University broadcast e-mail sent out earlier tonight:

As of 4:00 p.m. today a total of 192 patients have sought medical treatment for symptoms related to norovirus. While the vast majority of these individuals remain undergraduate students, for the first time today we became aware of that 2 employees who had been helping respond to students became ill.

Besides handwashing, the best way to “break the cycle of transmission” is to read Vox Populi’s Georgetown norovirus FAQ. Another good way is by eating at Qdoba, which did indeed open today and is still delicious.

The Washington Blade is reporting an assault on a gay Georgetown med student early Friday morning (emphasis mine):

The source said the men, who he described as Muslim and being of “Middle Eastern descent,” asked the other men if they were gay. When one of the men answered yes, the source noted that the man and his companion began using “profane language.”

At one point, the source said, the two men told the gay men, “If you were to do this type of behavior back in our country, you’d be stoned,” and that “a man’s asshole is for shitting not fucking, you fucking faggots.”

The source said one of the Muslim men eventually goaded his companion, who held a glass bottle, into attacking one of the gay men. The source noted the man who wielded the bottle struck the Georgetown student’s left cheek with it. The two men then fled.

An hour after the arrest, police arrested the two suspects.

Won’t you be Vox Populi’s friend? I promise it’ll be like friending someone you’ve known for a while who just got a Facebook, and not at all like friending someone you met once at a party and never saw again, except while walking to class.

Could a film set in Georgetown have been in the cards for Paul Newman? As director Whit Tillman tells it, he and producer Ronane Glennane had dreams of Newman and his wife starring in their remake of the French film Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud:

“Soon we were planning a film set in Georgetown, with Newman to be a retired, Eugene McCarthy-like senator working on his memoirs with a brittle yet beautiful English woman… As we traipsed through Georgetown planning the film, it was if Newman were with us, his senator character dominating our thoughts.”

Their project stalled (rights to remake European films are hard to come by, Tillman said), and the two never felt far along enough in the planning stages to approach Newman.

Still, in a city where filmmakers usually only stop by to get a few shots of the Washington monument, the idea that a director wanted to set a film in Georgetown—and bring Newman along for the ride—is pretty cool.

Due to the outbreak of the norovirus on campus, athletic director Bernard Muir has postponed or cancelled most events scheduled for this weekend, including women’s soccer home games Syracuse and St. John’s, football away at Colgate, and swimming away at American. Muir said games were delayed because of sick players:

“Because several members of the team have been infected and others have been exposed, and because the infection is contagious, after discussion between medical personnel at both universities and with Syracuse’s and St. John’s athletic administration and the BIG EAST, the decision has been made not to play the games. Make-up dates have not been reached at this time.”

According to people who’ve walked by the store lately, Qdoba is back in action starting today. It was knocked out by the hurricane, which was a surprise since I thought for sure it’d be a casualty in the Georgetown Burrito War first.

They’re in arrears on several of half-price Mondays, so some wild promotions must await students. Free lemon Wednesdays? Make the burrito for the person in front of you Thursdays?

Photo from Flickr user stacya used under a Creative Commons license