First off, we’d like to give an official Vox Populi welcome to the Class of 2015, for officially graduating from “pre-frosh” to bona fide freshmen. As you begin your career on the Hilltop, you’re going to notice that, although your fellow classmates may have different interests and hail from different corners of the Garden State, there is one habit that unifies the student body like no other: Complaining about the University. Here, Vox has compiled a rundown of Hoyas’s most common topics of complaint, why they do so, and how to deal with them a little more effectively.
Facilities
Why we complain: Blame it on Target catalogues that show college dorms with enough room for home theaters and popcorn machines, but most kids go to college under the delusion that their dorms will be big, perfectly furnished, and spotless. So it’s easy to forget before moving in that your room has been lived in by an unfathomable number of people, many with doubtlessly questionable hygiene and destructive living habits, before you. So your blinds might fall off (Editor’s Note: Mine did), your toilet might overflow, your lights will burn out, and you’ll have to wait some undesirably long amount of time before Maintenance comes around to fix them.
What to do instead: Make sure you report everything, and we do mean everything, in the Room Condition Report you fill out in the beginning of the year—it’ll keep you from being charged for the mess that the inhabitants of yesteryear left in their wake. If you have any problems with your room’s facilities that you really can’t deal with on your own (burnt-out light bulbs, broken drawers, even low water pressure in your shower), put in a work request immediately: Sure, it will still take a couple of days, but the worst thing you can do is wait.
[Editor's Note: This post was originally published last year.]
We know you’ve already started studying, which puts you miles ahead of most of us here at Vox. But here’s a couple tips for places to go if you find yourself a living like a refugee in Lauinger.
Our suggestions:
Hariri Building. Once the hidden gem for on-campus studying, Hariri still calls the sleepless masses with its plentiful desks, power outlets, and free coffee. Unfortunately, only MSB students can reserve the precious study rooms, but many are open anyway. Also, while the building might not have a Corp stalwart like Midnight Mug, it’s close enough to Vital Vittles and Uncommon Grounds that a late-night snack break isn’t out of the question.
Blommer Science Library. Tucked away on the third floor of the Reiss Science Center, Blommer is Lau’s oft-forgotten, nerdy sibling. Study here and you will be neither seen nor heard.
The Car Barn. Former Vox editor Juliana Brint gushed over the Car Barn a couple years ago, writing, “[it has] lots of tables and couches, tons of outlets, [and] multiple vending machines. It’s got its own microwave, and it’s right near one of the nicest bathrooms on campus.” Consider us sold.
Walsh Building, 4th Floor. No internet. No people. No distractions. When you need to hunker down, Walsh is the place to go. Who would’ve guessed that the University’s shoddy wireless access could be helpful once in a while?
Off-campus WiFi spots. Although it’s a bit extreme to leave campus, sometimes a self-imposed exile works wonders to stop procrastination. Barnes and Noble on M Street is close enough that the trip won’t be a hassle and there’s plenty of food and tables to go around one you settle down. If you’re not the “book superstore” type, don’t forget to look at some of the WiFi locations Jim McGrory has suggested.
After the jump, check out some of the University’s suggested study spots.
It’s been a while, but Vox Talks is back. Last Wednesday, we asked every student in Lauinger Library at 4:30 a.m. what they wanted from their GUSA President. Candidates, take heed!
This midterm season, a new option has opened up for students who tire of the brutal Lauinger Memorial Library.
Those who yearn for a more civilized studying experience would be well-advised to head up Wisconsin to the newly reopened Georgetown Public Library. The library, which was destroyed in a fire in 2007, moved from its temporary M Street location to return to its original, 1935-built home at 3260 R Street.
What could the GPL possibly have that Lauinger doesn’t? It’s more of an issue of what the GPL doesn’t have—namely, overachieving underclassmen in their pajamas, a snack machine that is always out of fruit snacks, bathrooms that are constantly in a state of inexplicable disarray, a vampiric lack of natural light … you get the picture.
After the jump, we’ve put together a list of pros and cons to help you decide if you want to ditch Lauinger for the new GPL digs.
This week’s in Features, Nico Dodd and Sean Quigley profile first-generation college students and how they transition to Georgetown.
“About eight percent of this year’s freshman class, approximately 120 students, are first-generation college students,” they write. “They come from families and, in some cases, communities where attending college is the exception, not the norm.”
This week’s “Worst Idea” covers two of Georgetown’s silliest property-related decisions: building Lauinger Library as a brutalist interpretation of Healy Hall, and selling WGTB’s radio license. We’ll keep the polls open for your votes until next week, when we’ll move onto the next round.
Lauinger Library
When visitors cross under Georgetown’s august front gates, they see one of the best prospy-traps in all of U.S. collegedom. The regal form of White-Gravenor, the picturesque front lawn, Copley Hall—DC’s most gratuitously castle-like dormitory—and the soaring Flemish Romanesque-style Healy Hall comprise an unbroken panorama of magnificent pulchritude. But, then there’s Lauinger.
Lauinger Library is ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Today’s “Worst Idea Georgetown’s Ever Had” isn’t really a contest. Heller is going to recall the egregious actions of a group of conservative blowhards who sold off a free-speech outlet and educational opportunity because they were—well, conservative blowhards. It was a terrible decision, but it didn’t put a hulking, concrete behemoth on campus that visually assaults thousands of students every day.
Changes to the University’s notoriously lax computer usage policy, which once led Washington City Paper to name Lauinger Library as one of D.C.’s best places to mooch internet access, will make it more difficult for guests to use the library’s computers.
“The impetus for the Library’s new computer policy is to ensure that our services and spaces are readily accessible to members of the Georgetown University Community,” Jessica Pierce, Executive Assistant to University Librarian Artemis Kirk, wrote in an email. “Lauinger Library is a heavily used building and we are constantly challenged to ensure that our resources are available to our primary users.”
Under the new policy, which takes effect on August 5, only 12 computers in the library will remain available to guests: ten on the third floor between the circulation and reference desks, one next to the printer on the second floor, and one across from the elevator on the fifth floor.
When the City Paper article was written last February, University guests had access to nearly every computer in the library, save for the ones meant for specialized tasks, such as editing or scanning.
Although the new policy seems to force out guests, it simultaneously “encourage[s] guests to bring their own laptops to Lauinger Library and take advantage of the free wireless network available throughout the building.”
Vox doesn’t know what’s worse: the way this policy tiptoes around the fact that many of the library’s “guests” are homeless people, or how it suggests that every inch of Lau has wireless internet access.
Last month, Sotheby’s auctioned a 1776 broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence that sold for more than $500,000. While the auction fell short of its $600,000 to $800,000 estimated sale price, press coverage revealed a surprising fact—only four similar documents exist, and Georgetown owns one of them.
According to Manuscripts Processor Ted Jackson, Lauinger Library’s first Head of Special Collections, Marty Berringer, discovered the documents in the University Archives in 1971. Prior to Berringer’s discovery, it sat unrecognized in the Archives for “an unknown length of time.”
After signing the Declaration, the founding fathers tasked printers and couriers to distribute broadside copies to the colonial capitals. The broadsides—essentially large sheets used for public announcements—informed most colonists of their newly-realized independence.
“It would have been the closest thing they had to a news flash,” Jackson said.
Although couriers distributed hundreds of broadsides, a unique printing style made Georgetown’s copy rare—the document is set in four columns without an imprint that denotes printer or place of publication. (A 2000 exhibit titled “Treasures of Lauinger Library” attributes the broadside to a printer in Salem, Massachusetts.) In addition to the privately-auctioned broadside, only Harvard University, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Peabody Essex Museum own copies.
Jackson was unsure if the document has been appraised, but suggested that it is valuable.
“It’s possible that our copy would approach the value of the other one,” he said.
Did finals creep up on anybody else? Suddenly, Lauinger Library is filled with students—some cramming, some writing, and some watching Hulu to avoid impending work. As in semesters past, expect Lau to be packed until that very last final on May 15.
To help out, Voice staffers suggested some of their favorite (i.e. lesser-known) study spots both on and off-campus.
Our suggestions:
Hariri Building. The hidden gem for on-campus studying. Hariri is clean, often empty, and has a ton of working power outlets. (Take that, Lau!) While the building might not have a Corp stalwart like Midnight Mug, it’s close enough to Vital Vittles and Uncommon Grounds that a late-night snack break isn’t out of the question.
Blommer Science Library. Tucked away on the third floor of the Reiss Science Center, Blommer is Lau’s oft-forgotten, nerdy sibling. Study here and you will be neither seen nor heard.
The Car Barn. Former Vox editor Juliana Brint gushed over the Car Barn last December, writing, “[it has] lots of tables and couches, tons of outlets, [and] multiple vending machines. It’s got its own microwave, and it’s right near one of the nicest bathrooms on campus.” Consider us sold.
Walsh Building, 4th Floor. No internet. No people. No distractions. When you need to hunker down, Walsh is the place to go. Who would’ve guessed that the University’s shoddy wireless access could be helpful once in a while?
Off-campus WiFi spots. Although it’s a bit extreme to leave campus, sometimes a self-imposed exile works wonders to stop procrastination. Barnes and Noble on M Street is close enough that the trip won’t be a hassle and there’s plenty of food and tables to go around one you settle down. If you’re not the “book superstore” type, don’t forget to look at some of the WiFi locations Jim McGrory wrote about last August.
After the jump, check out some of the University’s suggested study spots.
Admit it—you’ve walked across Healy Lawn, looked to the west, and thought, “Damn. Lau is an ugly, ugly building.” But, let’s try to hold our tongues for the next few days out of respect for the dead.
John Carl Warnecke, the library’s main architect, passed away earlier this month after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last November. Warnecke was 91.
In addition to Lauinger, Warnecke designed President John F. Kennedy‘s grave site in Arlington National Cemetery, the Hart Senate Office Building, and buildings at Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. He is also remembered for restoring the historic row-houses surrounding Lafayette Square in downtown D.C. after First Lady Jackie Kennedy discovered plans to build office buildings on the land.
“He was a modernest who recognized the importance of contextualism,” colleague Harold Adams said in the Washington Post‘s obituary.
So, maybe it’s time to reconsider the artistic merit of Lauinger. After all, if Provost James O’Donnell saw fit to describe the library as “that beacon of our commitment to learning and inquiry,” it can’t be all that bad. You know, except for fights over power outlets, the food and drink ban, and the soul-crushing experience that is pulling an all-nighter on the 1st floor. Aside from that stuff, it’s great!
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
First off, we’d like to give an official Vox Populi welcome to the Class of 2015, for officially graduating from “pre-frosh” to bona fide freshmen. As you begin your career on the Hilltop, you’re going to notice that, although your fellow classmates may have different interests and hail from different corners of the Garden State, there is one habit that unifies the student body like no other: Complaining about the University. Here, Vox has compiled a rundown of Hoyas’s most common topics of complaint, why they do so, and how to deal with them a little more effectively.
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