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The Big East's football expansion plans leave the conference with 17 universities, including non-Football members. That's a terrible number for scheduling; the only way the basketball teams can schedule an even number of games is if they play every other team only once. 18 teams would allow three divisions of six teams each. Any team would play the other five teams in its division twice, and one half of the twelve other teams in the conference. 18 sounds like worsening the problem of too many teams, but having three divisions could actually restore some rivalries, and return the conference to...

Attempts to reform higher education usually result in the object of those efforts digging in its heels. “The aversion to applied learning has grown stronger since A Nation at Risk came out [in 1983],” Georgetown’s Anthony Carnevale said at the National Press Club on September 29, 2010. “A good 40 percent of Americans don’t do well in traditional pedagogy,” he avers and “four to five percent of BAs are in the liberal arts.” Carnevale heads the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown. Nevertheless, according to Carnevale, the professoriate argues that “American education exists for some other purpose than...

Border Blues @ Georgetown Bethany Stotts, July 9, 2010 Speakers in the second panel a May forum co-sponsored by Georgetown Law School and the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) discussed what type of constitutional challenges that might be brought against Arizona’s law in a panel, “Is the Law Constitutional?” Several panelists argued that a preemption argument could carry greater weight than the class-action suit earlier filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other parties such as the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF) because the Arizona law doesn’t come into effect until the end of July, making...

Georgetown & Gay Marriage Bethany Stotts, April 13, 2010 Speakers at a recent Georgetown University event argued that the legalization of gay marriage in Washington, D.C. was done with the influence of religious groups, and therefore debunked the myth of “gay versus God.” For example, Cathy Renna, managing director of Renna Communications, argued that winning marriage equality in D.C. “struck a blow [to] two things,” namely, “the whole paradigm of gay versus god” and a perceived lack of diversity in the gay community. “From a media perspective and just from an activist perspective in my years of doing this, you...

Iraq & Hard Place Malcolm A. Kline, April 6, 2010 One of the crowning ironies of the age, to use a really pretentious phrase, is that the main site of anti-war rallies staged over the past decade—academia—is also the source of American foreign policy in Iraq. Witness, the CIA director who told President George W. Bush that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk” became a professor at Georgetown where he could look out the window and see his old boss hung in effigy for following the former top spy’s advice. “This is because...

Tuesday March 23, 2010 Catholic Georgetown Students Vote to Fund Abortion Rights Panel March 23, 2010 (CNews) – In early March, the Student Activities Commission (SAC) of Georgetown University, a Jesuit, Catholic university, voted in favor of funding an abortion “rights” panel on campus, according to The Hoya. Earlier the university partially funded "Sex Positive Week" and held performances of "The Vagina Monologues."“While Catholics the world over are engaged in penance, prayer and alms giving during this Lenten season, students at America's oldest Catholic university have participated in a perverse series of events that vividly reminds us why our...

A renewed push by students for the reintroduction of regular celebrations of the Tridentine Mass, or a traditional Mass conducted in Latin, will provide the Georgetown community with a new option for Roman Catholic worship on campus. Starting Feb. 11, the traditional Latin Mass will be offered one weekday per week every other week. This will be the first time that this Mass has been offered on campus since May 2008. The main advocate for the pre-Vatican II Mass (Mass said entirely in Latin]) Kieran Raval (COL ’13) describes the Latin Mass as a way to feel a greater connection...

WASHINGTON (AP) -Georgetown coach John Thompson III was asked to describe his demeanor at halftime Saturday after watching his Hoyas go without a field goal for nearly 10 minutes and fall behind by as many as 19 points against Connecticut. Before Thompson could answer, two players piped up. With a knowing smile, Austin Freeman said: "He was calm." Then Greg Monroe also offered: "He was calm." After a pause, Monroe added, with perfect comedic timing: "for a couple seconds."

A Potomac, Md., Islamic center maintains links to Iran despite its claims that it is independent of a foundation that is being sued by the U.S. government on charges of funneling money to the Islamic republic. Ali Mohammadi, the current manager of the Islamic Education Center (IEC) of Maryland, told The Washington Times that the center's only relationship to the Alavi Foundation is that of tenant to landlord. He quoted a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office as saying that forfeiture proceedings initiated earlier this month against the foundation - which also owns property in New York and other states...

As disgusting and disgraceful as Father Jenkins and the board of Notre Dame have been over the whole Obama commencement speech fiasco, it now seems clear that this invitation is part of a larger trend among dissidents within Catholic academia in America. Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York is hosting pro-abortion mayor Michael Bloomberg. St. Joseph's University, another Jesuit university in Philadelphia, is hosting pro-abortion media talking-head Chris Matthews. Yet another Jesuit institution, Georgetown Law School, is honoring pro-abortion vice-president Joe Biden. What does all this mean? According to the NCR article linked above, it means that certain...

Compared with previous generations, the youngest of today's adult Catholics are less likely to have celebrated the sacraments that provide the foundation of the faith. A growing minority of self-identified Catholic adults haven't made their first reconciliation, received their First Communion or been confirmed, according to research from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. The sacraments are at the heart of what it means to be Catholic, said Mark Gray, a CARA researcher. If fewer parents are anchoring their children in Catholicism through the sacraments, the result could be a smaller church. "To the...

I made an error last night, and asked the moderator to delete that error. I thank the moderator, but I must ask the moderator and the Religion Forum freepers for a little more patience, because my conscience requires that I do more than remove the falsity; I must correct it. I was scandalized over the past few days to hear local news reports that Joseph Biden was receiving an honorary degree at Georgetown. These reports were false. I'm not 100% positive they explicitly stated Biden would receive a degree; they might have said something more like, "While the controversy still...

Presidential aide Dick Darman once said that to understand Ronald Reagan you had to realize he was neither a Republican nor a conservative. He was, Darman said, a populist. Consider some of the 40th president's better-known aphorisms: "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." In an era of Cold War and Great...

What's fueling the continuing controversy over President Obama's planned trip to Notre Dame? This piece, from the Washington Independent, offers some answers: After eight years of only occasional disagreements with a Republican president, conservative Catholic activists have moved into the trenches to oppose Obama. They cite his repeal of the Mexico City rule, or “global gag rule,” his stem cell compromise, and his cabinet nominees like Kathleen Sebelius, the pro-choice governor of Kansas, to argue that he is the most pro-abortion rights politician ever to ascend to the job. They are bolstered by new media outlets and organizations that did...

The Franking Privilege by: Bethany Stotts, April 23, 2009 Frankly scandalized: that’s how some American University seniors felt when they learned that their 2009 commencement speaker would be none other than Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Congressman Frank is scheduled to speak to the graduating class of AU’s School of Public Service. “Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has a record as a key player in our current economic crisis, which is almost as offensive as his endless refusal to accept responsibility for it--hardly the marks of a public servant,” wrote four AU students in an April 16 op-ed to the AU Eagle....

Georgetown is honoring Vice President Biden tomorrow. Biden is a Catholic that supports abortion rights. Washington DC - April 21, 2009 - Georgetown is honoring Vice President Joe Biden tomorrow at a Symposium Celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Biden will receive the Legal Momentum Hero Award. Geoergetown’s decision to honor Biden, on the heels its acquiescence to the White House’s request to cover the IHS symbol at Gaston Hall last week when President Obama spoke, combined with the current imbroligio over President Obama’s scheduled commencement speech and honorary degree at Notre Dame, is...

Campus Peep Show by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 21, 2009 We don’t set out to cover the salacious but we’re on the education beat so what they do governs what we get to write about. Moreover, the prurient trend spills out into the popular culture. Hoyas Gone WildApparently, Georgetown University finds its Catholic in Name Only designation too restrictive. Even before the Jesuits that run it accommodated a visiting head of state by covering up a picture of Christ, the university observed Lent in a manner scarcely reminiscent of the original observance. Perhaps the denizens of Georgetown need to...

" All the Church’s activities stem from her awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself: in his goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known the hidden purpose of his will. God’s desire to make himself known, and the innate desire of all human beings to know the truth, provide the context for human inquiry into the meaning of life. This unique encounter is sustained within our Christian community: the one who seeks the truth becomes the one who lives by faith. "...A university or school’s Catholic...

At the request of the White House, Georgetown University covered up all the symbols in Gaston Hall, before the Great Man spoke, including IHS, the millennia-old monogram for the name of Jesus Christ. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, had adopted the monogram in his seal and it became an emblem of the Jesuit order. When it comes to rendering unto Caesar, Georgetown is not going to be outshone by Notre Dame, which stole a march by offering the nation's avatar of abortion a doctorate of laws degree, honoris causa. Actually, it is regrettable the IHS in...

Surprising word today that President Barack Obama's White House asked Georgetown University to cover all religious symbols at the scene of the president's economic speech at the Roman Catholic institution Wednesday. And the prestigious Jesuit university agreed. The decision, unnoticed at the time, seems likely to add further fuel to the ongoing controversy over Obama's upcoming graduation speech at the University of Notre Dame, where the Jesuit Indiana campus is plastered with numerous religious symbols. This includes a mosaic of Jesus Christ covering the entire 14-story southern wall of the Hesburgh Library next door to the speech site in the...