Charles Nailen/The Hoya

Yesterday afternoon, a number of members of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee emerged from their tents in Red Square, circled up and began planning their action for that afternoon. At 1:00 p.m., as drummers stamped out a slow, muffled beat in the background, the students yelled for the attention of the crowd and began their protest. Passersby circled around to watch the display, Solidarity members made their way through the crowd with petitions and one student delivered short speeches with a megaphone.

This time, however, the protest was not over whether the United States should go to war with Iraq, but whether Georgetown University was providing its workers with fair wages.

Liz McCurtain/The Hoya Sister Helen Prejean speaks about her opposition to the death penalty to an overflowing crowd in ICC Auditorium Wednesday evening.

Sr. Helen Prejean, C.S.J. relayed her personal experiences as a spiritual advisor to death row inmates in ICC Auditorium Wednesday. Prejean, a long-time advocate for the movement to abolish the death penalty, is the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the U.S., an autobiographical account and the basis for the movie Dead Man Walking, directed by Tim Robbins, and starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

Last Wednesday both Yale and Stanford universities independently announced that they would be changing their binding early admissions policies for next year’s applicants, replacing their early decision programs with non-binding early action programs. The announcement came five days after the Nov. 1 deadline for this year’s early decision applicants and will take effect in 2003.

Georgetown recently made changes in its own early action policy, removing the requirement that students applying in the early action cycle at Georgetown not apply for early decision at other schools.

Charles Nailen/The Hoya

On Wednesday, students representing several campus organizations protested a possible war against Iraq by staging a “die-in” in Red Square. A corollary panel discussion was also held to debate the Iraqi issue that evening in the ICC.

At 12:45 p.m. several students began beating drums and buckets, and at 1 p.m. between 50 and 60 students fell to the ground and remained motionless for the next 20 minutes. National media, including representatives from CNN, The Washington Times, Reuters and the Associated Press, were on hand to cover the event.