The New York Times Food section is a Wednesday delight. Reading about the hip cheese of the moment and which subtle Bordeaux I absolutely must pair with my next steak tartar really helps me get my jollies in the early AM on hump day. As good as Food has been in the past though, this Wednesday’s took the cake (ha, ha).

The story about a West African berry simply called “miracle fruit” (named in that delightfully sketchy tradition that gives dealers the appellation of “cookie men”) which drastically alters the palate for about an hour, making everything you eat or drink–even vinegar and lemons–taste sweet, really rocked my gustatory socks.

Apparently, it hit the New Yorkers hard too; the video accompanying the article features a blue tracksuited fruit dealer clutching wads of cash. This was not, however, the first time I had heard of this foodie phenomenon.

My older sister, a resident of Rockville, Maryland and her band of hipster friends had a tasting party for “miracle fruit” months before those New York hooligans took a bite. Advice from my big sis on eating the magic fruit: “I suggest also rubbing it on your lips so that the juice that get on them are still sweet and don’t sting. ”

No word from the FDA on whether or not there are any long-lasting adverse effects from the fruit. Besides the vinegar guzzling, of course.

-Clare Malone, Managing Editor

Photo from Flickr user Torrez used under a Creative Commons license

Student Affairs VP Todd Olson announced in a broadcast email this week that the long-promised LGBTQ Resource Center — one of GU Pride’s major demands throughout their yearlong conversation with the administration — has someone lined up to fill the director position. Her name is Sivagami Subbaraman, and she certainly sounds qualified for the job; she’s currently the Associate Director of the University of Maryland’s Office of LGBT Equity.

I’m a little surprised, though, that current Director of LBGTQ Community Resources Bill McCoy wasn’t tapped for the top job. McCoy is also the Associate Director of Student Programs, though, and perhaps he (or another admin) wanted him to stick with that rather than running the new center. Either way, choosing a director is a commendable concrete step forward for a process that’s been characterized by drawn-out working group negotiations and back-and-forth bureaucracy.

If you’re attending Georgetown’s 209th commencement exercises this weekend, you’re there to see your friends get their diplomas, not to listen to the speeches. But there will still be speakers, and while you’re sitting on Healy Lawn wishing you had remembered your sunglasses, you might as well listen to what they have to say. Or should you? That depends on which school’s graduation it is.

Georgetown College - Wendy S. Kopp, Teach for America Founder and CEO - I’m sure she’s a smart/interesting person, but this seems a little too much like pandering. 10% of Georgetown’s senior class applied to TFA, so there’ll probably be some congratulatory, everybody’s a winner, you guys are going to change the world blather in this speech. I think the ideal graduation speaker is someone super-accomplished who makes you want to go on to do something big, not someone who makes you feel big already (Saturday at noon.)

School of Foreign Service - H.H. Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, Qatar Foundation Chairperson - The SFS is obsessed with all things Qatari, for reasons I still don’t quite understand. Hopefully this speech will shed some light on that (Saturday at 6 p.m.)

McDonough School of Business - Carlos M. Gutierrez, United States Secretary of Commerce - This guy is a very big deal. He’s on TV during the state of the Union, and as the go-to econ guy in the Bush cabinet, probably partially responsible for running our nation’s economy into the ground. Maybe an MSB grad who failed to net a sweet i-banking job because of the recession will egg him or something scandalous like that. But I doubt it (Saturday at 9 a.m.)

School of Nursing and Health Studies - Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - Health care research is a personal favorite, but it’s not really the stuff of “ask not what your country can do for you” speeches. (Before you say anything, I know, that was an inauguration, not a graduation, but you know what I mean.) This speech will be interesting, but expect people, especially grad’s younger sibs, to get restless by the middle (Saturday at 3 p.m.)

School of Medicine - Ambassador Mark Dybul, United States Global AIDS Coordinator - see: NHS, but AIDS is quite a bit trendier, so the audience will probably stay with him until the end (Sunday at 11:15 a.m.)

Law Center - Joel I. Klein, New York City Public Schools Chancellor - Big ups to Klein for being the only speaker whose name I recognized sans title. I’m still not sure how I feel about that whole “banning cell phones in schools” policy, but he certainly subscribes to the Great Man theory of reforming public education, and I’m sure he’ll give a compelling talk that’s even worth hauling yourself down to the law school for (Sunday at 2 p.m.)

Photo from Flickr user Il Primo Umo used under a Creative Commons license.

In Date Lab Rat, Anna Bank (editor-in-chief, hopeless romantic) bravely experiments on herself with each week’s installment of the Washington Post’s Date Lab, where the Post tries–and often fails–to fix up applicants.

After high highs and low lows over the last two weeks, this week brings us a much more typical edition of Date Lab: two basically normal people hang out for the night and have a fine time, but neither one really sees it going any further.

It’s a pretty ho-hum read, although the guy has a couple of good lines. (Asked to describe his dream date, he says “She thinks the way I hold my fork is cute.”) He probably would have been a lot more fun to read about if he had been paired with a funnier girl, rather than someone who drops lines like, “He had taken a wine class at the French Embassy — he really enjoys learning, and, as a teacher, I thought that was great.” I’m sure we can all agree that liking learning is a plus regardless of what your day job is, but who says things like that?

They both give the date a 4, saying that they had a great time but didn’t feel any “romantic connection” (her words) or “butterflies in the stomach” (his). He asks for her number anyway, but she can tell it’s a half-hearted offer, and he later decides not to call.

Rating: 2. Even if the daters get along better as potential friends than boyfriend and girlfriend, they can at least have something interesting to say, and this pair could barely hold my attention for the time it took me to read the questionnaires and interviews.

Chances of Success: 2. If he gets lonely/drunk in the next few weeks, I’m guessing he wouldn’t be above texting her. But they both seem to be working on other prospects, so I don’t really see this going any further.

We ran a feature last year on the Oyster School, an English/Spanish bilingual elementary school in Woodley Park that has long been regarded as one of the few bright spots in the District’s struggling public school system. On Friday, the Post reported that Oyster-Adams (the school merged with Adams Elementary this year) principal Marta Guzman became the latest casualty of DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s tenure when her contract was not renewed.

The Oyster ouster is full of delicious details — Rhee’s daughters are both Oyster students, she attended a November dinner party convened by angry parents who wanted to complain about Guzman, and my parents (who live around the corner from Oyster) report that protesters gathered outside the school on Friday morning. Those parents and others form the pro-firing camp, citing the now-ex-principal’s “lack of organization, reluctance to delegate and sometimes-brusque style.”

Others allege that “Guzman was toppled by a cadre of dissatisfied and largely affluent Anglo parents with the ear of a woman who was both a fellow parent and the chancellor.”

The Editorial Board has backed Rhee’s attempts to reform the school system by cutting down on unnecessary administrative jobs and bringing new blood into the system with firings and buyouts, but I’m not sure I can get behind this particular firing. Oyster is one of the District’s most successful schools, and the dinner party situation is pretty shady.

Then again, maybe Guzman would have driven a stellar school into the ground if Rhee hadn’t taken action; I don’t know enough about the “intra-school politics” (as one parent calls them) to know for sure. One thing is for certain, though: no one is safe from the Rhee reign.

-Anna Bank, Editor-in-Chief

In Date Lab Rat, Anna Bank (editor-in-chief, hopeless romantic) bravely experiments on herself with each week’s installment of the Washington Post’s Date Lab, where the Post tries–and often fails–to fix up applicants.

Looks like the Date Lab team’s strong showing last week was just dumb luck after all. This week’s installment is a complete flop, both in terms of the duo’s romantic prospects and the amount of enjoyment you’ll get from reading it — it’s pretty much a tutorial on how not to set up a successful blind date. But then, that’s why I’m here.

First of all, I don’t know if Date Lab is running low on applicants or if the Post’s matchmaking team overestimated the daters’ appeal. He thinks he has a good sense of humor (who doesn’t?); she says she’s D.C. because she gets “annoyed by tourists who don’t stand on the right when going down Metro escalators” (more like she’s D.C. because she sounds like a witch in a major paper). There doesn’t seem to be anything in either of their questionnaire answers to suggest that they would make a particularly good pair, other than her stated preference for black guys, and that’s not much to go on.

Unsurprisingly, the sparks don’t fly: she’s not attracted to him, he thinks it’s lame that she doesn’t want to order free wine , she freaks out when he puts his arm around her for the photo. He’s nice enough to give the date a 3 out of 5, while she returns the volley with a damning (and weirdly specific) 1.9.

Rating: I’m sure this could be worse somehow. There were no acts of physical violence or outright psychological warfare, but after last week’s turnaround, DL slump is back. I’d give it a 1.

Chances of Success: Are negative numbers allowed?

I didn’t think much of GUSA President Pat Dowd when he was running. Neither did the Voice editorial board, which endorsed his opponents. With GUSA Summer Fellows coming together so soon and his pretty good response to our latest crimes, though, I’m feeling better about his reign.

Things will change, though, and probably for the worse. It’ll be hard to keep track of whether Pat Dowd’s better or worse than we expected him to be. That’s why we’ve come up with the Dowdometer, a device to measure whether he’s exceeding (admittedly low) expectations. So far, things are rosy. But who knows what next semester will bring?

Along with the numerous Public Safety Alert emails you’ve been receiving lately, you may have noticed a message from GUSA about their “Campus Safety efforts.” If the text of the e-mail seems familiar, that’s because it’s copied-and-pasted from the GUSA Campus Safety Watch Facebook group President Pat Dowd created recently.

Since, as the message declares, “a ‘business as usual’ approach to campus safety is failing to meet the needs of our community,” GUSA is soliciting recommendations and promising to present them to whoever DPS Director Darryl Harrison’s successor is. As of 12:30 a.m., the Facebook group, though boasting 295 members, has only 5 wall posts and 1 discussion post. Dowd told me via email that he has received over 20 student responses in the six hours since the campus-wide e-mail was sent out.

The missive also encourages students to join the Facebook group, saying that “By joining this group, you are sending a clear message to the administration that campus security it [sic] a major concern for you as a Georgetown student.” Does joining a Facebook group really constitute active participation in campus life, though? Surely there are more substantive ways of conveying your concern about safety issues than clicking the “Join this Group” button.

The open meeting VP for Student Affairs Todd Olson and VP for University Safety Rocco DelMonaco held Tuesday evening was pretty sparsely attended, even for study days. There were approximately 50-60 audience members, about half of whom were faculty or staff members. “Where are all these ‘mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore’ students?” someone sitting near me asked.

There’s also an interesting side note for any avid GUSA followers out there: back in the presidential campaign, during the debate hosted by The Hoya, Dowd distinguished himself from the other candidates by arguing that campus safety was not GUSA’s purview – “Safety is not a GUSA issue,” Dowd said in the debate.

After the jump, Dowd explains why he’s mucking around in safety now, the adorable Brian Kesten makes an appearance, and Rocco DelMonaco needs GUSA like jam needs toast.

(more…)

The Corp has taken to running the 1st floor of the Leavey Center like its personal fiefdom, with all the restrictions of free speech that entails. Thursday night I noticed several fliers on the bulletin boards near Vital Vittles and the Leavey elevators with this article (link currently down) from the Columbia Spectator about Collegeboxes’ failure to return stored items on time to Columbia students. Later that night, they were gone.

Expecting the hidden hand of the Corp’s Student Storage behind the fliers and Collegeboxes behind the takedown, I emailed Corp CEO Jesse Scharff. His response was surprising: the Corp didn’t put the fliers up, but they took them down because they thought it reflected poorly on them. If someone wants to tell students about Collegeboxes’ seemingly significant problems, the Corp shouldn’t stop them just because it might reflect poorly on them.

After the jump, Scharff’s email and a conspiracy theory I’ve been working on.

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In our new recurring feature Date Lab Rat, Anna Bank (editor-in-chief, hopeless romantic) bravely experiments on herself with each week’s installment of the Washington Post’s Date Lab, where the Post tries to fix up applicants using a secret formula known only to journalists. This week’s installment comes a week late because of problems isolating the case study.

After a recent run of failed fix-ups, Date Lab decided to introduce a new gimmick this week, hoping for a better match or at least some humor value. The trick–having a monkey select the two daters instead of using the Post’s “expert” matchmaking team - was just plain dumb, and given the pair’s similar questionnaire answers (they’re both company project managers and say that there’s either a 99 or 100% chance that they’ll talk to stranger in a bar, although maybe all Date Lab contestants say that), I’m guessing this primate wasn’t given many potential daters to choose from.

Stupid monkey tricks aside, though, this is a pretty high quality edition of Date Lab, and a good intro if you’re new to the feature. Both daters are attracted to one another, which is always fun to read (DL connoisseurs know that the most cringe-worthy sensation is reading a match where one person’s feeling it and the other completely isn’t.) The girl manages to pull off a semi-slick venue change by asking if he wants to go somewhere to watch a basketball game, and the night ends with kisses and text-message follow-up.

Rating, using the DL 1-5: 4. 1 point docked for the gimmick, but as goes Date Lab, so goes my week, and I love when things work out.

Chances of Success: 4. He’s already scraping off expired parking stickers so she won’t get a ticket, completely skipping over the infatuation phase and into domesticity, which makes is seem like this could last for a while. But they both claim to be more sarcastic than they let on during the date, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the claws come out.

Photo from Flickr user Little Brown Monkey