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VOICE
the georgetown
ROY
ROY KIM
KIM
K-Pop king returns
to the Hilltop
By Courtnie Baek
Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w January 22, 2015 w Volume 47, Issue 17 w georgetownvoice.com
the
Voice
Jan. 22, 2015
This week:
Editorial ... On Duke’s reversal on Muslim call to prayer, pg. 3
News ... CISR stalls divestment, pg. 4
Sports ... Big weekend for men’s basketball, pg. 6
Feature ... Roy Kim, Georgetown’s own K-Pop star, pg. 8
Leisure ... Nature through watercolor abstractions, pg. 10
Page 13 ... Obama drops a bomb, pg. 13
Voices ... Rethinking the War on Terror, pg. 14
POPSTAR on campus
The Voice profiles Korean pop superstar and
Georgetown student, Roy Kim.
Queen B(ee) Crossword
Last week’s key:
– Kathleen Couglin
Editor’s Note:
Last week’s issue incorrectly identified the volume and
issue of the paper. The correct numbers are Volume 47,
Issue 16.
The article “D.C. Restaurant Week” mistakenly identified
the lunch and dinner prices of restaurant week. The correct prices are $20.15 and $30.15, respectively.
Dayana Morales Gomez
Editor-in-Chief
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
Caitriona Pagni
Managing Editor
Mary-Bailey Frank
General Manager
Maya McCoy
Webmaster
James Constant,
Julia Lloyd-George,
Ian Philbrick
Editors-at-Large
Chris Castano
Contributing Editor
Tim Annick
Managing Director of
Accounting and Sales
Allison Manning
Managing Director of Finance
COVER
Editor: Christina Libre
SPORTS
Editor: Joe Pollicino
Assistant Editors:
Isabel Echarte, Kevin Huggard,
Max Roberts
LEISURE
Editor: Daniel Varghese
Assistant Editors: Elizabeth Baker, Dinah
Farrell, Sabrina Kayser
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
peace, love, and adhan
A stand against religious absolutism begins on campus
Last Thursday, Duke University regrettably reversed its decision to allow
members of its Muslim Student Association to chant the adhan, Islam’s call-toprayer, from the university’s monolithic
chapel bell tower every Friday.
Duke should have celebrated and
took pride in its forward-thinking
policy to allow Muslim prayers within
their chapel, which has historical ties to
its Methodist origins. But the decision
attracted dismay and censure on social media. Franklin Graham, the outspoken president of the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association, castigated
Duke for “promoting” the Muslim faith
while “followers of Islam are raping,
butchering, and beheading Christians,
Jews, and anyone who doesn’t submit
to their Sharia Islamic law.” He also
told donors to suspend their support
unless the university changed its mind.
Ultimately, Duke’s administration did
change its mind, citing external threats
of violence they had received in response to their initial decision.
Tragic incidents on American college
campuses in the past have told us that the
physical safety of students is, without a
doubt, the primary concern of any academic institution. By that calculus, Duke’s
reversal was the right call.
The problem, however, is that the university surrendered to supposed defenders
of religious faith and their unscrupulous
bullying tactics. Responses like Graham’s
actually embody the very lack of tolerance, understanding, and interreligious
dialogue they indiscriminately attribute
to Islam. Graham is not wrong that Christians, particularly in the Middle East, are
increasingly the targets of Islamist funda-
mentalist violence. Nonethless, Islam is a
diverse faith that spans the four corners of
the globe. Its 1.5 billion followers hail from
Indonesia to Uzbekistan, speak dozens of
languages, and are born with different ethnic backgrounds. They answer for these
atrocities no more than the Catholics answer for the Crusades.
Some may not see the larger significance of Duke’s failure to take a stand
against the fallout. After all, the Muslim
students’ rights to free expression, including that of religion, remain intact: they
will still be permitted to conduct the callto-prayer on the chapel quadrangle before
entering the chapel itself for prayer. But the
policy reversal symbolically marginalizes
its Muslim students, which, according to
The Chronicle, a newspaper at Duke, number just over 700 out of the university’s
15,000-strong undergraduate population.
“Interreligious understanding” is a
term we often hear on the Hilltop. We
rally around the virtues of dialogue and
research on other faiths in our required
theology classes, with our residence hall
chaplains, and in valuable institutions like
the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace
and World Affairs. What happened last
week reminds all of us—not just at Duke,
but here at Georgetown as well— that
even in the face of toxic adversity and
backlash, we cannot waver in our cleareyed look at religious absolutism.
Born of ignorance, this absolutism
exists both as a weapon of jihad and as
a trending hashtag—damaging whether
spread via social media, threat of violence,
or the barrel of a gun. The reversal of
Duke’s policy is yet another win for fundamentalism and absolutism over understanding. This is where the real sin lies.
power to the patients
A l’enfant plaza tragedy
Granting diginity in death
Not-so-good times ahead for Metro
Last Wednesday, D.C. councilmember Mary Cheh introduced a bill
that may bring “death with dignity”
laws to the District. The law will allow terminally ill patients who are
mentally competent to end their own
lives with the assistance of two doctors. Similar laws are already in effect
in Oregon, Washington, Vermont,
and New Mexico.
Cheh is already bracing herself
for the torrent of criticism from conservative and religious groups over
the bill. In an address made to Italian
Catholic doctors on Nov. 13, Pope
Francis called efforts like Cheh’s a
“false sense of compassion” and criticized the push to legalize euthanasia
as a symptom of “throw-away culture”. He argues that proponents of
euthanasia legislation view the sick
and the old as disposable items, ignoring the fact that “human life is always sacred, valuable and inviolable.”
Given the Pope’s staunch opposition
to the bill, Catholic leaders in the
District are sure to rally against the
bill as it moves through D.C. Council’s legislative processes.
As a Catholic institution, Georgetown takes a strong stance on protecting and defending Catholic values. For
example, it refuses to recognize H*yas
for Choice, a pro-choice group known
for distributing condoms on campus. The university hospital also does
not perform abortions, and medical
school students will not find topics on
abortion in their curricula. Given this
track record, it is likely Georgetown
will adhere to Catholic teachings on
the sanctity of life and refuse to comply with the terms of Cheh’s “death
with dignity” legislation.
Cheh’s bill may contradict the
Catholic church’s teachings, but extending “death with dignity” laws to
the District, and, perhaps, allowing
it as a practice at Georgetown University Hospital, would be a step in
the right direction. Cheh’s bill does
not take the question of euthanasia
lightly, and requires that patients
who qualify for the procedure undergo a stringent approval process
before they can receive lethal medication. Patients must make an initial
oral request for the procedure, followed by a second oral request within
fifteen days of the initial request. In
addition, a third written request must
be made to the attending physician.
The physician must also have offered
a chance for the patient to rescind
the request before prescribing or dispensing the lethal medication. These
proposed mechanisms will show
greater respect for the lives of terminally ill patients by granting them the
free choice to die with dignity.
The choice to end one’s life, regardless of the physical and mental degradation and pain that life
brings, is undeniably devastating
for one and one’s family. But leaving
patients to wait out their illnesses
alone on a hospital bed, waiting for
death to come at any moment, seems
to be the more dehumanizing option.
Ultimately, individuals with sound
minds should have agency over their
own bodies—whether it be on the
Hilltop, where students should have
free, unrestricted access to birth
control to protect themselves, or at
Georgetown University Hospital,
where patients should have a choice
on how to live out their days.
“Look alive, good times are ahead.”
Such was the message of the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority—
next to a cheery dance crew, no less—in
a video advertisement celebrating the
opening of the Silver Line in July last
year. It seems those happy times are
farther ahead than WMATA thought.
On Jan. 13, during what the National
Transportation Safety Board referred
to as “an electrical arcing event,” a train
tunnel near L’Enfant Plaza station filled
with smoke, resulting in the death of
one passenger and the hospitalization
of at least eighty others.
While the incident raises significant questions about the quality of
Metrorail’s infrastructure, more disconcerting, perhaps, are WMATA’s inadequacies in responding to the emergency in a timely and effective manner.
Before firefighters could reach them,
passengers suffocated for at least half
an hour while instructions told them
to stay on the smoke-filled train. 911
operators did not know that passengers were trapped and emergency radios had no signal coverage inside the
station, forcing firefighters to communicate using their cellphones.
This accident came less than six
years after another deadly accident in
2009, when two trains collided with one
another and killed nine people. Despite
a $5 billion capital improvement project
that continues to repair and upgrade the
metro, the tragic electrical fault on Jan.
13 follows a long slew of derailments,
train-to-train collisions, and track
worker accidents that date as far back as
1982. These accidents certainly foster
a disturbing image of D.C.’s metro system, and call into question whether or
not WMATA’s top leadership has been
committed to properly maintaining the
railway infrastructure.
All of these deadly accidents show
that, still, not enough is being done to
protect the residents who rely heavily on
Metrorail to provide a safe daily commute between downtown, Maryland,
and Virginia. Subway ridership has been
stagnant in recent years, and no ridership growth means no revenue growth.
If this stagnation continues, WMATA
risks being unable to afford the critical
upgrades the system needs after years of
negligence and procrastination.
As reports about the incident continue to trickle in from the D.C. government, the NTSB, and WMATA,
Metrorail’s disturbing safety record
should strike a particular chord with
the Georgetown University community, especially its students, who frequently use the Metro to commute
to and from their internships. Carol
Glover, the 61-year old woman who
passed away in the Jan. 13 incident,
could have just as easily been a Hoya
on his or her way to the office.
The D.C. metro is a service that
District residents should cherish and
WMATA should continue to promote.
It keeps vehicles and buses off the
roads while promoting employment
and commerce. However, the hundreds
of thousands of passengers that ride its
trains everyday should be able to trust
that its infrastructure is being properly
maintained and WMATA staff operate
on a work ethic that prioritizes safety
and emergency management. A vague
apology letter in the Washington Post
just won’t do to restore Metrorail’s
reputation of providing an efficient,
reliable transit service for District residents and workers.
news
4 | the georgetown voice
JANUARY 22, 2015
Interfaith dialogue remains strong on campus despite international turmoil
IAN PHILBRICK
Despite violence perpetrated
by Islamic fundamentalists in Paris, controversy over the religious
practices of Muslim students at
Duke University, and a year of attacks launched by Islamic terrorists
in the Middle East, awareness of
the importance of interreligious
dialogue remains high among
Georgetown’s administration, academic centers of study, and student
faith and interfaith groups.
On the morning of Jan. 7, two
gunmen who identified themselves
as affiliates of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based branch
of the terrorist network, killed 11
staff members of the Paris-based
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and
two French National Police officers.
Two days later, an associate of the assailants who aligned himself with the
terrorist group known as the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant killed a
Municipal Police officer and four
Jewish hostages at the Hypercacher
kosher supermarket in Paris’s Porte
de Vincennes district in an alleged
effort to defend Muslims.
On Tuesday, Georgetown’s Office
of Campus Ministry posted a blog entry on its website addressed to university students of the Jewish and Muslim
communities. Authored by Vice President for Mission and Ministry Rev.
Kevin O’Brien, S.J., the post expressed
“support and esteem” for Jewish and
Muslim students “in ardently rejecting
anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and violence in all forms.”
In addition to offering the services of Campus Ministry staff members Imam Yahya Hendi and Rabbi
Rachel Gartner, O’Brien also stressed
Georgetown’s historical tradition of
interreligious dialogue. O’Brien affirmed Georgetown’s “commitment
to … remaining a safe place for all religious communities to embrace their
particular identities” grounded in
“understanding” among members of
different faiths and standing “against
bigotry and intolerance.”
Andrew Meshnick (COL ’17), who
describes himself as an active participant
in Jewish life at Georgetown, expressed
his gratitude for O’Brien’s post. “As a Jewish student at a Jesuit university, it means
a great deal to know that the non-Jewish
community is there to support my com-
munity in this time of mourning,” he
wrote in an email to the Voice.
Against the backdrop of international Islamic fundamentalism, however, criticisms of religious practice by
Muslim college students in the U.S.
have increased. Last Thursday, threats
of violence that reportedly originated off campus were cited by Duke
University officials as the reason for
overturning a two-day-old policy that
would have permitted members of the
university’s Muslim Student Association to chant the adhan, Islam’s call-toprayer, from the bell tower of Duke’s
historic chapel every Friday.
Before Duke repealed its original
decision, Franklin Graham, president
of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which is headquartered in
Charlotte, N.C., criticized the university
from his Twitter account for “promoting” the Muslim religion while “followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and
beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone
who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law,” an apparent reference to the
Charlie Hebdo and Porte de Vincennes
killings as well as the on-camera beheadings of two American journalists
last summer by ISIL militants.
Although Georgetown’s Prince
Alwaleed bin Talal Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding,
which was founded in 1993 as a
“dynamic community of resident
faculty, scholars, staff and students”
to “improve relations between the
Muslim world and the West and
enhance understanding of Muslims in the West,” did not issue a
statement regarding Duke’s policy
reversal, its Associate Director, Jonathan Brown, repudiated Graham’s
logic. “The idea that innocent,
law-abiding Muslims in one place
should be held accountable for
what some small group of Muslims
elsewhere does is absurd,” Brown
wrote in an email to the Voice.
Despite international turmoil,
Campus Ministry and academic centers like ACMCU and the Berkley
Center have helped to support student
interreligious dialogue and collaboration both on-campus and beyond the
gates of Georgetown. According to
Georgetown’s Jewish Student Association Co-President Elizabeth Biener
(SFS ’17), “interfaith prayer events and
an interfaith meditation” typify recent
interactions among on-campus reli-
gious groups. Last November, members of the JSA volunteered alongside
representatives of Georgetown’s Muslim Student Association and Interfaith
Student Association at So Others Might
Eat, a D.C. interfaith organization that
addresses District homelessness. Biener
also highlighted the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, which receives funding
to invite student members of Georgetown’s JSA, MSA, Knights of Columbus, Catholic Daughters, and Buddhist
Meditation Sangha every week to make
sandwiches that are later distributed
through an intermediary to local homeless men and women.
Christopher Wadibia (COL ’16),
who delivered a TEDx Georgetown
talk last November on the subject of
interreligious understanding, echoes
O’Brien’s message, collaboration
among student interfaith and faith
groups, and Georgetown’s interreligious exceptionalism. “I wholly believe
Georgetown positively stands above
all other institutions of higher learning
as a place to be a religious student…
because of its desire to respect the religious or non-religious backgrounds
of its students, and…meet them and
serve them wherever they are.”
DC City Council introduces ‘Books from Birth’ proposal with unanimous support
MATTHEW WEINMANN
On Tuesday the D.C. City
Council introduced Councilman
Charles Allen’s “Books from Birth”
proposal, which aims to send one
book each month to District children under the age of 5.
The plan, which has gained
unanimous support from the
council, focuses on the D.C. Public Library system by building off
of existing programming, such
as the Sing, Talk, and Read program. STAR has been accessed by
over 14,000 people online since
its launch in 2013 and has hosted
64 workshops with 925 attendees
since last October, according to
George Williams, Media Relations
Manager for the DCPL.
According to Associate Professor Rachel Barr of the Department
of Psychology, interacting with
children is essential , whether it is
reading a book, telling a story, or
just talking to them at the bus stop.
“It doesn’t have to be book reading
per se,” she said. “Conversational
talk is the most important.”
Connecting the initiative to the
library is also, according to Allen,
intended to allow adults with low
literacy to take full advantage of
the program. “In the District, like
KIDS WILL BE ABLE TO START PROCRASTINATING ON READINGS EARLIER.
in a lot of places, there are plenty of
adults who have low literacy and if
you have low literacy, going to the
library is a fairly intimidating thing
to do,” said Allen. “We can create
connections for those adults to the
programs around adult literacy and
adult training that help them be
able to carry that message and start
reading to their child.”
This adult training has proven
effective elsewhere. Barr pointed
to the 30 Million Word Gap project in Providence, Rhode Island, in
which adults were given feedback
on their levels of child-directed
talk. “When given this feedback,
[parents] are very responsive and
they do increase their amount of
child-directed talk,” Barr said. “If
parents have information about
JOSHUA RAFTIS
child-directed talk, they increase
their child-directed talk.”
The plan will also send materials out with the books that
can be tailored to specific neighborhoods and library branches,
including information on upcoming events, group reading times,
and meeting different language
needs. “Our library can be the vehicle through which there is messaging,” said Allen. This messaging is critical, according to Barr.
“It’s not about giving children
books to teach them to read, it’s
about speaking and communicating with children so they know
how to use language,” she said.
This is the first initiative
launched by Allen who made education a priority in his campaign.
“When you look at where we are as
a district, more than half of the kids
in third grade are not reading at a
proficient level,” said Allen. “If we
only wait until third grade when
we find this big achievement gap in
the classroom ... we’re really chasing our tails.”
The negative effects of this
word gap have been shown to
compound over time, and children
with less word exposure have significantly smaller vocabularies,
according to Barr. “It’s harder for
them to express their emotions and
it’s harder for them to acclimate to
the school at the time of entry,” said
Barr. “If you start out with a gap
at the age of 3, it’s much harder to
make up that gap.”
Justin Fang (SFS ‘17) has volunteered in Ward 7 schools and
noticed some of the problems Allen mentioned, but thinks there is
more to the problem than a lack
of books available. “Many of the
children I had a chance to interact
with have the requisite resources,
but lack the support and reassurance that they are as capable as
any other student,” wrote Fang in
an email to the Voice. “It is a good
first step, but we have to seriously
reconsider the mentality behind
education for children in D.C.”
Based on the results of a now
decade-long program of the same
goals in Tennessee, the program
cost per child should be around
$35 per year, bringing the total
cost to around $1.2 million. “I
think that’s a reasonable investment to make in early childhood
literacy and I think you’ll see that
pay its dividends in the classroom
a few years later,” said Allen. He
hopes that the DCPL can build
off of its existing relationships
with publishing houses to achieve
economies of scale. The bill is also
written so that the library can accept donations or sponsorships
for the program.
At this time many specifics
remain to be hammered out and,
realistically, the proposal would
not be launched until next year.
Allen suggested the program start
with newborns to children age 3
and then expand. “I want [the program] to grow at a pace that makes
sense,” said Allen.
The full support of the council gives the proposal a necessary push forward. “Getting
everyone to co-introduce it is a
real sign of strength,” said Allen.
“I would like to have some sense
of urgency around moving it
forward quickly.”
news
georgetownvoice.com
the georgetown voice | 5
Applicant figures hold steady despite fewer high school grads
BREDNAN SAUNDERS
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions is currently processing the
applications that have been submitted
by high school students from around
the globe seeking to claim a spot in
Georgetown’s Class of 2019.
“Right now the applicant pool
is just over 19,400 applications,” said
Melissa Costanzi, Senior Associate
Director of Undergraduate Admissions. “It is pretty much identical to
last year … almost exactly even.”
Last year Georgetown saw 19,436
applications, and, while this year’s numbers are still being processed, the current count is 19,427. According to the
Admissions Office, this leveling of the
number of applications is a favorable
outcome at a time when high school
graduation rates are slipping nationally. Since 2011, there has been a five
percent decrease in the number of high
school graduates. While falling graduation rates would seem to correlate to a
parallel decline in applications, Georgetown has received two percent more
applications in this time.
Still, the decrease in graduation
rates is uneven nationwide. According
to the U.S. Department of Education,
the Northeast suffered an eight percent overall decrease in high school
graduation rates. By contrast, the same
report reveals that public high school
graduation rates increased from 76
percent to 78 percent in California and
from 86 percent to 88 percent in Texas
during the same interval.
SAXA POLITICA:
EMILY TU
INCOMING FRESHMeN ARE ALREADY more ambitious than peers.
Applications to Georgetown reflect
these regional fluctuations in graduation
rates. While fewer applications were received this year from many states in the
Northeast, there was an increase in applications from students in the West and
South. In addition, the pool of international applicants grew marginally.
Matching regional trends is positive
for Georgetown. “When you look at the
trend of the numbers, we’re doing pretty well,” Costanzi said. “For us, stability is
really good.”
To maintain this stability, the
university has continued to follow its
same procedures for attracting students. In addition to sending targeted
letters to students interested in specific programs, Georgetown tours the
country with Exploring College Options, a joint program with Harvard,
Duke, Stanford, and the University of
Pennsylvania. According to its website, the group seeks to bring clarity to
the college admissions process.
Furthermore, Georgetown has
maintained a presence internationally in Europe, Central and South
America, and Asia. New this year
SAMAN ASDJODI
is an Undergraduate Admissions
Twitter account.
Besides an increased social media
presence, Georgetown does not intend to make any significant changes
to the way it attracts applicants. It has
no desire to artificially increase the size
of the applicant pool. Costanzi said,
“We don’t want to inflate the applicant
pool if [applicants] are not there. We
want to make sure we’re getting the
right applicants.” As a result, the acceptance rate is expected to stay essentially the same as last year’s 16.6 percent.
Although selectivity rates play a significant role in determining a school’s
ranking, Costanzi explains that this is
not a factor in admissions decisions.
After Georgetown’s slight dip out of the
top 20 national universities compiled
by U.S. News College Rankings for the
2015 year, falling from 20 to 21, the Admissions Office is not worried.
“We pay very little attention to
the U.S. News rankings,” Costanzi said.
“They’re not going to change how we
do our admissions process. We’re not
going to try to bolster our place in the
rankings by doing anything specific.”
IT’S TIME TO LET STUDENTS GET ON BOARD
JAMES CONSTANT
a tri-weekly column
about CAMPUS NEWS AND POLITICS
GUSA did something great last
week. No, seriously!
The student body’s esteemed
representatives released a proposal
on Jan. 11. In it, they call on D.C.
college and university students to
unite to eliminate the city residency requirement that is currently
a prerequisite for serving on D.C.
Boards and Commissions. As of
now, students who aren’t permanent D.C. residents can’t serve on
the over 100 boards and commissions that the city relies upon to
deal with a myriad of governmental issues. Although the proposal
doesn’t sound like much on the
surface, it’s a step toward resolving
the injustice that has been visited
upon D.C.’s college students.
The current situation is a
shame. Many college students—
who, at 80,000 strong, constitute
CISR delays its decision on GU
Fossil Free’s divestment proposal
about ten percent of D.C.’s population—are being disenfranchised
just because many change their
residency after four years. This
isn’t always the case, however, as
the Georgetown grads still hanging
around Burleith can attest to. It’s
ridiculous. If this is the way D.C. is
going to treat college students, they
might as well issue this questionnaire to other new arrivals: “How
long are you planning on staying
here? If it’s less than four years, then
say goodbye to the ability to serve
your local government.” Students
are affected by the policies made by
the boards and commissions and
it’s only right that they should have
as equal a say in determining them
as any other District resident.
It’s fair to say that the average
Georgetown student—or the average student at most D.C. colleges,
for that matter—has a greater interest in politics than most other
young American scholars. Denizens of the Hilltop are well known
for their affinity for Hillternships.
Their awkwardly besuited bodies
cram the Law Center GUTS bus
and fill its stagnant air with chatter about such-and-such politician
they “actually saw, like, in real life.”
For the most part, congressional internships don’t provide very much
in the way of practical political
experience. They sound nice on a
resume, but the day-to-day work
of an intern is pretty far removed
from anything of real significance.
There’s a lot of answering phone
calls from deranged constituents,
and at the end of the semester,
lucky interns might get a photo
and a handshake with the Senator
they’ve been serving.
The Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility
has yet to finalize a decision on
whether or not it will recommend GU Fossil Free’s divestment proposal to the university’s Board of Directors after a
meeting on Jan. 16.
Fossil Free’s proposal, which
it has been revising for over two
years, calls for the university to
divest its endowment from the
top 200 fossil fuel companies.
In order to earn the proposal a
place on the agenda at the Board
of Director’s meeting this February, the group first needs CISR to
recommend that their proposal
warrants further consideration.
Fossil Free first presented
its proposal to CISR on Oct. 27
with the hope that the committee
would vote on it by the end of the
academic year. During the meeting on Friday, CISR had its final
discussions on the proposal and
was expected to give a final statement of review afterwards.
Deliberations on recommending the divestment proposal to the Board are still in
progress, according to a statement from Committee Chair
Dr. Jim Feinerman.
“The Committee on Investments and Social Responsibil-
If students had the opportunity to apply for positions on the
city’s boards and commissions,
a whole new option for gaining
political experience would open
up. They might actually accomplish something concrete because
boards and commissions have judicial authority (read: they can do
things). If Hoyas and others could
join, they’d be representing the
interests of college students, a demographic that is roundly ignored
by D.C. policymakers despite
comprising a significant portion
of the city’s population.
There are over 150 different
boards and commissions, according to the Washington City Paper,
and many of them have plenty
of open seats. They cover a wide
range of different issues. For a student interested in public policy,
serving as a full member of a D.C.
administrative body that addresses
an issue of specific interest to them
is a perfect way to gain valuable
ity today had a thoughtful and
engaged discussion on the Fossil Free proposal and is making
progress,” Feinerman wrote in
the statement. “We continue to
finalize our work and will make
a public statement when our deliberations are complete.”
According to GU Fossil
Free core group member Chloe
Lazarus (COL ‘16), a conclusive
result from CISR was not anticipated from the meeting.
“We did not really expect
a finalized decision on Friday,” she wrote in an email to
the Voice. “We assumed there
would have to be a more thorough deliberation. We have
been working with the committee for almost two years
and none of the information
was new to any of the members. That being said, we value their recommendation and
are looking forward to hearing
their decision soon.”
Fossil Free issued a statement
on Wednesday night to preempt any non-endorsement decision CISR may have reached.
According to the statement,
“Kicking a can down the road
only works as long as there’s still
road left; the end of the line, increasingly, is being reached, and
passing the buck is no longer an
acceptable ‘solution.’”
experience. Into urban planning?
There’s the Public Space Committee. Criminal policy? That’s what
the Sentencing and Criminal Code
Revision Commission is for. Not
to mention that lots of these seats
are paid part-time gigs.
GUSA is taking the right route
in approaching the issue. Rather
than doing it alone, it’s recruiting the student governments of
our fellow universities, including
American, George Washington,
and Howard. If they all band together effectively and manage to
get D.C. policy changed, students
will have the opportunity to effect
real change in the city that they’ll be
calling home for at least a few years.
Sure, “Boards and Commissions” might not sound as slick
as “Internship with Fancy Senator,” but students will get the
opportunity, at least in one small
aspect, to help govern the nation’s capital. That’ll look good
on a resume, right?
sports
6 | the georgetown voice
January 22, 2015
Men’s basketball downs No. 4 Villanova and Butler
KEVIN HUGGARD
It was a good weekend to
be a Hoya.
Two talented Big East opponents left the Verizon Center in
defeat, and after the dust had settled, the Georgetown men’s basketball team (13-5, 5-2 Big East)
sat atop the conference standings.
The fun began with Butler
(13-6, 3-3 Big East) on Saturday
night. The Hoyas started slow,
with the Bulldogs building a 2715 lead late in the first half before
a Georgetown run towards the
end of the half cut the deficit to
four at the break.
“Early on we weren’t getting
stops,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “You have to get stops
to be able to get out in transition,
and we want to get out in transition as early as possible.”
Guarding
Butler’s
Roosevelt Jones proved a difficult task
throughout the game for the
Hoyas, as he led all scorers with
28 points. It was no surprise, then,
when the Bulldogs gave the ball
to Jones on the game’s final possession as the Hoyas led by two.
This time, however, he failed to
convert, as junior guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera stayed with Jones
the length of the court and blocked
his lay-up attempt as time expired.
Smith-Rivera,
with
his
team-leading 14 points and
game-winning block, was a familiar hero for the Hoyas, but a fresher face provided the game-winning three-pointer with only five
seconds left to play. Senior guard
Jabril Trawick brought the ball up
the floor and found an open Isaac
Copeland waiting in the corner.
The freshman forward drilled the
shot to give his team the victory.
“Isaac was wide open,”
Trawick said. “As Coach Thompson always says, one of our
mottos is ‘trust each other’ so I
snapped it to him and he made a
big play for us.”
The game saw a breakout performance from the highly-touted
freshman, who scored all 10 of his
points in the second half.
“I know [Isaac] has been effective when he’s making hustle plays
for us,” Coach Thompson said.
“When he’s flying in for rebounds,
when he’s getting deflections,
when that happens that’s when the
ball starts falling for him.”
Trawick had six assists on the
day, including the decisive pass to
Copeland, while adding 10 points
during one of his better games in a
Georgetown uniform.
“We feed off of his energy and
he provided a lot of energy at the
defensive end and the offensive
end,” Coach Thompson said.
The Hoyas would carry their
momentum into Monday night’s
game against the No. 4 ranked
Villanova Wildcats (17-2, 4-2 Big
East), as the home team opened the
game with an effort that was far
from sluggish.
After trading early baskets,
the Hoyas went on a 17-0 run
that saw them play their best basketball of the season. The stretch
began with an Isaac Copeland
putback dunk, continuing with a
barrage of jump shots and transition layups that left the Wildcats
reeling and the packed student
section in hysterics.
“That was as good a defensive
stretch as we’ve had in a very long
time. I think our defense is what
dictated the game throughout the
game and got us to where we took
that lead in the first half,” Coach
Thompson said.
The Hoyas took a 42-20 lead
into the half, and the lead would
never fall below 12 points for the
rest of the game, although the
Wildcats kept it just close enough
to keep nerves high within the
Verizon Center.
carolyn zaccaro
Led by senior jabril trawick, the hoyas drove past villanova and butler.
“I kept thinking that we were
going to [come back],” Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright said.
“That’s why I say you have got to
give Georgetown credit. They never got tentative with the lead, they
just kept attacking, and I think that
is a sign of a really good team.”
The Hoyas were led by 17-point
nights from both Smith-Rivera
and Copeland, who continued
his breakthrough weekend with
the best game of his young career.
Once again, it was Trawick who
provided a defensive spark while
Joe o’s
Pollicin
also adding two three-pointers in
the first half that helped to build
the Hoyas’ insurmountable lead.
“It’s two outstanding games in a
row [for Trawick],” Coach Thompson said. “It was a selfless game,
making plays that might not show
up on this [stat] sheet right here.”
The crowd kept the noise
level high throughout the blowout. As the seconds ticked down,
the student sections surged
forward. Despite the efforts of
Trawick and other players to
stop the court-storming, the stu-
dents rushed the floor just after
the final whistle.
“They’re excited so they storm
the court,” Coach Thompson said
to Bill Raferty. “I probably wish
that they hadn’t done that, but they
watch a lot of TV.”
For now, the question of when
to storm can wait. The Hoyas seem
to have put it all together, and
provided fans with a near-perfect
weekend of basketball. Next, the
team travels to Wisconsin to take
on Marquette (10-7, 2-3 Big East)
on Saturday for a 2:30 p.m. tipoff.
SPORTS SERMON---
“ We played like Queens Park [Rangers] ... and that is not good.”-Manchester United Manager Louis van Gaal
Rather than debate the merits of court storming, like many
in the national media have done
in the wake of Georgetown students’ actions on Monday, and
whether a program of Georgetown’s prestigious status should
be engaging in this practice at
all, I’m going to take a different
angle on this development.
Simply put, the intensity and passion that inspired
Georgetown students to storm
the court needs to be present at
Hoyas’ games for the rest of the
season. The veracity of the student section was infectious not
only in the win against Villanova, but also against Butler this
past Saturday. The loyal student partisans of the Blue and
Gray spawned a chain reaction
that captivated the arena and
created a true, tangible homecourt advantage for the Hoyas.
The energy that the Georgetown students brought to Verizon Center this past weekend
for both games created a buzz
that has not been felt around
the downtown arena in nearly
two seasons, which is a long
time if you’re a program that
prides itself as a marketable national brand.
This buzz carried over to the
floor where the already motivated Hoyas, who were hungry
for the national attention that
would come with wins against
the Bulldogs and Wildcats, fed
off the energy and were better
players for it. As someone who
played high school basketball in
front of a lively student section
every home game, I can relate.
Knowing that my teammates
and I would be rewarded with
the most intense plaudits, including chanting our names or
taunting our opponents made us
want to go all out even more. It
made us better players because
we wanted to hear that crowd
erupt just one more time again
and again, knowing that it would
happen if we made the right
play. The same could be said
for the Hoyas, who played their
best basketball of the season this
past weekend, including possibly
their best stretch of the last few
seasons when they erupted for a
17-0 run in the first half against
Villanova, which sent the crowd
into a frenzy.
And with the Hoyas assuming sole possession of first place
in the Big East and a national
ranking upcoming in the next
poll due to their impressive play
as of late, there is now no better time to get behind the Blue
and Gray. This year’s team has
a lot to be excited about, with
its combination of veterans and
youth and the way it creates
havoc for their opponents on
both ends of the floor. They’re
on a mission to redeem the
postseason failures of years past
and etch the Georgetown name
back into the national college
basketball conversation as one
of the nation’s premier programs. The way the students can
play their part in accomplishing
this objective is showing up to
the Verizon Center and being as
loud as possible.
I understand the objections and concerns that students have about Georgetown
basketball games. I understand
that the Verizon Center isn’t
the most convenient of places to get to, especially on a
school night when you have
that midterm or paper due the
next day. I understand that
you probably didn’t get season
tickets this year because you
didn’t want to shell out $125
for what may have amounted
to another disappointing season. I understand that the new
opponents from the current
constitution of the Big East
are not as familiar and wellknown as those in the older
conference. And I understand
that the Big East, Fox Sports
1, and Georgetown have not
done you any favors by scheduling games for adverse dates
and start times.
But tough shit. The atmosphere that was prevalent this
past weekend needs to be replicated for the remainder of
this season and onward. No
excuses. Schools that Georgetown likes to compare itself
to with rich academic and
basketball backgrounds such
as Duke and North Carolina
all sell out their building each
and every night and create a
terrifying atmosphere for visiting teams. Like us, students
at those schools have been
dealt unfavorable start times
to their games due to the demands of television contracts.
Like us, they have to balance
midterms, papers, and their
other academic obligations.
And like us, they have to make
an extraordinary commitment, in either time or money,
to secure a seat at their team’s
home games. They still, however, despite all of this, find a
way to have some of the rowdiest student sections in the
country, and in effect, create
some of the loudest homecourts in college hoops.
So if Georgetown wants to
be taken seriously as a national
program, both on and off the
court, it’s time that Georgetown students consistently do
their part. Because when they
have, there are very few places
in college basketball that are
better than a packed and lively
Verizon Center for a Georgetown basketball game.
sports
georgetownvoice.com
the georgetown voice | 7
Women’s hoops falters on road trip
ROBBIE PONCE
As their road struggles continue, the Georgetown women’s
basketball team (4-15, 2-5 in
Big East) is sure glad to be coming home.
Last Friday, the Hoyas
hoped to secure their first road
win of the season as they traveled to Cincinnati to take on
Xavier (12-7, 4-4 in Big East).
A quick start and aggressive defense helped the Hoyas take the
lead from the opening tip, and
the squad led by as many as nine
points before taking a 35-29
lead into the half.
However, the Musketeers came
out of halftime with a 7-0 run and
used momentum on the defensive
end to take advantage of the Hoyas’
sloppy possession. The Blue and
Gray turned the ball over 17 times
against Xavier, including on key
possessions down the stretch when
the team was in dire need of some
timely hoops. Though the team
tried to fight back and speed up the
tempo of the game, they came up
short by a final of 63-55.
Following Friday’s loss, the
Hoyas set their sights on stealing
a victory in Indianapolis against
streaky Butler (10-9, 6-2 in Big
East), who had won seven of their
previous eight games.
Once again, the Hoyas were fast
out of the gates as they jumped out
to a 13-point lead early in the first
half. However, as Butler began to
beat Georgetown’s full-court press,
they found offensive rhythm and
used a 20-4 run to streak ahead 3432 at the end of the half.
Brendan Crowley’s TRI-weekly column about sports
éire jordan: Basketball in ireland
freddy rosas
Women’s basketball will look to rebound when they face st. john’s and seton hall.
In the second half, Butler kept
the Hoyas from scoring transition baskets and were able to stifle Georgetown’s offensive tactics
for minutes at a time. The Hoyas
mounted a late run but ran out of
time, falling by a final of 63-58. The
loss to Butler made the Blue and
Gray 0-10 on the road this season.
The Hoyas have been dangerous this season when they manage
to establish a solid defensive rythm.
They often find ways to translate
takeaways into easy transition baskets. However, when opposing defenses have slowed the game, the
Blue and Gray have failed to establish a dependable and efficient halfcourt game.
Despite the Hoyas’ struggles
this season, freshman guard Dorothy Adomako has had a consistent
impact for the Hoyas as the team’s
leader in points per game (12.9),
and has become Georgetown’s
most dependable offensive threat.
Adomako has received three
consecutive Big East Rookie of the
Week awards, and in Georgetown’s
two losses last weekend, she aver-
aged 16.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and
4.0 assists per game, keeping the
Hoyas in close games against some
of the best talent the Big East has
to offer. When Georgetown’s offense has seemed stagnant at times
this season, the squad has looked to
Adomako to help facilitate Georgetown’s offense.
“I know coach expects a lot
from each one of us,” Adomako
said. “She tells us everyday that
we’re not freshmen and don’t
need to play like we’re freshmen. I
think we’re going to get better and
things are going to be better from
here on out.”
Adomako’s contributions are
going to be needed now more than
ever as the Hoyas face off against
Seton Hall (17-2, 6-1 in Big East)
and St. John’s (14-4, 5-2 in Big East)
this week. These home contests are
likely to be the Hoyas’ biggest tests
so far in Big East play.
The Hoyas will face off with
the Red Storm at 6 p.m. ET at McDonough Arena this Friday, and
will hosting the Big East-leading
Pirates at noon on Sunday.
Track runs away at Penn State
ALEX BOYD
The
Georgetown
track
and field team dominated the
mid-distance
and
distance
events at last weekend’s Nittany
Lion Challenge hosted by Penn
State. Both the men and women’s teams boasted several firstplace finishes, starting with the
800 meters.
For the men, graduate student Billy Ledder took the 800
meters (1:48.46), junior Michael Lederhouse won the mile
(4:09.83), and junior Ahmed
Bile set a meet record in the
3,000 meters (8:00.25).
In
women’s action, senior Hannah Neczypor finished first in
the 800 meters (2:09.01) while
teammate sophomore Sabrina
Southerland took the 1,000
meters (2:44.77).
According to Georgetown
Director of Track & Field
– Riseandfire –
Patrick Henner, the strength
of the mid-distance and distance squads is a product of a
cross-country season that saw
both the men and women contending for the national championship. With the men’s team
finishing in 17th place and
the women taking 4th overall
in the NCAA Championships,
the Hoya track squad is loaded
with proven mid-distance and
distance talent. Versatile Hoya
legs have converted nicely to
different events, giving Henner plenty of options as the
team’s director.
“Look at Ahmed and
Amos—the two guys in the
3,000—they were 800 runners
last year,” said Henner. “Now
in their new event, they’re
fighting for meet records.”
In the men’s mile, 3K, and
800, Hoya runners ran together and out-leaned each other
for the top spots, and that was
just fine with Henner.
“It’s something you see in
practice,” Henner said of his
team’s
competitiveness.
“It’s
about making each other better.”
This fierce Hoya running
style is translating to winning
times on the track. Georgetown
runners are pushing each other
for faster times, and it’s working.
The Hoyas will return to
Penn State in less than two
weeks for the Penn State National Invitational, but this
time with a different focus.
The priority for the Hoyas on
January 30th and 31st will be
qualifying a Distance Mixed
Relay team for the NCAA
championships.
If the Penn State track
treats the Hoyas as well as it
did last weekend, Henner and
the rest of the coaching staff
will be very, very pleased.
“Alright Brendan, you’re going to come off these two screens,
get the ball, then just look to score
or pass it off if you don’t have anything. Ok?”
With seven seconds left, in my
first game as a member of the Trinity College Dublin basketball team,
my coach, who I had met just a week
earlier, was entrusting me with the
final shot with our team trailing by
two points. As I sat on the bench, in
a crusty gym in Longford, Ireland,
surrounded by twelve teammates, a
handful of whom I had met for the
first time that day, I had a thought
that would recur frequently for the
next four months: how the hell did
I get here?
My journey really started with
an email. After weeks of nervously procrastinating the task, I sent a
message to an email address listed
on the Trinity Basketball Facebook page introducing myself as
a hopeful future team member.
The page, which had a like count
around 550, was outdated to say
the least; honestly, I just hoped to
get an answer telling me the team
was still operable.
After a couple of weeks, I received a reply, albeit from an entirely different email address. Surprisingly, the message came from the
team’s head coach, who was thrilled
to hear I was coming over to study
abroad in Dublin. I was invited to
attend a pre-season meeting and
practice with the team. Nothing
was set in stone, of course, but I
knew now that I would at least have
the opportunity to prove myself.
Fast-forward to late August.
Fresh off the plane and searching
for the first Guinness of my Irish
experience, I receive word that my
first foray into the Irish basketball
scene would be at the team’s opening training session. In other words,
I had about a week to get ready.
The ability to “get ready,” of
course, requires access to a basketball court, which I had naively
assumed would be a fairly straightforward task. But, as my teammates would repeatedly remind me
throughout the season, basketball is
a minority sport in Ireland, so finding an open court to shoot around
was about as easy as finding a cricket pitch in the U.S.
Thus, when the moment finally
came for me to step on the court
for practice, I was very much out of
practice. Regardless, I proved myself quickly. Some of the skills that I
had developed in America gave me
an immediate advantage, namely
as a scorer. Though the competition is solid, the Irish style of play is
significantly different from that of
the U.S. Individual ability and athleticism are largely overshadowed
by team development, a model my
coach explained is religiously adhered to across Europe. Rapid ball
movement, three-point shooting,
and lots of cutting, are tenets more
appreciated than taking a player
off the dribble one-on-one. As a
result, I was able to mold well with
the team while also finding an increased number of opportunities
to score.
After a few weeks of training,
our first game was announced. We
would be traveling to Longford, a
town located northwest of Dublin,
for a scrimmage against the local
Longford Falcons. The prospect
of this trip thrilled me because it
would be my first major excursion
since arriving in Ireland. My excitement, however, simultaneously cast
me as a lunatic because, for my Irish
teammates, this trip was about as
exciting as going to grocery store.
Which brings us back to seven
seconds left. Trinity basketball is
down by two points, and my coach
is telling me that I will be getting the
final shot. I will never forget sitting
in that huddle and realizing both
how absurd and incredible the situation I had gotten myself into was.
I was 4,000 miles from home, in an
Irish community center, playing the
game I love in front of a collection
of schoolchildren, parents, and just
regular Irish folk with nothing to do
on a Saturday evening.
When the whistle blew, my
teammate fed me a perfect pass,
and I had a few seconds to make a
decision. I scanned the court and
saw a hole near the foul line and
accelerated towards it. I left the
ground, got sideswiped across the
head (foul calls are a little looser
abroad) and put up a jumper as time
expired. Swish!
As I turned towards the bench,
I was relieved. The pressure was
gone, and I knew I had earned my
teammates’ respect. Their emotion,
however, was a little more heightened. They ran towards me like I
had just handed them each a million dollars. Hugs, pats on the back,
(lovable) sideswipes across the head,
and smiles surrounded me. We
were going to overtime, and I was
over the moon.
I ended up playing twenty or so
more games with the lads of Trinity College Dublin. They elevated
my study abroad experience from
good to great and allowed me into a
community that I will remain a part
of for the rest of my life. They were
friends and brothers, and I’ll be seeing them soon. Thanks for the good
craic boys.
feature
8 | the georgetown voice
January 22, 2015
Roy Kim via Facebook
ROY
KIM
HOMECOMING:
Korea’s pop
idol retreats
from fame to
Georgetown
By: Courtnie Baek
G
eorgetown is a political place and its most famous alums and affiliates are political figures.
Kings and queens, presidents and congressmen all have ties to Georgetown. Georgetown
boasts a significant global student body and claims to have over 2,500 students and faculty
members from over 130 countries. With no large or famous music program to speak of,
Georgetown neither creates nor attracts any famous musical performers.
But one student in particular holds the distinction of being a massive pop star in his home
country, so much so that Georgetown is his personal escape from the fame and busyness of his
first home.
Looking like any other student, Kim Sang-woo, a sophomore in the McDonough School of
Business, entered an MSB breakout room in a simple Georgetown sweatshirt. As his interview began,
Kim’s powerful, resonant voice and confidence only hinted at the other side of his life.
A native of South Korea, Kim Sang-woo is more commonly known by his stage name,
Roy Kim. For the last two years, Kim has managed to balance not only his studies at Georgetown
but a musical career that’s produced two full-length albums and three number-one singles on the
Korean charts.
Although he started his studies at Georgetown in 2013, Kim has returned to campus this
spring for what is only his third semester. Any time spent away from D.C. is dedicated to touring,
writing, or recording his music. During his gap semester last fall, Kim released Home, his second fulllength album, and traveled across Korea to promote it, making stops in Seoul, Daegu, and Busan.
Now that he’s back in D.C., Kim hopes to unwind and recharge, because, unlike the average
student, he uses Georgetown as the place where he takes a break and focuses as much on rest and
recovery as he does on his studies. On top of that, and perhaps more relevantly, he wasn’t allowed to
take any more time off.
“[The administration] wouldn’t let me take any more gap semesters,” Kim said. “I just needed
a break because so many things happened in such a short time. If you live as a singer or a celebrity—it
may be different in other countries—but in Korea, you sing and you do performances just because it’s
in the schedule.”
Kim finds that such a busy touring schedule leaves little time for reflection or even feeling
normal. From the end of October to the end of November last fall, Kim performed six shows in five
cities across South Korea.
“I was losing myself,” Kim said. “Singing and performing is [being] myself, but people only saw
me as a celebrity and not as a person. I was more accustomed to the personal and student life, so I just
wanted to go back to where I would have been before and think about what I’ve done and think about
what I should do.”
Kim earned his professional start in music in 2012 through a South Korean annual television
talent show series, Superstar K—akin to American Idol in the U.S. First in 2009 on Mnet, Superstar K
has increasingly gained more attention and has become one of the biggest audition programs in South
Korea. Each season of Superstar K hopes to find the next big sensation in K-pop. Each week candidates are eliminated, based on a combination of the scores given by judges and votes from viewers.
Kim made it to the final round and won a head-to-head battle against the band DickPunks in
the show’s finale. Kim sang Leessang’s “Who Are You Living For?” and, as in his previous performances, arranged the song to another style, this time hip-hop. Kim donated 500 million won, the equivalent of US$460,596 at the time—the entirety of his prize money—to a Korean music scholarship
foundation.
Kim’s success on Superstar K earned him a contract with CJ E&M and he went right into
work on his first professional material. His debut single “Bom Bom Bom” stayed on the K-Pop Hot
100 chart for three weeks, making it the seventh biggest single of 2013.
georgetownvoice.com
feature
While Kim got his career started through Superstar K, he loved music for
most of his life and saw it as an escape from the competitive and busy culture of his
home country.
“I always liked singing and playing the guitar,” Kim said. “Before I got into
Georgetown, I hadn’t done anything that I really wanted. I think it’s generic for
any yoo-hak-sang [Korean term for international students] to spend time in Korea
studying SATs or doing things just for college. That’s how I got into the show
Superstar K, and it went on from there. At first it was just for the experience, and I
didn’t know I would make it into [the] top ten. But when I was given the option of
taking a gap year and continuing with the show, I thought it could be worthwhile.”
Kim has found live performance to be the most enjoyable part of his entire
career because that is where he gets to connect to his fans.
“It’s not a place to show off, but it’s just me with my audience talking through the
whole show, talking about how I wrote this song,” Kim said. “It’s a very intimate
and fun experience for me. That’s one of the reasons I think that my fans like me.
I don’t just consider myself as a TV star but just a student and fellow guy who
wants to sing in front of a big crowd and is nothing different than the audience
themselves.”
Of course, as a young, male K-pop star, a large part of Kim’s audience is
female, but he embraces that fact and also insists that he has all kinds of fans.
“I think it’s an inevitable thing being a male musician, there are more female fans,”
Kim said. “But there are male fans too. Girls tend to be more fanatic, following
wherever I go, rather than guys.”
Kim’s desire to relate to his fans and come across as a normal guy inspired
many of the songs on Home.
With its comforting, ethereal sound, Home is characterized by light guitar
strumming, soft piano, Kim’s strong-but-subtle vocals, and orchestral strings, all
put together by three-time Grammy-winning producer Marc Uselli.
On the track “Hold On,” Kim softly croons to comfort a person in distress
and tells them to just come to him and be. While it’s never quite clear if Kim is
singing to a lover, a friend, or even a stranger, the ambiguity makes the song that
much more universal and open to interpretation.
“I see people even crying during the show,” Kim said, “which shows that
they’ve went through similar things that I went through.”
the georgetown voice | 9
K-pop news outlet All K-pop quoted Kim as saying that he quit the Chimes because
of their “unfriendliness towards outsiders.” However, Kim denied that he ever said
that and apologized to the Chimes.
“I auditioned for an a capella group and I got in,” Kim said. “I really wanted
to do it, but I hadn’t held a pencil for a year, so the workload for me was very hard.
I saw this article of one of my interviews in Korea, and they said that I got out of
the a capella group because I didn’t like their way of treating other people, but I
didn’t say anything like that.”
“Probably that a capella group is very pissed at the moment. All I said was
I couldn’t handle it because it was overwhelming. I probably said then [that] I didn’t
want to be treated as a singer but as a fellow student who wants to be in an a capella group. So I want to say sorry to them. If you’re pissed at me, don’t be.”
Because Kim’s fame is confined mainly to Korea, he feels comfortable in
Georgetown, and his music career rarely comes up during his everyday life as a
student.
“When they do figure it out, they think it’s kind of cool but aren’t as fanatic
as other people may think of it. Usually how they find out is that I’m in the same
class with them and then they somehow hear the news that this guy’s name is Roy
Kim and they think ‘oh there’s this guy named Roy Kim in my class.’ They don’t bug
me or anything. Georgetown takes me as a part of its community.”
“This is one of the places that I feel most at home and happy,” Kim said. “I
feel home at my literal home in Korea, and here in LXR. It changes; I don’t think
home has to be a physical thing. It could be a cafe with tight friends, anywhere you
can be true and honest to your thoughts.”
In Korea, Kim’s privacy is a totally different story.
“My second album acknowledged that even when you reach your dreams,
it’s not all about happiness, there are other emotions that follow.”
“In Korea, drinking coffee at a cafe could be a very disturbing thing sometimes,” Kim said. “If I want to spend private time with a friend or two, I just want
to talk and drink coffee. Every five minutes, people would come up and ask for
photos. But here people don’t do that, so it’s a very comfortable place.”
“
I don’t think home has to be a physical thing.
It could be a cafe with tight friends, anywhere
you can be true and honest to your thoughts.
Home also represents a musical shift for Kim from Love Love Love, his
first album.
“My first album has a faster tempo and high pitched sounds. It’s more
cheerful compared to the second one,” Kim said. “My career had been blossoming
and I was more into happiness than other emotions. I just wanted to tell people
‘don’t worry, be happy, it’s all going to be all right.’ I realize that’s a really immature
and idealistic way of wanting other people to be happy. Just because I say ‘be happy,’ it doesn’t really change anything.”
“My second album was kind of realizing that and taking it to another
direction of soothing and writing songs that talk about people’s lives that don’t
simply tell them to be happy but provide sympathy with stories that anyone could
easily be a part of,” Kim said. “And my student life definitely had a part in it. I mean
most of my second album was written here in Village B.”
Kim’s musical influences include Ben Howard, John Mayer, Jason Mraz,
and The Beatles. He explained that he follows those artists, because he sees them as
just people who sing their own songs with guitars.
After all his touring and national attention in Korea, Kim thinks of
Georgetown as his second home.
“At first, I didn’t know anything about Georgetown when I got here, but I
realized I really like it here. Everyone’s really hardworking here, and that’s what I
really like about it,” said Kim. “I usually spend my time writing songs when I don’t
have anything to do. Everyone tells me to join a club, but I’m a very lazy guy so
I like to stay at the dorm and do nothing. I have seven more semesters here, so I
could do anything.”
Kim is not involved with any major extracurricular activities at Georgetown, but during his freshman year, Kim briefly participated in the Chimes, an
all-male a cappella group. After appearing on a Korean radio show last October,
”
As an undeclared student in the MSB, Kim plans to transfer into the College to study psychology or sociology, but has not yet made up his mind or thought
much about a post-college career beyond music. For now, he just hopes to enjoy
the ride and see where life takes him next.
“I don’t think there has been a singer in Korea who went through being
a singer and a student studying abroad at the same time, so I didn’t have any role
models to look at,” Kim said. “But it all just flowed. I don’t like to go against the
flow. If something’s going to happen, I just like to go with it.”
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10 | the georgetown voice
JANUARY 22, 2015
Touchstone Gallery makes waves with Watercolors exhibition
MIKE BERGIN
On the page of her personal
website labeled “Artist’s Statement,” Patricia Williams cites
a quote from French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste
Renoir: “To my mind, a picture
should be something pleasant,
cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty!
There are too many unpleasant
things in life as it is without creating still more of them.”
Joy, whimsical wit, and aesthetic beauty are exactly what
Williams provides in Hidden
Things Revealed, her latest exhibit. Located at the Touchstone
Gallery through the end of January, the collection demonstrates an impressive variety of
abstract natural scenes done in
watercolor, shedding light on
the beautiful nature of common
things around us.
Upon entering the gallery,
the boldness of Williams’ works
stands out immediately, her
daring color choices and rugged style juxtaposed with stark
white walls and framings. The
first work to strike me was titled “Grandma’s in the Kitchen.” In title and appearance, this
painting intricately captures the
fondest aspects of memory. Williams’ postmodern twist on the
familiar still life form generates
a simplistically ornate piece that
flaunts her mastery of color
and texture through this difficult medium. Delicate layers of
green slowly transition in hue
from dark to light with yellow
JUST ADD WATER For wholesome, abstract family fun!
blemishes that indicate the reality of imperfection in the past,
for better or for worse.
Williams’ art reflects joy in
other ways as well, most notably
through the sense of humor she
puts on display in many of her
paintings. Although its mottled
background and underutiliza-
OUTOFControl:
A bi-weekly column about gaming by Christopher Castano
I’ve never pre-ordered a game.
I would like to say that is because I’m patient when it comes to
snagging the newest releases, but
it usually comes down to the fact
that I have a habit of looking for the
cheapest source of gaming possible—thank you, college budget.
I know plenty of people who do
decide to invest their hard earned
money in the reservation of a
brand-spanking-new game they’ve
been waiting on for months, if not
years, to be released. It’s a gaming
institution that’s been around since
I became aware of the greater gaming community. But if the online
portions of gamers have their way,
the practice of pre-ordering games
could disappear from gaming, or at
least undergo drastic change.
Recently, companies like Ubisoft and EA have come under fire
for releasing largely buggy and unfinished games like Assassin’s Creed
Unity and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
They’re accused of neglecting to put
tion of the artist’s ability to blend
colors make “Some Melted Butter and We’re Ready to Go” one
of my least favorite works in the
gallery, the humble comedy she
applies to its title was irrefutable.
True abstracts make up the majority of Williams’ exhibit. Her most
successful works manage to balance
out a finished product for the sake
of speed. Gamers are concerned
that publishers are half-assing titles
that could be absolute masterpieces
simply because they know they’ll
get a huge amount of revenue from
pre-ordering. To show their disdain
for companies cutting corners to
gain revenue, users of online forum
sites like Reddit, Steam, Imgur, and
Kotaku have banded together to
boycott against this cost cutting.
But to be honest, those participating in the boycott are almost
as much to blame as the publishers themselves. For some reason
or another, gamers seem to think
that the problems associated with
pre-ordering are isolated to this
particular act. Unfortunately, issues like rudimentary game mechanics and expensive downloadable content are symptoms of a
bigger issue in the gaming industry
today: accountability.
Pre-ordering in and of itself is
actually a pretty sweet concept. The
interpretive color washes blended
into patterns and intricate details.
But when the former dominates the
latter, she risks losing the central
qualities that make her art interesting. One of Williams’ finest specimens on display, titled “Flight Plan,”
depicts butterflies and a flower with
an intricacy that rivals those of the
Audubon society. Around these
figures are seemingly random lines
that fall, as if by happenstance, into
a fascinating shape that interrupts
the still image. Seemingly random
splatters and drips of paint down
the page demonstrate unorganized
beauty, mimicking the flight path of
a butterfly.
TARYN SHAW
What also struck me in many of
Williams’ paintings were the original sketch lines and intentional paint
drips she left in the works. This
technique initially makes paintings
such as “Things Are Not What They
May Seem” appear unfinished. But
these remaining pencil lines are not
only intentional, but meaningful as
Patience is a virtue -- even in the digital world
problem is when publishers take the
easy way out when dealing with high
demand and low levels of transparency. If we want to see a change in
gaming occur, it can’t simply be in
the form of a boycott of an otherwise fine service, but instead in how
we hold companies responsible for
the quality of their product.
That being said, if accountability is what gamers want, they’ll
also have to turn a critical eye on
themselves in order to understand
why publishers and developers
have resorted to such underhanded tactics. At the forefront of any
self-criticism that should be levelled against gamers is the fact
that we, as a group, are impatient.
Sure, Duke Nukem Forever spent
15 years in development, and the
world is still waiting on any word
of Half Life 3 from Lord Gaben,
but we’re not usually made to wait
that long for new installments of
our favorite games.
For instance, Assassin’s Creed
fans only had to wait 2 years be-
tween the releases of the original game and the series’ critically
acclaimed second installment.
However, as the series picked up
in popularity, and people wanted
more and more historical goodness, Ubisoft began pumping AC
games out on a yearly basis, leading innovations in the series feeling contrived and gimmicky.
Ubisoft probably would have
loved to have given its developers
more time to fine-tune the games
released in ACII’s wake, especially
with the advent of its multi-player. But demand was insanely high.
People loved Ezio, loved the vast
open world gameplay, and wanted
more. Sure, Ubisoft has pumped
out some less than impressive titles in the past three years, but they
wouldn’t be doing this if the demand from consumers didn’t push
them to do so.
Not only are fans impatient,
but a lot of the time, gaming
connoisseurs forget just how
difficult making a truly spectac-
well. Each stroke shows a work in
progress, a reflection of the way nature truly is.
The abstract quality of Williams’ art often leaves the tone the
she attempts to invoke in viewers
highly ambiguous. Despite its title,
“Sunshine Makes Me Happy” initially elicits confusion. This multitoned deconstruction of plants spiraling apart is subtlety laced with
Williams’ pencil marks, which ultimately seems to trace the work’s
journey from her mind to paper.
In Hidden Things Revealed,
plants, insects, and sea-life become beautiful amalgamations
of color. Even when painting the
smallest of objects, like a plum, she
weaves large stories that capture
our imagination. In doing so, Williams appears to be gifting viewers
the compelling realization that
her works are theirs to finish. She
wants thought put into these astounding depictions of the natural
world. Because nature belongs to
all people, Williams seems to say, it
is ours to perceive.
Touchstone Gallery
901 New York Avenue N.W.
Wed - Fri, 11 a.m.- 6 p.m.
Sat - Sun, 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.
touchstonegallery.com
ular next-generation title can
be. Considering the staggering
number of staffers working on
a project at any given time, the
multifaceted nature of such an
undertaking, and just how much
content is jam-packed into a single disk these days, it’s a wonder more games don’t come out
looking more like Frankenstein’s
monster.
Pulling off a well-made, innovative game is by no means simple.
That’s not to say that sloppy work
is to be excused, but when the demand for a game has pushed the
company into producing multiple
titles in the span of three to five
years, know what you’re getting
yourself into when you decide to
pre-order/purchase a title.
If gamers are willing to be patient and understand the complexity of the today’s gaming medium,
and developers are more transparent about their intentions and
practices, the hordes of the internet
will have one less thing to complain
about in the coming years.
Play with Chris’s joystick at
[email protected]
georgetownvoice.com
“SOMETIMES IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO NO ONE IMAGINES ANYTHING OF WHO DO THE THINGS THAT NO ONE CAN IMAGINE.” — The IMITATION GAME
OKI Bowl redefines ramen’s reputation
CONNOR ROHAN
Fifty-cents-per-meal instant
noodles have tarnished ramen’s
good name. For too many Americans, ramen acts as the gastronomic equivalent of abject poverty; it is
fuel of the guttersnipe, the last resort of last resorts—a final admission that life has won and you have
lost. Friends, colleagues: it doesn’t
have to be this way.
Just ask the management of OKI
Bowl DC & Sake, a ramen restaurant
located just outside of Dupont Circle. Offering four rice and four noodle-based ramen dishes alongside a
host of authentic Japanese appetizers and beverages, OKI specializes
in the kind of food that Americans
have bastardized long enough.
Their most popular dish, Curry
Ramen, is a delight. Large enough to
keep your Tomagachi alive for de-
don’t forsake your sake tonight
cades on a single feed, OKI’s Curry
Ramen predominantly features tender fried chicken and pickled cabbage in a savory curry broth. Spicy
but not overwhelmingly so, sweet
but not saccharine, the Curry Ramen balances a host of complex flavors with the skill of a trapeze artist
made of really good ramen. Taste it,
boys, flavor load comin’ atcha!
Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold
true for the fried oyster tempura,
another option on the menu. Eating
this dish was a bit like biting into a
pen, as the taste of ink was overwhelming; the accompanying dipping sauce did not mitigate this, as
the sauce tasted remarkably similar
to the oysters themselves. Though
the mouthfeel of this dish’s crispy
tempura shell and fleshy oyster center was unique, texture is difficult to
enjoy when your mouth is drowning
in Sharpie juice.
AMBIKA AHUJA
OKI’s service wasn’t exceptionally good or bad, but they did commit one egregious act: my meal was
served approximately two minutes
after the appetizer. Amateur move,
OKI, amateur move.
The restaurant itself was lined with
a chaotic amalgamation of faux-tarnished metallic décor. With the only
consistent elements to OKI’s ornamentation being the color silver and
wooden birdhouses, the restaurant’s
interior resembled the love-child of a
fishing cabin and a T.G.I Fridays. It’s a
bit jarring, so stay away from this place
if you’re a militant aesthetician.
A wide, albeit pricy, selection
of microbrews, wines, and, sakes
are available at the bar. Illuminated
black lights and ostensibly vintage
light up letters that spell OKI (just in
case you forgot where you were), the
bar is sleek, hip, and would make for
a novel night on the town.
Ultimately, come here if you
want ramen. The restaurant is clearly ramen-oriented, and nothing else
was impressive enough to warrant
my approval. Ramen is in their name
(“bowl,” dummy), it’s by far the most
predominant dish on the menu, and
it’s delicious. They put all their eggs in
one basket, and it was the right basket.
Great basket, OKI, love that basket!
OKI Bowl DC & Sake
1817 M Street N.W.
Closed Sunday
the georgetown voice | 11
Amrika Chalo @ GU
Despite strict censorship, Lahore’s Ajoka Theater, a group of
avant-garde Pakistani artists, had their theatrical debut in their native
country in 1894. Their mission? To promote a just society in Pakistan
through socially meaningful theater.
This weekend, the group will be performing Amrika Chalo at
the Davis Performing Arts Center, under the umbrella of Myriad
Voices: A Cross-Cultural Performance Festival, a joint initiative
between the Theater and Performance Studies Program and the
School of Foreign Service that seeks to expand awareness and
understanding of Muslim societies through art.
This workshop production will force viewers to confront problematic stereotypes of Pakistani people through a comedic satire
addressing U.S-Pakistani relations at the American consulate. The
show will also include guest artists and advanced acting students.
Amrika Chalo is the second big event of Myriad Voices after last
fall’s “Syria: The Trojan Women” turned into a video conference
due to the denial of the Syrian actresses’ visas by the Department
of State.
—Sabrina Kayser
“why can’t we all just be friends?”
Georgetown university
Bad Boy El Greco finally finds vindication at National Gallery
CAITLIN CAIN
When asked what he thought
of Michelangelo, El Greco remarked indignantly and controversially, “He was a good man,
but he did not know how to
paint.”
El Greco is the illegitimate
child of the Renaissance. At the
time, his work was considered
scandalous among Italy’s elite.
He was a deviant—an outcast,
even. But today, El Greco’s
works are heralded as brilliant
with a style both avant-garde
and uncharacteristically modern for a Renaissance artist.
Last year marked the 400th
Anniversary of El Greco’s death.
To celebrate his life and works,
the National Gallery of Art has
brought together seven paintings by El Greco (1541-1614) in
their current West Gallery exhibition.
One of the largest collections of his works in the U.S.,
this exhibition brings together
four paintings recently returned
from Spain (Christ Cleansing
the Temple, two altarpieces
from a chapel in Toledo, and the
Laocoön), and three additional
works from Dumbarton Oaks,
the Phillips Collection, and the
Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Md.
The drama in El Greco’s
work is evident upon first
glance. The unconventionality
of the El Greco style is striking; it is clear that his works
were the Renaissance precursor
to expressionism and cubism,
though the art itself blends Byzantine, Renaissance, and mannerist styles into fierce visions.
The works are quite unsettling, but the discomfort they ensue is easily overcome by the underlying beauty of the paintings.
As I walked through the high
ceilinged exhibit, I noticed a level
of darkness in the religious figures present in El Greco’s work.
Unlike the works of other
Renaissance greats, El Greco’s
pieces do not always display an
idyllic and serene interpretation
of biblical occurrences.
Rather, his works are acknowledged as sublime and
anomalous for a multitude of
reasons: its striking colors, sophisticated simplicity, and serpentine figures.
His works are simply grotesque.
Take for instance the painting “Madonna and Child with
Saint Martina and Saint Agnes.”
It is certainly one of the more
nondescript works in the collection, containing the eponymous Madonna and Child in
typical Renaissance fashion. But
here, the visage of Madonna and
Child is menacing and watchful,
like nothing else from the era.
All seven works in the exhibit carry a unique emotional
context, from providing artistic
narration to less common bibli-
cal scenes as in “The Visitation,”
a canvas that depicts the meeting between the Virgin Mary
and her cousin Elizabeth, both
pregnant at the time, to a depiction of the mythological legend
from Virgil’s “Aneid.”
Of course, each of El Greco’s works in this exhibit are remarkable as magnificent, stand
alone compositions. But having
the works together makes them
all the more powerful. Each one
of the seven paintings is provid-
ed the unique oppurtunity to
play off of the rest of the works
in a way that does their creator
proud.
And at the very least, the exhibit does what might be considered impossible—it proves
Michelangelo wrong.
National Gallery of Art
6th 7 Constitution Avenue N.W.
Mon. – Sat., 10 a.m.– 5 p.m.,
Sunday 11a.m.- 6 p.m.
nga.gov
“still think The sistine chapel is impressive?”
National Gallery
leisure
12 | the georgetown voice
CRITICAL VOICES
Lupe Fiasco, Testuto & Youth, Atlantic
Records
I’ll just come out and say it. I’m
in love with this album.
Lupe Fiasco’s Tetsuo & Youth
has been a long time coming, and
despite the controversies and delays—it was first announced way
back in 2013—it has certainly lived
up to the hype. Glancing through
my notes on each song, it was hard
to miss that I had written, “obsessed
with this” next to nearly every song
title—and deservedly so.
Bulldog Alley Alley Cats, Blind Phyllis, Independent
What’s the first thing you think
of when you hear “the 1920s?” Many
think of the great excess of the prohibition era, of the parties, of the wealth,
of basically everything contained in
The Great Gatsby.
But what you might have forgotten was the soundtrack to this baccanale, the music that managed to
wrangle even the modest out of their
chairs and into step. You might have
forgotten about Jazz.
Lupe Fiasco has long been a
socially conscious rapper whose
interests run the gamut, meaning there’s a lot to offer on this
album—from lyrics, to musical
genre, to collaborators—and thus,
something for everyone.
There’s an R&B feel to the
song “Deliver,” church music and
religious references in “Madonna,” a jazzy intro to “Fall,” and
country music underscoring in
“Dots & Lines.”
Having first gotten into the
rap world by rapping poetry he
had written, it is no wonder that
his music, in particular the track
“Adoration of the Magi,” often
sounds more like poetry being
recited to music than traditional
rap—and it’s awesome. It’swhat
sets Lupe apart from the rest of
the rap pack.
And while Lupe is a skilled
lyricist and great on his own, he
has also done some of his best
and most memorable work with
collaborators. Guy Sebastian,
who Lupe has worked with in the
past (check out their incredible
song “Battle Scars”), is featured
on “Blur My Hands” with its easy,
laid back beat. Long-time collaborator Nikki Jean is also featured
on several tracks in this album,
most notably on the aforementioned “Madonna.”
It’s not often that I like, let
alone accept, even a quarter of
an artist’s album into my sacred
iTunes library.
And yet, I’ve currently got the
entire Tetsuo & Youth album sitting in my Recently Added playlist, and I strongly encourage everyone else to follow suit.
This album simply represents
Lupe Fiasco at his very best. Tetsuo & Youth is a true success.
Although that Jazz Age is
long gone, its music still lives on
through Georgetown’s own Bulldog Alley Alley Cats, a group that’s
added their own flair to almost
century old jazz traditions in their
new EP, Blind Phyllis. The songs
are well-organized, with all three
tracks clocking in at about nine
minutes long.
The best piece on the EP is
the title-track, “Blind Phyllis.” An
original composition by the group,
the song immediately grabs the
listener’s attention with powerful,
energetic saxophones that create
and sustain an enjoyable phrase
throughout.
About halfway through the
song, this catchy lick dies down,
opening the doors for other instruments, particularly Dan Sheehan (COL ‘17) on the drums and
Joe Epstein (MSFS ‘17) on the
trumpet, to demonstrate their
solo skills before the group loops
back into its saxophonic groove.
The album comes out uneven,
however, with the track “So What”
leaving listeners wondering the same
thing. Unlike “Blind Phyllis,” there is
no build-up; instead, there is a slowed
section in an already soft jazz piece.
That being said, the Alley Cats’ interpretation of this standard is not bad—
it simply pales in comparison to both
“Blind Phyllis” and “Khao Sok,” the
remaining track on the EP.
In Blind Phyllis, the Bulldog Alley
Alley Cats display their talent for producing elegant and engaging compositions. From the upbeat and energetic
title track to the triumphant, encore
sound of “Khao Sok,” this EP is a great
listen both for the token jazz enthusiasts and anyone interested in great
instrumentals.
Needless to say, these cats have a
lot to offer.
Voice’s Choices: “Prisoners 1&2,”
“Adoration of the Magi”
—Nicole Kuhn
Voice’s Choices: “Blind Phyllis”
“Khao Sok”
—Emmanuel Elone
CONCERT CALENDAR
SATURDAY 1/24
Hot in Herre: 2000s Dance Party
9:30 Club, 9 p.m., $15
MONDAY 1/26
Motion City Soundtrack
The Fillmore, 7:30 p.m., $30
WEDNESDAY 1/28
Less than Jake, Reel Big Fish
The Fillmore, 7:30 p.m., $30
SUNDAY 1/25
Baby Bry Bry & The Apologists
U Street Music Hall, 7:30 p.m, $15
WEDNESDAY 1/28
Giraffage
U Street Music Hall 10 p.m., $15
THURSDAY 1/29
Zola Jesus
Black Cat, 8 p.m., $15
REElTALK:
JANUARY 22, 2015
Going for
(Oscar) Gold
A bi-weekly column about film by Brian McMahon
The Best Picture field for the
Academy Awards boasts eight
strong nominees without any true
weak links. Oscar night promises intrigue and excitement with a
true battle of titans, from Birdman’s
quest to win for the sake of movies and performance to Selma’s
spotlight on racial dynamics that
remain relevant to this day. In my
mind, though, another film jumps
out ahead of the rest. We have seen
great dramas, biographies, and war
films before, but rarely do we get
to see one film become all three.
Beyond that, The Imitation Game
offers the greatest combination of
acting, directing, and storytelling
of any of this year’s nominees.
The Imitation Game offers the
riveting amalgamation of a compelling character study and a tense
wartime narrative, bouncing between the two constantly without
diluting the viewing experience. It
certainly helps that the film comes
about from phenomenal source
material—Alan Turing’s story is
one of the richest in modern history. Breaking the Enigma machine
is at the same time one of the most
groundbreaking and underappreciated accomplishments of the past
century. Beyond his World War II
heroics, Turing laid the foundation
for modern computing and information processing. It’s the kind
of story that even the driest documentary could make captivating,
let alone a tense and brilliantly acted motion picture.
As the Oscar’s judging season
rolls on, standout performers often push their films to contention
and victory—Colin Firth in The
King’s Speech, for example. These
exceptional actors provide a face
for viewers and voters to associate
with their films, which can bolster their campaigns. Biographical
films especially require a versatile
and talented lead to really shine—
cue Benedict Cumberbatch. His
portrayal of Turing is undoubtedly
the most nuanced and demanding
performance of his career, capturing not only the tormented hero’s
brilliance but also his fragility.
Like the film itself, Cumberbatch might be overshadowed by
the powerful performances of the
other best actor nominees—especially Eddie Redmayne, in The
Theory of Everything and Michael
Keaton, in Birdman. It’s no question, however, that Cumberbatch
does the most impressive work of
the bunch, embodying the numerous complexities of Turing’s character without allowing any to bog
down the story. Director Morten
Tyldum also deserves credit here
for successfully weaving the personal, professional, and historical
aspects of Turing’s story together
into a single narrative that is both
powerful and accessible to viewers. He reveals both the depth of
Turing’s story and the scope of
his legacy without disrupting the
film’s rhythm.
Films like Selma and American Sniper offer poignant takes on
turbulent times and individuals in
American history, while Birdman
and Boyhood are filled with lively
innovation. Where The Imitation
Game goes beyond, however, is
in its illumination of an important
historical figure while also tying his
tortured existence to social issues
that are still relevant to us today.
Alan Turing shortened the most
brutal war in history by years, he
fell victim to social persecution of
the day against homosexuality.
Turing has become somewhat
of an icon in the gay community, a
supremely intelligent and influential man taken far too soon because
of dehumanizing legislation that
required him to undergo chemical
castration. Again, Tyldum’s film
manages to reveal this while also
firmly reminding his audience that
Turing’s legacy and works transcends the discrimination he faced
in his lifetime. No one storyline or
event made the man, and the film
does well to convey that to its audience.
I do not intend to disparage the
rest of the Best Picture field. Each
of the eight films offers something
different and entertaining, and
regardless of whom takes home
the statuette, I probably will not
be complaining. No ill will surrounds any of the films—there is
no Crash in this field, no polarizing
or pretentious work. Directors like
Richard Linklater, with Boyhood,
and Alejandro González Iñárritu,
with Birdman, have done amazing
work, but Tyldum and his cast
have crafted a stunning combination of history, biography, action,
and commentary that will stand
the test of time.
Let’s hope the academy will
see it the same way.
Break the code with Brian at
[email protected]
georgetownvoice.com
PAGE THIRTEEN
the georgetown voice |13
– Dylan Cutler
—Dylan Cutler
voices
14 | the georgetown voice
January 22, 2015
A Life Worth Living: Finding the Time to find a Purpose
EUGENE “SOOSH” KIM
Leo’s grilled chicken has
made many a day of mine. So
has my International Finance
professor.
He’s one of those professors
who initially seems to straddle
the line between trying too hard
to be liked and being a genuinely likable character, but as the
semester progresses, you realize he’s the latter. Last week,
he sent my class an email, in
which he included a quote from
Socrates: “An unexamined life
is not worth living.” It’s a pretty good saying, and one that is
quite applicable in the busyness
of student life as a Hoya.
Between classes, homework,
and clubs, I find it difficult to
remember the “why” of my life.
Honestly, I’m not even that involved in activities on campus—
at least not by “Georgetown
standards.” Even so, I often feel
caught up in a whirlwind of an
ever-growing to-do list, including readings I never got to.
At such an important juncture, it is of utmost importance
to take time to evaluate your
life. This may go against the instinct of “go go go” that defines
the Georgetown experience,
but a lesson I have learned is
that rest begets productivity.
One of the jewels of Georgetown’s Jesuit identity that I will
take with me far beyond graduation is reflection and mindfulness. Reflecting using thoughtful observations, questions, and
answers is what sorts through
everything that is thrown at
you during college and helps
you make sense of, learn from,
and take from this unique time
of life. This applies to both our
studies and our life in general.
While reflecting, a useful
question to ask is, “why am I
doing all of this?” A more common and scarier-sounding form
of the same inquiry is, “what’s
the purpose of life?” I’ll even go
so far as to say that this is an
essential question that we must
all ask ourselves.
The answer to this question
is one that you may or may not
find during college. However, there are interim answers,
such as money, success, stabil-
ity, happiness, and making the
world a better place. I believe
that Socrates was referring
to this type of self-reflection
when speaking of examining
one’s life.
Now, I’m going to break
with Socrates, and go a step
further. We must deal with
what we discover at the end of
our examination if we are each
to live a meaningful and purposeful existence. If, at the end
of our examination, we realize
that the purposes of our lives
are not worth dedicating our
lives to, we must embark on a
journey to find purposes that
are more worthy. For me, a purpose that is worth living for is
one that is of the highest value,
outlasts my own life in terms of
time and impact, and narrates a
story far greater than my own.
As a Christian, I have discovered this purpose to be
bringing glory to God. To put
it in the terms of Georgetown’s
Jesuit identity: Ad maiorem Dei
gloriam. God’s glory is the most
valuable thing in the universe
and beyond. He, the Creator,
is eternal and is not bound by
time. He has a good and guaranteed plan in place to bring
glory to himself, which will
eventually manifest as a kingdom in which there will no longer be any selfishness, greed,
injustice, etc. His story is one
in which sinners like you and
me, who have offended this
morally perfect God, can be adopted as his children. The price
paid for this adoption was the
death of Jesus Christ. Why did
Jesus have to die? Death is the
required payment for sin, and
Jesus paid it despite being perfect so that sinners could have
relationships with God upon
repentance.
Why would anyone want a
personal relationship with this
God? He is perfectly good, sovereignly just, intensely loving, and
infinitely patient. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead after three
days, so that those who turn from
their sins and believe in him can
also have life after death. That is,
a relationship with God begins
upon conversion in this life and
continues in the next. His story is
a beautiful one of his perfect love,
justice, and mercy.
As such, the glory of God
meets the criteria of a purpose
worth living for. I even claim
that God’s glory is the only
purpose worth living for. This
may be offensive to you, as it
once was to me. However, I encourage you to at least strongly
consider the glory of God as a
purpose to which you can dedicate yourself upon examining
your life. A good place to begin
is by reading the book of John
in the Bible, or even talking to a
Christian acquaintance. I write
to you as someone left entirely
unsatisfied by pursuits of success, approval, and happiness.
While not “evil” in and of themselves, they do not suffice as the
purpose of life.
May this semester be one of
discovery and exploration. Remember, dear friend, your life
is a precious one. Dedicate it to
a valuable purpose.
SOOSH IS A SOPHOMORE IN THE SFS
Tired of Terror: Reexamining America’s Anti-Extremist Wars
RYAN GREENE
For almost my entire life, I
have lived in a world that is nearly
defined by terrorism and images of terrorism. My first week of
second grade was interrupted by
planes crashing into buildings
45 minutes south of my house. I
distinctly remember a grandiose
statue of a Middle Eastern dictator toppling over on the TV as I
sat in my doctor’s waiting room
not long after.
Last year, I ate an entire bag of
popcorn during Lone Survivor, a
Hollywood action movie depicting the single largest loss of American soldiers in decades.
Ever since 9/11, I have not
been able to put on the TV or read
news online without navigating
around stories about bombs being
dropped on dusty, desert cities or
American soldiers, some younger
than I am now, getting incinerated
in explosions.
It is horrifying, it is disturbing, and I see it every day. And yet,
I am not that affected by it all. At
least, it seems like the horror of my
nation’s apparently endless, continent-spanning war against hateful
KATIE HYLAND
MORE BAD NEWS EXTREMISM IS ON THE RISE EVEN AFTER YEARS OF WARFARE
extremists should affect me more
than it does. But it doesn’t, and I
feel that I am not alone in that regard. In fact, I believe that the constant war and violence is turning
the U.S. into a country full of complacent and ignorant voters who
are content with the unscrupulous
use of warfare.
The so-called “War on Terror” is a unique phenomenon in
American history. For the first
time, the U.S. has committed to
wage war not on a nation defined
by geographic borders to achieve
clear military objectives but, instead, on al-Qaeda and its fellow
travelers – organizations which
are defined more by their radical
ideologies and far less by concrete
geographic centers. Since the “War
on Terror” began, al-Qaeda alone
has since diffused into countless
groups in multiple countries: the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria, alShabaab in Somalia. The list goes
on and on.
The “War on Terror,” in terms
of any definitive military victory, is
a hopeless folly. JFK once said, “a
man may die, nations may rise and
fall, but an idea lives on.” That’s
what al-Qaeda and its affiliates
are: an ideology, a set of beliefs,
not a nation. That ideology won’t
crumble like a shelled building or
collapse like the target of an Amer-
ican sniper rifle. Militant Islam
cannot be addressed with violence
because it grows and strengthens
its resolve in the face of violence.
For every Osama bin Laden and
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the U.S.
and its allies obliterate, another
rises, ready to take their place. The
spiral of conflict continues: the
wounds and the hatred deepen.
In retrospect, declaring a “War on
Terror” made about as much sense
as declaring a “War on Hate” or a
“War on Violence,” as if you could
kill an idea with a bomb.
In the meantime, while the
U.S. struggles to redefine and reassess this conflict, American soldiers and innocent civilians die,
and the American public grows increasingly accustomed to being a
nation at war. A ludicrous callousness has developed towards our
nation’s use of violence. In the Iraq
War alone (which, in many ways,
has not ended), at least 100,000
Iraqis and about 4,500 American
soldiers died. Some of those soldiers who didn’t lose life or limb
on the battlefield took their own
lives because they couldn’t live
with the things they saw and did in
the theater of war. And yet, there
are those in this country who want
more bloodshed, more bombs, and
more bullets.
Following the attack on
Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Fox News
host Jeanine Pirro called for the
mass armament of Muslims to
destroy radical Islamists. Not
only does Pirro’s diatribe neglect
the fact that the last time the U.S.
did that, we helped create the
Taliban, but it reflects how much
our country has demonized the
Middle East and sees violence as
the only way to win.
Pirro is wrong. Violence is
not the solution to the problems
in the Middle East, and it will not
serve to keep the U.S. safe in the
long-term. I do not know how to
achieve peace in the Middle East.
No one does, although any keyboard-wielding political commentator is sure to give you what they
think is the definitive solution.
What I do know is that we
cannot sit by while our country
commits to the broad use of violence across the globe, promoting
a bloated conflict through its second decade of existence. We must
demand a more critical approach
to how we decide to use violence.
Pirro may be right about one
thing, however, and it was about
what I fear most: “This is not going to stop.”
RYAN IS a JUNIOR in the COLLEGE
voices
georgetownvoice.com
THE GEORGETOWN VOICe | 15
Wrong on so many levels: The Sorry State of our Facilities
JOE LAPOSATA
When I was a freshman, I
was a proud resident of New
South 4, home to Jack the Bulldog. Jack was the floor pet and
we all loved playing with him
and JJ, then the mascot-in-training. The dogs, however, could
not take the stairs, which is
why I have a particularly acute
memory of an irate Father Steck
sitting in the New South Courtyard, justifiably mad that he
could not bring the dogs back up
to his apartment because both of
the New South elevators were
broken, which they remained
for over a day.
Two years later, as a junior
trying to sell this university that
I so love to my friends still in
high school, and I’m frequently
presented with the question:
“What are the facilities like?”
The answer is always some version of: “It’s complicated.”
Before I really get into this, I
should make it clear that this is
a serious issue. We live on and
around steep slopes, which pres-
ERIN ANNICK
NOWHERE TO GO BUT UP TOO BAD ELEVATORS DON’T RUN ON HOPES AND DREAMS
CARRYING ON
ent insurmountable obstacles for
many of our disabled classmates.
There’s a reason we call campus
“the Hilltop.” Elevators and the
modern technology they accompany present a way for our fellow Hoyas for whom stairs are
not navigable to enjoy the same
access the rest of us do. Failing to
provide such alternatives leaves
us not only ethically suspect but
also seriously non-compliant
with the Americans with Disabilities Act. With this in mind, let’s
take a look.
The state of elevators can
be explained pretty equally by
two theories: an old-building/
new-building dichotomy, and
the heavy-duty wear and tear
we inflict upon them. On the
one hand, you have New South,
where you can travel in style
at a less-than-glamorous two
miles per hour as 45 continuous
seconds of urine-smell molests
your nostrils; on the other, you
have the beautiful ICC elevators,
whose mirrored ceilings provide
a great way for me to ‘get my
hair did’ when rushing to class.
Don’t judge. This is pretty easily
explicable in terms of the above
theories: New South was built in
the ‘60s and serves as a residence
hall for 400-odd freshmen who
use the elevator for sex when
their roommate is asleep. In con-
A DIFFERENT MOLD FOR THE OSCARS
BY JULIA LLOYD-GEORGE
A rotating column by senior Voice staffers
Everything seems a little tidier
in retrospect, the visceral immediacy of a moment a little muted in its
distance from the present.
The moment I’m thinking
about occurred last summer, when
I was 2,600 meters in the air and
clinging to a rock face, attempting
to convince myself aloud that I
wasn’t going to die. In hindsight, it
doesn’t seem like my demise could
have been that likely, but the combination of a strong fear of heights
and being whipped around by cold
Alpine winds wasn’t doing a whole
lot for my anxiety at the time.
Seven days into my solo trek
around the mountain range surrounding Mont Blanc, the second-highest peak in Europe, I
was filled with a primal fear that
I’d never before felt in my fairly
sheltered existence. But I’d also
never felt freer, or more alive. Everything hit harder, the intensity
of my new daily existence making
ecstasy an almost mundane notion. I’m not exaggerating when I
say that it was the best experience
of my life.
I’m recounting my story now,
almost six months after the fact, because this year’s slate of Oscar nominations has excluded the adapted
story of another lone female hiker,
Cheryl Strayed, in Wild. While Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern
scored nominations for their performances, the film was ignored in
all other categories.
It seems that every year the
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts
and Sciences fails to recognize at
least one highly deserving candidate that falls outside of its narrow
worldview, so the omission didn’t
really surprise me. The snub of Selma’s director, Ava Duvernay, is yet
another oversight that has received
media attention, and deservedly so;
the rejection of what would have
been the first black woman nominated for Best Director seems especially unjust, particularly because
her film received a Best Picture
nomination.
I try not to get too angry about
these omissions, since it’s pretty
much a given that the Academy
doesn’t always make the best or
trast, the ICC was constructed
much more recently, and since
nobody sleeps in the classrooms,
students can have sex there instead of the elevators. The only
fault I can find with the ICC is
that the path to the freight elevator is frequently obstructed by
gloriously inattentive patrons of
More Uncommon Grounds.
A similar story can be found
around campus. New buildings, which are predominantly non-residential, have nice
elevators that remind me of a
German train station: they’re
models of punctuality, efficiency
and cleanliness. In older buildings, I’m reminded more of a
Sicilian bus stop. I love my ancestors but, much like a Darnall
elevator, they were not known
for their kindness to travelers.
Harbin elevators break down
consistently, Village C elevators
have a penchant for stopping on
every floor until maintenance
fixes them again, and the poor
residents of VCE 10 have only
one elevator that goes to their
floor. This sounds fine, until you
realize that there are two elevators for every other floor, and
there is no way to call just the
one that goes to the tenth floor.
So what’s the solution? Well,
to a certain extent the problem
is fixing itself, as newer, shini-
fairest choices (to point out just one
glaring example, Alfred Hitchcock
never won Best Director). Nevertheless, those choices are still
important, because they validate
certain stories over others and increase their visibility. Even in an
age when an aggregate of easily
accessible information determines
our consumer choices, that traditional stamp of approval still has
significant weight.
No matter how much people
dismiss awards shows and the entertainment industry as frivolous—
especially at Georgetown, where
business and politics undeniably
trump the arts as areas of focus—
they determine the narratives that
define our world. The ability to see
ourselves in those narratives is an often underrated manifestation of authority. After all, visibility is power.
Just like the elite groups that
govern the worlds of business and
politics, the Academy is predominantly composed of old white men
who dictate what stories matter
and what voices should rise above
the rest. It’s not surprising that the
storytellers they choose to validate
mostly resemble them; all acting nominees this year are white,
while all directors and screenwriter
nominees are men. This is a trend
visible not only in Hollywood but
also in the workplace, where hiring practices are often determined
on the basis of “cultural matching,”
as a 2012 case study by the American Sociological Review found. The
challenge, then, is getting the most
powerful and visible people to resemble the rest of the world.
I’m hardly the first person to
point this out. What’s more, I don’t
have a solution to this problem.
I don’t know how we can fix this
broken system of narrative authority that reflects a wider culture
of entrenched racism and sexism,
except perhaps establishing some
kind of quota that promotes diversity within the Academy’s membership or, barring that, killing off
all the old white men.
All I can do, realistically, is add
my voice to the chorus. Even if we
can’t immediately alter this kind of
power structure, we can still train
er buildings are being built on
campus. For all the pain that the
residents of Henle have endured
this semester and will endure in
the semesters to come, I bet you
the Northeast Triangle will have
efficient elevators. We’ll sully
them with some combination of
alcohol and bodily fluids soon
enough, but imagine how shiny
they’ll be on move-in day! Addons and renovations to buildings
count too: Healy Hall’s elevator
is tiny—I’ve seen a woman in a
large wheelchair try and fail to fit
inside—but the Maguire’s much
newer elevator is large and lets
you out right by Riggs Library.
I don’t envy the task the university has in making this hill
ADA-compliant, but in a way,
their task is poetic. Perhaps my
favorite thing about elevators
is that they are their own metaphor. With a bit of attention
and slightly less pee, they could
shoot straight to the top floor
of our otherwise totally perfect
dorms. But as they stand, there’s
nowhere to go but up, because
the down button is broken, and
maintenance is busy.
JOE IS A JUNIOR IN THE COLLEGE
ourselves to detect the bias that
permeates this industry. Even if the
stories we love don’t receive the attention we feel they deserve, we can
still celebrate their existence. Most
significantly, we can license ourselves to tell our own stories and
fight to make them heard.
Wild is an important story to
me because its focus is a woman
on a quest, answering to no one
but herself. When I read Strayed’s
memoir, I was inspired to take a solitary trek of my own and felt more
confident about that choice because
of this story’s power. Like Tracks, a
lesser-known memoir-turned-film
about a woman who walked over
1,700 miles across the Australian
desert, or the journalism of Vanessa
Veselka, a former hitchhiker who
wrote a spectacular essay about
female road narratives, that story
provided me with a role model that
validated my own desires.
When I was on the trail, I frequently met people who were
shocked at seeing a lone female
hiker. In their eyes, I invited trouble. Though some called me brave,
many simply raised their eyebrows
and dismissed me as deluded. Lone
male hikers were a frequent sight,
validated by a strong legacy of male
quest narratives. I, on the other
hand, was an anomaly. It’s high
time for that to change.
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Jack the Bulldog’s Facebook page
Jack the Bulldog’s Facebook page