Dear class of 2017,

Welcome to your first post on Vox Populi, the blog for on-campus newsmagazine the Georgetown Voice. We will continue to delight and inform you over the next four years and beyond.

You’ve made it through years of hellish workloads, early mornings, late nights that have turned into early mornings, sports practices and Model United Nations, years of working toward a perfect GPA, getting into your dream school, and all-around overachieving. So congratulations, and welcome to Georgetown, where it will be completely, utterly, earth-shatteringly similar.

A few things will be different from high school, however, and that’s why Vox is here with the Prefrosh Preview—a weekly post to help you maneuver your way through your first year at Georgetown. We’ll cover topics ranging from academics to the party scene, so be sure to check back on Thursdays for updates.

The first key difference between Georgetown and your high school, and here Vox is definitely underestimating the number of kids who went to Phillips Exeter, is that your high school does not have the same kind of rich history and traditions that Georgetown does, tailgates excluded.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday afternoon, Internet2, a community of academic, industry, and government leaders who work together to find ways to advance global research and education, is hosting its annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Georgetown President Jack DeGioia, along with members of the Jesuit Refugee Service and the World Bank will deliver the meeting’s keynote address.

DeGioia’s address follows a trip taken last year by Georgetown faculty and staff to the Kakuma Refugee Camp, which houses refugees from conflicts in Kenya. The camp is home to over 100,000 refugees, many from Sudan and Somalia, and JRS has been there for months providing aid and protection to the refugees.

Yesterday, Vox interviewed International Director of JRS Peter Balleis S.J., who explained the role technology plays in JRS’s educational programs.

In recent times, however, JRS has been able to provide the refugees with far more than aid materials and physical protection. JRS now has a broad network of educators, who, with the help of modern technology, are able to provide high-level education to the refugees in their camps.

Read the rest of this entry »

Student groups and Jesuits on campus have expressed extreme disdain for the events that unfolded yesterday night at Dahlgren Quad. Tuesday night at 10:30pm, the steps of Dahlgren Chapel were found covered with alcohol, open and unopened condom packs, and condoms wrapped around bananas. A few hours later, a DPS officer and several students went to the scene to clean up the mess.

Rev. Patrick D. Rogers, Director of Campus Ministry, and Father Kevin O’Brien, Vice President for Mission and Ministry, were both appalled and disappointed at the reflection these events have on Georgetown’s student body.

“What is so profoundly disappointing to me and to many in our community is that as far as anyone can tell it was Georgetown’s own daughters and sons that did this.  It’s about as childish a stunt as one could imagine.  One would hope that any student bright enough to get into Georgetown would have more respect for themselves,” Rogers said in an email. “What they did was not only incredibly immature, it was disrespectful to all those who hold, teach, or love the Catholic faith.”

Student leaders were equally scornful. GUSA Secretary of Mission and Ministry Laura West (COL ’13) and Undersecretary Jon-Matthew Hopkins (COL ’13) sent a press release earlier today asking for all students to be more respectful to sacred spaces in Georgetown. “To deface it with vandalism is disrespectful and hurtful to those who treasure the beauty and serenity of the Chapel and Quad,” the press release read. “As a community that represents and honors a diverse array of religious and humanist perspectives, we ask that all students demonstrate respect and reverence toward all of our sacred spaces on campus.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Maher, S.J.,(COL’ 82) Associate Dean of Georgetown College, will be leaving Georgetown University at the end of this academic year.

On Tuesday, Kevin Quinn, S.J., President of the University of Scranton, announced that Maher will be the founding executive director of the university’s newly created Jesuit Center. Maher has served on Scranton’s Board of Trustees.

The Center will “foster faculty and staff participation in the Jesuit higher educational mission, support faculty teaching and scholarship that advances the University’s Catholic and Jesuit character, and promote Ignatian spirituality within an interreligious context.”

During his tenure at Georgetown, Maher has become one of the most popular and well-known Jesuits on campus. In 2009, Maher received the Georgetown University College Democrats’ Alumnus of the Year Award. Fr. Maher is also known for his popular class “Jesuit Education.”

“I love teaching that course, and I told the president of Scranton that I would only make the move to Scranton if I could continue teaching it up there,” Maher wrote to Vox in an email.

Maher becomes the executive director of The Jesuit Center at the University of Scranton in July 2012. He assured Vox in an email that he plans to teach at Georgetown for the remainder of the academic year.

Read the full text of Fr. Quinn’s email to University of Scranton students after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

On April 27, Fr. John Langan, S.J., rector of the Jesuit Community at Georgetown, signed a letter supporting Hollman Morris, a Colombian filmmaker and journalist who had been the target of a smear campaign on the part of ex-Colombian president and University lecturer Alvaro Uribe.

Morris’ documentaries accuse the Colombian government of human rights abuses. Because of these controversial films, Uribe’s government is implicated in an attempt to link him with the leftist FARC guerilla forces

Officials in Colombia are also thought to be behind the U.S. decision to deny Morris a visa when he was asked to speak at a Harvard journalist’s fellowship last summer. This decision was later reversed.

Langan’s letter came as Morris appeared on campus last week to promote his new film, Impunity, which details trials against alleged paramilitaries in Colombia.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinal Newman Society, a group that aims to “renew and strengthen Catholic identity in Catholic higher education,” is attacking Georgetown College’s recent video “Jesuits at Georgetown” over the opening line of the video.

At the beginning of the video, Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J., associate dean of the College, says, “Our job as educators, and as priests really, is not to bring God to people, or even to bring people to God. God’s already there and the people are already there. Our job, our way, of living out our educational vocation is to ask the right questions, and to help young people ask those questions.”

CNS jumped on this quote, writing that the video never makes it clear that the Jesuits at Georgetown are trying to “bring students to the fullness of truth in the Catholic faith.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Providing a glimpse in to the Jesuit philosophy, the Georgetown College has created a video entitled “Jesuits at Georgetown.”

The video features Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., executive director of Campus Ministry, Fr. Ryan Maher, an associate dean in the College, and professors Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., and Fr. Christopher Steck, S.J.

In the video—which includes footage from the University Gaudete Sunday Mass, Steck’s weekly mass in New South, and Fr. Carnes teaching his government class—each Jesuit talks about their purpose and vision at the University.

Maher opens the video, saying, “Our job as educators and as priests is not to bring God to people, or even to bring people to God. Our job, our way, of living out our educational vocation is to ask the right questions, and to help young people ask those questions.”

Carnes—who came to Georgetown in the fall of 2009—said that while many people think of Jesuits as “old school,” his goal in class is to engage students. Carnes was instrumental in introducing iClickers to the University.

Maher mentions in the video that the Jesuits had a great impact on him as both a student and as a fellow priest, especially Fr. Thomas King, S.J.

He also reflected on why the Jesuits are central to Georgetown, saying, “What does our presence mean? What difference does it make? We are meant to embody in a particular way the tradition that animates and gives life to Georgetown and has for 200 years. We’re not the only ones, but we are asked to do it in a particular and unique way. In many ways we are the tenders of the fire.”

Kuna Malik Hamad, the lead videographer for the College, created “Jesuits at Georgetown”.

Jesuits at Georgetown from Georgetown College on Vimeo.

Despite there being only 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the country, nearly one in every ten members of the 112^th Congress has attended a Jesuit school for undergraduate or graduate studies.

A total of 53 members—41 in the House and 12 in the Senate—have attended a Jesuit secondary education institution.

In the House of Representatives leadership, the new Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) are both alumni of Jesuit universities, having attended Xavier and Georgetown, respectively. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), a Georgetown alumnus, remains as Assistant Majority Leader.

“With the many challenges facing our nation, we are happy that our Jesuit college and university alumni/ae continue to play important roles in Congress and the Administration. Their commitment to lead and to serve is in the best Jesuit tradition,” Fr. Charles Currie, S.J., president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities said in a statement.

Of the Jesuit schools represented, Georgetown leads the pack with 18 alumni, followed by Boston College with 7 alumni, and the College of the Holy Cross with 4 alumni.

Of the significantly large number of new members in Congress, three are Georgetown alumni.

There are also more than 30 alumni serving in roles in the Obama administration.

Last Thursday, the Jesuit Community invited Fr. Mauricio García Durán, S.J., director of the Center for Research and Popular Education, to assess the legacy of Álvaro Uribe, the former Colombian president and current Georgetown Distinguished Scholar.

In the wake of unprecedented violence in Colombia, García explained, Uribe adopted the “Democratic Security Policy,” which abandoned a decades-long peace process in favor of a direct military campaign against the left-wing guerrilla movement FARC. While García admitted that homicides and human rights violations decreased during Uribe’s administration, he also pointed out that the bloodshed only decreased to levels seen during the 1990s.

García also claimed that Uribe did little to stop the resurgence of right-wing paramilitary groups that emerged to combat the FARC, complaining that only two paramilitary leaders have been indicted although paramilitaries displaced 4 million people and illegally appropriated 6,500,000 hectares of mostly peasant land.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »