According to The Sexist, the city’s most progressive sex column can be found in the American University Eagle. Co-written by three anonymous authors, the column has been a bit of a mixed bag, with high highs (tackling anal sex in an enlightened way) and low lows (the inaugural column kicked off with a disturbing date rape scenario). But the Sexist found enough promise in the column-writing threesome to give them a progressive score of seven.
Coming in second was the GW Hatchet‘s sex column. The Hatchet switches off between an anonymous male writer and an anonymous female writer, and tends to neglect the LGBTQ perspective, according to the Sexist, earning them a six on the progressive scale.
The Sexist gave Leahey props for using her real name and acknowledged the challenges inherent in writing a column for a relatively conservative paper where “vulgarity” is frowned upon, but took her to task for directing her columns at “desperate” heterosexual females. Ultimately, Leahey and The Hoya walked away with just four progressive points.
In case ourcoverage of the Hoya‘s delayed independence (not to mention their news story, editorial and letter from the editor) left you confused about the Media Board’s logic, Vox has some of the memos that show the Media Board’s reasoning behind their sanctions.
First, we have the memo Director of Student Programs Erika Cohen-Derr sent on behalf of the Media Board to the leadership of the Hoya on April 22 announcing their sanctions:
According to emails obtained by the Voice, in mid-April the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action filed a complaint with Media Board, the funding board that oversees student media, over the Hoya‘s April Fools Issue. On April 22, Media Board issued sanctions, including a one year delay of the Hoya‘s planned independence.
The Hoya appealed Media Board’s ruling, citing their unwillingness to remain tied to the University, but their appeal was denied on June 16, documents show. A three person appeals board composed of Father Christopher Steck, S.J., GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11), and Faculty Senate President Wayne Davis decided that Media Board had acted within their rights and that the ruling should not be overturned.
The Voice will have more information in our Friday issue.
This week Vox figured we’d give you some sense of institutional history by presenting a primer of the ten most widely-discussed campus news stories from the past couple years. 10. GUSA election debacles
GUSA Candidates, pre-squabbling
Georgetown’s student government, GUSA, doesn’t have a great record as far as presidential elections are concerned. In 2008, they experimented with instant run-off voting. They failed to conduct the election properly, though, and had to have a re-vote with the top four candidates.
This past year wasn’t much better. GUSA ditched IRV, but the election still devolved into chaos when the Election Commission disqualified two candidates hours before voting started. GUSA largely objected to the Election Commission’s decision, the election was suspended, complaints were filed, Election Commissioners resigned, and the disqualified candidates were ultimately reinstated.
9. Hoya independence and insensitivity
Students hold a sit-in after the Hoya‘s April Fools’ issue
The Hoya, Georgetown’s self-proclaimed “newspaper of record,” has been trying to go independent from the University for a quite a while. Indications were that they were set to go independent this coming year.
For the past couple weeks we’ve been wondering what’s going on with the Hoya‘s website. TheHoya.com has been displaying a variety of things—a standard issue “down for maintenance” message, ads for a web-hosting service and, briefly, their tech guy Ryan J. Zambon’s personal homepage—but not the actual Hoya website. Their website currently shows an article about the passing of Father King underneath the “down for maintenance” banner.
Doing maintenance during the summer’s no big, but being down for a whole two week stretch makes it seem like you’re doing a little more than standard-issue touch-ups.
According to Hoya Editor in Chief Kevin Barber, the site’s down as they switch servers in preparation for the eventual launch of a new website:
We’re currently in the process of switching our server prior to launching an entirely new web site. (No specific timetable on that.) The regular site should be back up fairly soon; for the time being we’ve restored our main two blogs [The Hoya Paranoia and Outside the Gates], and we also posted a story about Fr. King on our temporary main site because it was important news. Most of our new content during the summer thus far has been on our blogs.
It’s quite irritating, but the summer is obviously the best time to do this sort of work.
Want a shot at your own 15 seconds of internet micro-micro-fame? Start following us on Twitter (GtownVoxPop) and, if you’re connected to Georgetown, we’ll return the favor and you’ll automatically be in the running!
Scott Chessare witnessed a major intern gaffe involving the very dreamy Paul Rudd.
Nick Bunker was glad to get back to a place where the ambulances appreciate T-Pain.
It’s a bit of a challenge to describe dating columnist and alumna Julia Allison (COL `04) to anyone who isn’t already familiar with her micro-celebrity—perhaps because no two followers’ characterization of her are alike. While Wired finds that her successful cultivation of herself and byline as an internet franchise makes her an item of curiosity and microcosm of modern media, a particularly vitriolic Gawker post described this same friend- and fame-making as “laying it on thicker than a toddler spreading peanut butter.”
But Allison’s observers do tend to agree that her life is prone to overexposure, with most bloggers concluding that other bloggers are guilty of giving her career and antics way too much attention. And Allison’s having “a Facebook account, a Myspace page, a Flickr, a Twitter, a Friendfeed, four Tumblrs, three Movable Type blogs, two Vimeos, [and] one YouTube,” certainly keeps her personal life in the public domain, if not in the limelight.
In fact, about the only portion of Allison’s career that others haven’t picked over or that she hasn’t divulged in intense detail is her two-year tenure at The Hoya as Georgetown University’s first sex columnist (which isn’t to say that her college career escaped scrutiny altogether; her relationship with Congressman Harold Ford, an incident in which she allegedly tried to get a free grapefruit by claiming to be from the Post, and allegations of plagiarism have all been much ballyhooed). So on Friday, Vox met Allison at Tombs to get her to do just that. Below is part of the resultant interview—which she kicked off, by citing her Hoya editors for limiting the scope of her columns.
Vox: Wow, I didn’t even have to ask you a question. So, how much freedom did you enjoy with your columns?
Allison: So, the administration didn’t step in and sanction my columns, but the editors did. Here’s the thing. The editor that I had my first semester Junior year was very supportive. And then you know, the editors change every semester, and by the time I ended my tenure there, I had an editor who was very conservative. In January of my senior year, I got fired, and it was very dramatic. I mean, it was massive.
This afternoon, your favorite student journalists got dressed up for the Bunn Awards, the annual ceremony in which the University picks the best articles published in campus newspapers over the past year. I’m pleased to report that the Voice bounced back from a humiliating softball defeat yesterday with a very solid Bunn performance, picking up 11 awards and sweeping the reviews and features categories.
Listed below are the winners, all of which are great reads, especially for all of you looking to procrastinate on studying.
While on the subject of student journalism awards, congrats to the Hoya‘s former Editor in Chief Andrew Dwulet and current managing editor, Marrissa Amendolia, for making UWire’s Top 100 student journalists! Dwulet was picked for “[putting] his own health on the line to cover an outbreak of contagious disease on campus” and Amendolia was honored for expanding the Guide from 12 pages to 16.
Hidden among the nine (and counting) University emails that assailed undergraudates’ inboxes this evening was a message from President Degioia expressing his regret over the recent acts of vandalism around campus and The Hoya‘s divisive April Fools’ issue. Just like we said!
Writing, “I would like to be clear in stating that it is unacceptable for any member of our community to be subjected to harassing or discriminatory conduct or behavior. We can and must do better,” DeGioia announced that he will hold a community meeting on Monday, April 20th at 5:00 in the ICC Auditorium. There, he will “[share] thoughts on some of the steps we can all take together—as students, faculty and staff—to build a more welcoming and inclusive community.” He also may or may not have issued a veiled thank-you to the SCUnity team for their research.
In other Hoya news, Hoya members will discuss which of the community’s suggestions from last Tuesday’s forum they will try to incorporate into their structure (like getting better community feedback and staying more in-touch with community issues). Their board will vote on these suggestions late tomorrow night, and Voice News will have the whole story on Thursday.
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.
WWCD: What Would Carrie Do?
GUSA Candidates, pre-squabbling
Students hold a sit-in after the Hoya‘s April Fools’ issue
Julia Allison in Tombs
Entries (RSS)