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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Letters to the Editor

Misguided efforts

Let’s face it, we’re going to drink. We’re going to go to out with our friends and drink. This is a fact of college life. Whether GW believes it or not, drinking is going to occur on our campus and on every other campus in the country.

Since the beginning of the semester, students have been attacked and harassed by the administration for doing what every other American college student has done since Prohibition. What GW does not understand is drinking will occur no matter how many students they haul into “Time Out” or how many fraternities they kick off campus.

Since our freshman year, drinking has been a part of college life. This doesn’t mean that we have drinking problems or spend every night praying to the porcelain god. We might be “binge drinkers” by the definition of the Harvard School of Public Health survey, but who isn’t?

We accept the full consequences of our actions, we always have. We are not condoning the fact that this semester students have been out of control and subsequently hospitalized. We understand why the GW administration is concerned. However, a witch hunt by the administration is not what will stop the underage drinking at GW.

How can any university stop underage drinking? It can’t. All GW can do is teach responsible drinking to its students.

In addition to the freshmen advising workshop, make every freshman take a course in alcohol education. At least then, GW students will learn to be responsible about their drinking habits.

How can the University prosecute students for off-campus underage drinking based on rumor? So now if we get speeding tickets, are we going to be put on academic probation?

-Emily Cherniack and Kaitlin Donahue
juniors


Focus on Korea

My compliments to The GW Hatchet for covering the “Outlook Korea” forum in the Sept. 28 issue (“ESIA conference addresses Korean politics, economics,” p. 6).

The article and the conference itself brought to attention GW’s increasing interest in the Korean peninsula. The Elliott School of International Affairs, although it offers one of the best East Asian studies programs in the country (focusing on China and Japan), has yet to fully establish a concentration in Korea. I feel such a concentration is necessary.

Few schools possess a separate school for international affairs and even fewer offer Korean studies. GW should take the initiative and commit itself to integrating a Korean concentration into the major.

“Outlook Korea” made two things evident: A considerable number of students have an interest in Korean affairs, and the future of the Korean peninsula and events taking place there are essential to understanding the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, it would be beneficial to anyone studying Asia to have access to Korean history, economics and culture.

“Outlook Korea” and the upcoming conference on Women in Korean Humanities (hosted by Professor Young-Key Kim-Renaud) are positive signs. They are welcome indicators of growing support by the GW community of the study of Korea.

-Casey Ahn Reivich
sophomore

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