Georgetown Basketball
No election indignities or security scares stir up Georgetown students quite like a winning basketball season. The odyssey of the Hoya men’s basketball team – from a season-starting win at Navy to a March Madness run to the Sweet 16 – was the crown jewel of Georgetown’s 2005-06 story.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been the same without the Duke victory. Prior to the Jan. 21 matchup at MCI Center, the Hoyas were a bubble-bound squad.
But when the Hoyas dropped the Blue Devils, fans spilled out onto the streets and honked car horns in jubilation. “Beat Duke” signs became obligatory dorm-window decor. Georgetown basketball was legitimate once again, and its fans were captivated.
After swagger-building wins over Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the Hoyas were on their way to the Big East tournament. They narrowly defeated Marquette before succumbing to Syracuse. It was a disappointing Big East conclusion for the Hoyas, and the New York crowd did little to ameliorate their spirit.
That’s what the NCAA tournament was for. The win over Northern Iowa, watched by rabid Hoya fans in a packed Sellinger Lounge, was cause for local television coverage, but it was Georgetown’s 70-52 win over Ohio State that put the greatest charge in the audience. That, perhaps, was the pinnacle of a long season, which ended at the hands of the Florida Gators and resulted in a warm welcome home when the team bus pulled up to McDonough Gymnasium.
Crime an+M53d Safety
Prospect Street and its environs have never been immune to D.C.’s more unsavory elements, but this year marked a new wave of evidence against late-night treks in Georgetown.
The crime wave began in October and November, when a string of university-area robberies and assaults were punctuated by a pair of off-campus stabbings. Weeks later, a female student was drugged and sexually assaulted at a Prospect Street house.
On Feb. 4 came the shooting. A trio of students was confronted by two armed men, who took their purses, cell phones and money without much resistance. Before fleeing the scene, one of the men shot a female student in the left arm. Sellinger Lounge was home to a town hall meeting on Feb. 8 that detailed new steps to improve off-campus security. Among the reforms were private security for LXR, an expanded SafeRides program and further coordination with PD on off-campus security.
Police officers have since patrolled the area more vigilantly.
Hurricane Katrina
Just as students were returning to the Hilltop, many quickly found themselves among the hun dreds of thousands reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, and members of the university community came out in full force to support the relief effort for those they knew and those they did not.
While the university admitted approximately 100 students from Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans, students organized a charity concert that helped raise over $23,000 for disaster victims.
A team of on-campus organizations formed a coalition called the Georgetown University Hurricane Emergency Relief Effort and raised an $11,576.60 sum matched by the Nestle Corporation and donated to the Red Cross, according to Press Coordinator Christine Fraser (MSB ’08).
Even as the media coverage faded in the months following Katrina, the demolished homes and FEMA trailers remained in New Orleans. And Georgetown continued to respond.
The Volunteers of America, the Knights of Columbus and a group of Georgetown law students were among those who spent spring break rebuilding New Orleans and Bayou La Batre, Ala.
“I just wanted to stay down there and continue helping,” said Michael Sokil (COL ’09), who attended the Knights of Columbus trip.
SFS-Qatar
The inaugural year of the School of Foreign Service campus in Doha, Qatar, established last May, took the Georgetown experience into the heart of the Middle East.
In March, a delegation of students from the main campus traveled to SFS-Q to participate in a model U.N. conference and interact with the 25 students who are Doha’s first Hoyas. Later that month, 15 of those students paid their own visit to Washington.
Their days touring Washington included meetings with University President John J. DeGioia and other faculty, as well as a trip to the U.S. State Department.
“People at Georgetown are especially friendly. I expected them to be cold, that kind of thing. It was fun to see them actually interested in SFS-Q.”
Yancee Hardy (SFS-Q ’09) came away with a different understanding.
“There’s two really contrasting awarenesses,” he said. “Here [on the main campus] people . have yet to really understand what they are hearing. Students at our campus are very aware of the issues.”
