Dining Services Commission pushes for lower catering prices

Student organization concerns about high-priced University catering services have led to a Dining Services Commission push for a price reduction.

Chris Voss, who chairs the Student Association commission, said he became aware of the problem when student groups told him the price of food catered by the Marvin Center was unusually high.

“I find the prices of some items exorbitant,” Voss said.

Talks have been held with Tim Karns, manager of catering at the Marvin Center, and Paul Krouse, director of dining services, who were able to “strike a deal” for student groups.

Voss said the price of one can of soda was lowered from its original price of $1 to 75 cents.

Student groups use a limited selection of food for their events, such as cookies and chips, Voss said.

Voss said the commission has $7,000 to assist student groups with financing catered events. In an e-mail to student leaders, he said he hopes the fund will make catering more affordable for all student groups.

Voss said the next step for the commission is to push for lower prices on all catered food when it meets next Tuesday.

“We’re pushing for a 25 to 50 percent reduction,” Voss said.

-Joanna Romansic

GW professor lectures on Rape of Nanjing

Assistant Professor Daqing Yang outlined the early stages of his research into Japanese author Hotta Yoshie’s Rape of Nanjing in a lecture in Stuart Hall Wednesday afternoon.

Yang said he is studying Yoshie’s novel, about the Japanese massacre in the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937-’38, as part of his study of post-war Japanese culture. The book was published in six installments between 1953 and 1955. He said he has entered a different field as a historian studying a work of literature.

“I’m looking at the assertion that there was a collective amnesia about (World War II) in the immediate post-war period. The piece itself throws doubt on that assumption,” said Yang, who got his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1996. He teaches Japanese and East Asian history and international affairs at GW.

Yang’s talk was part of the Elliott School of International Affairs’ Brown Bag Lunch Lecture Series.

Yoshie lived in China and Japan during the Sino-Japanese conflict of the late 1930s and World War II, which Yang theorizes helped Yoshie write from the viewpoint of a Chinese man.

The book follows the main character’s life in Nanjing before and during the Japanese occupation in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese women were raped and killed by Japanese soldiers.

Yang said the book has little direct description of the massacre itself but examines the thinking of the people involved.

“This perspective, often lost on historians, can be given by literature,” Yang said.

-Dave Mann