Everyone’s favorite, the Washington Post is a little late covering Georgetown University’s latest petty election scandal. In an article last Thursday, local reporter Ian Shapira recounts the history of the Stewards from beginning to end: from mysterious early 80′s founding to Jack Appelbaum’s (COL ’13) loss at the polls. Although the Post didn’t uncover much new information, the article features some amusing quotes and gave greater D.C. a chance to comment on Georgetown’s latest reputed instance of self-importance.

Even though the feelings of Vox readers range from aggressively indifferent to hostile on the Stewards, Vox thought these comments were just too funny to ignore.

First off, though, for some reason, apparently we’re calling Steward Throat a blogger now, a designation Vox takes offense to:

The anonymous blogger discovered the secret society’s internal e-mails and gleefully published the most amusing material: members deliberating over which ties to wear (Brooks Brothers, of course) and another insider venting about the “extremely left-wing tilt” of the Georgetown University campus tour.

The Post also got a hold of the Stewards’ founder, Manny Miranda (SFS ’82), who just ignored Vox‘s requests for comment. He, along with every other Steward, holds that the group is part of the good, social-justice, fellowship, service -type Catholics, not the secretive, white, conservative, scheming, political, -type Catholics.

Miranda said misperceptions about the group are the result of its support for Georgetown’s Catholic traditions. “Some of the projects we’re associated with are Catholic, but we don’t view them as political,” Miranda said. “We view them as honoring Georgetown’s Catholic identity.”

Read the rest of the comments on the WaPo article after the jump!

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Ezra Klein, blogger and columnist for Bloomberg and the Washington Post, opened his remarks, sponsored by the Lecture Fund, to a full lecture hall in Reiss yesterday by declaring it was “most annoying day of the year.”

He further explained, “There are days where all we do in the media is keep ourselves busy,” later continuing, “This Rosen thing is real bullshit,” referring to the recent attention to a comment made by CNN commentator Hilary Rosen on Twitter about Ann Romney and stay-at-home moms. A frustrated Klein considered the argument is utterly inconsequential: in November, no one will remember. He warned that there will be a lot more of these faux scandals until Election Day, and then concluded, “I hate campaigns.”

Klein expressed his disdain that for the proliferation of spinning, messaging, and strategy at the expense of the truth. Ads and smear campaigns, he argued, do not convince anyone who is not already decided. The Obama campaign will have the most money of a campaign in history, but “they will both have more than enough money to call each other jerks.”

What does convince people, however, is the economy. Klein admitted that he much prefers budgets, but wasn’t impressed by the campaigns’ proposals. “They have to get a thousand times more honest,” he remarked.

He boiled the election down to taxes. Comparing the Obama and Romney budget plans, this central point of difference becomes evident. “The heart of Obama’s economic philosophy is that the economy has been stacked against you,” Klein said, so it’s appropriate to tax the rich. Republicans on the other hand “care more about taxes than anything besides preserving Ronald Reagan’s memory,” Klein joked. Therefore, Romney’s budget depends on cutting social programs.

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This week, a report published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry revealed unhealthy levels of perchloroethylene, a common component of dry cleaning products that has been linked to such disorders as cancer and neurological damage, in clothing that has recently been dry cleaned. But this study is not the typical one published in scientific journals, as a significant portion of the research was done by a high school sophomore.

That sophomore, Alexa Dantzler of Arlington County’s Bishop O’Connell High School, took what started as a regular high school science project into the big leagues of chemistry with the help of Georgetown Professor Paul Roepe, currently a biochemistry professor and formerly the head of the Chemistry Department. According to a story in Friday’s issue of the Washington Post, Roepe responded to an email from Dantzler, requesting help with the chemical analysis in her project.

The study, which the two performed along with some research assistants from the University’s chemistry department, involved sewing patches of different fabrics into the insides of coats, sending them to different, unidentified dry cleaners, and then testing the patches for various chemicals.

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Easter has plenty of redeeming qualities—beautiful weather, a break that makes other schools envy our Jesuit heritage, and, of course, loads upon tooth-rotting loads of candy. But every year, there’s always one major damper on the sugary celebration, and that damper is animal-shaped, neon-colored, and tastes like a pile of squishy, grainy cardboard: Marshmallow Peeps.

But not everybody thinks that Peeps should be banned from our Easter Baskets. The Washington Post, for instance, seems to think that this oddly tasteless “treat” does  indeed have its place in this world, but that place is not in the mouths of disappointed children who really just wanted a Cadbury egg.

It’s as the central figures in timely, sometimes politically-conscious, and always creepily nightmarish Peep dioramas, which are given awful Peep portmanteau monikers and entered into WaPo‘s annual “Peep Show” contest.

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This weekend, The Washington Post followed up on its previous stories about Juan Gomez (MSB ’11), a senior who is about to graduate but risks deportation.

Gomez came to the United States from Colombia with his family in 1990 on tourist visas and during that time his father applied for asylum, claiming that paramilitary fighters had threatened his family. The petition, which took several years and allowed for the family to become acclimated with the country, was eventually rejected.

Despite the rejection of the petition, the family remained in the country until immigration officials raided the Gomez household in 2007.

Gomez’s parents were deported, but due to a strong lobbying campaign by classmates and teachers, Gomez, along with his brother, were allowed to stay in the country through private bills in Congress sponsored by Senator Chris Dodd.

As he wraps up his senior year, Gomez has already received a job offer from J.P. Morgan Chase’s Latin American division, the same place he interned this past summer.

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Pepco, Washington’s main power company and Georgetown’s electricity supplier, now ranks “near the bottom” in several surveys comparing power companies throughout the nation.

According to a Washington Post analysis, Pepco customers suffer through seventy percent more outages than those of other major companies. After finishing dead last in a 2008 study, Pepco simply stopped participating in the survey’s rankings.

As Georgetown and the D.C. area gear up for winter, Pepco’s reliability record proves troubling. During last year’s Snowmageddon, 98,000 Pepco customers lost power in an outage that took the company almost a week to resolve. In contrast, power company Dominion lost electricity to 105,000 customers, but responded by restoring power in just over a day.

Pepco’s regional president Thomas Graham told the Post that, “The number one commitment today at Pepco is to increase reliability,” the company continues to blame the real culprit behind their problems—trees.

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Let’s chalk one up for liberal education, folks. In a recent list of the strangest courses taught at D.C.-area schools, the Georgetown’s “Philosophy 194: Hallucinating” took the number one spot.

Taught by Dr. James Mattingly, the course asks some seriously profound questions, such as “How can we be sure that we’re not mistaken about everything?” and “What kinds of things can we know for sure?”

Other courses that made the Washington Post‘s list include “Ancient Egypt: Sex/Drugs/Rock” at Johns Hopkins, “Philosophy and Time Travel” at Maryland, and “Raising Chickens at Home” at Anne Arundel Community College.

While the Post‘s list made us chuckle, we think that they missed much odder courses. “Philosophy and Star Trek,” anyone?

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 thanks Eric Wind for the tip!

From time to time, the Washington Post attempts to provide good hyper-local coverage of D.C.—and they almost always fail stupendously. Recently, the Post found a new, similarly out-of-their-purview beat to epically fail at: college campuses.

Their college news blog, Campus Overload, features either tame rehashes of mildly interesting stories from campuses all over the country, or completely inane original stories. Par exemple, within the past week, Campus Overload offered readers such gems as this “hilarious video,” “Spring Breaking It Down,” and a totally vapid interview with Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ’11).

Vox has no idea what the point of this interview—and its thought-provoking questions, like, “What’s allowed and not allowed on your Facebook profile?” and “When’s the last time you pulled an all-nighter?”—was supposed to be. To show readers how the sleepless, social-networking other side lives?

To edify student government leaders on other campuses?:

[Post]: What advice do you have for students on other campuses who are launching student government campaigns?

[Angert]: Make sure your heart and head are in the right place, and tell the truth.

[Post]: What’s the best way to get to know your fellow student government members?

[Angert]: E-mail them or call them. Anyone I know who is involved with student government would love to meet and talk about current issues and future initiatives.

To show off the Post’s incredibly high editing standards, where “haha” is a word?:

[Post]: How much sleep do you usually get?

[Angert]: Too little, haha. I’m fully operable on 4 hours — anything less and my productivity suffers.

Beats us. Even the interview’s more substantive questions, about funding reform, mystify us. Who cares to read about that who isn’t a Georgetown student? And if some reform-minded soul was interested, why would they turn to the Post for their nuance-free, after-the-jump coverage of it?

Oh well. At least now we know what Angert’s favorite Georgetown bar is (Saloun), what his favorite admissions essay was, and what he wants to do when he grows up.

The perfect Post columnist to have love-hate relationship with

There’s some good news and some bad news for Georgetown in Jay Mathews’ recent Washington Post column.  The good news: He thinks Georgetown qualifies as an “elite” university!  The bad news: He doesn’t think going to an “elite” university is important in the slightest.

Mathews’ Monday article urges students to focus on their experiences in their respective colleges and not get caught up in the name or prestige.

The article cites examples of “heroes” who did and didn’t attend prestigious, brand-name schools to argue why the college doesn’t determine one’s success in life. Billionaire businessman Warren Buffett, for example, attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln; Oprah went to Tennessee State; and singer Bette Midler spent her college years at the University of Hawaii (I, for one, cannot imagine Bette Midler throwing a shaka sign).

Mathews concludes:

No one is sure where greatness comes from. These lists make clear that it does not have much to do with the name of the college on someone’s diploma …

Researchers Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger found that admirable character traits—persistence, imagination, energy—produce success in life no matter which college a person attends.

While it’s depressing how quickly Mathews dismisses Georgetown’s hard-fought elite status, it does makes us feel better to know that the annoyingly knowledgeable kid in Econ isn’t necessarily the next Wall Street tycoon—or at least one can hope.