Protest not, lest ye be protested. Tonight, about twenty students gathered in Red Square to condemn the protesters who interrupted General David Petraeus when he spoke in Gaston Hall last Thursday. The students, two of whom held a large American flag for the duration of the counterprotest, read aloud and circulated a letter of apology to Gen. Petraeus and a letter to University President John DeGioia asking him to issue a formal apology to Petraeus for the disruption.

“A great injustice was perpetrated against General David Petraeus, those in attendance of his presentation, and the Georgetown community as a whole on January 21,” junior Will Downes said, reading the letter to DeGioia.

The letter to Petraeus, they said, was drafted in collaboration between several on campus groups, including the the Georgetown Federalist, the International Relations Club, and Georgetown University College Republicans. It asked that and that “university policy be altered so that it does not tolerate the constant and continuous disruption of university sponsored events.”

After the reading the letters out loud, members of the group engaged in some good old-fashioned oratory.

“How is it that a guest at our University could be subject to such disrespect?” Randy Drew (SFS ’10) asked, standing on the planter in the middle of the Square. Drew said the protesters were motivated by “the same spirit which motivates a person in the middle of the night to shout racial epithets, the same spirit which motivates a person to deny a professor the right to teach what he or she believes.”

Members of the crowd hissed softly when Drew mentioned the op-ed that James Reardon-Anderson, a dean in the School of Foreign Service, published in The Hoya comparing the actions of the protesters to Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read more, and the letters to Petraeus and DeGioia, after the jump.

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All class at GWU.

In George Washington University’s great tradition of drawing attention through effective use of symbols, some of its College Democrats took and defaced crosses used at an anti-abortion rally.

A conservative group had placed 1,100 white, wooden crosses on University property on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and some of them turned up vandalized scattered around a room shared by GW College Democrats and Republicans. The Washington Post reports:

“Student Republicans later found drawings and writing in black ink on some of the crosses. One depicted a stick figure of a crucified Jesus. Another, hung upside down, had a condom stretched over it. One had the name of a College Democrats leader.”

On the cross featuring the Jesus stick figure, the vandal had also inscribed the words “pwned” and “lol.”

College Democrats took responsibility for the incident and apologized without publicly revealing the name of the vandal. The GW University Police Department is dealing with the perpetrator, writes the GW Hatchet:

“University Spokesperson Tracy Schario said the student responsible has been identified by the University and will face disciplinary action under the Code of Student Conduct. UPD is investigating the incident further.”

Pwned.

Photo by GW College Republicans.

It’s election day, and that means giveaways, including free Starbucks and Ben & Jerry’s. Georgetown clubs will also be giving away free food, but if you don’t keep a tight schedule you can’t take advantage of all the freebies. Follow this dinnertime guide and finally, we’ll know where those mysterious SAC funds went–right into your stomach.

6:00-7:00

College Democrats, Sellinger Lounge

The Dems are getting started at 6, before the other two parties start. If this Dems election watch is like most, it’ll be simple but filling–big soda bottles and pizza. The pizza will probably arrive in between 6 and 7, at which point you should dive because it’s gone fast at earlier election parties. If you go crazy and grab a box, you’re set for the night!

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The new College Republican shirt for this year is a picture of Ronald Reagan and the text “What He Said” (similar to the one above). So, what did he really say?

“If you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all?” (on forest preservation)

In 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store

“You can’t help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”

He cited a Chicago “Welfare Queen” who had ripped off $150,000 from the government, using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen social security cards, and four fictional dead husbands. The country was outraged; Reagan dutifully promised to roll back welfare.

Charming!

Picture from Thoseshirts.com

Gone the way of the dodo

Despite not actually accomplishing its titular goal, Take Back Georgetown Day, the College Republicans’ annual lecture-fest, will not be returning this year. That news comes from GUCR president Erika Barger (COL ’10), who said in an email that the Republicans will focus their energies on individual events instead. Hoyas raised on a steady ironic diet of Rush Limbaugh and Townhall.com are understandably anguished.

It didn’t happen last year, either, but Barger’s email just started my grieving. To mourn an event that always had the potential to make a lot of people mad, but never lived up to those expectations, let’s remember TBGD the way it would want to be remembered–angsty about women, and through the recollections of some crazy Catholics:

A busy line-up of prominent conservative speakers and workshops ran from 9:30AM to 4:30PM. In the lobby, representatives from various Washington, D.C. think tanks displayed literature and shared information. Members of TFP Student Action had their own table and were engaged in lively discussion during the greater part of the day. Many students promptly joined the TFP’s petition against the immoral “V-Monologues” scheduled to play again at Georgetown on February 17-18.

Flickr photo from user Decaf used under a Creative Commons license

Then look no further than Sellinger Lounge in the Leavey Center tonight from 7 pm to 1 am.  From the College Dems weekly e-mail:

This Super-Duper Tuesday will be a monumental event and the College Democrats and College Republicans will be celebrating and watching the returns in bipartisan fashion in Sellinger Lounge with FREE PIZZA and SODA.

And as a special treat, C-SPAN will be reporting all night LIVE from Leavey and interviewing College Democrats and College Republicans throughout the night!

Not a member of the College Dems or College Republicans?  No worries, just give yourself an important-sounding title (I’m pretty sure Strategic Initiatives Director is up for grabs), put on your nicest polo, and wait for your moment in the spotlight.  Move over, Anderson Cooper!

Not too savvy about the 2008 primaries?  That can be fixed too—just take a 30-second speech with the phrases “as a young person,”  “YouTube,” “clearly, the lesson from tonight’s results are,” and “what’s the deal with this Hillary character, anyway?“, add in a few thoughtful pauses and meaningful hand gestures, and C-SPAN’s producers will be besides themselves.

Then again, if you’re not huge on politics, you might want to save up your fifteen minutes of fame for a forum beyond C-SPAN.  This guy did.

Georgetown’s College Republicans had officer elections earlier this month. Nothing particularly notable happened, which is disappointing considering how much fun College Republicans can be. The platforms varied, but one thing was agreed on: the flow of fuzzy lobbyists into Georgetown will continue uninterrupted.

Ok. Admittedly, this post is a round-about way of pointing you to a dishy article about the National College Republican organization. It ran in The New Republic back in 2005 (link via IvyGate). A writer for the magazine attended the group’s presidential convention and found out that, essentially, when College Republicans don’t have Solidarity to harass, they turn on one another.

The protagonists in the story are two rival candidates for head of the organization. One, Paul Gourley, is the Establishment candidate. The other, Michael Davidson, is a well-funded underdog. They threaten and cajole their way through the convention however they can, including using a congressman who threatens to “ruin” voters who don’t toe the company line.

(The article is hosted on the site of a group the writer mentions, but it was that or buy a New Republic subscription. I know how you feel about the Internet and credit cards.)

-Will Sommer

Georgetown hosts politicians all the time, but one category of speaker has been conspicously absent, namely, conservative masterminds. This Tuesday at 7, the College Republicans will be quenching our thirst for shadowy backroomers by presenting a lecture by Grover Norquist in White-Gravenor 311.

Norquist is famous for being the head of Americans for Tax Reform and making George W. Bush popular with Republicans. In short, he was Washington’s pudgy wunderkind long before Karl Rove realized direct mail wasn’t just for L.L. Bean.

Here are less pertinent but more interesting facts from this colorful character’s extensive Wikipedia entry.

• Along with Jack Abramoff, he was buddies with Angolan rebel and conflict diamonds dealer Jonas Savimbi.
• Tucker Carlson called him conservatism’s “leering, drunken uncle.”
• In 2001, he said he wanted to drown government in a bathtub.
• Even Thomas “It’s Cheaper Overseas” Friedman thinks he’s selfish!

White-Gravenor should be a blast.

Posted by Will Sommer