You can keep your Kofi Annans and your Rupert Murdochs. For me, the best mark of a speaker at Georgetown is that he or she has no patience with stupid questions. The Ethicist was pretty good at dissing rambling questioners two years ago, but Matt Ivester, the founder of Juicy Campus, didn’t just raise that bar–he called it a make-out slut the next day.

Lecture Fund brought Ivester to campus because of the furor Georgetown Juicy Campus caused when it launched earlier this semester. It doesn’t hurt that, judging by the number of times his people have asked Vox Populi to interview him, he probably comes cheap.

Ivester came off as reasonable in his speech. He’s got the law on his side, and, as he pointed out, it’s not like anyone hassles Google for libel posted on Blogger. He generally stuck to the same points that he used with the Independent and the GW Patriot. The only real “news” in his talk was that Juicy Campus won’t expand to high schools and that he doesn’t know how long posts will stay up.

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When Rays shortstop Jason Barlett stole 2nd base in the 2008 World Series opener he didn’t know he would also be stealing a free taco for everyone in America courtesy of Taco Bell. In-between innings during Monday night’s game Taco Bell announced that they would be giving away a free Crunchy Seasoned Beef Taco upon request at every participating Taco Bell nationwide, no purchase necessary.

You only get one taco for free…per store.  Pick up your taco today from 2pm - 6pm at participating Taco Bells. Look for an update tomorrow to see if HoyaCourt’s Taco Bell is among those participating in this promotion. Given the Hoya Court Subway’s reluctance to participate in $5 Footlongs, it’s dicey.

Either way, God Bless America, baseball…and Jason Bartlett.

Photo from Flickr user kevinv033 used under a Creative Commons license 

Ever get the feeling that the price of attending Georgetown has become a little exorbitant? It could be because, with an annual cost of $49,689, we’re now the 4th most expensive college in the country, according to a list compiled by Campus Grotto. We didn’t even crack the top 20 on last year’s list, so this is quite a jump.

What’s even weirder is that while we’re the 4th most expensive school overall, our tuition is only the 36th highest. My guess is this means we’re making up the difference with super high room and board fees. (According to the Princeton Review, the cost of room and board at Georgetown is $12,146. At the University of Pennsylvania, which has the 37th highest tuition and the 30th highest cost overall, it’s only $10,621.)

Elsewhere in the District, George Washington University lost its long-held superlative of most expensive school in the country to Sarah Lawrence, coming in 2nd, while American University ranked 94th.

Oh dear. Before the start of a 1:15 Comparative Political Systems class, a light fell on a student who showed up early. GERMS took him to the hospital, but Professor Charles King, the class’s teacher, said he’s fine.

Potential for falling lights makes Tuesday’s speech by the founder of Juicy Campus that much more appealing.

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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