In what can only be called an act of war, a group of high school students threw a water balloon at Jack the Bulldog yesterday.

As a member of the Jack Crew walked Georgetown’s mascot into the courtyard area of the Southwest Quad, the students called out from a fifth-floor window in Kennedy Hall.

“They were just calling him over to harass the dog,” Steck said.

Once Jack and his handler approached, the teens lobbed a water balloon in the dog’s general direction. Although the balloon missed, it “freaked [Jack] out.”

The Department of Public Safety canvassed Kennedy Hall, but the dispatched officer failed to find the guilty parties. (Or as Steck wrote yesterday, “Called DPS. Hunted for the kids. No luck. Evil lurks.”)

The students most likely attend one of the University’s many high school summer programs.

“Because they had the water balloon beforehand, they weren’t necessarily going after Jack,” Steck said. “They were looking for victims and we can’t tolerate that.”

In the past, people rarely harassed Jack, who lives in New South with Steck.

“Two or three times, students have offered Jack something to drink and it was alcohol,” he said. “But, no one’s intentionally done anything like this before.”

We’ll admit it—we love spotting Jack the Bulldog riding around campus in a golf cart with his buddy, Fr. Christopher Steck. For a short time this week, however, it looked like Jack lost his cart privileges.

“Bad news for Jack: he’s going to have to use his paws to get around campus. No more use of the Jesuit golf cart,” Steck wrote in a Twitter message last Saturday.

The Jesuit Community decided to “limit use of its golf carts to Jesuits” after one cart set on fire while students used it. Steck told us in an email that the incident, which occurred “a couple of months ago,” raised liability concerns that led to the stricter policy.

Read the rest of this entry »

It might be tough to consider the abstract merits of Georgetown’s curriculum this week—you’ve got papers to write and tests to take, after all.

But, that’s not stopping some Jesuits who recently released (…hold on, Vox is taking a deep breath…) A Distinctive Education: Reflections by Georgetown Jesuits on Education at Georgetown. If the title somehow didn’t clue you in, the document is the Jesuit Community’s best suggestions as to how reshape the University’s curriculum.

The document, which was collaboratively written by 27 members of the Jesuit Community, outlines aspects that the community feels are necessary to strengthen a Georgetown education.

In an interview with Vox, Christopher Steck, S.J., a member of the Provost’s Ad Hoc Working Group on the Curriculum, said that despite changes with departments and majors, a “systematic redoing of the curriculum [for the University as a whole] hasn’t happened in a long, long time.”

But, don’t expect to find any arguments for or against Map of the Modern World in A Distinctive Education, because the Jesuit Community’s recommendations don’t dive into the nitty-gritty of University academics.

Inspired by Spiritual Exercises, a text by Ignatius Loyola, A Distinctive Education hones in on three themes that the Jesuits feel are important for the University to address when reforming the academic curriculum.

First, the Jesuits advocate for “a world richly understood and religiously explored.” (Vox‘s translation: Georgetown’s Catholic identity isn’t prominent enough.)

“This doesn’t mean [classes] will be like catechism … [we're] not trying to tell you what to believe,” he noted.

Steck mentioned that Catholic influence isn’t just in theological areas, but is also found in philosophy, art, literature, architecture, as well as a variety of other disciplines, meaning that it is possible to further incorporate Catholic tradition within the University.

“[Georgetown's Catholic identity should be] fostered in tandem with a broad and respectful pluralism,” according to the A Distinctive Education.

After the jump, read about the Jesuits’ other suggestions, as well as A Distinctive Education in its entirety.

Read the rest of this entry »