In case you were wondering, the Georgetown Hoyas owe their team moniker to the days when Georgetown students cheered their sports teams in Greek and Latin. Those days went away with compulsory morning Mass and the all-male campus, but the legacy of the more rigorous past lives on in the chant, "Hoya! Saxa! Hoya! Saxa!." Loosely translated, this means "what rocks!" Thus a Hoya is half of "what rocks," which confounds the casual onlooker. It gets even more interesting when you realize the team mascot is a bulldog named Jack, to whose care a Jesuit priest is assigned full-time. They zip around campus in a special golf cart. I guess the philosophy and theology sections are undersubscribed these days...that's what Jesuits do mostly.
The blue and grey uniforms the players wear are a tribute to the nearly equal numbers of Confederate and Union Georgetown students who died in the American civil war. My own freshman dorm had had students in it continually since just after the revolutionary war.
Off the hardwood, it's truly fascinating to go to G-town for four years, because the diploma you will receive will be entirely in Latin. I've never taken the time to puzzle through all of the words, but I assume it says I'm legit, a grad-you-ate.
"Georgetown, Georgetown, Alma Mater,
Swift Potomac's lovely daughter,
Ever watching by the water,
Smiles on us today..."
6 comments:
thanks for that, i had no idea about what i just learned about the university. it is quite amazing
yes, kind of a quirky place...it has always had its immortals among the faculty, too, including Fr. Fadner, who dressed like and in fact tried to become Tolstoy, and his counterpart in Russian lit, Fr. Grigoriev, who was actually the dean of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas and allegedly fought the Bolshies in the Vlasov dissident army in World War II. The Polish dissident and Holocaust hero Jan Karski taught there, too, in the l970s, a wonderful, impeccably-mannered Polish nobleman.
I've always wanted to go to Georgetown, but I have a hunch that they'd take one look at my GPA (3.2), and toss my application in the trash. Gonzaga is probably more realistic, but unfortunately they don't have a history doctorate program.
97, it depends on your gpa and strength in history classes more than overall gpa. also, if you started weak but are finishing strong, that counts for a lot, too. i've just finished my second year on grad studies committee, reading people's apps, so i have some experience evaluating credentials. i'd go ahead and apply if i really wanted to do it...
Thanks buckarooskidoo, maybe I'll give it a shot. I look forward to going to the grad school seminar on Tuesday.
And kudos to those whose school went at least 1 step further than my beloved fighting ducks.
Go U/O!
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