If you’ve been on Facebook in the past few days and you’re friends with anyone at Georgetown, you’ve probably noticed the rapidly growing “KEEP PHILLY PIZZA FROM GETTING SHUT DOWN” group pop up in your newsfeed.

The group, started by Alex Carroll (COL ‘11), who has done on-campus marketing for the pizza joint in the past, the group’s description claims that “[The] ANC is threatening to close down Philly Pizza, so they need our help to continue business. We need a 1,000 people to join this group for them to stay alive!”

And they’re well on their way to the 1,000 member mark.  The group was just started on Sunday evening and already has more than 870 members.

According to Carroll, one the owners of Philly P, Matt Kocak, told him that the ANC is pushing to make them close earlier, around 11 p.m., which would be a significant blow to their business.

Kocak asked Carroll to create the Facebook group so that he could demonstrate to the ANC that his business has student support.

The Voice recently covered the testy relations between Philly P and the ANC, and it seems tensions have only mounted in the past few weeks.  Look for more about the current dispute in this week’s paper!

When it was revealed last week that the School of Foreign Service standby, Map of the Modern World, was undergoing a curriculum revitalization and getting a new professor, students and alumni were quick to voice their outrage.

A Facebook group, “Take Back Map of the Modern World,” quickly cropped up, and its membership has skyrocketed to nearly 700.

While Facebook groups are all well and good, the administrators of the group realize the real key to effecting change is putting pressure on administrators.  To that end, in the group’s leaders encourage members to e-mail the Dean of the SFS, Carol Lancaster, and other administrators:

Nothing demonstrates opposition like a letter. If every person in this Facebook group took the time to write one, we would get what we want. It doesn’t have to be too long if you are pressed for time. The most important thing is the number of people writing to express their opinion. It takes 2 seconds to join a Facebook group, but it takes effort to express your opinion in a letter.

Unfortunately, their encouragements haven’t proved too effective yet.  When asked how many letters and e-mails she has received about the Map changes, Lancaster wrote in an e-mail this Monday that she has only received 20 complaints so far.

That’s no way to make sure SFSers of the future have to learn about Vanuatu and Kyrgyzstan!

Bring back the old Map!

As we reported yesterday, the School of Foreign Service institution, Map of the Modern World, is undergoing major changes this year.  Turns out SFSers aren’t taking too kindly to the alterations.

They’ve started a Facebook group in protest, “Take Back Map of the Modern World.”  The group currently has 392 members, including SFS Academic Council Representative Josh Mogil (SFS ‘11) and former Map TA Helen Burdett (SFS ‘11).

The group’s description explains their grievances:

Just because Dean Reardon-Anderson wants to take over the course, it doesn’t the course material should change … Map of the Modern World is a pillar of the SFS, and we urge the new Dean to reconsider his changes, not to the class called Map, but to that SFS institution called Map.

Keep Map and its cherished contents intact. Some additions to the course are always warranted, as there have been new developments occuring all the time. That isn’t the same as gutting the course. It’s just one of those binding forces that brings all of us in the SFS together

The group encourages members to invite all their friends in the SFS so that the deans will understand that students don’t support the “watering down” of Map.

What’s black and white and read all over?

Read Vox’s coverage of the Tuesday night forum here.

Many of you have been asking where to find this year’s Hoya April Fools’ issue online. Finally, you can.

For starters, The Hoya posted it as a PDF last night, (which to my knowledge they have never done before with an April Fools’ issue), but those interested in why people were so offended by The Hoya’s issue might want to view the articles here, where the Facebook group entitled “The Hoya: Discrimination Is Not A Laughing Matter” has scans of 24 articles from the issue with their offending passages underlined.

They’ve also annotated each article with relevant commentary (“‘Ryan Westen’ is a pseudonym for Brian Kesten, who is the Chairman/Founder of the Student Commission for Unity, a research and advocacy group of students addressing diversity issues at Georgetown”) for your benefit. (They also gave Vox Populi a lot of link love—thanks guys!)

Hopefully, their annotations will prevent future news fails like the one perpetrated by a certain Wonkette-turned-newswriter, whose first mistake was assuming that “Ryan Westen” was either a nom de plume or “was just ‘in character,’ portraying a very, very stupid ignorant idiot.” Whoops.

Scan courtesy “Not a Laughing Matter” Picasa Web Album.

Looks like the power of the internet can, in fact, be used for good.  Witness the email soon to be sent out to undergraduates from the Provost:

Dear Fellow Hoyas,

I’m happy to announce that the Main Campus will celebrate Georgetown Day –the annual celebration of our campus community – on the last Friday of classes, April 24th . This event brings together students, faculty and staff to mark the end of another academic year, when the flowers are blooming and the sun is shining, but before finals and graduation. I invite you to join us as we celebrate with food, festivities, and friends.  There will be opportunities to participate in planning that you’ll hear about directly from the Office of Student Affairs, so stay tuned. Questions or suggestions can be directed to guday@georgetown.edu .

Hoya Saxa,

James O’Donnell
Provost

No word on whether the event will be on the lawn or relegated to the gym yet, but we’ll try to find out.

Remember the thrill of getting your acceptance letter and smugly joining the “Georgetown Class of 20-whatever” Facebook group? Remember innocently bonding with your future classmates over discussions about just how ready to party you are and gleefully accepting the flurry of friend requests, all of which were accompanied by some permutation of the phrase “Hoya Saxa!!!”?

Well, I saw it as a digital right of passage, but College Prowler, a company that publishes college guidebooks, saw it as a huge potential market. SquarePeg.com has done an amazingly thorough investigation of what’s been happening with “Class of 2013″ Facebook groups and found that an absurd number of them had the same administrators – including the Georgetown 2013 group, where one of the admins was Ron Tressler, who SquarePeg traced as an admin for 58 different Class of 2013 groups.

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Won’t you be Vox Populi’s friend? I promise it’ll be like friending someone you’ve known for a while who just got a Facebook, and not at all like friending someone you met once at a party and never saw again, except while walking to class.

Please friend us. The blog said it wanted to try out New Facebook, so we made it a page. If you become Vox Populi’s fan, not only will your Facebook profile be improved with a tiny picture of John Carroll, but you’ll enjoy some exclusive content that’ll start rolling once school starts.

The items that show up in your Facebook news feed fall into one of three categories: interesting (your ex’s relationship status changes), sort of interesting (your housemate posts new photos), and not at all interesting (someone you knew in high school leaves a group.) But even the most mundane entry is still good because it’s not work.

Until now. Blackboard Sync is a new application that will link announcements, grades, discussion boards, and other Blackboard features with Facebook:

You can find out if you have a new assignment, grade, new forum posts, etc., without having to leave Facebook. Blackboard Sync also cross-references your courses’ Rosters with Facebook to make it easier to connect with your classmates through Facebook.

Northwestern is signing on, but we can only hope that UIS’ documented ineptitude will for once work to our advantage and keep Blackboard out of your downtime.

Via Uwire.

Tuesday I wrote about a delicious set of Facebook messages between two GW students that discussed, among other things, who they were leading on . My source, The Colonialist, took down the messages. I can understand that–they have to go to school with these people, after all.

I have no such problem, and no one likes it when things disappear from the internet. Full exchange, Taming of the Shrew style, after the jump.

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