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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

Music lawsuits not GW’s responsibility

The Recording Industry Association of America wanted GW to do its dirty work. By issuing “pre-litigation” letters including only IP addresses (Oct. 15, p. 1), the RIAA hoped that GW would foot the bill for locating the alleged file sharers. It is nonsensical for GW to waste time and money tracking down these IP addresses, verifying that the students who used these addresses then are indeed the students using these addresses today and proving that these songs were actually downloaded. This slow, cumbersome procedure is an ineffective and wasteful method for stopping file sharing; among the hundreds of millions of file sharers worldwide, only a single woman has been found guilty in court.

GW should not take part in this wasteful RIAA scare campaign. The RIAA should understand the realities of the “cut-and-paste” digital world and attempt to salvage its hemorrhaging business model rather than waste time with this frivolous attempt to punish GW students for sharing music.

Nathan Jones, Graduate Student


Give club sports a hand

This is a letter in response to Ross Romano’s article on club sports (Oct. 18, pg. 10). He made a very good point of showing how club sports are underfunded. I play on the club soccer team and, as a senior, I have good knowledge of the inner workings of the men’s club soccer team. I believe one of the problems is funding, but I believe this stems from the way the Club sports office is run.

The liaison for club sports is supposed to work with the club presidents to help the organizational and financial aspects of each club team to be successful. The problem is, this office works more like a dictatorship than a friend for club sports. When I joined the club team from the varsity team in 2006, we were penalized as a group with reduced practice times and a lack of matching funds from the University because of prior mismanagement by club leaders. This is just absurd to punish new members and incoming freshmen for the wrongs of people who are no longer associated with the team.

The club office also shows favoritism in assigning practice times to club sports that the club office finds successfully run or club teams that were organizationally sound in the past. Club soccer was again penalized in 2006 with a lack of adequate practice team, giving club soccer one time slot a week on the Mt. Vernon field, yet club lacrosse had practice three times a week.

Earlier this semester the men’s and women’s club soccer teams were bumped off of their practice times because the University decided to lease the field to a local adult soccer league. This type of blatant disregard for the community that pays the upkeep of those fields and courts with their tuition is irresponsible. Too many times in my four years has this University made decisions based on finances with total disregard for their student community. As a graduating senior in 2008, I will not be answering any future donations calls because my debt of $120,000 for an education here feels wasted.

Dillon Colucci, Senior


This college still far from the realworld

I can’t help but chuckle when I pick up a copy of The Hatchet and reminisce on my undergraduate years. They seem so long ago, but the truth is I only graduated three years ago. The column about parents weekend (Oct. 18, p. 4) made me actually laugh out loud.

The freshmen that described themselves as “being on their own” should take a trip down reality road. Maybe it is because I went to the University of Utah where the majority of the student body works full time and commutes to campus or maybe it is simply because what I saw during “parents weekend.” I heard on separate occasions students yelling at their parents for “more cash” or the time-old “you just don’t understand how it is to be young.” It made my stomach churn.

As a full-time graduate student on student loans, I realize that it is hard for many undergrads to even fathom how it is “to be on your own.” I am currently cleaning houses in the neighborhood to pay for food and silly things like printer ink. I don’t have a car for that matter and I can’t just call my mommy when I run out of cash – there simply is none.

Maybe I am just jealous of the clear influence of the “haves” and “have-nots” on this campus, but I think it is more of the way I see the younger students not only treat each other but the GW staff in general. To be a freshman is in fact a time to “find yourself,” but it would just be a nice change of pace on the GW campus to see fewer young people smoking and more people just being kind to each other. Call me cheesy but these are things I learned in college.

Jana Baldwin, Graduate student

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