lorenzen] didn’t ask
about anything. He was just telling
us, ‘Well, you’re aware,’” Elvina said.
As a reaction to what it perceived as a danger of having
unqualified spokespeople to
speak on the issue of sexual assault, SAWG came to a general
consensus in December “that if
[the video] was going to be out
there, athletes should have further training,” West said. Carey
acknowledged that the Power
Workshops were not comprehensive trainings on issues of
sexual assault, though they were
not intended to be.
“In the coming weeks, we
look forward to connecting SAAC
with the Sexual Assault Peer Educator group to work together
collaboratively as an additional
avenue for student-athletes to
be trained by peer facilitators on
these issues,” Carey wrote.
“Right now, Athletics is
talking the talk, and hopefully
with these trainings they’ll have
a better sense of what it actually means to, pardon my cliché,
walk the walk,” West said.
news
Aramark considers permanent Hoya Court meal exchange program
georgetownvoice.com
THOMAS STUBNA
After running a pilot meal
exchange program at Hoya Court
last semester, the Office of Auxiliary Business Services, GUSA, and
Aramark are currently working
together to evaluate the longterm feasibility of the program.
During the trial run from
Dec. 8 to Dec. 13, students were
able to use meal swipes to pay
for predetermined food options at Elevation Burger, Subway, and Salad Creations from
4:30pm until closing.
According to Joelle Wiese,
Associate Vice President for
Auxiliary Business Services, the
program was generally positively received. “There were some
ups and downs for Aramark and
for students, but most students
who participated in the pilot
seemed to be happy,” she wrote
in an email to the Voice.
Although students would like
the additional flexibility in their
meal plan options, GUSA President Trevor Tezel (SFS ’15) recognizes that the program might
not be easy to implement moving
forward. “A meal exchange program is both extremely desirable
and fairly expensive for the university to operate,” he wrote in an
email to the Voice.
In order to keep the program
long term, Wiese explained that
they would need to determine
whether or not it’s financially
viable. “There is a significant financial impact that needs to be
mitigated in order to successfully
implement a program like this on
a permanent basis,” she wrote.
Another aspect of the program that has to be considered
is the impact it will have on customers without meal plans. According to Wiese, some of the
challenges they face moving forward include the speed of service
and the maximum operational
capacity of the restaurants.
Despite the large influx of
customers, managers of the
Hoya Court businesses are motivated to accommodate their
demand. “The Hoya Court team
was very dedicated and executed the pilot program successfully, in what was unchartered
territory,” Wiese wrote.
Although the permanent
implementation of the program
faces challenges, GUSA will continue its support. Tezel wrote,
“We will need to think creatively
with university administrators to
see how we can ensure a financially sustainable program that
increases on-campus meal options for students.”
SALAD CREATIONS HAS NEVER BEEN THIS POPULAR.
TARYN SHAW
Government Department establishes new grading policy
RYAN MILLER
The Department of Government enacted a new policy beginning the Spring 2015 semester that
limits the percentage of students
who can receive an A or A minus
grades in undergraduate level Government courses, according to department chair Michael Bailey.
According to the department
website and course syllabi handed out this week, the policy mandates that no more than 40 percent
of grades will be higher than A or A
minus in the four introductory Government courses: International Relations, US Political Systems, Comparative Political Systems, and Elements
of Political Theory. In upper level undergraduate Government courses,
the expectation is that no more than
50 percent of the grades being higher than A or A minus, giving these
courses more leniency, especially
for honors courses and courses in
which students demonstrate high
levels of effort, according to Bailey.
“[In non-introductory level
courses] the faculty can go above
[50 percent]. But when they do go
above that, then they have to kind of
explain their work,” Bailey said. “And
they may not go above that. But in an
honors class, it would be really unfair
to have ... some kind of cap.”
Bailey made it clear that the policy does not include any provision in
which a professor will be allowed to
change a student’s grade in order to
meet the cap. Rather, the policy seeks
to guide courses so that roughly 40 or
50 percent of the students receive an
A or A minus in the course. According to Bailey, this change should not
affect students’ grades dramatically.
“Our guidelines are based roughly on empirical estimate of what we …
actually do in terms of grade distributions,” Bailey wrote in an email to the
Voice. “So the average percentage [of
As and A minuses] shouldn’t change
too much for most classes.”
The new policy replaces an
unofficial and sometimes unpracticed norm within the department
that previously sought to have only
25 percent of student receiving an A
or A minus in the four introductory courses. This standard, however,
was not uniform. The goal of this
policy is to ensure fair treatment of
students across the department.
In crafting the policy, the department looked at statistics for
the percentage of A’s and A minuses received in given courses, and,
according to Bailey, it found substantial variation of grades within
any given course, notably in introductory courses, where the unofficial norm previously existed.
The Government Department also looked at courses from
other departments, such as the
Departments of Economics and
History, in order to more adequately line up with departmental
policies throughout the College.
Dean Chester Gillis of the
College noted that the new policy
will lead to more equitable procedures in the grading process.
“It will not matter which section
of a course [students] take, they will
receive equal and fair treatment,” Gillis wrote in an email to the Voice.
One potential effect that Bailey sees the policy could have
would be in eliminating students
selecting courses based on a perceived ease of the professor.
“I definitely don’t want a situation
where students are looking for classes based on the grades they can get,”
Bailey said. “I don’t think that happens
a lot, but I’m realistic and it might happen a little. So on that margin, if that
behavior goes away, that’s good.”
Bailey says the new policy is
designed to add more meaning to
receiving an A in the Government
Department in a fairer way.
“The easiest thing when you’re
giving grades and you’re in doubt is
just to go high because then students
don’t complain,” Bailey said. “At some
point, you just have to stop doing that.”
the georgetown voice | 5
HIGHER EDGE:
a tri-weekly column
ABOUT AMERICA’s UNIVERSITIES
STUDENTS PAY THE PRICE OF COMMITTING TOO SOON
BY: LARA FISHBANE
While most high school seniors
will spend the next few months anxiously praying for the big envelope
to arrive in March, some students
already know which college they will
be attending this fall.
By applying early to their top schools,
students receive admissions decisions
several months before most of their
peers. For students who are accepted,
it alleviates them of pressure later in the
year. Early admissions programs are also
beneficial to universities as they are able
to secure a portion of their incoming
class earlier in the year. On the surface,
this system seems to be helpful for both
students and universities.
When carefully analyzed, however,
the early admissions trend might not be
equally beneficial for both parties. When
then-Yale President Richard Levin eliminated the university’s early decision program in 2002 he said, “The only people
served by early decision is the colleges.”
An increasing number of colleges
have established early action and decision programs in recent years. Some
prior critics are even reinstating the
programs—Yale included.
In fact, according to the 2012 State
of College Admission Report, the number of colleges offering early action
options has increased to 31 percent
from 18 percent over the past decade.
Furthermore, the number of students
accepted early has also been increasing
across institutions. Harvard’s early acceptance rate, for instance, increased to
21 percent for the class of 2018, up from
18 percent the year before despite a decrease in applicant pool.
For universities, early admissions
programs are a safe way to fill up the incoming class as students applying early demonstrate higher interest and are
therefore more likely to enroll. Some universities even use the binding “early decision” or “restrictive early action” programs,
creating a pool that is even more self-selective. Sincethesestudentsaremorelikely to accept admittance offers, institutions
are able to fill a significant percentage of
their incoming class before the majority
of students finish applying. Last year, Columbia, Dartmouth, and the University of
Pennsylvania filled 46.8 percent, 42.3 percent, and 53.7 percent of their incoming
class with early applicants, respectively.
The reason why universities are so
heavily invested in securing their class
through early admissions, however, is that
they want the highest possible yield. Utilizingstudentinterestisonesurefiremethod
of increasing yield, as students who select
to apply early have a higher enrollment
rate. The higher a university’s yield is, the
higher it’s ranked. Universities, then, can
manipulate their rankings simply by increasing early acceptance numbers. At
many universities, the percent of students
accepted from the early applicant pool
is double the percent accepted from the
regular applicant pool.
There is nothing inherently wrong
with colleges trying to improve their rankings. The problem arises because the early
applicant pool and the regular applicant
pool are not equivalent. Many students
have to hold out until regular decision applicationsbecausetheyarewaitingtohear
back from scholarships and other sources of aid before applying to schools they
will not be able to afford. The students
who are able to apply to schools early are
generally able to do so because they have
the necessary financial security—there is
no financial aid question.
While it’s in the college’s financial interest to enroll more students who will be
paying full tuition, the practice is harmful
forthosewhocannotaffordsomeschools’
rates. Students dependent on financial aid
are unable to apply early and therefore
miss the benefits of the early pool’s higher
admissions rate. Consequently, as colleges
accept a larger percentage of their student
bodies through early admissions, the
number of low-income students who
will have the opportunity to attend the
same institutions decreases.
These students accepted early don’t
just lack diversity. In fact, colleges are also
so desperate to obtain a high yield that
they are willing to sacrifice the quality of
their students. According to a study published by Christopher Avery and Jonathan
Levin at Harvard University, applying to a
university early increases a student’s likelihoodofacceptanceby20to30percent—
roughly equivalent to a 100 point increase
on a student’s SAT score.
In order to preserve the integrity of
our nation’s universities, the early admissions system should be discarded.
Without early admissions, low income
students would be able to explore all
financial aid options without systematically being disadvantaged against their
peers. Furthermore, all students would
have time to more fully explore potential universities without having to strategize over which early admissions program would give them the best odds.
College admissions offices will have to
more honestly consider the quality and
genuine interest of each applicant without depending on binding or restrictive
policies as a crutch. Ultimately, eradicating early admissions systems will benefit both students and institutions by
creating equal opportunities and raising
university admission standards.
sports
6 | the georgetown voice
January 15, 2015
The heart of a champion: the Tyler Adams story
ISABEL ECHARTE
Senior Tyler Adams, at a
height of 6-foot-9 and a weight
of 250 pounds, is hard to miss.
He’s a member of the Georgetown men’s basketball team,
but you won’t ever see him in
uniform during the games. You
won’t see him playing at practice, either. Instead, you’ll find
him reviewing the team’s film,
giving the players advice, and
cheering them on from the
bench during games.
After discovering a possibly fatal heart condition in Dec.
2011, Adams decided to give up
playing basketball and has now
become an assistant coach of
sorts for the team, doing whatever he can to help out.
Before realizing he could no
longer play basketball, Adams
came to Georgetown poised to
make an impact on the team
when he enrolled on the Hilltop
in the fall of 2011.
“Coach Thompson and my
assistant coach Robert Kirby
had told me to come prepared
to work and be ready to play
early as a freshman,” Adams
said of his expectations his first
year. “Everybody thinks they
can go to the NBA, so I mean
that was one of my main goals
when I got here. I mean even if
I wasn’t good enough to get to
the NBA, I thought I would at
least get a shot to play overseas
for a good team.”
Adams had been the captain of his high school basketball team his junior and senior
years. During his first fall at
Georgetown, he played four
games with an average of 2.5
points per game. In early December, however, he experienced chest pain during practice. Adams had testing done
on his heart after experiencing
the pain and was not diagnosed
with a specific disorder.
“My heart rate wasn’t going up as high as it needed to
be, and the doctor said I could
play for 20 years and nothing
happens or I could play for two
minutes and something could
happen,” Adams told the Voice.
This problem did not come
as a surprise to Adams. He was
born with an irregular heartbeat, and at the age of six had
to have a muscle removed
from his heart. He said after
that surgery until the age of 18,
he had no problems with his
heart and had no trouble playing in high school.
The summer before coming to Georgetown, however,
Adams did stress tests and his
heart rate did not go as high
as it needed to. After this, he
began to use a pacemaker, but
the problem didn’t go away,
as he experienced difficulties
that prevented him from playing for good.
Adams said that at first, it
was stressful to know that he
could no longer play basketball.
“I pretty much came to
Georgetown to play basketball. All the academics are important too, but that was one
of my main focuses for why I
was coming here,” he told the
Voice. “It was kind of stressful at first, but I’m not really
a person who mourns or gets
sad about things, because in
life bad things happen to people everyday so I couldn’t, even
though its a big issue, I couldn’t
let one problem dictate how I
live the rest of my life.”
Adams initially considered
transferring to a smaller school
closer to his hometown of Brandon, Miss., but Coach Thompson said he could stay on the
team and keep his scholarship.
voice archives
pictured here in a suit, tyler adams always has his teammates’ back.
Since then, Adams has become
a manager for the team and acts
like another coach.
“He has his heart issues and
that’s hard. That’s hard,” Coach
Thompson told the Voice. “For
someone who basketball has
meant so much to, that’s hard
on him, and that’s hard on us.
But I call him my junior coach.
He stays engaged. He’s here everyday. He understands what
we’re doing.”
Adams says Coach Thompson makes him feel like he is
still very much a part of the
team. He still attends every
workout, practice, and game.
He does whatever he can to
help his teammates, whether
that entails watching film or
wiping floors. And the players
appreciate it.
Senior guard Jabril Trawick
says Adams is a leader and a
sort-of second coach. Adams
doesn’t protest to this description. “With [senior forward]
Mikael [Hopkins], we hang out
a lot so I’m always giving him
pointers, even when we’re
outside the gym, which probably annoys him a bit.”
In the future, Adams said
he might like to go into coaching. “I mean growing up I’ve
always wanted to be a coach,”
he told the Voice . “I always
said if I couldn’t play basketball, I would definitely want
to go into coaching. So that’s
probably why it’s a lot easier
for me to deal with this, too.
It’s something that I probably
want to do after school.”
Joe cino’s
SPORTS SERMON--Po“lWeliwill not major in punting.”-Rex
Ryan in his first press conference as Buffalo Bills’ head coach
Rather than just accept the
fact that steroids and other
performance-enhancing drugs
were part of the sport’s culture
at the time, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, the
electoral body for the Baseball
Hall of Fame, has engaged in
their own reprisal of the Salem Witch Trials. Any accusation against a player, no matter how scarce the evidence is
supporting that claim, or even
just simply playing during the
Steroid era of the 1990s and
early 2000s can be enough to
squander one’s chance of earning the ultimate acclaim for
one’s career.
As a result of this ill-advised
witch hunt, some of the sport’s
all-time greats, such as Barry
Bonds, the all-time home run
king, and Roger Clemens, the
pitcher with the most Cy Young
Awards ever, have found themselves without a Cooperstown
membership card, because of
their past association with steroids. Although it seems odd
to exclude these two distinguished players from the Hall
of Fame outright, it never really
troubled me. Even before news
of their past associations with
performance enhancing drugs
came to light, I never particularly cared for either athlete.
Unlike some people, I never
saw them as my role models.
But my ambivalence towards
the Hall of Fame selection process all changed this past week
because it finally hit me personally. My childhood idol, Mike Piazza, the star player of my beloved
New York Mets and the greatest
hitting catcher in baseball history,
found himself left out of the Hall
of Fame in his third consecutive
year of eligibility. To say that I was
infuriated would be a tremendous understatement.
Here’s another tremendous
understatement: Mike Piazza was my hero growing up as
a kid. And unlike most childhood role models who end up
disappointing their admirers,
Piazza never did. He was everything that a young, aspiring Little Leaguer could ask. His sheer
dominance in the batter’s box
with his moonshot home runs,
and his ability to get the clutch
hit in dire situations made him
an opposing pitcher’s worst
nightmare. Combine that athletic ability with his mantra for
doing things the right way—running hard down the first baseline and always making extra
time for the fans for autographs
and pictures—and you can see
the reasons to why I adored him
so much. I dressed up as him for
Halloween three years in a row.
But childhood bias aside,
Piazza was a damn good baseball player. A 12-time All-Star
and 10-time Silver Slugger
Award winner, Piazza has hit
more home runs than any other
catcher in baseball history. Not
solely just a power hitter, Piazza is one of only nine players to
hit 400-plus home runs, have
a career .300 batting average,
and never strike out more than
100 times in a season. If that’s
not enough to convince you of
his worthiness, consider how
Piazza almost single-handedly
carried an otherwise mediocre
Mets lineup for over a half-decade, helping them reach the
2000 World Series. His arrival to New York via trade in the
summer of 1998 helped rejuvenate a franchise that had been
mired in the National League
cellar for almost a decade. On a
more sentimental note, he also
hit the most significant home
run in New York baseball history with his game-winner in
the first baseball game played
in New York post-9/11. For most
baseball fans, these accomplishments would make Piazza
a sure-fire hall of famer. But Piazza still finds himself without a
plaque in upstate New York.
What was Piazza guilty of,
one might ask? What did he do
that has prevented him from
joining the all-time greats in
Cooperstown? The answer is
simple: to the writers who fill
out their Hall of Fame ballots
every year, unless they can
prove with certainty that a
player of that era did not use
steroids, it is not worth electing
them. Like many accomplished
players of the time, Piazza, as a
result, finds himself punished
for the crime of simply playing
during an era tainted by rampant steroid use.
But this logic is flawed. Piazza, unlike some of the other
players on the ballot this year,
never tested positive in a drug
test, never was mentioned in
any of the sports’ supposed
fact-finding investigations—
most notably the Mitchell
Report. He never had to testify before Congress for past
steroid use and never was
indicted in a federal court
for using performance-enhancers. But that doesn’t matter to these writers.
I used to walk to the plate
for an at bat in Little League
and conjure the Shea Stadium public address announcer broadcasting in my mind,
“The catcher, number 31, Mike
Piazza!” Like many of my other
peers who find their favorite
baseball players of yesteryear
not getting the credit they deserve, I’m now left wondering
what it will take for the Hall of
Fame to call my favorite athlete’s name.
sports
georgetownvoice.com
the georgetown voice | 7
Women’s hoops on the rise in 2015
ROBBIE PONCE
The Georgetown women’s basketball team (4-13, 2-3 Big East) had
a tough year in 2014.
During the calendar year, the
team suffered two losing streaks of
at least seven games, sustained several injuries to star players, and had
difficulty competing against a gritty
and tenacious Big East Conference.
Dating back to last season,
the Hoyas were a combined
7-26 in 2014.
After a promising 2-1 start to
their 2014-15 campaign, Georgetown dropped 10 straight contests,
including a 76-61 defeat at Creighton in their first Big East game.
However, with 2014 in the past
and 2015 in full swing, the program
has a unique chance to build upon
the trials and tribulations that they
faced last year.
Since the start of the new year,
the Blue and Gray are 2-2 and are
excited to reap the promises 2015
has to offer them. The Hoyas’ two
losses came at the hands of DePaul (12-5, 4-1 in Big East) and Villanova (9-7, 4-1 in Big East), who
are currently tied atop the conference standings. However, the
Hoyas defended home court in
resounding fashion against Marquette (4-12, 0-5 in Big East) and
Providence (4-13, 1-5 in Big East)
and hope to carry some momentum into the rest of season.
The Hoyas have a young core of
dynamic players, and Head Coach
Natasha Adair—in her first year at
the helm of the program—has faith
that the team has set the foundation for a bright future.
THE DOPiEST ARMSTRONG
A New year has brought new hopes for the women’s basketball team.
“Sometimes, experience is
the best teacher,” Adair said. “As a
coach, you want to see your team
grow and take steps forward. That’s
what we’re doing. We’re a year older, and that’s been a great reason as
to why they’ve been competing and
why we’re turning things around.”
Two of the Hoyas’ brightest
stars have been freshmen guards
Dorothy Adomako and DiDi Burton, who have settled in as solid
contributors for the Blue and Gray.
Though she has had three head
coaches in three years as a member of the Hoyas, junior captain
Katie McCormick is the team’s vocal leader and is one of the biggest
perimeter threats.
McCormick continues to believe in her team’s ability to compete with the best of the Big East.
“It’s been neat seeing some of
the freshmen develop,” McCormick
said. “Dorothy [Adomako] is only a
freshman and she’s been doing really well. [DiDi Burton} is coming in
as a good point guard and Justyce
[Swango] will come in and do good
things. I think we still have people
freddy rosas
who we need to step up in order
for us to keep going, but I think it’s
gonna come, and we’re gonna keep
building on the wins.”
In the two months left before
the conference tournament, however, the Hoyas still have much
to prove. The new year will bring
new challenges and adversity, and
Coach Adair wants her team to be
more resilient in 2015.
In fact, Coach Adair even has a
New Year’s Resolution for her team.
“I want us to fight to the finish,” Adair said. “I want to show
more grit and toughness because
that’s the Big East. No one is gonna give you anything, you’ve gotta
come out ready to compete and
believe it.”
“We have to be one unit, one
focus, one team, one fight to the
finish,” Adair said.
The team’s fight for Big East
relevance will be tested on Friday
when the Hoyas travel to Cincinnati to face Xavier (11-6, 3-3 Big
East). After that contest, the women will travel to Indianapolis to face
Butler (8-9, 4-2 Big East) on Sunday.
Sailing takes a bow at Rose Bowl
JOE LAPOSATA
While Georgetown’s football team may not make it to
the fabled Rose Bowl Stadium
in the near future, the sailing
team has made a habit of successful trips out West.
“It went well,”
That statement by Georgetown junior sailor Nevin Snow
provides a downplayed evaluation of his and his teammates’
most recent performance, as
the Georgetown sailing team
ended their fall season by
winning the 30th annual Rose
Bowl Regatta during winter
break, one of the most prestigious sailing contests in the
United States. The regatta, held
on Jan. 4, in Long Beach, Calif.,
saw the Hoyas defend their
2014 title.
Including the Hoyas, 30
teams competed in the Regatta,
– Buckwild –
emmy buck’s TRI-weekly column about sports
making it the largest collegiate
sailing event on the west coast
of the United States. Aiding the
Hoyas was experience from
sophomore A.J. Reiter and junior Nevin Snow, both Southern California natives, an advantage given their proximity
to Alamitos Bay, home to some
of the best sailing conditions
on the West Coast.
The races, themselves,
were held at the U.S. Sailing Center and Alamitos Bay
Yacht Club, beginning at Belmont Pier and into Long Beach
Harbor, created by a 7-mile
breakwater.
Conditions for the regatta
were brisk, with temperatures
on the water not rising above
60 degrees, but otherwise
clear—good weather for a winter regatta. The races, which
started in the late morning, began with an early Hoya lead as
senior Katie DaSilva and Snow
won their first five races in the
A fleet. The two would go on to
win by 12 points overall.
In the B division, junior Isabelle Luzuriaga and Reiter
also got an early lead, turning
a first match victory into an
equivalent 12 point win. The
Hoyas won by 37 points overall,
finishing ahead of the second
place finisher, the Coast Guard
Academy, and third place finisher Boston College, who were
51 points behind.
The Hoya Sailors open their
spring season on Feb. 21, traveling between the College of
Charleston Spring Intersectional in Charleston, S.C. and
the Quad Meet at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va. The Hoyas
remain at the top of the Sailing
World College Rankings, tied
for first place among collegiate
sailing teams across the globe.
I bought into the idea of
Lance Armstrong.
I bought into the idea sold
by the bright yellow bracelets
with an embossed “Livestrong”
embedded in the rubber. I
watched every Tour de France
with bated breath. I chose to
disregard the onslaught of
doping accusations. I erased
any possible doubts by reading
his biography.
Then, two years ago, Lance
Armstrong admitted to using performance enhancing
drugs while racing in the Tour
de France. And so let us commemorate how a man who
shares the last name of some of
our country’s most iconic figures, the first man to walk on
the moon and and an accomplished musician, truly became
the dopiest Armstrong.
Born and raised in Plano,
Texas, Lance Armstrong grew
up with his mother and stepfather. When he was 21 years
old, Lance signed with the Motorola cycling team Clearly. By
1996, Lance was the youngest
road race champion ever and
was ranked the number one
cyclist in the world. It all came
crashing down on an October
afternoon in 1996 when Lance
was diagnosed with stage three
testicular cancer.
Lance relocated to the Indiana University Medical Center to complete his treatment,
joined by his teammate Frankie
Andreu and his wife Betsy. After undergoing brain surgery
and chemotherapy, Lance beat
the odds and was declared
cancer free in February of 1997.
Despite the many nay-sayers
and the fact that his old cycling
team had cancelled his contract, Lance was ready to reclaim his popularity and status
as one of the best cyclists in the
world. He joined the U.S. Postal team and found a group that
would go to extreme lengths
to win. The team’s impressive
success and ability to crush
others was astounding.
Starting in 1999, Lance
Armstrong
impressed
the
world with his speed and determination to beat the competition, winning the Tour de
France seven years in a row
alongside his teammates on
the U.S. Postal team. To this
day, Lance Armstrong is still
the only man to accomplish
this impressive feat.
But in the midst of this impressive winning streak, au-
thors David Walsh and Pierre
Ballester, along with other
members of the cycling community, accused Armstrong of
lying about past doping. Rumors festered for a while, a federal case was made, and then
the case mysteriously disappeared after Armstrong called
some select government individuals. The notoriety of Lance
Armstrong and the good deeds
done by the Lance Armstrong
Foundation were too great for
any one person to tackle.
But as it goes with most heroic downfalls, hubris got in
the way of a clean getaway. In
2009, Armstrong announced
his return to cycling after retiring, in part due to his legal troubles. Two years later
he retired once again, facing
multiple charges and cases
concerning his use of performance enhancing drugs. The
accusations arose after Lance’s
old teammate, Floyd Landis
confessed on national television that he and the entire U.S.
Postal team were forced into a
doping program while racing
with Armstrong. When Frankie
Andreu refused to participate,
Floyd Landis was recruited to
replace him. Despite his adamant testimonies, Armstrong
was caught in a web of lies.
Floyd Landis’ public confession brought to light an Armstrong unknown to the public,
an Armstrong who was willing
to lie, deceive, and malign the
reputation of others in order to
achieve great success.
Finally, on January 19, 2013,
Lance Armstrong admitted
to the world on Oprah —the
only decent place to make a
shocking confession—that he
had been taking performance
enhancing drugs while racing
in the Tour de France. He had
been lying for 20 years. Keep
in mind that I’m 21 years old.
So where is Armstrong today? The government is suing
Armstrong on behalf of the
Postal Service for $100 billion, attempting to regain the
sponsorship money they paid
to Armstrong. He is no longer
earning millions of dollars in
sponsorship money; he is now
using all that wealth to pay for
numerous legal fees.
As I mentioned earlier,
there have been many famous
Armstrongs throughout history, but I hope this proves that
Lance is without a doubt the
dopiest Armstrong of them all.
8 | the georgetown voice
feature
January 15, 2015
standing up and standing together
Students demand racial justice
“Your silence is suffocating. We, students of color, cannot breathe.”
So begins the letter issued by a coalition of
Georgetown University Law Center students of color to
the GULC administration on Dec. 6, 2014, two weeks after
a St. Louis grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police ofﬁcer, in the killing of an unarmed,
18-year-old black teenager, Michael Brown. The letter
criticizes the Georgetown administration for remaining
silent amid the nationwide outcry for nearly four months.
“GULC students of color struggle to grasp at the
‘surreality’ of our role as change agents of Justice; we
continually lose hope in our study of the law because
we attend a legal institution that has neither openly acknowledged or denounced the current legal (in)justice
system that oppresses Black and Brown people,” the letter reads.
Following the letter, Georgetown University Law
Center, joining Harvard Law School and Columbia Law
School, postponed ﬁnal exams for students who wanted
time to stand in solidarity with the grieving families of
Michael Brown and Eric Garner, another unarmed, black
man who was killed by police ofﬁcers this year.
“Your silence is
suffocating. We,
students of color,
cannot breathe.”
The efforts of these law students have received
national attention with reports from a number of media
outlets, including The Washington Post and the New York
Post. The GU Law letter, however, is only the latest in a series of instances wherein students have chosen to stand
together in the name of racial justice since the death of
Trayvon Martin. In fact, the statement followed months
of Georgetown student activism protesting police treatment of black Americans and the inequities that follow
them day to day.
For Walter Kelly (COL ’16), the deaths of fellow
black men at the hands of law enforcement left him
scared of the kind of society he lives in.
“Post Trayvon Martin, I feared for my brother.
With the Eric Garner case, I feared for my uncles and my
dad,” Kelly said. “But with Michael Brown, he was just a
couple days from going to college. That was so real to me.
I feared for myself.”
Kelly found an outlet for his concerns last summer, when he was approached by LaDarius Torrey (COL
’17) with an idea for a spoken-word performance project
to give voice to black Georgetown students on issues that
had come to the fore of America’s national conscious.
“I started thinking, ‘Could I be the next person
to be shot dead simply for being a black male?’” Torrey
said. “From that I started asking myself, ‘Am I next?’ more
as a question for myself, and then I asked my peers and
shared my thoughts. I found that our patterns of thinking
were very similar.”
By: Shalina Chatlani and James Constant
That kernel of an idea morphed into a fullﬂedged artistic endeavor.
“My living room table became the drawing board
and we started spitballing ideas,” Kelly said. “It felt right to
do it on campus. It was about the larger community of
black men, but we wanted to show what the Georgetown
male voice is.”
Kelly and Torrey gathered a group of like-minded students and ﬁlmed their spoken-word project, entitled “Am I Next?” on the steps of Healy Hall and across the
Georgetown campus and neighborhood.
“The melanin in his skin labeled menacing,
black boy is pulled over while driving while black. He is
stopped and frisked for walking while black. He is pinned
down to the ground for breathing,” Kelly recites in the
video. Signs held by fellow students read, “Why must I
feel fear every time I see a police ofﬁcer, rather than protected?” and “Why do you think my intentions are to steal
when I walk into a store?”
While the goal of the video was to engage students across the board in the broader dialogue, Kelly
believes that its message is also particularly relevant at
Georgetown.
“Georgetown is a bubble. Just going a couple
streets or blocks down I don’t feel as safe. I deﬁnitely
experience small microaggressions and smaller instances of violence,” he said. “We just wanted to make people
aware of that—it’s not just speciﬁc to Staten Island or Ferguson. It’s also felt here.”
Kelly’s and Torrey’s work was just one of numerous protest movements that originated on Georgetown’s
campus and drew inspiration from how relatively sheltered and homogenous the neighborhood is.
On Dec. 5, during the annual tree lighting ceremony in Dahlgren Quad, students held a peaceful die-in
in solidarity with similar protests occurring across the
nation over the decision not to indict NYPD Ofﬁcer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Staten Island’s
Eric Garner. Garner’s last words—caught on tape—were
“I can’t breathe.”
According Candace Milner (MSB ’16), who
helped organize the die-in, the tree-lighting ceremony was chosen speciﬁcally for its status as a prominent
campus event.
“This is a space that’s very visible, so we can bring
awareness about what was going on in our country and
try to hold people on this campus accountable in just being aware,” Milner said. “We knew students, faculty, and
administrators alike would be there. A lot of students had
experiences where a conversation on Ferguson or Staten Island or Eric Garner came up and their classmates
didn’t know what they were talking about or they wanted
to talk about it in classrooms and their professors didn’t
know how to have those conversations or weren’t willing
to have these conversations … That took a toll on many
students, just the lack of awareness or acknowledgement
about what was happening.”
Five days after the tree-lighting ceremony, on
the Georgetown Medical Center campus, between 40
and 50 medical students participated in a “white coat
die-in.”
Michael Pappas, a first year student at the
Georgetown School of Medicine and co-organizer of
the demonstration, said the goal was to raise awareness of racial discrimination among Georgetown medical students—what he described as a privileged group
that is often removed from the realities that blacks in
America face.
“Ultimately, in any action like this, I think it’s important
that students recognize their privilege,” Pappas said. “I
think that that’s one of the ﬁrst things that you have to do
in order to be able to truly work in solidarity with individuals who are affected by such oppression.”
Aya Waller-Bey (COL ’14) launched a Twitter
campaign with the hashtag #BBGU, or “Being Black at
Georgetown” in Dec. 2013. Waller-Bey was a member
of the Black House, a Georgetown residence dedicated
to fostering a community for students of color. WallerBey’s campaign was followed by a number of her classmates launching another hashtag, “Dangerous Black
Kids at Georgetown University,” or #DBKGU, a photo
initiative to challenge stereotypes surrounding black
men and women.
In an interview with The Washington Post in May
2014, Waller-Bey credited the social media campaign for
making a lasting impact on Georgetown and launching a
deeper conversation.
“There have been alumni involved and there’s
still a written track record of what people have said.
I think that allows us as people to hold the university accountable and to understand, like, ‘Hey, this public
shaming thing works,” Waller-Bey told the Post.
Waller-Bey and current Black House Alumni
Coordinator Diondra Hicks (COL ’15) declined the Voice’s
request for an interview. Olivia Holmes, Black House
communications and outreach coordinator, and Nancy
Hinojos, Black House resident director, did not respond
to the Voice’s request for comment.
Shavonnia Corbin-Johnson (SFS ’14), who
launched the satirical hashtag and phototrend #DBKGU,
picturing black students wearing professional clothing
while standing next to a list of their impressive accomplishments, felt that it was important to challenge stereotyping in the Georgetown community.
“Could I be the
next person to be
shot dead simply
for being a black
male?”
“I felt like it was important to send that message
at Georgetown, but also to other places,” Corbin-Johnson said. “We don’t just [stereotype] at Georgetown.
We do that in the U.S. and also in the world in general.
I mean, things like that have happened to students at
Georgetown.”
Corbin-Johnson said that police in Georgetown
often stereotype people, especially black people, by
looking at their clothing.
“I personally, myself, I don’t wear sweatpants,
and I don’t wear a hoodie, but I happened to be walking
to CVS one day, and I happened to be wearing a hoodie
georgetownvoice.com
because it was raining,” she said. “And the cops stopped
me, and they were like ‘What are you doing in this area?
You don’t belong here.’”
Corbin-Johnson believes that one area for
change is Georgetown’s curriculum, which she believes
allows students to tailor a comfort zone that prevents
meeting different people with different experiences
and ideas.
“The majority of Georgetown tailors their education to a comfort zone and is not learning about, in my
mind, modern society. Not everyone is the same, so people should learn about who they’re going to interact with
outside of the Healy gates,” Corbin-Johnson said.
At the same time, however, Corbin-Johnson acknowledged that making thousands of strangers form
meaningful connections with students they don’t want
to meet is a big challenge.
“Whether you’re white, whether you’re black,
whether you’re Hispanic, whatever, you can tailor who
you live with, you can tailor what you study, you can tailor everything to stay in a comfort zone all four years,”
Corbin-Johnson said. “And that’s the problem. You need
to get out of a comfort zone.”
At a university like Georgetown, where black
students make up only 6 percent of the student body,
according to Forbes, it was inevitable that the protests
would also include largely wealthy white students. For
Corbin-Johnson, that’s not a problem.
“If there’s a white person who wants to support
a movement, we’re all for it,” she said. “One person approached me and said ‘I’m not black, but I really want to
be a part of it.’ And I said, ‘Absolutely, of course’... If someone wants to help the movement, no one is ever going
to say no. They just have to know the reason behind the
movement.”
Pappas agreed.
“A lot of these students at Georgetown have
beneﬁted in one way or another, myself included, from
societal structures that create class inequality and suffering in our society,” he said. “I think it’s important to
recognize that just because you were born into that privilege that is not necessarily a reason not to take part in
such movements, but it’s a reason to recognize that and
then work in solidarity with other populations.”
Following the grand jury decisions not to indict
the police ofﬁcers responsible for the deaths of Michael
Brown and Eric Garner, University President John DeGioia emailed the Georgetown University community on
Dec. 10, 2014.
feature
“Recent events in our country have brought
frustration and sadness, anger and despair, as grand juries in two different American cities have shined a bright
light on the enduring fault line of our Republic—the persistent legacy of segregation, discrimination, inequality:
of injustice,” DeGioia wrote. “The fabric that we think of
as America seems to be fraying.”
Prior to DeGioia’s email, the administration organized a panel of professors in September to start a dialogue on the implications of police violence and community unrest in Ferguson, Mo.
The panel, which packed Gaston Hall to standing-room only, nonetheless struck Torrey as a sign of the
Georgetown administration’s reactive nature and came
across as mere lip service in the face of massive, national
protest movements.
“The fabric that
we think of as
America seems
to be fraying.”
“They put together this all-star panel with Michael Eric Dyson, but the premise of putting together all
these people was more to cover themselves,” Torrey said.
“I think the ‘Am I Next?’ video may have threatened them,
because it’s directed at Georgetown rather than broader
American society… I feel like [the administration’s] efforts
only serve to appease our community rather than truly
address the sentiments of our community. It’s a reactive
step to cover themselves.”
Paul Butler and Peter Edelman, Georgetown Law
Center professors who sat on the September panel, both
declined to comment on this story. Main campus professor Michael Dyson did not respond to the Voice’s requests for an interview.
Torrey echoed the thoughts of Corbin-Johnson
and said that the university could dispel a sentiment of
appeasement by changing the nature of classroom discussions.
“I believe more dialogue should be encouraged
in the classroom setting and it’s just not,” Torrey said.
“There are professors out there who are touching on
these vital issues… I had a professor last semester who
had a whole day dedicated to these issues, and one of the
issues was stop and frisk. I had a classmate get up and say
there’s nothing wrong with stop and frisk, that it serves
the georgetown voice | 9
its purpose and it’s effective. Just from that, you hear the
ignorance.”
Most student activists expressed a similar sentiment: the end of ignorance is an increase in the knowledge base.
For instance, the letter addressed to the Georgetown University Law Center demands that the administration begin publicly addressing the issues.
“What does that persistent silence tell us, as law
students of color, about our agency, our value, and our
role at GULC?”
Dean of the Law Center, William Treanor, responded to the letter showing a willingness to cooperate
and listen to students’ concerns.
“Thank you for your open letter. You have expressed important and troubling concerns about the experience of students of color at Georgetown Law and in
the broader community, and you have shared thoughtful
proposals about action steps the Law Center could take
to address those concerns,” said Treanor. “My colleagues
in the faculty and senior administration at the Law Center take your concerns very seriously and want to discuss
them with you.”
After all the actions and protests, the long term
effects of of black student protests at Georgetown remain unclear, especially in light of what protesters felt
was lukewarm backing by the university.
Kelly, however, believes that there still remains
a strong sense of community at Georgetown supporting
the message he and other student activists are trying to
promote.
“The fact that there were so many people supporting us was really great. It showed what a strong community we have here,” he said.
Corbin-Johnson agrees that the sense of community is changing.
“When I was at school, Aya Wailer-Bey started
#BBGU, and she was really large in the black community,
and I was also very inﬂuential in the black community,”
she said. “But we were individual people who decided to
take on things ourselves. And I feel like the black community now is more like an organization rallying.”
For Milner, at the very least, increasing a sense of
recognition of how interconnected all students are with
racial issues is the ﬁrst step.
“When you talk about racial issues, especially black issues, even Latino issues, being in a place of
privilege economically does not divorce or separate you
from the issues that you face as a person of color,” she
said. “I know people who have been asked, ‘Do you go to
Georgetown? Do you belong on campus?’ I mean, we’re
students here. We’re paying tuition, too… We don’t get a
pass from that just because we’re in this place of privilege at Georgetown.”
leisure
10 | the georgetown voice
JANUARY 15, 2015
Nomadic’s latest production Sick : the cure for our worst fears
BRIAN MCMAHON
What sort of fear is healthy
in our world? How safe can we
be without losing our minds?
These are among the many
questions director Gregory
Hans Keiser (COL ‘16) and his
team tackle in their production
of Zayd Dohrn’s Sick. The story
taps into post-9/11 fears and insecurities, questioning just how
cautious we should be in a decaying world.
From the moment the audience enters the theatre, you
feel trapped. The beautiful,
towering set—painted a sterile
and haunting shade of blue—
glares at you, pulling you in as
another patient in the bizarre
quarantine. The cast filling the
set proves small but mighty. A
talented group of five tackles
a complex and dialogue-heavy
piece. Facing the challenge of
playing the parents of their
peers, Thomas Shuman (COL
‘17) and Arianne Price (SFS ‘15)
give standout performances.
Their confidence and vigor
grow with each spousal conflict, with Shuman’s Sydney doing everything he can to live a
normal life while Price’s Maxine
shelters herself in the confines
of her disinfected fortress.
Olivia Duff (COL ‘16) and
Conor Ross (COL’16) play their
children, withdrawn from the
danger their mother fears in
the carcinogenic outside world.
Duff’s Sarah has talent and am-
“Don’t forget to wear your hazmat suit, dear”
bition but knows nothing of taking action for herself; Ross’ Davey provides comic relief but also
stands in as an affirmation of his
mother’s rampant panic.
Duff and Ross show strong
chemistry throughout, creating
a believable and moving sibling
relationship. Rounding out the
under the Covers:
A bi-weekly column about literature by James Constant
Your dear scribe spent a hell
of a lot of time reading over
winter break.
I was channeling my inner Juan Garcia Madero, one
protagonist of many in Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. Madero’s known for such
lines as “Discipline: reading every morning and writing in the
afternoons and reading like a
fiend at night.”
It’s inspirational stuff.
Beyond the relatable details,
what sticks out the most about
Bolaño’s novel is its length—it’s
a 648-page titan. The reader quickly gets sucked into its
world, filled with the romance
of rebellious Mexican poetic
movements and glamorous literary bums, but there’s something to be said for brevity.
It is difficult to keep track of
the interlocking character paths;
every few pages a new name to
remember emerges.
talented cast is Albert Scerbo
(COL ‘15), tasked with observing and reacting to the family as
Jim, Sydney’s promising student
thrust into the family’s dysfunction. In many ways, Jim stands
in for the population at large,
aware of clear and present dan-
Holding on to all of the details—questions arise like which
failed poet slept with which
other failed poet, when did
such-and-such thug get serious
about writing and stop smoking weed all the time—required
contortions from my brain that
brought back unhappy memories of finals week.
I couldn’t help but think that
the book would be better off had
an editor chopped, say, 30 percent of its length and insisted
on dropping a few characters. I
adored The Savage Detectives ,
but it didn’t earn its length.
Toting around fat tomes is
seen as sign of intelligence (see
the numerous Etsy listings for “I
Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie”
canvas bags and coffee mugs).
Goodreads has many listings
for book clubs based around
lengthy novels, but there are
none out there for fans of
shorter ones.
gers but unsure of how much
weight to assign them.
Scerbo carries a heavy load
well, showing off some comedic
chops in early scenes with Shuman before taking on heavier fare
with Duff late in the second act.
Along with the wildly talented cast, the script and its mate-
rial leave a mark. Keiser notes
that the play is a lot more about
9/11 for older viewers while we
the children of these events associate more with communicable disease. Regardless of your
age or 9/11 experience, the show
remains provocative.
CAROLYN ZACCARO
The script has numerous
bits of ire and wit, but its contemplative silences may be its
strongest feature. Dohrn’s play
challenges the limits of both
caution and sanity, for the players and audience alike.
Producer Nicole Chenelle
(COL ‘15) calls the work “fright-
Sometimes, bigger isn’t actually better
It certainly seems like recent
“important” American novels
that aspire to greatness usually
drop 500-plus pages down in
front of readers—David Foster
Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Jonathan
Franzen’s The Corrections, and
Don DeLillo’s Underworld being the most egregious. The Man
Booker Prize winner of 2013, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries,
is 848 pages long.
Doesn’t the literary establishment know that we’ve got other
things going on in our lives?
At least DeLillo’s been listening to us lovers of the short reads.
Since 1997’s 832-page Underworld, he’s stuck to writing works
that look like novellas in comparison. His latest, Point Omega, is
only 117 pages. “If a longer novel
announces itself, I’ll write it,” he
said in a 2010 interview.
That’s the spirit.
Longer novels can aggravate.
They expose the reader to a writer’s particular quirks for an ex-
tended period of time. The latter
half of Great Expectations was
sullied because I knew that the
future would hold more run-on
sentences and convenient coincidences than I could handle.
My sister memorably discarded Infinite Jest two-thirds
through with a tweet—“There’s
only so many times you can
read about a guy’s pot dealer
being late.”
The shorter the book, the
smaller the chance there is that
something about it will rub me
the wrong way. And that means
wonderful short books get closer to that ideal of “perfection”
than longer ones.
Take for instance, F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
These novels wouldn’t evoke the
same powerful, singular emotions if they were longer. Their
short length ties the reader indelibly to the certain moment in
time in which they read them.
eningly relevant,” and it’s hard to
deny considering recent events
such as the Ebola outbreak and
even Monday’s Metro tragedy.
And while not everyone has
a personal connection to 9/11
and many people have no Ebola-induced fear, Sick connects
on a broader level, pushing us
to consider where we draw the
line between fear and paranoia,
between physical sickness and
mental illness.
Just as importantly, the play
reminds us just how talented
and impactful our peers can be.
Reflecting on her final Georgetown role, Price proudly asserted, “Student theatre can remind
people what matters.”
Sick showcases talent across
a variety of mediums, but it
also touches on themes that
will continue to resonate as the
world simultaneously modernizes and weaponizes.
The world has changed in
innumerable ways in the past
thirteen years, but popular
fears endure, as does the play’s
relevance.
Devine Studio Theatre
January 15-17, 8p.m., 21-24, 8p.m.
performingarts.georgetown.edu
I read The Bell Jar over two
days of intense joy in my life,
and the dichotomy between
my happiness and the depression that Esther Greenwood experienced seared my
impressions of the novel into
my mind.
If it was a slogging read that
dragged over several weeks, I
doubt it would have left such an
imprint.
I love it when a writer makes
an impression on me with
a book that I finish over the
course of an afternoon. It’s a
sign of confidence—they know
what they’re saying is powerful,
and they don’t need to beat me
over the head with it.
For readers, shorter books
mean that they get to move
onto the next one as soon as
possible and experience more
styles and stories within the
same period of time.
Maybe that’s a little mechanistic, but hey, I’m all for efficiency.
Assure James that size isn’t everything at [email protected]
“you mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?” — inception
georgetownvoice.com
Dog Tag Bakery has a tasty tale to tell
SIMONE WAHNSCHAFFT
“Welcome to Dog Tag Bakery!
Making it deliciously simple for you
to empower the lives of our veterans
and military families!” Warmly written
on a small chalkboard as you enter,
these words merely hint at the expansive mission of this inviting\little
bakery. Dog Tag Bakery, tucked away
on Grace St. off Wisconsin Ave., is the
long-awaited realization of the dream
of Georgetown’s own Fr. Richard
Curry, S.J.
The bakery is an integral piece of
the puzzle for the fellowship program
offered by Dog Tag Inc., a non-profit that offers wounded veterans and
their spouses an education in business
and the ability to transition back into
civilian life.
During this six-month program,
participant veterans take classes at
Georgetown’s School of Continuing
Studies that focus on business administration and entrepreneurship. At the
same time, members work and operate all aspects of the bakery—from
baking to marketing to inventory—as
a way to gain hands-on experience
in business. The hope is that participants ﬁnish the program with the skills
and credentials to successfully start
their own businesses in any industry,
whether this be of a culinary sort or
not. All proceeds from the bakery go
towards supporting the nine participants of the pilot program.
The restaurant’s atmosphere reﬂects its role as much more than just a
small business. Pictures of participants
at work and the opening of the bakery
adorn the wall above a cluster of booths.
Red, white, and blue plates and bowls are
neatly arranged in clean white cabinets,
and whitewashed shelves are adorned
by cookbooks such as Jesuit Soupmaking and Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking.
bRINGING A CAT TO THIS RESTAURANT Could PROVE DISASTROUS.
DOG TAG BAKERY
Perhaps the most impressive ﬁxture is off to the right of the restaurant,
where a chandelier of dog tags hangs
like a curtain over a small stage. As a
part of the fellowship program, employees occasionally get up on the stage
and describe their experiences to customers. The dog tags that hang above
the stage are meant to honor the servicemen and women who have fallen
in the defense of our nation. They can
be purchased for a donation of $125
and inscribed with a personal message.
Though heavier fare is offered, the
bakery excels most in smaller, sweeter bites. This makes it an ideal place
for sampling and sharing amongst
friends. Get an assortment of éclairs
and ﬁnanciers and pass them around.
The cookie selection is extensive and
presented tidily in jars—perfect for an
on-the-go accompaniment to a large
cup of house blend coffee.
The food doesn’t scream experienced baking, but then again,
it’s not supposed to. This place has
more heart than any number of establishments with mouthwatering
delicacies around the Georgetown
area, and this spirit goes a long way.
Hopefully the ﬁrst of many successful openings around the country,
Dog Tag Bakery is truly a D.C. gem.
Dog Tag Bakery
3206 Grace St. NW
Closed on Monday and Tuesday
www.dogtagbakery.com
the georgetown voice | 11
D.C. Restaurant Week
MEGAN PATEL
How many times have you
walked past 1789, trudging
through the snow on the unfortunate path from Walsh to Leo’s,
only to realize you have nothing
but fish tacos to stay your appetite for the finer things?
Thankfully, D.C. Restaurant
Week provides the opportunity
to eat at some of our city’s fanciest joints, turning dreams’ gastronomical mastery into reality.
From Jan. 19 through Jan. 25,
a two course lunch and a three
course meal will be $20.00 and
$35.00, respectively at over 200
restaurants in the DMV area.
These restaurants serve every
cuisine imaginable, from Thai to
Italian. So, if you’re tired of eating
the mystery vegetables in the Aloo
Gobi at Leo’s, check out Bombay
Club for scrumptious Indian cuisine. Newly opened Mama Rouge
provides
southeastern
Asian
cuisine with a French twist on
the waterfront. For a quick bite
around Georgetown, you can visit
Cafe Milano, Clyde’s, El Centro, or
even the aforementioned 1789—
just to name a few.
The lunch and dinner prices
are preset, so all you have to do
is head over to your restaurant
of choice and mention that you
want to participate in the District. Restaurant Week. But these
restaurants will be receiving a
high volume of visitors during
the week, so call ahead to make
reservations.
D.C. Restaurant Week provides
the unique opportunity to pursue
your quest to unearth the ﬁnest
restaurants D.C. has to offer.
You might even be able to kill
two birds with one stone and take
that special someone out to dinner someplace other than O’Donovans on the Waterfront.
This sure beats TRIVIA Taco TUESDAYS!
VIKKI LAM
Despite Eastwood’s efforts, American Sniper misses target
IAN PHILBRICK
“You’re going to be ﬁne hunter someday,” prophesied Chris
Kyle’s father at the outset of Clint
Eastwood’s American Sniper, an
adaptation of Kyle’s autobiography of the same name. Coming
on the heels of two wars at a time
when the gap of understanding
between America’s civilians and
armed forces is growing, the ﬁlm
provokes essential questions. But
neither the quality of Eastwood’s
directing nor the strength of Bradley Cooper as Kyle, the most decorated sniper in U.S. Navy SEAL
history, outweigh the ﬁlm’s fear of
answering them.
The ﬁlm follows Kyle through
four tours of duty in Iraq, spanning
key campaigns in Fallujah, Ramadi,
and Sadr City, and interstitial visits
home to his wife, Taya, portrayed
by Sienna Miller, and kids in Texas.
Throughout, the yawning gulf between soldier and civilian, and the
challenges of reintegrating into do-
mestic life while one’s comrades remain on the front lines, looms large.
The ﬁlm maintains a complicated relationship with its eponymous subject. In Cooper’s capable
hands, Kyle comes off incorrigibly
likable, dutiful, and undeniably
heroic. But through the mouthpieces of his fellow soldiers and
his wife, the ﬁlm questions his
all-consuming patriotism, prejudice (he labels Iraqis “savages”),
and persistent denials of PTSD—
war’s good alongside its bad.
But this complex relationship
isn’t always to the ﬁlm’s credit. At
American Sniper’s heart is a fundamental identity crisis: what begins as
a biopic depicting Kyle’s virtues and
foibles ends as a eulogy. In a toopat aesthetic cop-out, the enemy
Kyle conquers is both his embodied
antithesis, a deadly and highly ﬁctionalized insurgent sniper named
Moustafa, and the insurgent within,
the patriotic fever that keeps him reenlisting, absorbs his thoughts, and
neglects his wife and children. “I’m
ready to come home,” he tearfully admits to his wife via cell phone
during the ﬁlm’s climactic ﬁreﬁght
and, having slain his foe with a record-setting 2,100-yard shot, come
home he does.
As history knows, however, reality resolves far less neatly. The consequences of the Iraq War still ravage, its
legacy as complicated as Kyle’s own.
In ways too harrowing to ignore, but
in a manner too ham-handed to feel
entirely genuine, American Sniper
metonymizes Kyle’s story as that of the
war—its successes, failures, frustrations,
and lessons learned and unlearned. But
as Kyle’s tragic murder at the hands of
a fellow veteran approaches, the film
backs down, whitewashing its protagonist into a reformed husband,
family-man, and selfless volunteer for
wounded warriors whose struggle is
entirely behind him.
American Sniper opens in Fallujah, with Kyle squinting down his
scope at a mother and child. When
last he aims a gun on screen, however, it isn’t a riﬂe tracking insurgents
but a pistol trained on his wife in the
kitchen of their Texas home while
his kids play in the next room. “Drop
them drawers,” he drawls, “slowly.”
The moment exempliﬁes everything
American Sniper leaves out: a celebration of intimate humor without
the willingness—or maybe the bravery—to explore the possibility that
when the Navy’s deadliest sniper
points a gun at a loved one, however
jocularly, some demons persist.
Ringing with the adulatory
cheers of crowds lining a miles-long
funeral procession, American Sniper dodges answering the very questions it poses through Kyle about
wartime morality, taking and protecting life, and America’s relationship with its military. Perhaps this
country isn’t yet ready to ask such
questions—of its heroes, least of
all. But honoring a memory means,
ﬁrst and foremost, understanding.
The real Chris Kyle, ﬂaws included, lived courageously. American
Sniper, despite its promise, ends
in cowardice.
“I’ll kill you with more than my Ravishing good looks”
IMDB
leisure
12 | the georgetown voice
CRITICAL VOICES
Meghan Trainor, Title, Epic
Georgetown students were “All
About That Bass” in 2014, held captive by the catchy tune of the hit
single by singer-songwriter Meghan
Trainor. In her new album, Title, the
rising pop star brings new music
that doesn’t disappoint. Trainor, a
self-made musician from Nantucket, Massachusetts, officially enters
the pop scene with the release of
her debut studio album.
The LP begins with a short introductory track, “The Best Part (Inter-
Mark Ronson, Uptown Special, Columbia Records
Complete with flair, class, and
more guests than you can imagine,
Mark Ronson has created an album
to pay to tribute to the great era of
early funk and soul music. Uptown
Special turns pop, indie rock, and rap
into a charming homage this period.
Taking a mellow, lounge-singer vibe
at times and a high-energy, big band
style at others, the album’s opposing
attitudes towards the genre blend together well. Just as he bridges differ-
lude).” Trainor concludes the track by
singing, “But the best part of being a
singer at all / Is singing to the world
my songs,” introducing the carefree
nature of the album and reflecting
Trainor’s entry into stardom.
Title then continues with hit
single “All About That Bass,” eventually ending with the second single
released from the album “Lips Are
Movin.” This gives the album a nice
balance with the new tracks tucked
safely in between.
Full of bubblegum pop hooks,
all-female background vocals, and
catchy doo-wop tunes, this LP may
just be the essence of pop music.
Trainor’s modern and self-empowering lyrics, however, keep it from
fading into obscurity in the overly saturated pop genre. The 21 year
old artist knows her peers well, describing topics and situations relatable to any young adult.
Whether it’s being comfortable
in your own body in “All About That
Bass,” late-night texting your crush
ent styles of funk, Ronson also uses
Uptown Special to musically tie together the popular genres of the past
and the present. He only falters when
the album loses sight of its main goal:
an entertaining, funk revival.
To compensate for the fact that
Ronson does not sing, he features
a different artist on each track.
These guests are important—their
own influences substantially affect the attitude of the tracks.
Stevie Wonder’s mellow tones
open the album in “Uptown’s First
Finale,” gradually easing listeners into
Ronson’s project. The song blends
rising 60s-style with horns and
modern synth work to add a more
provocative, dancey beat.
While the featured artists on Uptown Special generally compliment
Ronson’s production, problems arise
when their own styles overpower
the central themes of the album.
“Leaving Los Feliz (ft. Kevin Parker)” falls victim to this issue. The track
in “3am,” or mentally listing the attributes of your perfect future bae
in “Dear Future Husband,” Trainor’s
sassy, positive lyrics can’t help but
feel relatable to the daily struggles
of a Georgetown student.
Though many of the songs unintentionally sound similar, sharing near
identical beats and melodies, Trainor
finds a way to use this to her favor,
enabling the tracks to easily ingrain
themselves in your head. Although
the album lacks any clear standouts,
its title track “Title” perfectly captures
the overall bubbly, jitterbug feel of the
album, leaving you with strong urges
to sing and dance along.
Trainor is starting off her musical
career strong with her first full-length
album, offering a likeable, upbeat experience with memorable tunes you’ll
catch yourself humming weeks later.
Voice’s Choices: “Title,” “Lips
Are Movin”
—TYLER Kranawetter
slips off of the fine line between indie
synth-rock and funk in the direction
of the former. Ronson’s departure
from his musical thesis in this instances creates a mottled image.
Fortunately, this issue arises only a
few times in the album. It is surrounded by his best, most high-energy works
yet. “Feel Right” uses rapper Mystikal to
bring back the ebullient presence of
James Brown. The aggressive rap lyrics
tie the song to the present, yet Ronson
and Mystikal seem to reach perfect accord through this reminiscent lens.
Ronson leaves his listeners with
a unique album. The broad spectrum
of influence he uses ushers in a great
appreciation for styles of the past.
Uptown Special marks a potentially
powerful musical shift towards the
roots of all modern rap and pop.
Voice’s Choices: “Feel Right,”
“Uptown Funk”
—Mike Bergin
CONCERT CALENDAR
FRIDAY 1/16
T.I.
Echostage, 9 p.m., $42.60
FRIDAY 1/16
DJ Questlove
Howard Theater, 10 p.m., $42
MONDAY 1/22
Dr. Dog
9:30 Club, 7p.m., $55
FRIDAY 1/16
Boris
U Street Music Hall, 10 p.m., $10
SUNDAY 1/18
A$AP Ferg & YG
The Filmore Silver Spring, 8 p.m., $38
THURSDAY 1/26
Motion City Soundtrack
The Filmore Silver Spring, 7 p.m., $33
january 15, 2015
DeadBeats
The “Problem” with
Iggy Azalea
To say that the deaths of unarmed black men Michael Brown
and Eric Garner—and the subsequent decisions by grand juries
to not indict the police officers
who were responsible—were a
big deal would be the understatement of last year. For months,
news outlets, activists, and social
media slacktivists have buzzed
about the two deaths and their
implications for police brutality
and race in the United States.
In early December, right after a New York grand jury chose
not to indict Eric Garner’s killer,
members of the hip-hop community began tweeting their
outrage at the jury’s decision and
hope for change. One black artist,
Azealia Banks, posted a scathing
Tweet calling out white, Australian
artist Iggy Azalea for not joining in.
“Its funny to see people like
Igloo Australia silent when these
things happen... Black Culture is
cool, but black issues sure aren’t
huh?” Banks wrote. Azalea replied
the next day, telling her followers
that change doesn’t happen on
social media—implicitly accusing
Banks of just trying to get attention by starting a fight.
While I do think that Azalea
comes out on top in this Twitter
fight for putting up a calm, reasonable defense and not just escalating things further, I can’t help but
feel that she’s just deflecting the
bigger issue with her response. The
fact of the matter is that Azalea and
other artists just like her are ruining hip-hop, but not precisely for
all the reasons her critics list.
On the surface, Azalea’s work
is pretty unusual. Azalea is white
and Australian—not exactly the
pedigree expected of brag-spitting
hip-hop artists. More importantly
(and problematically), Azalea’s act
and singing style seem to draw on
African American stereotypes.
At best, Azalea’s career is nothing
more than a whitewashed version of
Nicki Minaj and, at worst, an appropriation of a genre of music that has
historically been created by black
people and has typically had an activist message. Hip-hop has its roots
in the black activism of the 1960s and
70s. By the time hip-hop came into
its own in the 80s, groups like Public
Enemy wove stories of activism and
political dissent into almost every
song.
Azalea clearly does not live up
to that legacy in any way. When
she’s not bragging it up about how
sweet and “fancy” she is, she’s—
well, that’s about all she does in
her music. It’s Iggy, Iggy, and then
more Iggy. There’s not a message
to be found—certainly not one
that is in solidarity with the black
portion of the hip-hop community. And Azalea’s sole defense
against these criticisms is a weak
deflection, saying that people calling her racist are sexist because
no one says the same thing about
white artist Macklemore.
Azalea is wrong about that.
Plenty of people see Macklemore
as another whitewashed artist
who’s ruining the genre. Azalea’s
critics are right to call her out and
draw attention to her cultural appropriation and bad music.
Where Azalea’s critics falter is
that they attribute Azalea’s failure
to her race. Azalea is neither bad
for hip-hop nor bad at hip-hop
because she’s white. Azalea is bad
for and at hip-hop because of her
shallow music and appeal to the
least common denominator.
Some of Azalea’s critics seem to
assume that white artists inherently
dilute and weaken the genre. They
cite Eminem and Macklemore as
contemporary successors of Elvis:
stealing away black music—dumbing it down, making it white, and
then getting rich off of it.
Just last month, hip-hop artist
J. Cole released 2014 Forest Hills
Drive. “While silly n****s argue over
who gon’ snatch the crown / Look
around, my n****, white people
have snatched the sound,” J. Cole
raps on “Fire Squad.” He also calls
out Justin Timberlake, Eminem,
and Macklemore. But J. Cole and
people who make similar claims
are wrong. White hip-hop artists
are not an inherently bad thing.
It’s white and black hip-hop artists
who do not respect the political origins of hip-hop and strive for mass
appeal as opposed to a meaningful
message who are the problem.
No genre of music should be
reserved for any one race. Of course,
hip-hop has its origins in black communities, but that influence does
not fade when some white artists
adopt hip-hop music to tell their
own stories in an appropriate way.
Hip-hop’s biggest battle shouldn’t be over race. It
should be over quality.
A bi-weekly column about music by Ryan Greene
Rap it up with Ryan at rcg63@
georgetown.edu
georgetownvoice.com
PAGE THIRTEEN
the georgetown voice |13
– Dylan Cutler
—Dylan Cutler
voices
14 | the georgetown voice
January 15, 2015
Ouvrez vos yeux: Looking beyond the Paris terror attacks
ANA SMITH
We don’t seem to care about
Boko Haram.
Last Wednesday, a series of
terrorist attacks in France, beginning with the Charlie Hebdo
massacre in Paris, gripped the
nation and the world. Millions
of people from across the world
gathered in Paris, adopted the
phrase “Je suis Charlie,” stood in
solidarity to support the rights
to freedom of expression and
religion, and condemned terrorists’ suppressive agendas.
This unprecedented response to the unconstructive and horrific murders of 17
people by fundamentalist Islamist terrorists is extraordinary,
needs to continue, and should
be commended. However, Boko
Haram, a West African extremist group of Al Qaeda’s ilk, has
been committing more atrocious crimes than this recent
attack in Paris for years. They
have killed nearly 2,000 in Nigeria this month alone. Where’s
the media coverage, the outcries for justice, the demands to
stand together against such acts
of aggression and terror?
Perhaps we’re not paying
attention to it because it isn’t
“beneficial” to us, since, face
it, we as a country and a global community tend to only give
consideration to those injustices whose cessation serves
American interests, whether it
be through oil, weapons, or appeasing a powerful ally. Maybe
we ignore Nigeria and Africa
in general because we view it
as a misadventure—a hopeless
and constant problem with no
solution.
The issue with this line of
thought is that if America wishes to export the concept that all
lives are sacred, valuable, and
precious, and therefore radical
groups such as Boko Haram and
the radical Islamists responsible for the Charlie Hedbo attacks should utilize discussion
rather than violence, we need
to start viewing these events
proportionally. We need to give
a measure of consideration to
other pressing global events.
How can we teach extremists
that all lives matter if we don’t
act on that credence? And, perhaps if we took the utilitarian
perspective, more lives could
be saved by focusing on larger
scale events like Boko Haram
massacres.
Maybe we see “Je suis Charlie” as an opportunity to stand
together and effect change ripe
for the taking. But can’t that also
be true for those slaughtered by
Boko Haram?
This predicament is reminiscent of the Boston Marathon
bombings and the West Fertilizer Company explosion in April
of 2013. The Boston tragedy—
which resulted in three deaths
and 264 injuries—completely
overshadowed the West Fertilizer Company explosion in terms
of media coverage and national
outrage. With 15 casualties, 160
injuries, and a decimated town,
I bet some readers of this piece
still haven’t even heard of that
tragedy. Both events deserve
compassion and due attention,
but somehow mourning the injured and the multitude of first
responders who charged into a
fire they knew they would die
trying to fight got completely lost in everyone’s daily news
report. True, the onset of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil
snapped everyone’s attention
to the marathon bombings, but
meanwhile many heroes died
in Texas waging a losing battle
against a massive conflagration.
Activists and historians
may read this and bring up the
valid point of race. If those in
Africa were white Europeans
perhaps the world would have
demonstrated more concern
for them. Even so, if you were
to compare the two separate
points in time, many or all of
those who died in West, Texas
were white. The easiest answer
to these ponderings is that we
have neglected these other, incomparable tragedies because
they didn’t involved terrorism
on Western cultures.
The problem with these
excuses for general apathy toward Boko Haram and West,
Texas is that not only are we
showing extremists our ability to disregard massive loss of
human life, but the near certainty of a media circus after a
terrorist attack allows terrorists to gain the attention that
they are demanding. They want
to scare us, they want us to be
dumbstruck by their actions,
they want our attention, and we
give it to them each time. Terrorism needs to be addressed
and combated, but our political myopia needs to stop. Both
Boko Haram and the Charlie
Hebdo massacre need to be acknowledged, but there’s a difference between plugging one
hole in a sinking ship and plugging all of them. In one scenario, the ship still sinks.
ana IS junior IN THE college
Come back, Voltaire: Free Speech in the wake of Charlie Hebdo
ANASHUA DUTTA
The cover of next week’s New
Yorker depicts an unsettling version of a familiar image. The Eiffel
Tower emerges from a blood-spattered landscape, with its peak
transformed into a pencil pointing
skyward. The pencil has become a
symbol of the events that occurred
in Paris on Jan. 7 at the office of
Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical
news-journal where three armed
men, alleged to be Hamyd Mourad,
Said Kouachi, and Cherif Kouachi,
broke into the building and began to
shoot randomly, murdering twelve
individuals, including some of the
country’s most prominent cartoonists and satirists. Before their attack,
security cameras outside the building caught the men yelling “Allahu
Akbar” (God is [the] greatest). Their
actions mark the deadliest terrorist
attack in France since 1961.
While it should go without saying that these attacks be condemned
by all for their heinous actions, it
was cartoonists as a group who had
perhaps the most coherent and
immediate response. Cartoons de-
ERIN ANNICK
“JE SUIS CHARLIE” THE MISTAKES OF A FEW SHOULDn’T BE PROJECTED ON THE MANY
picting conflict between the pencil
and the gun began to proliferate in
print publications and online. Steve
Bell drew a cartoon for The Guardian depicting cartoonists with their
mouths wide open, tongues sticking out, tied to stakes that resemble
pencils, while a gunman points his
weapon at their mouths. In another
cartoon, captioned #CharlieHebdo,
by Ruben L. Oppenheimer, a black
plane hurtles towards the Twin
Towers, in this version replaced by
two green pencils.
Charlie Hebdo has long been
known for its wholesome embrace of free speech, having published a litany of inflammatory
content since its founding in 1970.
The publication infamously featured a cover where Pope Benedict XVI holds up a condom and
says “this is my body,” and on Jan. 7,
the day of the attacks, it reviewed
Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, Soumission, which describes a
not so distant future where France
is overtaken by Islam. In addition
to the cartoons circulated in support of Charlie Hebdo’s mission,
the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie and
Voltaire’s apocryphal quotation, “I
may not agree with what you say,
but I will defend to the death your
right to say it,” became ubiquitous
following the attacks.
Though much discourse following the attacks centers around
the need to protect free speech,
Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s
response stands out from the rest
for its disconcerting prediction that
focuses not on freedom of speech
but on the future of Europe’s Muslim population. In his cartoon, captioned on Twitter as “#CharlieHebdo
attack has another victim,” two gunmen open fire through the Charlie Hebdo office’s doorway. Their
bullets sail through and bombard a
mosque situated in the background,
knocking a crescent, the symbol of
the Islamic faith, off the dome.
France has a long history of
strained relations with its growing Muslim population. The 1980s
slogan, la France pour les Francais (France for the French) neatly
summarizes the anti-immigration viewpoint that has long been
promoted by right-wing activists. In the early 2000s French
law stripped Muslim girls of their
rights to veil in public schools on
the grounds that the practice violated the country’s commitment
to public secularism. Attacks such
as the those on Charlie Hebdo further exacerbate these anti-Muslim
and anti-immigration sentiments.
On Jan. 9, Marine le Pen, president
of the far-right Front National party, called for an immediate French
withdrawal from the Schengen
Area, a group of 26 countries that
abolished border controls to allow
for greater freedom of movement.
In a country with a growing
lower-class Muslim minority, publishing inflammatory covers featur-
ing the Prophet Mohammed kissing
another man or saying “100 lashes
if you don’t die of laughter,” walks a
fine line. In a world where Malala
Yousafzai works to bring universal
education to all children, a tenet of
Islam, the acts of terror carried out
by less than one percent of Muslims are more often than not the
only brand of Islam we see in mainstream Western media. It’s patently unfair for the media to target all
Muslims for the senseless actions of
a radical few.
The events at Charlie Hebdo
were acts of terror. There is no excuse or justification for them. But
they raise an uncomfortable issue—
yes, we have the right to freedom of
speech and expression, but we also
have the responsibility to exercise
this liberty with discretion. At what
point does exercising accommodation and tolerance become more
important than the right to satirize?
Maybe Voltaire would have an answer. Perhaps Philippe Val, the former editor of Charlie Hebdo, had it
right when he published his book in
2008. The book’s title, Reviens Voltaire, Ils Sont Devenus Fous (Come
Back Voltaire, They Have Gone Insane) seems especially fitting in
these trying times.
ANASHUA IS a sophomore in the SFS
voices
georgetownvoice.com
THE GEORGETOWN VOICe | 15
Relearning to read for pleasure, or: how I got lost in a book
ROEY HADAR
Last semester’s finals generated a lot of panic, and in the
middle of exam week, I wanted
to go study. But not in Lau, or
the MSB, or the Healey Family
Student Center, or even the Bioethics Library. I needed to get the
hell out of Dodge. So I took the
Red Line to Tenleytown, walked
15 minutes, and found Politics
and Prose, a well-known independent bookstore in D.C.
I had heard good things about
both the store and its coffee shop,
so I ventured in and opened up
my laptop and books to study.
After a couple of hours, I decided to go browse. As I strolled the
endless aisles, I realized, “I have
to read a book.”
Sure: I, and probably you
also, have read hundreds, if not
thousands, of pages of textbooks, PDFs, and assigned novels. But how long has it been
since you have actually read a
proper hardcover or paperback
READ A BOOK shouts to levar burton and reading rainbow
ellie yaeger
CARRYING ON
A rotating column by senior Voice staffers
Climate change is the challenge that will define humanity’s
future. Devastating droughts and
floods will be more common,
and the developing world will
be disproportionately harmed.
Let me get something straight:
global warming is undoubtedly
anthropogenic. Those who deny
the existence of climate change
only waste time better spent on
necessary decision-making to
cut emissions and ameliorate the
upcoming impacts. Ideological
environmentalists, however, do
just as much to stymie productive discussion. Addressing climate change is not—and should
not be—equivalent to fabricating
an “evil” other side to blame, for
doing so oversimplifies a complex and multi-industry sector.
It’s hard to miss the presence
of GU Fossil Free on campus, a
student group that agitates for
the divestment of the university’s endowment from fossil fuel
companies. The group is right
about the need to combat climate change, but is going about
it all wrong. Forcing Georgetown
to divest will not reduce carbon
emissions and will not help the
world develop a cleaner energy
matrix. This is because the levelized cost of electricity of solar photovoltaic is twice that of
coal and over eight times that of
natural gas in the United States.
This is because wind and solar
energy are unreliable, not dispatchable, and not storable at
grid-level, and if you don’t want
rolling blackouts, you want stable power generation. The market demonstrates confidence
in “cleantech” company stocks
if there is due reason for confidence, not the other way around.
GU Fossil Free admits divestment likely won’t make a
financial dent on fossil fuel
companies, nor do they have
specific alternate stocks or
bonds in which the endowment
should invest. Rather, they go for
the low-hanging fruit, framing
divestment as a “moral imperative.” Wind and solar are good,
coal is complicit in “destructive
behaviors.”
Fossil fuel companies are far
from models of corporate responsibility—but their historical
printed book? For me, it was
nearly two years.
I grew up reading endlessly, and
I would assume many other kids
who made it to Georgetown did
as well. But increasing workloads
in high school and college meant
that I had increasingly less time to
read for fun. Walking through this
shop, however, made me want to
lose myself in a book all over again.
I went to the service desk and
asked for a recommendation. The
employee proceeded to get up and
walk around with me for a solid 15
minutes, trying to ascertain the ideal book for me—try getting that sort
of help next time you’re at Barnes
and Noble.
Although I ended up not getting the book that the employee
had recommended, I still bought
two: Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone
Hanging Out Without Me (And
Other Concerns), and Bill Simmons’
The Book of Basketball. I got home
that afternoon, and with the clock
ticking before my exam at noon the
next day, I decided to open Kaling’s
book instead of my notes.
I devoured it as if I were receiving a meal after not eating
for a week.
It was funny, but not amazingly captivating because it was a
memoir rather than a novel, and
yet, within two hours, I had gone
through more than half of the 250
pages. My long-stifled desire to
read a book for fun finally had the
chance to break free. I had reached
my wall and wasn’t able to study
anymore, but found the chance to
read for fun a necessary and liberating experience.
After my exam, I came back
and finished the book. I had
three exams coming in the following three days, but I kept going, starting Simmons’ book concurrently. Of course, I did throw
in some studying, but I still took
out the time to get through 200
pages by the time I left for vacation, not counting what I read
on the train ride back. Simmons’
700-page book was interesting,
thought-provoking, and genuinely fun. And to think I only
picked it out because there was a
little staff recommendation note
below the book on the shelf at
Politics and Prose.
Now is as good a time as any
to go read a book for fun. You
can use a book as a way of exploring any topic you want or to
imagine a world you could not
have dreamed up before. There
are millions of books out there;
there’s bound to be one that really
interests you.
THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT
FOSSIL FREE
BY CLAIRE ZENG
human rights and labor violations
should not be convoluted with
carbon emissions, because it is
intellectually and factually lazy to
blame the complex problem of
carbon emissions on them.
First, fossil fuel companies
don’t just shut down because of
public opinion. They stop producing if price indices fall below
cost of production. Divesting
from fossil fuel companies is the
same idea that blocking Keystone
XL will stop heavy and sour crude
oil production in the Canadian tar
sands. FYI—it won’t. It’s already
being produced, and will just get
moved via another, more environmentally risky route if Keystone XL isn’t approved.
Second, wind and solar are
booming in the U.S., but not
because the energy sector has
suddenly developed a conscience. Instead, a web of government incentives like regulations and tax credits are making
these technologies more financially attractive. Ironically, the
overwhelming majority of wind
projects are in Republican-held
districts.
The world will move to
more cleantech, but it won’t
just be because of the “clean” in
cleantech. Only some kind of financial incentive or penalty, like
a carbon tax or price, will make
cleantech viable—moral opprobrium alone won’t do the trick.
This will be because cleantech
has real benefits right now: zero
fuel costs, role as a price hedge
against volatile oil and natural
gas prices, and lack of dependence on geopolitically unstable
regions of the world.
Finally, fossil fuel companies
don’t burn fossil fuels (for the
most part). Consumers do. Over
30 percent of carbon emissions
comes from electricity generation in the United States; the next
28 percent comes from transportation. In fact, the only reason
power generators and utilities
began using renewable energy
was because they were required
by law to do so by the 1978 Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act
(PURPA). Fossil fuel companies
respond to demand for fossil
fuels that has nothing to do with
whatever devious mechanisms
If you’re planning on watching Game of Thrones, for instance,
why not read George R. R. Martin’s
series instead? Excited for the NFL
Playoffs and the Super Bowl? It’s
likely that there are a number of
books on the history of professional football, or of your favorite team,
or on any other topic where you
want more information than you
could find on a Wikipedia page.
A book can offer you so much
information on anything—it can
transport you to any time or place
you would like to go. College is a
place to do what you love and pursue your interests. So why not take
a little bit of time and get a book
that covers something you like but
would never be covered in class?
Washington, D.C. is not lacking
in independent bookshops, many
of which also serve coffee or lunch.
Politics and Prose is far but worth
the trip if you have the time. Closer
to campus, there are Kramerbooks
and Bridge Street Books.
If you don’t have too much
work yet, take a break, go visit one
of these shops, and go read a book.
ROEY IS A SOPHOMORE IN THE SFS
GU Fossil Free charges fossil fuel
companies with using. Burning
fossil fuels is not inherently good
or evil, and framing it as such is
ludicrous.
In a nod to financial realism,
GU Fossil Free writes in its proposal that its real goal is not the
instant elimination of fossil fuel
companies, but instead a “discursive shift” in the energy sector. They see divestment is the
“optimal strategy” for bringing
about that shift. What GU Fossil
Free fails to realize is that in the
present, apart from token climate deniers, no one seriously
doubts the merits of addressing
climate change. The discourse is
over the price and technological
reach of current cleantech. The
discourse is on how to decouple
the current revenue structure
that discourages energy efficiency by paying utilities by unit of
energy generated.
This is not to say that social responsibility does not influence the calculus of many
cleantech companies. It is to
say, however, that they succeed
because their projects are financially successful and stable.
In order to continue fostering a
greener world, the next generation of policy makers and business leaders need to understand
how the energy sector works,
not rebuke the entire system.