A student living in an apartment on the 1400 block of 36th Street awoke at bout 7:40 a.m. on Friday morning to find that over $5000 worth of items had been stolen from his house, the Department of Public Safety said in a Public Safety Alert.

DPS said that the suspect entered through an unlocked back door near an unlocked back date. The stolen items included a 42″ flat screen TV. The Metropolitan Police Department responded to the scene and is investigating the crime.

Following a burglary and attempted burglary that took place early Monday morning and a burglary reported by MPD on a community listserv that took place on Wednesday at 37th & O Streets at about 11:45 a.m., this is the fourth area burglary this week. More than one person was also robbed at knifepoint at the 3100 block of O Street on Thursday night.

In January, Project Hilltop and the Campus Sustainability Advisory Board conducted a ’sustainability survey’ among students that looked to quantify what Georgetown students think and do about conservation on campus. Vox has the report, which compiled the results of 645 student responses, and we’ve summarized it below.

What do we want to see Georgetown doing?

Transparency was a big issue for students who responded to this survey. “Overwhelmingly, students want to know, ‘What is Georgetown doing?’” the report on the survey results said students asked in the free-response section.

Students also consistently brought up Leo’s, asking that the University reduce food waste, offer a more varied menu, more information on preservatives used in food, and the elimination of non-biodegradable disposables. “Students also ask[ed] about workers’ conditions and ask that lights be turned off when Leo’s is not in use,” the report said.

Some called for more recycling bins and education, and asked that the University focus more on waste reduction than recycling. Students complained of leaking sinks, faucets, and showers in residence halls, and extreme temperatures in dorms and classrooms. Some wanted to see easier and better transportation efforts, such as buses to basketball games.

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Not many of our celebrity bracketeers are confident that Georgetown will make it to the NCAA championship game. But change the rules of the game, and the Hoyas can take on almost anyone in the tournament—at least as far as alumni salaries go.

In its annual celebration of March Madness, PayScale.com ranks the teams in the NCAA tournament by the median annual salary of alumni who are five to 15 years out of college. This year, with alumni making $95,100 a year, Georgetown breaks the “Fat Wallet Four” and beats out Vanderbilt—$85,800—to take on Duke, with $104,000, in the ‘championship game.’

That’s better than we did in 2008, when we lost to Notre Dame $99,100 to $92,500 in the Fat Wallet Four. Let’s not talk about 2009.

Georgetown probably does consistently well in the battle of the bucks because PayScale counts the salaries of alumni from graduate, medical, law, and other schools incorporate with a University besides its undergraduate students. The data don’t reflect the self-employed or unemployed, either—but this still made us feel pretty good about the degree we’re getting.

Via Casual Hoya.

When you see a sophomore girl selling towels in Red Square next month to raise money for a charity, know this: she could have been in movies.

But lifelong surfer Emi Koch (COL ‘12) turned down that opportunity years ago to start an international non-profit to support opportunities for impoverished children instead. Now, she’s head of Beyond the Surface, International, a group that raises money to support centers where underprivileged children in Peru, South Africa, and India can learn to surf—a positive activity, Koch said, for children in poor communities where there usually aren’t alternatives.

“In Western society, we’re so used to having a Boy Scout group a Girl Scout group, or a volleyball club,” she said, “but there they don’t really have anything like that, so this gives them more self-empowerment and more self-confidence.”

In Peru, the center Beyond the Surface sponsors works with providing children with an activity after school. The second center is located in South Africa, where Koch said it serves as more of a rehabilitation clinic. Sniffing glue has become a popular drug addiction among the children in the community where the center is located, she said, and the surfing serves as a tool for rehabilitation. The third center, located in India, is dedicated to keeping kids out of violent street gangs. The center tries to get children off the streets by replacing their gang with a home in the life of surfing.

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The School of Continuing Studies has started a program that will offer a master of professional studies and advanced professional certificate in disability studies, the University announced yesterday. The program, “for students who want to explore the many roles of disability in social, cultural, historical and political contexts,” will launch this fall.

“One aspect of our school’s mission is to provide programs that answer today’s biggest societal needs,” School of Continuing Studies Dean Robert Manuel said, according to Blue and Gray. “The disability studies program will bring the industry’s top experts into the classroom exposing students to the most current political, societal, financial and emotional issues surrounding this growing and important career field.”

The new program grew out of Georgetown’s Center for Child and Human Development. Students pursuing either degree in the new program will have the option of concentrating on one of three subjects, developmental disabilities, early intervention, or mental health care systems for children.

After news broke last night that Austin Freeman had been diagnosed with diabetes, the Hoyas’ leading scorer spoke with the media this afternoon to address his health and its impact on his basketball career.

The junior guard, sitting alongside head coach John Thompson III, professed he was feeling fine after spending the early part of the week in the hospital. While both player and coach acknowledged that there was still a lot to learn about the situation, it sounded like the return to normalcy had already begun.

“When I first found out I was just like, ‘I’m going to have to deal with it,’” Freeman said. “But it’s just going to be a few adjustments I’m going to have to do in my life now. To hear that, it was tough at first, but I know that with me, I can deal with something like this.”

Freeman first showed signs of the disease last Saturday before an afternoon game against Notre Dame, symptoms that at that time were attributed to a stomach virus. He traveled with the team to West Virginia for a Monday night game, but took a turn for the worse Saturday night and was sent back to campus and Georgetown University Hospital.

On Monday, Freeman was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease he said he shares with his paternal grandmother. It is not yet known whether Freeman has the Type I or the less serious Type II form of the disease.

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As dozens of other churches in the District of Columbia are banding together to protest D.C.’s new marriage equality law, which went into effect yesterday, Georgetown’s Dumbarton United Methodist Church has announced that its pastor and all 12 other ordained clergy will recognize and perform ceremonies for same sex couples.

“As a pastor, I am called to extend care and grace to all people even as Jesus did,” Pastor Mary Kay Totty said after all 28 members of the Dumbarton Church Council voted to support same-sex marriage, according to a press release from the church. “We celebrate love and loyalty wherever it is found.”

Specifically, the Council voted “to honor and celebrate the wedding of any couple, licensed in the District of Columbia, who seek to commit their lives to one another in marriage.”

Given the congregation’s history, their support of same-sex marriage is not surprising. The Week explains that in 1987, the oldest Methodist church in D.C. made a point to “publicly welcomed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families into full participation in the life and ministries of the congregation.”

But in the greater context of the Methodist Church, the move is risky. The United Methodist Church does not recognize same-sex marriages, and no other Methodist church in D.C. has promised to do so.

Acknowledging the risk, Totty said that marriage equality is about justice and civil rights.

“We rejoice that at this point in history,” she said. “The arc of justice now bends toward equal recognition of marriage for all couples.”

Via the Georgetown Week

The Georgetown University Board of Directors have approved a 3 percent tuition increase and 2 percent increase in room and board charges for the 2010-2011 school year, Blue and Gray is reporting.

The increases will bring the cost of tuition up to $39,768 from this year’s $38,616, and the total cost of a Georgetown education for the year will increase to $52,443.

“We understand that the lagging economy is having a real impact on our students and their families,” Provost James O’Donnell said. “These uncertain times require that we balance the need to limit tuition growth with the university’s commitment to supporting our top notch faculty and providing exceptional academic programs and services.”

Blue and Gray notes that hikes increase next year’s total cost of attending Georgetown by less than 3 percent of this year’s cost. The Board also approved an 8 percent increase of the school’s financial aid budget to accommodate the more than 55 percent of students who draw from financial aid every year.

Tuition has increased at Georgetown’s other schools, too. At the Medical Center, for instance, the cost a degree in medicine has increased from $42,803 to $43,616. An MBA student’s annual tuition will rise from $41,952 to $45,984. And it will cost $45,105 a year to pursue a law degree, up from $43,750. (Of course, those can be sold). You can see all the tuition changes here (PDF).

Last year around this time, the Board approved a 2.9 percent tuition hike. They cited the recession then, too, and pointed out that it was the smallest tuition increase Georgetown had ever imposed. Last year, the increase was coupled with an 18 percent increase in the need-based scholarship budget.

H*yas for Choice and United Feminists’ announcement that they were undertaking a joint campaign to pressure Georgetown into changing its reproductive rights policies has upset or confounded a number of students.

Now, members of several Catholic groups on campus have responded with a letter to President John DeGioia in support of the University’s current policies, in which they aim to refute the arguments made by HFC and UF that a Jesuit University can and should provide contraceptives, comprehensive sexual education in its medical facilities, and allow for greater dialogue about related topics.

“The students who are currently advocating this ‘Plan A’ campaign fail to understand our identity; they use terms such as ‘Catholic,’ ‘Jesuit,’ and ‘cura personalis’ without a basic understanding of their significance. Although perhaps not grounded in a willful ignorance, their argument nonetheless demonstrates a thorough and pervasive hostility for Georgetown as a Catholic institution rooted in the rich tradition of the Society of Jesus,” the letter states.

Here’s the full letter, which was sent to Vox by Georgetown Academy Editor David Gregory (COL ‘10):

Dear President DeGioia,

It has come to our attention that United Feminists and H*yas for Choice have recently submitted an open letter to your office and the University community at large. We are writing in response in order to point out the errors within their campaign and thought process. We do this not to over-dramatize this issue – which has resurfaced on a regular basis over the past two decades – or to belittle the University’s competency with regards to handling this campaign. We simply write to support our beloved University’s ideals and identity, which inhere within every facet of Georgetown’s operations and campus life.

The students who are currently advocating this “Plan A” campaign fail to understand our identity; they use terms such as “Catholic,” “Jesuit,” and “cura personalis” without a basic understanding of their significance. Although perhaps not grounded in a willful ignorance, their argument nonetheless demonstrates a thorough and pervasive hostility for Georgetown as a Catholic institution rooted in the rich tradition of the Society of Jesus. They advocate for “dialogue,” yet fail to engage in true dialogue given their ignorance of Catholic Social Teaching; there can be no dialogue without preliminary understanding, only empty accusations.

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Sex Positive Week 2010—a week geared toward helping students feel comfortable talking openly about sex and sexuality—is wrapping up. For its part, the Voice was pleased to see the University fund SPW for a second year in a row. “SPW is a much-needed antidote to the limited, overwhelmingly conservative dialogue that currently takes place on campus about sexuality,” wrote its editorial board.

How limited and overwhelmingly conservative? Well, recently, the Voice came across a curious treatise on the Georgetown University Counseling and Psychiatric Services website called the “Top Ten Reasons Why Dating is Better Than Hooking Up.”

Vox thinks this list—which more or less argues that STIs, emotional pain, pressure to go sexually farther than you’re comfortable with, pregnancy, pregnancy ending in abortion, unreciprocated feelings, and walks of shame are never risks in dating and always risks of hooking up—is a good example of the conservative (and sometimes ridiculous) platforms Georgetown has found itself capable of espousing in the past.

In an e-mail, Phil Meilman, the Director of CAPS, suggested that CAPS had not been aware of the existence of the page.

“It has been there for at least four years, if not longer, and we are unsure who authored it or posted it. However, we do not believe it is appropriate for our website and we are removing it.”

Thank goodness. Here’s a look at what one anonymous sage at CAPS once found appropriate to tell students of Georgetown (And for your reference, the full text of what was on the page is after the jump.):

• “4 ) With dating, the worst thing you will go home with is a doggie bag”

  That’s a reference to STIs. Apparently, it is physically impossible for people who are dating to transmit STIs, lie about having STIs, assume they don’t need to get tested for STIs and transmit them, or not know they have STIs. Or engage in any behavior that would make any of those things possible.

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