What happens when a bunch of bored alums get together to chat Georgetown on the internet? Here’s a hint: it involves asking us here at the Voice to, um, kill ourselves. Here’s a charming Hoya from the boards:

When did the rag put out some worthy material?

Has anyone checked out their website recently?

The main facade at the top of the screen is some hippie’s smelly ORANGE foot stepping on the seal.

http://www.georgetownvoice.com/

….seriously, what the bleep is that all about?

Well, it’s a joke. Also, if not stepping on the seal was such a university priority, maybe it shouldn’t have been put on the ground in front of a door. I’m just sayin’.

Now, they also crack some jokes about our reporting. We don’t mind taking one in the teeth when we screw something up (it’s why we run corrections) but I feel compelled to defend our honor. This last year, for instance, we won more on-campus journalism awards than the Hoya (including second* place in the Sports category, HoyaTalk fans), and for the past three years I’ve been on campus, we’ve split the awards fairly evenly with our rival newspaper. Maybe that’s why our alums end up working at places like CNN, CBS, Agence France Press, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Washington City Paper, Entertainment Weekly, the Poynter Center, The Nation, and The Washington Post.

But why would these anonymous alums bash students who work long hours to contribute to our campus’ culture? Maybe the same reason they have plenty of time to spend rehashing their golden college years on the internet: they don’t have anything productive to do with their time. Hoya Saxa, your life is awesome!

- Tim Fernholz, Editor-in-Chief

* Turns out The Hoya (in fact, this gentleman) picked up the first place prize for sports writing, we took second! It seems one of our writers won first place in commentary and second place in sports, and I flipped them around in my head.

Dorm room beds are too small, reports the Washington Post. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Georgetown’s administrators to follow AU’s lead and start equipping campus housing with double beds — our impenetrable housing bureaucracy, combined with the official party line prohibiting cohabitation will keep you in the cramped cot until graduation (or at least until you move off-campus).

-Anna Bank, editorial board chair

The people who run the Georgetown Canal have noticed you’re getting fat, and they’ve come up with a solution: guided walking tours of the canal, with prizes. You can wreck the process, though, by cheating like a fiend.

You see, prizes are awarded to whoever walks the most miles, but the score is based on an online spreadsheet. There’s nothing keeping you from winning the tennis shoes, park service badge, or whatever they’re handing out. [Ed. note: I don’t trust Will as far as I can throw him]. I doubt this guy will be waiting for you at the end of each 30 minute walk.

If robbing senior citizens of their plaudits isn’t your thing, marvel at the canal administrators’ loose definition of what it means to “walk” something. If you walk all 7 weeks, you’ll have walked 185 miles. That means big things, apparently: “Why 185 miles? The C&O Canal NHP actually runs 185 miles from Georgetown all the way to Cumberland, MD. If your team walks 185 miles in the next seven weeks, you can say you walked the entire Canal!”

That seems like a gross exaggeration of your achievement. I’ve swam a good amount in my life, but I don’t say I’ve swam the entire English Channel.

-Will Sommer, blog editor. Flickr photo from user Absolutwade

As a gallery attendant in Walsh 101, I sit for five hours, twice a week attempting to read a book amidst the noise of Bolivian rap and the trumpets of a street performance in La Paz. Occasionally, a student wanders in as if entering an undiscovered portal to a fourth dimension. As I remind them that they’re just in a gallery they’ve never noticed, they tilt their heads in bemusement at Edgar Endress’ video installations—a series of masked faces viewers tend to perceive as terrorists—and leave without reading the program (which I always recommend).

Let’s get a few things straight. Yes, there is a gallery in Walsh, right next to the staircase. It’s been there for quite a few years now. No, Endress’ Heroes and Masks exhibit has nothing to do with terrorists. Those masked faces are shoe-shiners working for a dollar a day; many of them are college students. And yes, they do look like terrorists, if you are one of those people who breezes by without taking care to realize what you’re seeing.

The art most people enjoy consists of voluptuous nudes reclining on divans or landscapes rendered in thick, emotionally-charged brush strokes of oil paint. At least, that’s the sort of art I enjoy. But Endress’ exhibit doesn’t involve that sort of aesthetic. It reaches out to educate, explore and expose the viewer to a socio-political condition most are unaware of. Students and professionals donning ski masks shine shoes for a meager wage to supplement their income and studies, while smaller horizontal videos capture street performances in La Paz, Bolivia, where participants don the “Mask of All the Saints”—the actual mask is on display nearby. An embroidered fabric, “One Latino American Story,” tells a tale slightly chaotic and saturated with symbolism. Endress stopped by the gallery and explained it to me in detail; the beautifully-rendered, folk-style embroidery (which Endress commissioned) contains images of saints, military symbols and the U.S. seal and dollar signs.

The exhibit is modest, but Endress’ exploration of the mask as a political and social symbol is complex and intriguing. Between classes, or in your free time, drop by, entertain the idle gallery attendant and take a thorough look at Endress’ “Heroes and Masks.”

The Walsh 101 Gallery is open Mon-Sat, 12-5 pm. Heroes and Masks runs through Oct. 5.

-Madeline Reidy, Leisure Editor

Is the Programming Board trying to be irrelevant? That’s the only way I can interpret their decision to spend money taking students to see Caroline Rhea (of The Biggest Loser!) before in D.C. I might’ve written off Fountains of Wayne as a catastrophic mistake that happened to well-meaning people, but awful taste doesn’t strike twice without a reason.

Last year, I interviewed GPB’s faculty director Bill McCoy. He was sad that Fountains of Wayne went so poorly, and that people thought GPB were such bumblers. This is why! GPB didn’t even have a fall concert this year, they should be loaded. And they’re blowing it on Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s aunt? It’s enough to make you miss Mike Birbiglia.

-Will Sommer, blog editor. Flickr photo from Spin Cycle NYC.

Last week, I had a flier that I wanted copied in eye-pleasing pastels. To my surprise, the cheap copy center on the second floor of Lauinger had been replaced by more tables and two study rooms. I had to copy my flier manually, and no one was convinced by their white color. What happened to this convenient service?

It was eliminated because it was losing money, said Lauinger’s Director of Finance and Operations Phyllis Barrow in an e-mail. “The Copy Center was supposed to be a self supporting unit which over the years was not producing enough revenue to sustain the operation. In light of declining business, the library made the decision to close the walk up center,” Barrow wrote.

I can’t blame the school for closing the copy center if it was losing money. We’re dirt poor, after all. But while MSB students enjoy their subsidized printing and copying and the rest of us pay more at Kinko’s, consider which campus program deserves elimination more: one that serves a wide variety of students, or one that went 28-7 against Lafayette? [Ed. note: For a more sympathetic take on our football team, check out this week’s Sports Sermon.]

-Will Sommer, blog editor and football underappreciator

This week’s issue is full of goodies. I’ll let it speak for itself:

-Thinking about going abroad? Or are you a returnee battling for credit while missing the experience? Check out Madeline Reidy’s feature on where your study abroad money goes (or went). Rejected headlines include “Mo Money, Mo Problems” and “OIP on U.”

-The Georgetown community remembers 9/11/01 six years later. We here at the Voice add our best wishes to all those affected.

-BIG news on the continuing party policy saga: Metro keeps a list of “problem houses” where each new complaint will result in immediate arrests, report Juliana Brint and Crystal Chung. The news echoes Metro’s new arrest-first policy (reported by the same duo) and comes amidst rising neighborhood complaints about the Georgetown policy, reports Lynn Kirshbaum.

-In response, the Voice editorial board tells Metro to get their priorities right.

-Anthony Francavilla penetrates the world of D.C. bocce (Italian lawn bowling). I, for one, will be signing up next year.

-Size doesn’t matter, but artistry does at the D.C. Shorts film festival, writes Tae Jung Choi.

-Louisa Aviles argues that a favorite target of supposedly enlightened activism shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly. It’ll give you some food–and clothes, and medicine, and toys, etc.–for thought (at low, low prices).

Check out the rest of the issue over at the main site or in print–it won’t disappoint. As always, we look forward to your comments, which you can send to thevoice@georgetown.edu. Take it easy, folks.

-Mike Stewart, Managing Editor

Avid readers of The Washington Post were regaled Wednesday morning by Hope C. Bogorad’s letter to the editor ridiculing student complaints about Georgetown’s new alcohol policies. Besides being based on multiple logical fallacies–most notably, straw man (claiming that Georgetown students can’t complain about anything else while the country is at war, even though activism on both fronts is not mutually exclusive) and poisoning the well (more on that later), with a nice bit of spotlight (believing all 18-25 year-olds should be drafted because of a few quotes from Georgetown students against an unrelated policy), ad hominem (we must always pass out when we drink) and special pleading (unless, of course, Hope spends all her days solving the dilemmas of Iraq and Afghanistan) thrown in. That’s five fouls in 50 words; it’s the logical equivalent of fouling out five minutes into a game without scoring. And that’s before even touching the obvious grammatical error in her first four words (which should read “if there ever were“).

What’s more, she bemoans the “appalling behavior” of Georgetown students (this is the well being poisoned). Let’s count up every single one of the actions Post article depicts students taking: 1. Not having parties at a “typical party spot.” 2. Feeling blindsided by a rule change that did, in fact, come without discussion. 3. Creating a Facebook group. 4. Bringing home a case of Bud Light and not have many people over to drink it. 5. Offering various docile quotes in opposition to the party. 6. Allegedly holding noisy parties, with no direct quotes about it. Appalling!!!

Most disturbingly, let’s take Hope’s argument out to its logical conclusion: students who are willing to be vocal about infringements on their rights to assemble peaceably and (especially for the many students who are 21) to imbibe alcohol (which actually very rarely involves passing out) should be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, where they would risk death. Students who want to enjoy weekends the same way college students (before, during and after Hope’s generation) have traditionally done should be forced to risk death.

Rest assured, Hope, that we would never harbor any similar wish for you. We just hope you’ll think responsibly in the future.

-Mike Stewart, Managing Editor

I hope these limericks from Voice senior writer Sam Sweeney will satisfy you until the next issue of Anthem comes out in winter 2009.

For Leo’s Mariott was unfit
But GU says Aramark’s legit
So what is in store?
Lobster, truffles, galore?!
Sorry, just the same old gross shit

Sam hates party training as much as he hates stringy roast beef:

DeGioia’s not much of a slob
With most profs we’d like to hobnob
But if students could choose
(You booze or you lose)
Olson would be out of a job

-Will Sommer, blog editor

Last Thursday, we published an editorial about Georgetown needing to move into the 21st century and finally make the whole campus wireless. We looked into the situation at GW and AU and found out that both of our so-called competitors in the District are completely wireless.

Today, though, while leafing through my roommate’s study abroad materials, I discovered something even more incredible. The university that she plans to study at in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic — one of the poorest countries in Latin America — is 100% wireless enabled. Come on now, Georgetown. I think that information speaks for itself.

-Anna Bank, editorial board chair