Looking back on University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg's legacy after 18 years at the helm of The George Washington University will inevitably invoke nostalgia, fondness and anger - depending on whom you ask. He has been here too long to simply go down in history as a good or bad president.
In a Feb. 27 Hatchet editorial essay, Adam Connor wrote about a personal catastrophe that probably sent chills right into the very bones of most students at GW. His iPod died ("iSolated: iPods and an alternate reality," p. 4). Worse, his old iPod also died.
Authors note: As I write this, Art Buchwald is in a hospice in Washington, D.C. He wants to spend his final days with friends and family. This is my memory of the one time our paths crossed. From my very first day of college in September of 1965 at George Washington University in Washington, D.
During the spring semester of 2002, the Palestinian Intifada was at its height. Multiple suicide bombings occurred every week in Israeli caf?s and on buses. Israel reoccupied Palestinian population centers, bulldozing houses and launching missiles aimed at top figures in Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Last week, Hillel Director Robert Fishman sent an organizational e-mail over the Hillel listserv accusing me of being a terrorist. The claims include that I have "led chants (of) 'Death to Jews'" and "openly admitted to associating with suicide bombers." Needless to say, I have not done either; in fact, all of Fishman's accusations are appalling lies with absolutely no basis in reality.
There is always that one person in the gang that becomes "the gooey stuff" that holds everyone together. In "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown," that happens to be my favorite character, Sid, a lisping sloth voiced by John Leguizamo. Brought to us by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios, the second installment of the animated feature is finally here.
Some plays have stuck around because of their quality and continued relevance. And then there is Arena Stage's The Rainmaker. The Rainmaker is dated in the worst way: it presents a central situation so old fashioned it seems absurd. Here's the deal: The Currys live on a ranch somewhere in the western United States during a cattle-killing drought.
One might experience an extreme sense of d?j? vu while watching New Line Cinema's "Take the Lead," as it seems to be a mixture of "Dangerous Minds," "Save the Last Dance," "Coach Carter" and "Dead Poets Society," with a dash of "Welcome Back Kotter" and "The White Shadow" thrown in.
A few hundred students are still without housing assignments for next year and may not get an answer until the end of the semester, University Campus Housing Director Seth Weinshel said. There are still about 200 students left on the guaranteed and non-guaranteed waitlists combined.
It is 9:10 on a Tuesday night. A handful of GW students are hurrying into a conference room tucked away on the fourth floor of the Marvin Center. Already present in the room is a student waiting expectantly behind freckles and black-rimmed glasses. Cool and collected, junior Morgan Corr raises the gavel and calls the Student Association Senate to order.
Record companies beware: the Internet is taking over. Kids in garage bands across America are logging on to MySpace.com, one of the biggest destinations in the do-it-yourself industry. Once a haven for self-absorbed teenagers taking pictures of themselves at weird angles ("MySpace: The Movie" is a favorite on YouTube.
The second Wednesday of each month, Gate 54, the lounge club of D.C.'s popular Caf? Saint-Ex, allows its clubgoers to experience typical club music from very atypical DJs. These self-made music masters are a new breed of MCs for the digital age, aptly titled MP3Js.
As May quickly approaches for graduating seniors, some are still asking the big question: what do you do after college? Many students get jobs on Capitol Hill or go on to graduate school. But 2004 School of Business graduate Gabe Smiles decided to take a job on K Street at a litigation support company (or what Smiles describes as Kinkos on steroids).
Indie rockers Ben Lee and Aqualung are performing at Mount Vernon's annual spring Fountain Day, according to Lee's Web site. Aqualung's Web site has not yet announced the concert. The Mount Vernon Programming Council's Web site has yet to announce the concert.
As the house parties around campus start to become more constant and the weather beckons me to stay and play outside, my drinking priorities in the past couple of weeks have shifted. After a year of hearing my roommate talk about how awesome brunch is in D.
Maybe it's just because the weather is finally nice again, but April is bringing some serious live music to the D.C. area practically every night of the week. Students won't even have to leave campus to see three great big-name shows this month, with celebrated rapper Talib Kweli headlining Spring Fling at University Yard on Saturday, April 8.
ABBA, Ace of Base, The Cardigans. Many Swedish bands can be pigeon-holed into the genre of kitschy Swede-pop with relative ease and accuracy. Not all of them, though. The country's latest export, The Sounds, have taken the derivative synth-pop of their 1980's counterparts and infused it with a decidedly American punk appeal.
4/7 - Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers w/ Kenin, 9:30 Club, $15 The Influence, Grog & Tankard, $10 (Live at WRGW 2-4 p.m.) 4/8 - The Derek Trucks Band, 9:30 Club, $20 Talib Kweli, University Yard, FREE Downtown Singapore - WRGW Studio (listen on-air) 4/9 - Matisyahu, Smith Center, $16 on GWorld Neko Case, 9:30 Club, $20 4/10 - The Sounds, 9:30 Club, $15 Ghostface Killah, 9:30 Club, $20 4/11 - Blackalicious w/ Lifesavas, 9:30 Club, $20 Franz Ferdinand w/ Death Cab for Cutie, D.
If you have $5 Got a secret? Frank Warren has thousands of them. He's the curator of the PostSecret project, an artistic endeavor in which he elicited secrets from ordinary citizens all over the world on postcards. Now he's bound the secrets into a book, "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives," which he'll be signing at Barnes and Noble in Rockville, Md.
Quentin Tarantino has ruined the cinema. Yes, with his wildly popular 1994 crime opus "Pulp Fiction" he blew open the floodgates for independent filmmakers in the mid-90s and jump-started an otherwise torpid American film market. But as with all messiahs and revolutionaries, the great leader brought with him lesser followers - filmmakers satisfied only to emulate Tarantino's warped stories from the underground and snappy style of writing.
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, the erudite Brooklynite who has left his imprint on every facet of The George Washington University, announced Tuesday night his retirement effective July 2007, when his contract expires. By that time he will have been president for 19 years, making him the third-longest-serving leader in the University's history.
"I just felt like it was time," Trachtenberg, who was contemplating retirement for the last year, told The Hatchet late Tuesday night.
The University's Board of Trustees plans this semester to establish a search committee responsible for choosing the replacement of President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. Board of Trustees Chairman Charles Manatt said the board has been conversing with Trachtenberg for more than a year about his plans for retirement, and that the decision was made final about three weeks ago.
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg will step down as someone who put GW on the map institutionally. But others see him more as someone who altered the Foggy Bottom map detrimentally. In the 18 years that Trachtenberg has stood at the helm of GW, he has transformed Foggy Bottom from a quiet residential area to a booming center of activity, to the dismay of many residents.
While many will look ahead toward new leadership at GW with about a year left of a Stephen Joel Trachtenberg presidency, some will find themselves looking back, examining who exactly this man was who reshaped the character and reputation of the University - and how he got to where he did. Anyone asking Trachtenberg about the greatest factors affecting his formative years would hear mention of one particular influence: James Madison High School in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg got a lot of advice from his food Tuesday. On the day he announced his retirement from GW after nearly 20 years, his soda cap told him "You're doing the right thing." A late dinner at a local Chinese restaurant yielded a fortune cookie that said, "Overlook not your own opportunity." Trachtenberg didn't need the ironic one-liners for reassurance.
The announcement of President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg's 2007 retirement drew mixed reactions from faculty, who have differing opinions on the way he has pushed his initiatives. Professors cited Trachtenberg's academic transformation of GW as perhaps the most positive aspect of his legacy. He is credited with helping the University earn a national and international reputation.
GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg's announcement of retirement Tuesday means he will step down before some of his major goals are accomplished. Three of Trachtenberg's major goals include getting the endowment to pass the billion-dollar mark, embarking on a 20-year campus development plan and creating a degree-seeking language translation program. One administrator said it's possible that Trachtenberg will reach his goal of pushing the endowment over $1 billion before he steps down.
Lamar Anthony Thorpe was born in a women's correction facility in Los Angeles. At the ripe age of 2 days old, Thorpe was adopted by people he came to know as his parents, two Mexican immigrants who did not speak English. From being born in a prison to learning English in elementary school, joining the U.
Harassment 4/3 - Ivory Tower - case closed A female reported that a male subject posted an inappropriate photograph of her on another male's Web site. The two individuals were in a previous relationship; the female has asked that the photograph be removed.
Former GW geography professor Thomas Abercrombie, 75, died Monday afternoon after being in a coma because of a blood clot. The clot developed in Abercrombie's lung after he had open-heart surgery in mid-March.
One of the key aspects in winning softball games is also one of the hardest to come by: strong pitching. The GW softball team has found pitching to be one of its strengths this season, something that was proven Wednesday night when the team shut out George Mason 5-0 and 1-0 in a home doubleheader.
Monday night marked the conclusion of a men's college basketball season that witnessed arguably the greatest wire-to-wire performance by a GW team in school history. There was much to savor, and GW fans will for some time. But inevitably, the dialog among fans turns to the topic of how the school can maintain this level of success, on a regular basis.
Baseball Freshman Justin Prinstein threw three scoreless innings in his first collegiate victory in a 10-2 trampling of Delaware State at Barcroft Park in Arlington, Va. The Colonials (8-20) got a three-run homerun in the first inning from sophomore Charlie Kruer in addition to a homerun in the in the bottom of the third from senior Tom Shanley.
Cermignano out GW women's basketball team assistant coach Lisa Cermignano accepted the same position at Vanderbilt University, Director of Athletics Jack Kvancz said Wednesday. Cermignano, a graduate of the GW class of 1997, joined the coaching staff in 2001 as an administrative assistant and had served as assistant coach since 2002.
Thursday Al Franken Political commentator and author will broadcast his weekday radio show live from GW Free, RSVP by e-mailing uevents@gwu.edu Noon to 3 p.m. Jack Morton Auditorium Medical School Fair 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Marvin Center Grand Ballroom Sponsored by American Medical Students Association Friday Black Family Reunion BBQ Come to this old-fashioned BBQ, complete with food, music and vendors 1 to 5 p.
Thorpe and Lasky team up for runoff Student Association presidential candidate Lamar Thorpe has joined with executive vice presidential candidate Josh Lasky for this week's runoff election. The union of the two juniors was announced early this week. Lasky, formerly of the GWUnited slate, ran with SA presidential candidate Elliot Rozenberg, a sophomore who came in third place in the general election.
Anchor Bowl, a weeklong fundraising event hosted by the Delta Gamma sorority, raised about $8,775 for Service for Sight. The national charity for glaucoma and eye screenings trains seeing dogs for the blind and supplies glasses to those who cannot afford such services.
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This special section of www.gwhatchet.com was developed to centralize our coverage of University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg's retirement from his post, effective July 2007. As the current longest-serving leader of a D.C. university and the third-longest-serving president at GW, Trachtenberg not only departs his job but ends an era as well. After nearly two decades of news emanating from his office, there is plenty of fodder for reporting on the University's outgoing leader, which you'll find in the following news and feature pieces.
>>Read The Hatchet's staff editorial on Trachtenberg's legacy.
>>Read a column by Trachtenberg written before he announced his retirement.
>>Read Trachtenberg's "Letter to the GW Community."
>>Check out the results to our informal Web poll about reactions to Trachtenberg's departure.
Posted Thursday, April 6, 10:30 p.m.
Juniors Lamar Thorpe and Josh Lasky will be next year's Student Association president and executive vice president, the Joint Elections Committee announced Thursday night in the Marvin Center.
Thorpe beat junior Morgan Corr for the SA's top post by 186 votes, while Lasky defeated sophomore Angela Chang for the position of EVP by 439 votes.
Vol. 108
An Independent Student Newspaper
Serving The George Washington University Community Since 1904
