Solidarity is bringing writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich to White Gravenor 210B tonight at 7:30.  Ehrenreich is the author of the books Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America and Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream.  Ehrenreich is also a frequent contributor to The Nation.

In Nickle and Dimed, Ehrenreich decides to give up her comfortable upper-middle class life and work for a few months as an unskilled laborer.  Leaving home with her car and $1300, Ehrenreich is exposed to the strenuous and challenging life of the working poor.  Over the course of the book she works in the women’s department at Wall Mart, tries to work as a waitress in a diner, and finds employment as as maid cleaning houses.  Despite all the advantages she had starting out (car, savings, work ethic etc.), she is never able to get ahead and achieve a sustainable standard of living. She even cleaned toilets and couldn’t climb her way up–no justice!

Photo from Flickr user David_Shankbone used under a Creative Commons license

This year has seen an onslaught of new Georgetown blogs—starting with Saxa Speak, then the Hoya’s newest venture, Outside the Gates, and the Independent’s The Daily Monthly, plus the return of The Progressive—but I’m willing to bet that I’ve found the most fabulous, zeitgeist-y one: George the Third.

It’s an anonymous blog based on the camera-phone-fueled, dishy-and-bitchy Gossip Girl model. Here’s the delightful mission statement (emphasis and paragraphing mine):

Welcome to the world of The Hilltop, aka Georgetown University, a college community like no other. Here you will find an eclectic student body from all walks of life. Some grew up diving bombs in war-torn states, while others grew up diving off their docks in Newport.

However, they all have one thing in common: Georgetown students want to rule the world. This is what separates them from the youth at other elite American universities. And why should anyone stand in their way? This is the essence of the Vanity Fair campus. And who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. I’m here to chronicle the movers and shakers inside the Ivory Tower. Welcome to the Catholic, Colonial, Cosmopolitan Camelot.

At the University of Texas, Georgetown new Director of Public Safety bought 10 semi-automatic AR-15 rifles (in action here), and justified them by referring to a sniper attack 40 years ago. The guns are one of my favorite parts of the Jeffrey Van Slyke Parade of Infamy . The student informants are chilling and the alleged police brutality is disturbing, but Van Slyke’s guns have an unbeatable visual flair. According to weapons receipts from the University of Mississippi obtained under an open records request, Van Slyke’s fondness for huge guns didn’t end in Austin.

A summary of the receipts, sent by Ole Miss’s attorney Lee Tyner, includes 8 purchases of Bushmaster M-4 rifles while Van Slyke ran the department. The M-4 is modeled on the AR-15, and has great ratings on Police Link.com (”Pretty Heavy Duty. This is good weaponry for war in the jungle.”).

To Van Slyke’s credit, the open records request did not turn up any serious police brutality complaints. But seriously, “war in the jungle”?

Freebie alert!  Starbucks is handing out free $5 gift cards and free drinks in Red Square today.   Great news for coffee drinkers, although probably a further sign of our impending doom to some.  $5 may not seem like much in terms of expensive frappuccinos, but it’s nothing to scoff at in these tough times.  Caffeine drinks aside, $5 will also get you 2 whole shares of AIG, 6 shares of Fannie Mae, or 80 shares of Washington Mutual.  The coffee’s probably a better investment, though.

Photo from Flickr user visualpanic used under a Creative Commons license.

If the crap bands won’t come to Georgetown, Georgetown must go to the crap bands.  So thinks the Georgetown Program Board, anyway.  Not content to simply waste money bringing sub-standard music to Georgetown (Coolio), GPB is branching out.  According to the Weekly Events email, GPB is subsidizing tickets to a Halloween show at George Mason’s Patriot Center featuring Panic! at the Disco, Dashboard Confessional, Plain White T’s, and the Cab.  “Tickets are retailing for over $50, but you can go with GPB for only $10 for GU students, $5 GPB Members and $15 off-campus students,” the email reads.

So GPB is spending around $40 per student to go see four (terrible) bands 20 miles away from campus?  Ridiculous.  Why does GPB subsidize Top 40 concerts out in NoVa while ignoring the countless shows here in D.C. that are twice as good and one third as cheap?  I can understand that not everyone dislikes bands like Panic! at the Disco, but GPB should at least provide alternatives for people who do.

Photo from Flickr user NRK P3 used under a Creative Commons license.

David Frum

Political commentators David Frum and Bob Shrum (COL ‘65) appeared at Gaston Hall tonight to discuss the “issues and implications” of the Presidential election.  SFS Professor Jacques Berlinerblau moderated the discussion.

Frum, a leading conservative thinker, served as the current Bush’s speechwriter during his first term and even penned a book about Bush entitled “The Right Man.”

Described by the Atlantic Monthly as “the most sought-after strategist in the Democratic Party,” Shrum is well regarded in the Democratic establishment despite the Shrum curse–every presidential campaign he has played a major role in has failed.

Frum spent a great deal of time discussing the rise and fall of the conservative movement, arguing that the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 will remembered as the high water mark for the conservative movement.  Frum was also very pessimistic about the GOP’s chances in November, saying, “I don’t think there’s a lot of doubt about what the outcome of this election is going to be, and I think it’s time that Republicans talk frankly about this.”

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Aramark, whose last foray into charity involved ice sculptures and Amir Bakshi and went generally well, may be acting nice again by helping Leslie Tang, the Leo’s employee who lost her house in a fire.

In last Thursday’s Student Food Committee meeting, Andrew Lindquist (of blue cup fame), suggested donating food or getting a matching gift from Aramark. Meanwhile, Solidarity has raised just over $3,000.

Interesting thing about Tang: she survived the Khmer Rouge.

Speaking of Leo’s, sad news from the Solidarity Committee: Leo’s employee recently Leslie Tang lost her house in a fire (emphasis added):

She was cooking rice in her kitchen, left the room to do laundry, and the electrical unit in her stove exploded and her house went up in flames. Her husband was severely burned in the fire. She lost everything: food, cooking utensils, clothes, everything, she told me. Anything that wasn’t burned, for example her sewing machines she needs for her job as a seamstress, was looted by burglars a few days later. She has two teenage children, and her daughter has special needs. Her husband had a stroke last year and has been unable to work since, therefore she is the only income earner.

The Georgetown Solidarity Committee has set up a Paypal account to help Tang. So far, they’ve raised an astounding $1,574. All jokes about the Solidarity food strike yurt aside, they do good work when they have to.
Via Saxaspeak

Smug because we proved him right

Shortly after the year began, big blue cups disappeared from Leo’s, leaving students only with small clear ones. It seemed like the big blue cups were just more victims in the new Leo’s push to limit students’ consumption, but according to an email from Andrew Lindquist, the Director of Campus Dining Services, there’s another culprit: short-sighted students!

The issue with the blue cups is that people seem to like them as souvenirs. Each week we see the number of cups dwindle on our inventory….If there was ever a way to ask students to please refrain from taking these and other permanent items from Leo’s it would be wonderful.

Turns out the blue cups are a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons, a theory articulated by Garret Hardin (above). It’s better for everyone if the cups stay in Leo’s, so you don’t have to get up 4 times during a meal to get more water, but it’s better for the individual student to take a cup and hope no one else does.

Their enormous size makes them great for home use, which has inspired many students, including me, to slip them inside backpacks. On the plus side, a new order of cups will be coming in soon.

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Mages Row 

If you, like me, had an application to live in a themed townhouse on Magis Row rejected, you might have assumed the other, winning applications were much more exciting and creative. Hardly! As the list of townhouse themes (after the jump) shows, they were just lucky enough to fall into one of two surefire categories.

The first genre of Magis Row house is “Wha-?”.  Their names–Nobody Home, Hip Hop Justified–only give a vague idea of what they’re about. These are fine because Nobody Home sounds like a house full of Boo Radleys

The other kind of Magis Row house is created by printing a list of Georgetown’s favorite words–justice, interfaith, global–and pasting those words on top of one another like a ransom note. I’m looking at you, Global Health Awareness and Activism Project.

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