The prevailing themes of the last eight months illustrate a year of contradictions. On the one hand, arbitration of the campus plan and student activism were troublingly passive. In contrast, GUSA elections and the university’s attitude toward its endowment experienced marked changes. Here now is our final word on the eventful 2011-2012 school year.
Among all of the possible majors offered at Georgetown, one standard area of study remains conspicuously absent — journalism.
Although the vote Thursday to change the burden of proof for student discipline may have been overdue, the change will improve the lives of students and the community by making the disciplinary process more just and consistent with Georgetown’s mission.
With Mitt Romney having nicely sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, there is one major question mark left to salivate over: Whom will Romney pick as his running mate?
Questions surrounding urban planning are too often left out of the national conversation, and more emphasis needs to be placed on neighborhood planning and its influence on citizens.
Online Exclusive
The “Georgetown Day 2012” blog and “Save Georgetown Day” Facebook posts calling out Senior Class Committee Chair Chris Butterfield were inappropriate and immature, falling far short of the standard of discourse to which Georgetown students should hold themselves.
Online Exclusive
While there is no question that schools like the University of Virginia and The College of William & Mary also have strong honor systems, Georgetown’s foundation as a Jesuit institution makes our situation unique.
Online Exclusive
Letter to the Editor
To the faculty members who signed the letter to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) last week: Your note brings me sadness.
The upperclassmen of the women's club volleyball team accept responsibility and apologize for the littering of the steps of Dahlgren Chapel with condoms and alcohol late Tuesday night.
If we’re negotiating with the Taliban now, then I have a question: Why did we surge in the first place? The Obama Administration owes an answer to the families of over 1,000 U.S. service members who lost their lives since the surge and those of the thousands more who have come home permanently disabled. I think some of those families would be upset at the idea that their loved one gave the ultimate sacrifice to achieve something that was just as achievable in 2008.
Among all of the possible majors offered at Georgetown, one standard area of study remains conspicuously absent — journalism.
Professors who neglect to provide feedback on final papers miss a valuable learning opportunity and fail to provide the transparency necessary for fairness in grading.
If adidas did indeed violate its code of conduct with Georgetown, the university must take action irrespective of business considerations, even if it means severing ties with the company entirely.
University Information Services launched its much-anticipated mobile website Thursday, and the finished product was well worth the wait. The new website meets almost all of our expectations for a portable help desk for on-campus life.
CURA HOYANALIS
There is a distinctive atmosphere on campus, a strange and elusive sensation permeating the Hilltop and affecting its students. The names given to this peculiarity are as diverse as they are intangible. Personally, I think it comes down to one thing: purposeful passion.
CUTTER, KUH-TAWR, QATAR
Nobody is telling students to be silent, but there is a fear of what could happen if a negative view became public. This standard is unacceptable. If we want this generation of Qataris and expatriates to be truly enlightened, we need the ability to honestly express what we feel.
For a video game that involves shooting a lot of things, “Mass Effect 3” has come under heavy fire — from an army of dissatisfied fans and critics.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) “Path to Prosperity” budget proposal may have been been lauded as a courageous and sincere attempt to address this nation’s budget problems, but its proponents have been deceived.
If a student has unpaid fees of more than $100, he or she is then blocked from using MyAccess. Given the fact that students must use checking accounts to make such payments, it is unreasonable to block them from preregistering for fines less than two weeks old.
Eating at O’Donovan Hall is a rite of passage for most Georgetown students. While it is understandable that freshman meal plans are compulsory, sophomores shouldn’t share the requirement.
Tonight, out of respect for the cause and their fellow attendees for whom Relay is much more than just festivities, students should refrain from excessive drinking before arriving at MultiSport Facility.
Unlike the overt racism of the past, stealth racism is manifested through policies and rhetoric that ostensibly appear benign.
Georgetown must be explicit about the qualities that define it as a Catholic institution and how those qualities differentiate it from non-religious institutions.
While we read Freud, Marx and even “The Hunger Games” in our spare time, we are in the business of harnessing hope.
Despite the bewilderment and awe that characterized my first year at Georgetown, it was and still is my dream school. And quite frankly, I’m happy it’s been such a strange experience.
We, the Georgetown community as a whole, can and should lead the way to sustainability. As a university dedicated to the service of others, we should take up our calling and be more environmentally oriented.
Generation Y will have to one day come to terms with this ballooning truth — whether in the form of an organic movement of its own or by riding on the coattails of populist anger.
Cardamom, Spice and Human Rights
The best-dressed politicians may be dictators, but true elegance is found only in the leaders that embody beauty, style and integrity.
The State of Nature
Georgetown is a great university because it is a place whose identity is defined by service. This is manifested in Georgetown’s classrooms, its student organizations, its faculty and staff, its students and its mission.
The dog in whose pawsteps he will someday follow, the current Jack the Bulldog, is a vital part of university culture. J.J.’s arrival this past Friday was a time for us to come together and remind ourselves why we love this campus.
Grab ’n’ Go was developed to accommodate students’ busy schedules, but the rigidity of its rules fails to serve students’ needs.
With the university reporting record-low acceptance rates, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions should not feel pressure to play the numbers game to increase its selectivity.
We, the Georgetown community as a whole, can and should lead the way to sustainability. As a university dedicated to the service of others, we should take up our calling and be more environmentally oriented.
Our current capital campaign, “For Generations to Come”, has two important goals. One is to raise $1.5 billion so we can put Georgetown on a trajectory to keep up with great global universities. The second is to grow our alumni giving participation rate.
A Canadian Contention
There should be two main priorities when thinking about entitlement reform: ensuring that the quality of benefits remains high and guaranteeing that these programs are sustainable in the long run. Too often, political figures fixate on only one of these goals and ignore the other.
Quorum Call
Ryan has been unduly demonized for demonstrating the courage and ingenuity to seriously address one of our country’s greatest social and fiscal maladies.
If Georgetown’s freshman dorms were all the same, there would be good reason to randomly assign students to those dorms. But when the living styles and amenities provided in each dorm are so clearly different, it’s only fair that incoming students have an opportunity to express their residence hall preferences.
The variety of lenses offered by these classes benefits the student body. However, the differentiated amounts of work required for different sections do not. The workload for “The Problem of God” ranges from lengthy papers and challenging midterms to only one-page reflections and discussions, depending on the section.
Letter to the Editor
As newly inaugurated GUSA president and vice president, we want to address some of the issues that have arisen during our first few weeks in office.
Letter to the Editor
After reading the recently finalized 73-page Student Life Report and The Hoya’s coverage of it (“Finalized Student Life Report Debuts,” A1, Feb. 28, 2012), I felt both exasperated and disappointed.
I assumed that by the time I reached higher education, women’s leadership wouldn’t really be an issue. However, I could not have been more wrong.
Dialogue on acceptance of LGBTQ members needs to be a deeper part of the Georgetown experience, but these conversations cannot happen if incoming students do not feel secure.
As This Jesuit Sees It...
There’s something about that class and its conversation that is, at least for me, oasis-like. It slakes a thirst that’s hard to define but that lies at the heart of what a Jesuit education is all about.
Imperfect Union
There will be a dark side to this year’s presidential elections: the precarious state of contemporary American democracy due to the confluence of two trends.
We commend the GUSA executive’s initiatives and the proposals of the Visions for a Sustainable Georgetown report for both their small-scale goals and their long-term intentions to build community awareness and effect larger change.
Students should do more to take advantage of the resources offered by the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area and clubs that promote intercollegiate cooperation.
Cura Hoyanalis
Our forbearers challenge us to be all that it means to be Georgetown students, whether they are buried on campus or throughout the world. To fall into complacency, to act irresponsibly and to live apathetically is to reject everything our university’s founders intended for us.
Cutter, Kuh-Tawr, Qatar
Jesuit values are the most important part of Georgetown’s culture, even here in Qatar.
Ravi is an insensitive idiot, not a murderer. His roommate’s life has been destroyed, but the guilt he has to live with every day has surely ruined his life as well. A 10-year jail sentence won’t reform him; it’s just salt in the wound.
Among the promises made by new GUSA executives, one particularly caught my eye: The team has indicated their intent to add an LGBTQ-friendly checkbox to CHARMS.
Georgetown needs to continue eco-friendly efforts to provide the flowers that color campus and improve the sustainability of its landscaping in general.
Students shouldn’t be unfairly forced to pay for a resource that, for many others, is either covered under tuition or is otherwise optional.
Amid the ongoing debate on contraceptives, it’s easy to forget we’re not just talking about birth control, but a health care bill that will drastically change the future of this nation.
Though heartbreaking, Georgetown’s premature exit from the NCAA tournament allows us to consider the merits of our basketball program in a broader light.
Quorum Call
I am more convinced than ever that America needs a moderate, centrist version of the Tea Party. Recent political events have pushed our country down a dangerously fractious and acrimonious path.
A Canadian Contention
Bar none, the District of Columbia’s greatest failing over the past few decades has come from a stunning lack of political leadership.
I am a passionate supporter of Invisible Children and its mission. But I am also a student here at Georgetown who has been thought to think critically about the way organizations work.
The State of Nature
The tulgey life of a doldrum education weighs heavy on the soul. But in ambiguity and uncertainty there’s happiness. All of us, on occasion, should make light of the entirely too serious life of a Georgetown undergrad. All of us should speak a bit of nonsense, just for fun.
After reading and carefully considering the Student Life Report, I want to offer my commentary on the section that pertains to the Georgetown Program Board.
It is gratifying to me that the report recognizes the substantial improvements to SAC in recent years, citing some of SAC’s best practices, while also providing additional recommendations.
Cardamom, Spice and Human Rights
Due to pressing economic issues and increasing, though often exaggerated, military concerns, U.S. foreign aid comprises just about 1 percent of the nation’s annual budget. Though America is rhetorically supportive, tangible efforts for humanitarian relief remain stagnant, causing the neediest recipients of U.S. aid, like victims of the famine in Somalia, to suffer.
For some students who have jobs on campus, hard work for the university isn’t paying off — literally.
Where our financial aid programs have stretched themselves thin, the federal government has the opportunity to intervene.
Though Limbaugh’s words were shocking and hurtful for Sandra Fluke and her supporters, this story still has a chance to have at least one happy ending.
Imperfect Union
There is something wrong when Americans are more agitated about access to birth control and atrocities overseas than they are about the rape and murder of our own soldiers.
Partisanship runs so deep that the offensive comments made by people like Rush Limbaugh are more commonplace than we may care to admit.
Technological failures happen, but when those failures threaten student safety, the university should demonstrate more thorough preparedness in its response.
In the national debate on contraception coverage, students and alumni should be proud that University President John J. DeGioia added a voice of reason to the polarized din.
It is now an established truth that women can successfully occupy roles previously reserved for men, but can men successfully occupy the roles previously reserved for women?
Affirmative action is a well-intentioned idea, but it has become outdated. Race should not be given priority in a holistic admissions process.
A Canadian Contention
Time is running out for the only way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With each passing year, hope for a two-state solution fades. While the continuation of this seemingly never-ending conflict can be disheartening, it is more important than ever to push for peace.
Quorum Call
The GOP went through a series of exciting twists before settling on Romney.
College education is a collective undertaking, but if the Supreme Court decides to oppose affirmative action policies, it could ultimately detract from the American undergraduate experience.
As their tenure comes to a close, Meaney and Laverriere can say that they leave GUSA a more legitimate institution than they found it.
Letter to the Editor
The idea of philanthropy is not limited to the giving of massive means, or even means at all. Giving time, talent or funds to your alma mater is always appreciated and will allow for the next generation of Georgetown students to shape the world as we know it.
I don't deny that inequality exists, that it matters or that it's a problem. But I think that focusing on income inequality is misleading and distracts us from the real problems that face America in the 21st century.
Diversity is often expressed as a no-fault remedy for an unacknowledged crime. The idea of diversity has become a marketing tool. Like wi-fi, fitness centers, sushi bars and on-campus arenas, it is an amenity of the modern college.
Cutter, Kuh-tawr, Qatar
It would be impossible to replicate Qatar's Education City project, a massive campus that houses educational facilities from elementary schools to branches of research universities, anywhere else in the world.
Cura Hoyanalis
It is easy to promise the moon in an election campaign. But now GUSA and Georgetown return to reality: We are full-time students with limited energy, resources and attention spans. The incoming administration will have to prioritize and keep its focus on students.
While Georgetown thankfully doesn't require a thesis of all seniors — months of intensive research isn't for everyone — the university should make the process more uniform for those who do want to take on the commitment.
The sheer number of tickets and high voter turnout show that the GUSA's influence is growing, but with this greater power comes higher expectations for the incoming administration.
We think about ourselves so much that when it comes time for the comics among us to caricature something, their natural instinct is not to mock the "other," but the self.
We shouldn't allow ourselves to be so fully focused on the labels with which we identify that we want to shout it from the mountaintops. We should all see ourselves as individuals and treat each other equally based on that fact alone.
Letter to the Editor
The gay rights movement is not about bringing about equality, but rather about creating a fundamentally new right that would alter our nation's moral and societal landscape.
As This Jesuit Sees It ...
We want to do well, not out of duty, but because it's the right thing to do.
Imperfect Union
Black History Month is an opportunity for all Americans to reflect on our country's past, present and future. Only by recognizing past and present racial injustice can we as a nation move forward to create a more perfect union like that envisioned by the founders of this country.
Asking current students or newly employed alumni to provide additional funds is unfair and may sallow their impressions of the institution they associate with the best years of their lives.
Now that Georgetown has been allocated an additional seat on the ANC, we would like to see both a student and a faculty member or chaplain-in-residence represent us in hopes that the balance will allow us to better work with our neighbors.
Put simply, I believe we need a new type of GUSA leadership. We need a movement toward a new brand of GUSA senators and executives. The leadership we will elect next Thursday needs to continue this virtuous cycle, using communication, outside experience and a sense of the university's core identity to lead us into the future.
Many Georgetown University Student Association executive tickets have asked me for advice on how to win this year's executive election. I thought I'd share some words of wisdom for running a successful GUSA campaign via a viewpoint.
Letter to the Editor
If you don't show up to the basketball games, why did you even pick Georgetown? I'm sure there are plenty of students over at GW who would love to take your place. So let's get this attendance problem fixed, and quickly — before Notre Dame upsets us, too. We're better than that.
A Canadian Contention
Maybe I am an optimist, but I believe that though the arc of history may have its bumps, in the long run, the human condition is improving. Advocating for full equality for members of the LGBTQ community is part of continuing to provide justice for all.
Quorum Call
Rick Santorum truly intrigues me. In general, the candidate is perceived as either a conservative savior or a theocratic monster. The true Santorum, I believe, lies somewhere in between.
This year, students should take the next step in making GUSA their own by voting for Tyler Sax and Michael Crouch for GUSA president and vice president.
Letter to the Editor
Although it is not at all uncommon for professors to leave one university for another, the circumstances of professor Patrick Deneen's decision to leave Georgetown for Notre Dame, together with the attention The Hoya has paid to the event, invite further comment.
There is one crucial element missing from Georgetown's undergraduate curriculum: a required, seminar-style course on the purpose of education.
For those like me who aren't going to graduate school, there are only a few months left before the real world comes crashing into our lives like a ton of bricks.
Imperfect Union
One of the most troubling aspects of the American criminal system is the huge disparity in the way it treats people of different races.
As This Jesuit Sees It ...
Leadership at Georgetown must include the ability to convincingly articulate our animating faith-based tradition if we hope to pass these traditions on to future generations of students.
Maturity and motivation vary among college students, but professors should no more enforce strict attendance than they should insist students eat their vegetables or brush their teeth before bed.
There is a difference between open-mindedness and straying from founding values, and fortunately, the university embraces the former.
An unfinished version of the 2012 Student Life Report released to the press Sunday analyzes the effectiveness of the university's funding boards and the state of campus organizations, focusing on the levels of bureaucracy facing student groups.
When a professor opens his or her door for regular offices hours each week, it facilitates a dialogue outside the classroom and creates an opportunity for students to seek clarification and make an impression on professors who may otherwise not know the names of all students in their large lecture classes.
Cura Hoyanalis
As they pass the statue of John Carroll, tour guides are advised to suggest to prospective students that our Jesuit founder would be proud of where we are today. As our annual celebration of Jesuit Heritage Week came to a close Sunday, I found myself deeply reflecting upon the question: What would past Jesuits think of Georgetown today?
Cutter, Kuh-Tawr, Qatar
If the population of the Arab world were offered ballots for the 2012 U.S. presidential election, I'm pretty sure they would choose not to vote.
Tomorrow, Georgetown students will once again be unified in their passion to "juice 'Cuse." But Georgetown and Syracuse are not just rivals on the court: Both are candidates for White House recognition for exemplary interfaith service campaigns as part of President Obama's Interfaith Campus and Community Service Challenge
Rising income inequality threatens to destroy the promise of America — that each citizen has a chance at material and personal success, independent of the condition of his or her birth. Upward social mobility and equality of opportunity are nothing short of America's civic religion, but these tenants are in danger of becoming little more than vestiges of the nation's storied past.
Theoretically, the School of Foreign Service should be the shining example of the values held by Georgetown as a Jesuit university, but the SFS has strayed from its mission for the sake of attaining unquestionable academic excellence.
Letter to the Editor
Now it's my departure that looms, and there's no softening that blow. I will miss the Hilltop, and I thank her for all she has given me and hope that in some small way I have given something in return.
SafeRides is subjected to too many superfluous calls, and there aren't enough vans to take the students who genuinely don't feel comfortable traveling on foot late at night. Snack Cab won't add any cars to the SafeRides program, and game show may in fact increase the number of unnecessary calls.
When a professor opens his or her door for regular offices hours each week, it facilitates a dialogue outside the classroom and creates an opportunity for students to seek clarification and make an impression on professors who may otherwise not know the names of all students in their large lecture classes.
A Canadian Contention
Immigration has always been a defining aspect of the United States. It's time to create an effective immigration system, one that can benefit both new and old Americans.
As we approach the final stretch of classes, it is important to value our mental health and wellbeing.
Bruce Springsteen and Broadway have made me a better Catholic.
After almost a year of debate, the 2010 Campus Plan battle will come to a close in the final Zoning Commission hearing Thursday.
Don Casper's untimely death reminds us of the tremendous impact he had both on the Hilltop and across the country years later.
is a member of the 
