Vote your conscience. Or the way Vox tells you to.

Amidst the dozens of hourly campus-wide emails that we’ve been getting over the last few days, most of the Class of ’09 probably deleted or ignored yesterday’s Vote for Your Alumni Class Leaders! missive. Luckily, we not only tracked down the email, but even read through the applications to figure out who you should vote for.

Without further ado, Vox‘s endorsements for senior class alumni leadership:

Class Chair: Everyone running for this has headed up a stereotypically Georgetown organization (NSO, the Corp, GUGS), but Jake Styacich and Christopher Golski should get your vote because, even if this position isn’t spectacularly demanding, two representatives are probably better than one for liaising with the administration, and they really do tug at the heartstrings with that line about small towns in the Midwest. But what the hell are Sleeveless Saturdays?

Communications Chair: Communication is all about using words, and Elizabeth Arnold manages to use “conversations with Jesuits” and “in the sweet spot” in the same sentence. Vote for her.

Homecoming Chair: With our joke of a football team, Homecoming is pretty much like NSO for drunk people who already know each other, so former Camp NSO Coordinator Stephanie Bean can definitely handle it.

Our recommendations for Fundraising, Community Service and more after the jump!

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Back in the day (where day = middle school), I once intentionally forgot my Pink Lemonade LipSmackers lip gloss on my desk in English so I could go back and pick it up when I knew a certain boy would be in the room. Just to recap, I was twelve. But apparently you’re never too old to play that game, as this week’s Date Lab proves.

The daters seem fairly compatible, if not spectacularly suited to one another, and luckily they hit on plenty of shared interests (Chris Rock, Earth Wind & Fire, the Air Force) early in the conversation. When their bill runs over the allotted Date Lab tab, he says he has money in his jacket and he’ll pay her back for covering the extra. Surprise, he forgets to give her the cash, which is “sort of the perfect excuse…to see [her] again.” Wow, you’re a slick one.

The missing money scores him a second date, but when they meet up again he decides he’s just not that into her because she’s just not than into working out. Fortunately, she doesn’t get desperate, and they part ways amicably.

Rating: 3. A little more interesting than last week’s, but still not terribly so.

Chances of Success: 1. She seems pretty happy with herself, so it’s unlikely she’ll start exercising just to please some random blind date dude, and for him, that’s a deal-breaker.

If Date Lab were a person and that person was going on a first date, he or she would do terribly. You don’t want to show too many of your cards too soon, and in this week’s DL the Post crew lets us know right away why they set these two up.

It’s because they have identical best date stories. His: “We packed up a bottle of wine with fresh mozzarella-and-basil sandwiches, climbed a fire ladder to the roof of a campus building around midnight, and sat and told stories from our childhoods.” Hers: “He made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we went down to the waterfront with a thermos of wine, people-watched and talked for a couple of hours.” Out of the seemingly endless list of questions on the questionnaire, why did the DL team choose the one that makes it the most obvious that this pairing was based on a fluke similarity?

Unfortunately, the matching best nights of their lives didn’t get this twosome very far, although it was mostly his fault for being too young. They parted ways with an amicable “see you around,” but she didn’t mean it. He could tell, though, so with no hard feelings on either side this was a disappointing but not painful match up. Next!

Rating: 2. It wasn’t as squirmy as any of the really bad dates, but sadly it was pretty boring, too. These kids need to work on their one-liners.

Chances of Success: 1. If she’s single when he’s in the his early 30s and she’s pushing 35, he might have a shot. But until then, hasta luego.

Sorry about last week’s absence, folks. Today’s a great day to get back in the game, though, because this week’s Date Lab raises an interesting question about the Post team’s Date Lab editing etiquette.

The daters both seem likable enough, although he’s definitely funnier than she is (his morning routine and dream date: “Watch a YouTube video of a baby panda sneezing” and “A ponytailed second-grade teacher with a political-button collection;” hers: “Check my email” and “A tall, dark and handsome diplomat.”) Nonetheless, they enjoy their evening together, chatting about Camus and mutual friends (of theirs, not the author’s.) They even grab a post-dinner drink and both rate the date a 5.

Sounds good, right? Just pleasant enough to leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling before a long Sunday of studying. But the follow-up reveals that “The two met up a few more times, but then ‘things just kind of fizzled.’” It got me wondering — do we always need that extra morning-after comment?

Any relationship is bound to fizzle eventually if you follow it long enough (I doubt many DL couples end up married), so why not cut out while you’re still ahead? Then again, this is a newspaper, and I suppose it’s a question of journalistic integrity to include all the information you’ve got. Sigh.

Rating: 4. Despite the downer ending, you don’t have to feel sorry for anyone, which is nice, and the date itself was a fun read.

Chances of Success: 2. These two both sound popular enough not to recycle if it didn’t work out the first time.

Last night, I saw He’s Just Not That Into You with three friends, all in various flavors of singleness. This morning over Leo’s brunch with one of them, we discussed which of the movie’s many predictable happy endings made us the maddest in its absolute lack of connection to real life (I know, I know, it’s our fault for seeing it.) Our verdict (SPOILER ALERT, if you’re a moron who can’t predict chick flick plots): Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long, closely followed by Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck.

This week’s Date Lab is the perfect bitter after-dinner drink to complement that sickeningly sweet dessert. She’s into it and delusional, he’s giving her the not-so-subtle brush-off. On top of that, they’re both pretty unlikable: he comes across as frighteningly shallow and self-involved, and she’s the kind of clingy that makes you want to shout at her through your newspaper or computer screen.

A few choice excerpts:

I just had a forkful of icing. She ate 98 percent. [As for the cards,] I don’t give them out to everyone.

It was about 9:30 when we left the restaurant. Bryan told me he’d walk with me over to the Metro. We discussed again that he’d call. I took his arm, actually. It was a very memorable part of the date.

Rating: 1. Come on, Post. This is just painful for everyone involved.

Chances of Success: 0. Even those of you who didn’t figure out from the first Jennifer Connelly scene that her husband would turn out to be Sack from Wedding Crashers can see where this is going, and that would be nowhere.

Earlier this week, I wrote about a Jerusalem Post piece that attacked two Georgetown centers, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, and championed the Program for Jewish Civilization as an antidote to those two.

Since my initial post, a few more of the relevant faculty members have chimed in with their responses, with professors on both sides saying that the article was ill-informed about what actually goes on here on campus. Listen to what CMCU Director John Esposito and PJC Director Jacques Berlinerblau have to say, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t read this week’s Date Lab yet, don’t bother—it’s exactly the squirmy exercise in awkward that I’m sure you’re not looking for heading into the pre-Valentine’s Day week.

Based on the duo’s favorite movies, I wouldn’t have had high hopes anyway: Legally Blonde, Ocean’s Eleven, and Saw for her; Predator, The Matrix, and Wedding Crashers for him. (For the record, the best answer is High Fidelity, Clueless, and Annie Hall, but that’s just me.)

Their interests and senses of humor don’t really mesh, so the date itself is a little uncomfortable and not worth dwelling on, but it does raise an interesting question about phone number etiquette. He offers to give her his number, but since she’s not interested, she gives him hers instead, telling the Post that “I wouldn’t want it to be ending on a bad note if I never called him.”

A fair point, but it still seems like a risky move to give out your number and then have to either avoid calls and texts or lead someone on until you break it off. In this case, she settled the matter with a lukewarm brush-off text, but I can’t help thinking there’s a better way.

Rating: 2. He was definitely more into it than she was, and that’s never fun to read about.

Chances of Success: 1. After reading the Post‘s rundown, I doubt he’ll be contacting her again.

The fighting in Gaza may have cooled for now, but the Arab-Israeli conflict seems to have set its sights on Georgetown.

Amir Romirowsky of the Jerusalem Post published an article earlier this week lauding Georgetown’s Program for Jewish Civilization and lambasting the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) and the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU), alleging that the Centers have a pro-Arab bias.

CMCU Associate Director John Voll called the article “basically ill-informed” and took issue with its characterization of his Center as “the locus of academic apologetics for Wahhabism in America”:

“I have seen the article and am glad to see that the Program for Jewish Studies gets a positive description. However,the author clearly has not bothered to read anything that the people on the faculty of the Alwaleed Center have written. For example, I would find it difficult to describe what I have written on Sufism (the mystical tradition in Islam which is opposed by strict Wahhabi teachers) as presenting ‘a glossy version of Wahhabi Islam.’”

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I’m starting to think that Date Lab is biased in favor of girls who like college sports. It’s as if caring (or pretending to care) about your alma mater’s football team somehow makes you automatically down-to-earth and date-ready.

The girl in this week’s date fits the mold perfectly: “I’m a huge sports fan. I can sit down with the boys and watch football and keep up!” An exclamation point?! She must mean business.

But a shared love of SportsCenter does not a love connection make. Despite consciously shying away from jeans and choosing a sweater/leggings/boots combo instead, she’s doomed from the start: he’s looking for a “blonde in pearls and polka dots.”

Fortunately, they manage to talk football for long enough to keep the date from being awkward, although her Penn State-ophilia hurts more than it helps: Alabama fan Ben rates the date a 4.157, but says that “it could have been a 4.16 if she wasn’t such a big Penn State fan.” Unfortunately for us, that’s the funniest thing either of them says in the whole column.

Rating: 2. Post commenter ASmallBlue said it best: “B-O-R-I-N-G…individually, together, B-O-R-I-N-G.” Right on, Blue.

Chances of Success: 1. He got her number and said they’d hang out as friends, but sometimes “I’ll call you” is just one of those things you say to avoid an awkward silence, and I think this was one of those times.

What, no repeat performance?

Apparently sick of hearing people complain about the bands it chooses for its kinda-sorta biannual concert, this semester, the Georgetown Program Board wants YOU to decide who Georgetown will be hosting for the Spring Kickoff concert. (What are we kicking off? Spring?)

GPB sent a mass email this morning with a link to a voting site listing 13 artists and asked students to rank the bands 1-14 (no, that’s not my typo). If you vote, treat this like the mock-election of your middle school years when you voted for the president: GPB hasn’t seen a lot of success bringing comparable bands to campus in recent years (re: Fountains of Wayne).

Here’s who we’d like to see win this fantasy election:

Lupe Fiasco: After 2007′s The Cool, Lupe is the clear number one choice on the survey. And given that he spent the majority of last year on tour with Kanye, there is no way that some of that theatricality and general ridiculousness didn’t rub off.

Ben Folds: A good performer with a solid catalogue to back him up, and who can say no to the man who put William Shatner in a recording studio?And remember when you found out that “Brick” was about getting an abortion? Now you can relive that loss of innocence by helping bring Ben to campus.

Guster: While they definitely don’t have the most artistic merit on the list, there is something to be said for well-made pop songs, which this Bostonian band does so well. Plus they use bongos.

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