The annual “Jabbo” Kenner Summer Basketball League started yesterday at McDonough Gymnasium. Teams made up of some of DC’s top college talent, including some Hoyas, are competing on weekends throughout the summer.

Georgetown players are spread out over three teams: Clyde’s (DaJuan Summers, Austin Freeman, and Julian Vaughn), The Tombs (Chris Wright, Nikita Mescheriakov, and freshmen Henry Sims, Jason Clark and Greg Monroe) and Myers & Alterman (Jessie Sapp and Omar Wattad). GUHoyas will post full rosters later in the summer.

My first Kenner League experience went well, despite a frustrating start.  I was quickly reminded that this is a summer recreational league and not the Big East—organization, at least in these early stages, is lacking.

I showed up at McDonough  at 3:30 expecting to see Clyde’s take on PG Storm. A scheduling conflict, however, meant that game was not going to take place. This news wasn’t conveyed to spectators until 45 minutes later, at 4:15.

The next game, between Clyde’s and Hoop Magic, soon began. Summers was gone, but Freeman picked up the slack for Clyde’s with plenty of help from Vaughn, a recent transfer from Florida State. Freeman exhibited the inside and outside game that he will hopefully show throughout the season, knocking down 3-point shots and getting the rim seemingly at will. 

After the jump, will Donte Green break the Hoyas’ hearts?

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MA in Arab Studies, Georgetown ‘74

I know firsthand that learning Arabic is a time-consuming, difficult task. That’s why I’m so impressed that Harvard Law student Joel Pollak has the time not only to study Arabic in the Georgetown-produced Al-Kitaab textbook, but to uncover its propagandic nature.

He doesn’t like Al-Kitaab for a lot of reasons, but mainly he’s mad because it has a story about a depressed girl and talks about Egyptian president Gamal Nasser. Pollak took his distaste for Nasser so far that he became, as we say in Arabic, a prick:

The accompanying lesson describes the highlights of Nasser’s career, including the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the formation of the United Arab Republic. No mention is made of Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War or of Nasser’s brutal, repressive rule. In my class, we were asked to recite a passage about Nasser to practice our vocalization. (I refused.)

When Neal Pollak finds himself in a memory hole, he keeps on digging.

Via Yglesias

Georgetown announced in 2006 that it was going to use a 56-acre property it had bought the year before in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Northern Virginia to build a “Contemplative Center.” Two years later, the University hasn’t even filed for a construction permit.

The center was supposed to house programs Campus Ministry programs like ESCAPE. Its $5.3 million price tag was to be covered by a $10 million donation by Arthur Calcagnini Jr. (COL ‘54).

The center would have areas for religious services, art projects, meditations, and “perhaps even a ropes course”. Most interesting for current students, “the center could be ready for guests by the end of 2008.”

Now, months away from the proposed end of 2008 deadline, it looks like very little progress has been made. Georgetown has yet to submit the necessary application, site plans, or special use permit that must be approved before construction can begin. Plus, conservation-minded locals are already up in arms about the preservation of a 19th century farmhouse located on the property.

University Spokesperson Julie Green-Bataille writes in an email:

“…[O]nce the approvals are granted, we anticipate a 12 month construction time period so opening would be after that –the time frames in the [Blue & Gray] article are obviously outdated as we still haven’t secured the approvals but the plans have been presented to the local community on several occasions and we’re moving forward through the process.”

My guess is Georgetown students will be waiting a while longer for that ropes course. We’ll be sure to update you as the project  gets further mired in Georgetown’s and Clarke’s unique morasses.