Sixteenth Annual Christmas Concert Awes at the Basilica

Last night, over 200 voices could be heard reverberating off the walls and vaulted ceilings of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Yesterday marked the 16th year the University has held the annual Christmas Concert. This year, the donations collected before the concert will benefit the organization So Others Might Eat (SOME), an interfaith group that aids the homeless and poor in Washington, D.C.

Performers at the concert included the CUA Chorus and Symphony Orchestra. These campus groups performed along side the Basilica Choir, as well as the musicians of the Orchestra of the 17th Century. The Basilica Chorus's portion of the performance included songs from the 16th and 17th centuries. The vocalists performed some of the songs a capella, while others were accompanied by numerous instruments including the organ, violins and trumpets. The vocalists and their accompanists were placed on the steps leading up to the altar, allowing the sound to carry to the back of the Basilica. Each note and chord was allowed to fully penetrate the open space of the Basilica, resounding off the walls. The Latin pieces were especially poignant. Even in a dead language, the sounds and emotions of Christmas could be clearly understand.

The CUA Chorus and Symphony Orchestra performed the majority of the concert. They used a wide selection of music that ranged from well-known carols to lesser-known foreign language pieces. The repertoire was a comprehensive mix of traditional music, like "Silent Night," along with fairly modern works, such as "A Child is Born in Bethlehem," which was composed by CUA graduate student Phil Carluzzo. This most recent work was a jubilant dance piece that kept the wind instruments flying and the chorus playful. The repertoire for the vocal performance was extensive, including songs in English, Latin and German.

While the sound of the performers was amazing, it was difficult to understand the lyrics due to the acoustics of the Basilica. The blended chords alone, however, made the performance amazing to hear. The orchestra was especially beautiful when they performed alone. The music was strong and powerful, allowing each note to sink into the audience.

For most of the songs, the chorus and orchestra performed together. While the instruments and the vocals blended perfectly, the sound seemed trapped. Whereas the Basilica Chorus sung closer to the audience, CUA's chorus was placed behind the orchestra forcing them to sing over the powerful instruments. Also, the performers were placed at the back of the Basilica, causing the sound to be stunted by the arching ceiling. Instead of letting the music resonate throughout the entire church, there seemed to be an invisible wall holding the sound back from the audience's ears. But since the performance was recorded for broadcast on EWTN, and it is likely that the home audience will have better sound than live audience.

Every year, the Christmas concert helps collect donations to benefit a local charity organization. SOME provides a number of services for the poor and homeless in the District. The organization's charity work includes providing shelter and clothing for the homeless, along with providing food for the hungry. SOME gives opportunities to those in poverty through job training, elderly services and addiction recovery. The organization began as a soup kitchen and has expanded over its 35-year history into an organization with over a dozen locations that are manned by more than 6,000 volunteers each year.

EWTN will broadcast the concert on Dec. 16 at 1:30 p.m., with an additional broadcast on Christmas Day.

Second Floor Flooded in Gibbons Hall

Over the span of 10 days, two major water incidents crippled Gibbons Hall, causing damage, flooding in the 93-year-old building and affecting the availability of restroom facilities, one of which was closed for several days.

Flooding first occurred on Nov. 19, when a clogged drain overflowed in the ceiling above the second floor, sending a deluge of water down to the two floors below and damaging the ceiling in some rooms on the first floor of the building and left dripping bulges. The water also cascaded down the stairs between the second and first floors, making the stone steps slick with a thick layer of water that made walking down dangerous.

In addition to the situation on the first floor and stairways, the west wing of the second floor filled with water that was in some places about an inch deep. The water filled the hallway and common bathroom of the wing, forcing residents to attempt to protect their belongings and use towels to prevent water from entering the room. Some welcome mats in front of rooms even were floating away from their doors because of the large amount of water in that wing. "The boys' wing on the second floor was flooded, and I could not get into the bathroom on the first floor where my room is because of the flooding," said senior media studies major Anna Moore.

The cause of the flooding was a clogged shower drain from the third floor located below the second floor, according to Kevin Petersen, director of Facilities, Maintenance & Operations for the University. "The clog was below the second floor, but anyone using the shower above on the third floor would not have known they were flooding the floor above unless someone told them," said Petersen.

Facilities took some time to fix the problem, according to Petersen, and broke a snaking device, used to clear drains, in the process. The bathroom was closed while they worked to clear the drain, causing students to have to seek alternative facilities. "The bathroom was closed for a while and it really was an inconvenience," said junior mechanical engineer and Gibbons resident Kerri Allen.

Despite the difficulty in fixing the problem, the flooding was cleaned up by the following morning, Nov. 20. The cause of the clog remains unknown, Petersen said.

In addition to the Nov. 19 flooding, there was additional flooding on the fifth floor of Gibbons. A toilet clogged with paper towels overflowed, Petersen said. "On Sunday Nov. 28, a toilet overflowed causing flooding in the bathroom on the fifth floor. Public Safety was called and responded by turning off the water in the bathroom," he said. "The on-call custodian that night came to the building at 3 a.m. and cleaned up the flooded water so that affect on residents was minimal."

Graduate Housing To Be Scrapped

Graduate housing will be phased out over the next few years, according to two Graduate Student Association (GSA) members who attended a meeting with Katherine Boone, the director of Housing and Residential Services. Approximately 30 students from the GSA met with Boone on Wednesday concerning the issue.

According to the two GSA members, who requested anonymity, Boone said the decision was made due to the growing shortage of housing on-campus. Beginning with the Fall 2005 semester, Gibbons Hall, home to a number of graduate and undergraduate students, would be reserved exclusively for undergraduates, leaving only Caldwell and Seton Halls as the only on-campus graduate housing.

In addition, Boone said that incoming graduate students could not procure housing in any open spots in Caldwell or Seton as of next year. This policy was already enforced this past semester as no new male students received housing on campus, according to the two graduate sources. This policy was crafted so that as current students graduate, vacating spots, there will be no need for housing after the 2005-2006 year. This is the scheduled ending of graduate housing, according to these sources.

Caldwell Hall and the Seton Hall addition will not be used, however, to house the growing undergraduate population, as the building is not equipped with any fire suppression system like sprinklers. Instead, the empty space in Caldwell will be converted for use as academic space for School of Theology and Religious Studies and other academic departments.

Nonetheless, Housing is attempting to accommodate graduate students by providing a better system for finding off-campus housing online via the housing website.

The GSA did not support Housing's decision and issued a resolution which is being sent to University officials for review, saying "the situation is regrettable."

Christmas Cheer Lights Up CUA

The tree in front of McMahon Hall was lit at a ceremony Friday night that included Christmas carols sung by with students, faculty and administrators.

Citing Morals, Corigliano Returns Speaking Honorarium

John Corigliano, an award-winning and openly gay composer who offered a master class on campus last month, returned his payment for the class and subsequent lecture, saying CUA was "morally insufficient."

In a two-page letter sent to University President Rev. David M. O'Connell, Corigliano cited an article in The Tower about his whether his appearance violated a CUA policy prohibiting speakers who defy Catholic moral principles.

Corigliano detailed his disagreement with Church teaching on homosexual couples, saying the "Church and this Universtiy do not live up to my moral principles."

"With all due respect to you, your hospitable faculty, and your welcoming students, I am returning…my payment for speaking at The Catholic University of America," Corigliano wrote.

Powell Encourages Students to Study Abroad, Come to U.S.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said that although a "tightening-up" of visa regulations has made it more difficult for international students to study in American colleges and universities, the State Department is working to cut down on that speed and encourage more international students to come to the U.S.

In a meeting with college newspaper editors last month, Powell said that the time between applying for a student visa and traveling to an American university was about a year. He said the department is having a difficult time convincing foreign students that "we really do want them to come here."

But the process, he said, "will never be as easy or as fast as it used to be."

Powell also said that American students should feel safe studying abroad in Europe, despite prevalent anti-American sentiment toward the U.S. Powell said the feelings are most often against U.S. policy, and not the American people, and the conflict in Iraq and the issues between Israel and the Palestinians were wedges between the U.S. and much of the rest of the world.

"Those are the two issues that drive European public opinion against us, not totally against us, but not as good as it used to be, and Arab public opinion, which has really gone south in the last couple of years," Powell said.

The meeting between Powell and the newspaper editors took place on the same day that Powell offered his resignation to President Bush, though it was unclear whether the letter was tendered before or after the meeting. Powell was asked about his future during the meeting, but he only said that Bush was looking over his Cabinet and that being the Secretary of State "is not easy work."

During the meeting, Powell also said he supported college newspapers, and while on the Howard University board of trustees, he read The Hilltop regularly.

"…I also made sure that I got every single week-and would read every single article and every single page-was The Hilltop, because it gave me greater insight as to what was going on on campus than anything I was going to get from the Board Secretary or from the President," Powell said. "It gave me the sense …of what the students felt."

Shooting Victim Not Completing Semester

The CUA student who was shot in the abdomen last month while visiting friends in Brookland has taken a medical leave and will not be returning to campus this semester.

The student, who declined to be named, said that several officials in the Dean of Students office contacted him to offer counseling and to help him in marking his current course load as "incomplete."

The student was shot in the abdomen during an altercation with four men at a Brookland house early morning Nov. 15, but the bullet missed vital organs "by millimeters and inches" and he was treated and released.

The senior finance major was visiting friends at a house on the 1000 block of Newton Street NE when two men approached the house and asked to join the group. In an interview from his home in Pennsylvania last month, the victim said no one at the house knew either of the men and asked them to leave.

An argument ensued after the men, whom the victim described as black males, claimed the students were being racist and would not leave. Twenty minutes later, he said, two other men, a "younger black male and a white male," joined the first two men. The four men remained at the porch of the house.

One of the men from the first pair then struck a student at the house, whom the victim declined to name. At that point, the victim said, the group forced the men to leave.

The students chased the four men onto Newton St., where the victim said the man who had punched a student fired "three or four rounds" at the group, one of which struck the victim in the left abdomen and exited through his lower back. The assailant was 20 to 25 feet from the victim, standing from behind the car, he said, before entering it and driving away.

"I didn't think I was shot," the victim said. "I didn't feel anything. I took 4 more steps, he sped off and I looked down and felt pain and realized I was struck."

The suspect, Albert Booth, 25, was arrested the Tuesday after the incident, and later charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He is being held without bail.

The victim said it is common for "people from the neighborhood to try to get into parties. Most of the time they're very nice about it, but sometimes there's altercations."

Police are trying to tie the incident to another crime that occurred just five hours earlier, where a man was shot and killed after leaving a wedding reception at St. Francis Hall at the Franciscan Monastery. Robbers demanded money from four people leaving the reception, beat three of them with pistols and shot the 57-year-old man after he threw money at the assailants.

Several students at a public safety meeting Thursday night, and two parents who sent an e-mail to University President Rev. David M. O'Connell, expressed a concern that the University's support of students who witnessed the shooting was inadequate.

"Just because these students do not live on campus does not exclude them from the community of Catholic University," wrote George and Joan Maybury. The Mayburys have one daughter attending CUA who witnessed the incident in Brookland. "Now, when they have been harmed and scared, there is no reaching out from the school community because they live off campus," they wrote.

In an interview, George Maybury said that "if a kid should happen to go off campus, it's like they're forgotten about….That's the way they seem to be treated, and it's deplorable."

Maybury, who also has a daughter who is a CUA alumna, said that after this incident his high-school-aged daughter will not attend CUA. He said that O'Connell said that the matter had been forwarded to the Dean of Students.

"Most schools…aren't in the greatest neighborhoods. There's got to be some form of assistance or sympathy, or 'What can we do…to make this better, safer, more comfortable? It seems that this is another thing that was just brushed under the rug."

Students attending a Student Life-sponsored meeting on public safety also expressed a concern that little was being done to safeguard students who live off-campus.

Commander Jennifer Greene, who oversees CUA as part of Metropolitan Police Department's fifth district, offered general tips for safety but cautioned, "Certain things in an urban environment are just going to happen."

In MPD's only reference to the shooting on Newton St., Greene also said that "As soon as students realized that someone wasn't supposed to be there, they should have told them to leave." The student who was shot said that the incident became violent when students asked the four men who came to the house to leave.

Greene also said that officers assigned to the Brookland area are often pulled for special events, citing January's upcoming presidential inauguration, the annual March for Life and the Martin Luther King holiday.

Although more than 500 seats were prepared for the meeting, only 60 people attended, including Student Life administrators and directors, UCSPE staff members, DPS officers and officials, MPD officers, as well as a handful of Brookland residents and students.

DPS Director Thomasine Johnson ended the meeting after 90 minutes, saying that the MPD officials had been promised that the event would last only one hour. Five students, who were told to hold their questions, raised them privately with Johnson after the meeting had concluded and most of the audience members had left.

"I know that those students will be meeting with Dean Sawyer on Monday…. I don't think the meeting should have been cut off when it was," said USG President Sarah McGrath. "I thought some really good things came out of the meeting just because it opened up dialogue between DPS, Metro Police, administration and the students."

Editorial Cartoon: Facebook

Editorial: It's Time to Seriously Address Crime Problems

Dizzying is the only way to describe the University's handling of a recent crime spike, made prominent by a rash of car thefts and break-ins and culminating in the shooting of a student while he was visiting friends in Brookland. Thursday night, Student Life administrators and representatives from the Metropolitan Police Department and Metro's Transit Police spoke to students about how to prevent thefts and violent crime.

Mostly, though, the event was spin. Rather than listening to students and engaging in "dialogue"-the purported purpose of the meeting-CUA officials were argumentative with students while ignoring the elephant in the room: the fact that a student was shot in Brookland, an occurrence that would presumably elicit a massive safety response from CUA. Not so. As students noted at the meeting, and as parents George and Joan Maybury said in an e-mail, the response from CUA after this event has been abysmal.

Thankfully, the Dean of Students office has assisted the victim, but as yet no support, counseling, or even honest conversation has been offered by University administrators to students, including those who witnessed the shooting. Not even so much as a Crime Alert was issued by DPS; no statement was posted on the CUA website. To our knowledge, the only way students would know about the event was either through word of mouth or reports from The Tower.

It's sad that the University isn't willing to do more to reduce violent crime and thefts on campus and around campus. With the news that campus housing for graduate students will be phased out, along with the fact that a growing enrollment means less on-campus housing available for undergrads, CUA really ought to pay attention to students who, by choice or by necessity, live off-campus, in an often-dangerous neighborhood.

If a student were-God forbid-killed in Brookland, while visiting friends or traveling to campus, we would like to think that CUA would wake up and find a way to patrol the areas neighboring campus. Why can't this problem be solved before something horrific occurs?

Column: Christmas: A Time for Hope

As the semester draws to a rapid close, Christmastime approaches quickly. For me in particular, the thought of Christmas brings back memories of sitting around the fireplace and opening presents with the family.

For the ancient Greeks, the fireplace (focus) was the center of family life; they use it for heating and cooking. We are members of our biological family but we also exist as part of the Christian family. Christmas is an appropriate time for us to reflect on what is at the focus of our family life as Christians.

It is very clear that we live in a post-original sin world. We need look no further than the want and abject poverty that exist in this city. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world provides a compelling contrast to the misery that exists within the world. Jesus' birth was a source of great rejoicing; we think of the response of the shepherds, of the wise men, and of Simeon. These people alike- rich and poor, educated and uneducated- knew that something special was happening.

For us today, Jesus' Nativity is a sign of hope, just as it was for those who witnessed his infancy. It is right for us to hope because Jesus, fully human and fully divine, is a bridge from the spiritual kingdom to the temporal kingdom. Best of all, his time on earth is but a foretaste of what is to come; it is a small glimpse at that which is heavenly! Even though Jesus is not with us in person today, he left us a sign of hope: the Eucharist. For us as Catholics, the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life. Pope John Paul II observed in a recent encyclical that heaven unites with earth in the celebration of the Eucharist. Wherever the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, Jesus is present and waiting for us to visit Him.

This Christmas, I encourage you to draw close to Jesus. When you can, makes a personal Holy Hour. There is also a great grace that comes from reception of the Blessed Sacrament. We must take this grace from the communion rails out into the streets. At times, that means doing some things that are easier than others: helping the poor- even if all we can do is say a prayer, making up with those that we have disagreed with- accepting tough breaks with a smile. Many of these things are not easy to do- but Jesus calls us to do them for the sake of the Kingdom.

St. Paul identifies three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. We see that these virtues nourish each other. Without hope, it is difficult to have faith in Jesus and in the Eucharist. Without faith, charity is far more difficult. Without charity, faith and hope are empty and have no concrete expression.

It is my wish that all of you find this Christmas to be a time of profound hope- both for the new liturgical year and the new calendar year. I pray that your travels are safe. May your Christmas be a time of happiness and flourishing.

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