Just in time for tomorrow’s big event, Georgetown Athletics has put a “2009 Midnight Madness” video up on its website, and it’s well worth a watch:
Unfortunately, the big take-away from the video isn’t “Wow, I’m so amped for the 2009-10 Georgetown Basketball season!” but rather, “Wow, Georgetown’s has strange ideas about what makes for an acceptable pump-up video.”
With four students (one of whom is inexplicably sporting a crazy wig) solemnly/creepily intoning “Our school … Our pride … Our blood … Our team … Our tradition … Our time … Hoya … Saxa … We are … Georgetown,” the video mostly just makes us wonder how Georgetown has fallen so far from the “Beast of the Big East” glory days.
For Georgetown, late September means one thing: GUSA Senate elections! Vox stopped by the candidate interest meetings that were held earlier this week to talk to some of the would-be Senators.
Interviews by Tommy Buller, videography and editing by Joe Mancino.
Last week, the Athletic Department held tryouts for potential Jack the Bulldog mascots. Three hopefuls—all freshmen—showed up to audition for two open spots (since there are so many obligations, three students share mascot duties).
What does it take to make a good mascot? Dance skills; the ability to successfully execute high fives, low fives and fist bumps with limited visibility; and a high tolerance for hot, smelly costumes (one potential Jack almost threw in the towel before his audition started due to the stench).
Because the mascot’s identity is a highly-guarded secret, Vox wasn’t allowed to interview the candidates, but we are able to show you footage from their try-out routines. Enjoy!
The Washington Post captured this video of the much-hyped sculling explosion that CBS Paramount executed at 3 p.m. this afternoon (not between 9:30 and 12:00, as announced) for a pilot episode of “Washington Field.”
Was the special effects show worth the hype or lamesauce?
Spectators wait for the pyrotechnics
Video used with permission from the Washington Post Photo by Lexie Herman for the Voice.
Fear not, SFS students, your life won’t always suck! Blue and Gray reports that on Sunday night, The Academy awarded Megan Mylan (SFS `92) an Oscar in Best Documentary Short Subject for her film Smile Pinki. The film “focuses on two children born with cleft palates who live in poor, rural India.”
The Smile Train was behind the operations in the film. When Mylan accepted the Oscar, she took a heartfelt moment to thank Pinki, who was in the audience, saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, for letting me tell your inspiring story.”
Mylan also co-directed the Emmy-nominated documentary “Lost Boys of Sudan” and B and G says a film about racial equality in Brazil is in the works.
This Thursday, ResLife will bring the “Tunnel of Oppression” to Georgetown for the first time. The program, which has been around for ten years, is meant to encourage students to confront issues or race, discrimination, homophobia, abuse, and gender by sending students down a hallway (if you don’t have a Tunnel—Georgetown’s will be in McCarthy) filled with graphic images or images meant to be thought-provoking and recordings of hateful speech.
ResLife’s description of the event doesn’t give away whether or not Georgetown’s will be particularly intense:
“This powerful program combines elements of live action scenarios, videos, picture, words and symbols to educate about the types of oppression in our society, and how campus communities members can combat it. We encourage campus community members to participate and experience the tunnel.”
When Santa Clara University hosted theirs, for example, here’s what they expected:
“Eerie whispers will express remorse in the darkness, sexist catcalls will bark loudly at passersby and startling images of sexual assault victims will stare students in the face as they make their way through a winding, in-your-face course of multi-media displays.”
So it’ll be interesting to see what we get. After all, the girl in the video above seems to be afraid of what she created. Another YouTube renditions of the Tunnel are disturbing—distractingly so?
At the end of the Saturday Georgetown-Syracuse basketball game, fans in the Syracuse student section threw beers cups and water bottles at the group of Georgetown students seated nearby. Syracuse’s senior associate athletic director Pat Campbell said the Carrier Dome, where the game was held, had assigned security to the area earlier in the game, according to Syracuse.com:
“We were all pretty surprised when we saw all those gray shirts in the student section,” Campbell said. “They never should have been there. The problem is we have a group sales department within the box office. We made a sale and didn’t realize it was to a Georgetown group up in that area.
“When we saw them up there we assigned a security presence,” Campbell said.
Even the acerbic Hoya Suxa was embarrassed, writing, “I have no idea what would cause someone to throw things at another individual, but I know that the outcome of a basketball game is not the forum.”
This week, the Voice, which has interviewed all the candidates running for GUSA President and Vice President, will give their endorsement of one or two lucky pairs. But don’t take our word for it! Vox wants you to make a (more or less) informed decision when roughly a fourth of you decide to vote in this year’s GUSA election!
We’ve sent surveys to all eight presidential candidates and will post them as we receive them. Below, Calen Angert explains why he and VP candidate Jason Kluger deserve to be elected as top execs. If video’s more your thing, check theirs out here.
What are three things you’d try to accomplish as GUSA execs?
Improve career services. We hope to make career services not just a resource for students to discover, but a proactive service which comes to the students. Through short consultations, the career center could achieve two goals: raise awareness of its existence/usefulness to the student body and help students to consider their future life goals/plans. While job placement is an important function of career services, it should also consider a wider scope when directing students for life after the hilltop. Career services should help students develop a life or career plan on an individual basis as opposed to catering primarily to those with defined goals.
Work on student safety. After sitting on the Student Safety Advisory Board, I understand that only so much funding and resource allocation goes towards student safety. Though I support advocacy for increased funding, the current economic crisis is a harsh reality check for such dreams. However, within the confines of the safety budget, we can restructure and streamline operations to create funds from previously committed monies. Through student lead initiatives, such as student drivers for Safe Rides, the decreased hiring costs could allow for an expansion of Safe Rides’ hours of operation or its fleet.
The Georgetown Fund: While we would normally suggest intellectual life and improved relations between students and professors for one of my main issues, we will substitute a part of our platform which received less attention in this campaigning period. The executive branch works under a $60,000+ budget, and we intend to allocate $30,000 of it for student groups in need of funding. Under this plan, student organizations may apply for money and a GUSA co-sponsorship to host an event. Considering the already scarce funding available to students, the Georgetown Fund would provide simple access to much needed money. We believe GUSA should serve the students, and funding their activities helps to show this support.
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.
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