The office of Greek Life is in the process of relocating from its shared space in the Marvin Center's Student Activities Center space to a Marvin Center suite of its own. The Office of Community Service is moving out of the Marvin Center and into a townhouse on 2129 G St, allowing the Office of Greek Life to occupy OCS's former Marvin Center suite.
Students with Verizon Wireless cell phones can expect better service this year. After a year of negotiations, Verizon activated its new antenna on top of Funger Hall in early July. Verizon Wireless contacted GW as early as February 2004 with ambitions to increase its service area in and around campus.
The nearly 7,200 students moving into residence halls Saturday will experience a different move-in process this year. The University is offering students online registration and has nearly tripled the number of volunteers working on move-in day. Seth Weinshel, director of Campus Housing and Occupancy Management, said GW recruited 80 volunteers last year, but has about 250 students, staff and faculty signed up to help this year.
Package Services has expanded its facility and made procedural changes in response to student complaints about delays. Changes include the expansion of counter space to accommodate four customer service stations instead of two, and an additional doorway to help alleviate crowds, said Michelle Petricono, deputy director of Auxiliary and Institutional Services.
The Hall on Virginia Avenue, a former freshman dorm, will temporarily house graduate students this year while the University considers the best long-term use of the building. As part of the current Campus Plan, an agreement between Foggy Bottom residents and the University on restrictions to University development, GW made a commitment to remove undergraduates from its off-campus dorms: HOVA, the Aston and City Hall.
Back in early April, junior Ted Lynch and his father bought two plane tickets from St. Louis to D.C. for Saturday, Aug. 26 - the day Lynch planned to move into his new dorm room. Lynch said that when he bought the ticket he didn't give the date a second thought, since the last Saturday in August had been move-in day since his freshman year.
Senior Sam Sherraden, an international affairs major and former Hatchet photo editor, spent the summer studying abroad in Beijing, China and will spend the fall semester further north in Harbin, China. Twice a month, he will share his experiences and observations from the Far East as one of GW's many expats.
Forget backpacking across Europe. These globetrotting students learned about their field of study and got their hands dirty. From working at a women's clinic in Thailand to digging up ancient artifacts in Israel, these four students had anything but typical summer travel experiences.
By 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings this summer, junior Katie Bolton was passed out on her couch. But she wasn't exhausted from a night of wild partying - she was tired from already completing a 15-mile run that morning. Bolton is part of a team of runners who have woken up for 6 a.
Renovations to the Law School are nearly complete after seven years of planning and ongoing construction. Though initial phases of the renovation process began in 1999, areas where construction most recently took place include University Yard, Lisner Hall and Bell Hall, said Thomas Morrison, associate dean administrative in the Law School's Dean's Office.
Hip-hop artist Common will headline the annual Fall Fest concert September 9, said Program Board's Concerts Chair Zach Pentel. Common has toured with rapper Kanye West, a headliner of Spring Fling in 2004. Last year's Fall Fest main act was Robert Randolph and the Family Band.
If the mark of a big-time Division I program is its ability to produce NBA-caliber players, GW never quite made the cut - until now. Pops Mensah-Bonsu and Danilo (J.R.) Pinnock could become the first GW alumni in the NBA since Yinka Dare's last season in 1998.
The GW men's basketball team will face teams from the Big East, Mountain West, Pacific 10 and Atlantic Coast Conference during the upcoming season. The Colonials, who made the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season, have a schedule highlighted by games with Providence in Rhode Island, University of Southern California in Anaheim and Virginia Tech at the BB&T Classic.
The GW women's basketball team has a tradition of playing strong out-of-conference opponents , and this season is no exception. The highlight of the squad's 2006-2007 schedule is a match up with defending national champion Maryland in College Park, Md. GW coach Joe McKeown said he would like to make the game with Maryland an annual event.
Baseball GW graduates Dan Pfau and Derrick Lutz were drafted in the MLB's first-year player draft. Pfau was picked up by the Washington Nationals and Lutz by the Cincinnati Reds. Josh Wilkie signed a free agent contract with the Nationals. Volleyball After two dismal seasons, the volleyball squad opened the season with a 3-1 victory over Georgetown and 3-1 wins over American and George Mason in the DC challenge.
As students gear up for class, they might want to know about their electronic options. Students across the country have chosen to utilize online databases of texts, including Google Book Search. In November 2005 Google's ever-growing database of books went live for anyone with an Internet connection to search the content of millions of books.
GW ranked No. 52 in this year's U.S. News and World Report annual listing of top universities, marking the eighth year GW has just missed a spot in the top 50. The report for national universities is based on factors including peer assessment, retention rate, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate and alumni giving, according to the magazine.
Only 900 of the nearly 17,000 people who lived on campus this summer were GW students, according to Executive Vice President and Treasurer Louis Katz. To catch up on the summer news most students were not on campus to see or read about, here is a wrap-up of some of the biggest stories of the summer.
As college students prepare to return for another year of school, disproportionately high textbook costs remain a pertinent issue for higher education. While a number of studies have blamed publishers for driving up costs of books for several years, little has been done to reverse this trend for America's college students.
I wouldn't really consider myself to be a super-experienced traveler, but this summer I was given the opportunity (OK, the money) to spend the month of August backpacking around Europe. And yes, of course, I went to Amsterdam. There seems to be a lot of hype about this infamous city in the Netherlands, considered perhaps to be the most liberal city in the world - which is true, if by "liberal" you mean "stupid-ridiculous.
Just because you weren't here this summer doesn't mean nothing happened at GW. Here is a run down of our pre-semester Winners & Losers: Winner: Grad students in HOVA Talk about a deal - grad students accustomed to brutal area rents are now getting away with $700 for singles and $400 for doubles, albeit without kitchens.
"This is Petra, the ancient rose-red city carved into the mountains of southern Jordan. Here I am climbing up to the tomb of Aaron - you know, Moses' brother who died on the trip to the holy land. Oh, and this is a friend whom I met with in Amman, and here is where we had the most amazing falafel.
New York's Hunter College settled a lawsuit last week with a student who alleged that the school barred her from her dormitory after she tried to commit suicide. The student's suit resembles that of former GW student Jordan Nott, who filed a discrimination lawsuit against the University in October 2005.
It's the beginning of the year, and there are some things we are just plain excited about. The Scene has compiled a list of the top 10 things we are looking forward to at the moment. 10. Maybe it's just that "Snakes on a Plane" has revved up our willingness to see so-bad-they're-good movies, but we couldn't contain ourselves when we saw the preview for "The Protector.
Elliott Smith has been dead for three years, his last tracks have been mixed and released as 2003's "From a Basement on the Hill," and your vinyl copies of "XO" and "Figure Eight" have burned a hole in your record player. Where, then, sad indie boy or girl, are you to turn? Ashton Allen hopes it's to "Dewdrops: An Ordinary Servant," his debut album that has more than enough melancholy melodies and moody minor keys to keep you going until the next introspective indie rocker accesses the depths of your depression.
SizzEx - you may know it as the pay-by-the-pound buffet you turn to on those nights when all you want is a gravy-soaked slice of turkey on a peach cobbler with a side of egg rolls. You may know it as a magnet for mammoth middle school tours of the capital.
"Warterloo to Anywhere" Dirty Pretty Things Interscope Records Ex-Libertine Carl Barat says the songs on his band's debut aren't about former best friend, band mate and partner-in-crime Pete Doherty. Uh-huh. Much has been made of Doherty's spiral of self-destruction, and Barat has been relegated in the public imagination to the role of mere witness to the downfall of the most important British band since the Clash (sorry, Oasis).
If you have $5 Put it in your midnight 7-11 Slurpee account and head down to the Kennedy Center from 2 to 10 p.m. Saturday through Monday for the Page-to-Stage New Play Festival, an annual event that offers potential theater-goers a sneak peek at the upcoming offerings of the D.
GW's student government is commonly blamed for being inefficient, out of touch with students and plagued by political bickering. Student Association President Lamar Thorpe, a senior, said he is aiming to change that view. Thorpe, who won the student body presidency last April in a run-off election against SA veteran Morgan Corr, also a senior, has been working over the summer to install the "Colonial Compact" platform that he campaigned on.
Results of an audit of GW's enrollment numbers, which affect the University's campus development plan, are scheduled to be released this week. The audit, conducted through D.C.'s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, was spurred by an Advisory Neighborhood Commission resolution last winter that called for a review of GW's enrollment.
Two of the Marvin Center's new food venues will open later than expected, while the rest should be ready to serve food before the start of classes Sept. 5. The WOW Café and Wingery, which will serve alcohol and have satellite TV and radio consoles in the Hippodrome, is not slated to open until mid-October, said Matt Lindsay, assistant director of Media Relations.
Beginning this fall, GW will team up with Apple computers to offer audio recordings of classroom lectures over the Internet using the iTunes music program. The new software, called iTunes U, is designed to record lectures and broadcast them over the iTunes network where students can download them onto their computer or iPod.
GW officials said they plan to have the next University president selected by February with the help of a higher education consulting firm. The presidential search committee met twice over the summer and is in the pre-search planning stages before officially launching the search next month, said chair of the presidential search committee Russell Ramsey, who is also vice chairman of the Board of Trustees.
Heather Bentrum and Rachel Weismann are both undergraduates with a similar interest: studying the Middle East. This summer, one chose to go to Lebanon and the other Israel. The two students return to Foggy Bottom this week with similar stories about their time abroad: bracing for rocket and bomb strikes exchanged between Hezbollah and Israel and hoping to make it back to the United States alive.
D.C. mayoral candidates discussed such issues as the state of public schools, baseball stadium construction and homeland security at the first of two televised debates in the Jack Morton Auditorium Sunday night. The College Democrats co-sponsored the D.C. Democratic candidate debate along with the Washington Times, radio station WMAL 630 and CBS/WB, a new local television station, which broadcasted the debate live.
Vol. 109
An Independent Student Newspaper
Serving The George Washington University Community Since 1904
