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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

Faculty in the introduction

User:65.51.122.131 has now removed the reference to the faculty in the introduction four times over the last month. After the first time, I restored the mention to faculty, but changed the sentence to tone it town just in case, from "nationally recognized programs and faculty" to "popular programs and noteworthy faculty", and then today to "notable faculty". I do not agree with the user's suggestion that such mentions of faculty in any way constitute "an opinion". We have sources in the Academics section, and its subsections, that highlight where Georgetown has noteworthy faculty, and who some of them are. Today I chose the word "notable" to highlight a simple premise: That the fact that the faculty who are mentioned have their own Wikipedia articles means by definition they pass the bar of notability. If the user wishes to argue that they are not notable, I suggest they take it up on the pages of the individuals themselves.

The bigger reason I feel we need to keep this phrase in the introduction is for MOS:INTRO. We need to "briefly summarize the most important points" of the article here, and for an article on a university not to mention faculty at all in the introduction, I believe would cause it to leave out one of the biggest points. So does anyone have any suggestions for how to perhaps better word this sentence so that it is further immune from such anonymous critiques while still highlighting that which needs to be highlighted?-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 19:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Can I translate this article to Chinese?

Does Wikipedia support/courcage this?--Kevin 09:24, 13 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wanghaoyu0403 (talk • contribs)


Yes, that is fine and encouraged. Please read Wikipedia:Translation for details. I am, however, soon going to propose extensive changes to the article's introduction, so you might want to hold off for a bit. —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 20:16, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for New Introduction

I am proposing a wholesale rewriting of the article's introduction, which is particularly muddled on points of history (the mysterious reference to 1634) and religious identity/controversy (poorly elucidated). My aim is better clarity, better organization, and better flow, not substantial revision of the content. I have, however, added several new pieces of information to promote these goals:

  • the date of affiliation with the Jesuits and the number of Jesuits on campus
  • a word on the religious and geographic demographics of students
  • the number of academic programs

All of this information appears elsewhere in the article, I think, but if not I have citations. I have also refined the focus of the introduction to the things Georgetown is best know for. Here's my first draft. Please provide comments.

The oldest Catholic college in the United States, Georgetown University is a private, co-educational research and teaching university whose main campus is located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Georgetown's faculty do research and provide instruction to students in 180 programs in four undergraduate schools, three graduate and professional schools, and several specialized institutes. The university's programs in international affairs and law are especially well regarded.
The foundation of the College of George Town in 1789 by John Carroll, later the nation's first bishop, realized efforts dating from 1634 to establish a Roman Catholic college in the province of Maryland. The college was placed under the supervision of the Society of Jesus in 1815, the same year that it was conferred civil recognition as the nation's first congressionally chartered college. Small and meagerly funded in its early years, Georgetown grew after the American Civil War into a modern branched university under the leadership of Patrick Francis Healy, the first American of African descent to earn a doctorate and to direct a university.
Home to 56 Jesuits, Georgetown is nonetheless governed independently of the order and of Church authorities by the President and Directors of Georgetown College, under which name the university was incorporated in 1844. In recent years fewer than half of Georgetown's undergraduate students have identified as Catholic. The tensions between the university's commitments to its Catholic and Jesuit heritage and to academic freedom and between Catholic doctrine and students' secular lifestyles have sometimes caused controversy on campus and within the broader Catholic community.
Georgetown's students, who in most years hail from all 50 states and more than 130 countries, are known for their political activism. Notable for their leadership in government, Georgetown's alumni include former U.S. president Bill Clinton as well as the present heads of state or of government of six countries and the European Commission. Georgetown's student-athletes, known as the Hoyas, don Union blue and Confederate gray to compete in the Big East Conference and the Eastern College Athletic Conference in 23 varsity sports. The men's basketball team is well known for having reached the Final Four five times, winning the national championship in 1984, and for producing dozens of NBA players.

—Feis-Kontrol (talk) 23:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Too long and too wordy (like all of my drafts! :) ). If you'll move or copy this to a suitable sandbox I'll be happy to help edit it down. ElKevbo (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Where's the appropriate place to move this so we can work on it?
My proposal is about 40% longer than the existing introduction (367 words to 254). I agree we should try to make it shorter, but keep in mind that it is already shorter than or commensurate in length to articles for other universities that have been nominated for or achieved good or featured status (e.g., UCLA: 436 words, Michigan: 407, McGill: 344, Virginia: 345, Berkeley: 318). When looking for parts to cut down, keep in mind that there's really no point in mentioning people like Carroll and Healy in the intro if we don't leave space for a few words explaining why they're significant.
Look forward to seeing your changes. —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 03:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
You can make a sandbox hanging off of this page, in your userspace, or even mine if you'd like. Do you need help doing that? ElKevbo (talk) 03:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I've just noticed that I got the year the university was put under the supervision of the Jesuits wrong. It should be 1805. The charter was indeed conferred in 1815, so that sentence must be reworked. —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 03:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I must say that's not bad, and I kind of like it. Know that the article's gone through many critical examinations during its periods at GAN, PR, FAC, and TFA, and the current introduction is one of serious and concerted compromise that's the key part of an article that other editors on Wikipedia consider among the small percentage of well-written works. And the intro, in a similar form, was used on the mainpage when this was Today's Featured Article in 2007. That all said, there's always space for improvement and new blood. Here are some thoughts, with some issues I see:
  • I do like how your intro deals with 1634, and don't like how the current one does. Way back a few users tried hard to get 1634 put in the infobox, and that was my compromise with them, putting it in the intro. But I haven't seen any rumbling about this for years, so its probably fair to change that around.
  • The sentence in the History section, "The Maryland Society of Jesus was restored in 1805 and given supervision of the school", is actually badly worded. The society was restored in 1805, but the society wasn't "given supervision" then. Its not like one day the Jesuits showed up and took control. Many of the priests/teachers/administrators, who had joined the priesthood as Jesuits before the group was suppressed, rejoined the Jesuits when the society was revived by Leonard Neale in 1805. The early relationship between the school (then in dire need of money) and the society was negotiated out in correspondence between Neale (and later his brother) and Carroll over the following years. So the date of some formal affiliation with the Jesuits is not really a specific one you can pin down. It all makes teasing out the relationship between the school and the Society of Jesus a tricky job, but that itself is part of the founder's legacy. However, since this relationship is the topic of much discussion, perhaps the bit in the history section can be elaborated on better.
  • The use of bold in your intro might be problematic. The name certainly has evolved, but I'm not sure where "College of George Town" is from. In Carroll's early letters he references the Academy at George-Town, and other iterations, and when it started out, the college was just the level for the older kids, after "elementary" and "preparatory". Likewise, I'm not sure the name "President and Directors of Georgetown College" needs to be mentioned, since that was only for the administration, and its not like anyone used that name to refer to the whole school.
  • The specific numbers in the intro might be problematic. Summary style usually doesn't go for specific figures, since they change frequently, and its better to get words that say it. I'm not sure if 56 (where'd you get that, the page still says 59) is actually the number of Jesuits on campus right now. The website we reference for example still lists the late Father King, who passed away last year, so others may have come and gone. The line in the text should probably have an "as of 2009" preface. Likewise I'm not sure about the number of countries/states. However, the number or programs might work, but its probably not necessary and I don't know what it tells the reader.
  • Some of the wording is a little flowery. I note "don Union blue and Confederate gray". There's also some overlinking, for example with dates, which are rarely linked on Wikipedia these days, but also words like "countries", "bishop", or "incorporated" wouldn't generally be linked. And I do not think we could get by with "especially well regarded", that would be removed or changed by more critical users quite quickly.
  • Also no teams are actually currently in the ECAC. Only the men's lacrosse team was, until last year when it left. The rowing team is in the EARC and EAWRC, which are in turn affiliated with the ECAC.
  • I don't know about Healy status as an African American. There's was a good article in the Voice recently about this issue, and we changed his footnote accordingly. Though I'm guilty of doing this, to use African American is very anachronistic, applying a modern category to him. Besides that, I don't even think his status as the first black phD (or even university president) should be noted in the intro. Its not really the place.
  • And Jose Barroso didn't finish his Georgetown phD as I understand it, so he doesn't really get mentioned among the alumni here, except in broad terms.
So those are my concerns right now. I hope you have some tough skin, I realize I'm biting a new user pretty hard with some of that criticism. However, I can only see good things coming out of this discussion.-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 06:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Will one of you put this in an appropriate sandbox? I don't know how to do that, unless you just mean to dump it on my user page somewhere. ...
Patrick, thanks for your comments. Let me reply to the points of fact and style your brought up. I didn't mean to do anything controversial, so let's get these out of the way to start:
  • I think correctly portraying the affiliation with the Jesuits is very important. The university claims, "With the partial restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1805, the order was given the direction of the institution", and the Catholic Encyclopedia quotes the Laity's Directory in writing, "Since the year 1805, it has been under the direction of Society of Jesus." The Bicentennial History offers more detail, clarifying that five of the ten priests at the school rejoined the Jesuits in 1805 and "John Carroll began the process of formally entrusting Georgetown College to the order." Maybe we could change the sentence in the introduction to something vague like "After the restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1805, the college was entrusted to the Jesuits; a decade later it was conferred civil recognition as the first congressionally chartered college." Then we can flesh out the details in the history section and in the separate history article. Clearly you know quite a bit about this, so hopefully we can find something that works without getting too prolix.
  • I used boldface in the way I understood to be the correct style—for alternative names and synonyms—but I very well may have misused it. "The College of George Town" (or George-Town, hyphenated) is the name and spelling I have seen invariably used in early documents from after the founding (e.g., the prospectus of 1798 reads "The College of George-Town", etc.). More importantly, that is exactly how it appears on the federal charter of 1815, which I believe remains the legal authority under which the university confers degrees. "The President and Directors of Georgetown College" is the name under which the institution is legally incorporated. I suppose you could argue that's a detail that need not appear in the intro, but I already had occasion to mention the governing structure in discussing the university's relation to the Jesuits and the Church in general, so I thought it a significant enough detail to slide in.
  • I took the number of Jesuits from the same source, the Jesuit Community's webpage, and it looks like my 56 was a typo and should be 59. Agreed that the precise number doesn't need to appear in the intro; I wrote it that way simply because it was a more concise way of saying "a bunch of Jesuits live there as well". I am having trouble thinking of a vague phrase that could be readily interpreted as "about 60." ...
  • "don Union blue and Confederate gray" can perhaps be excised. I wrote it like that because mentioning the school colors seems appropriate and the addition of just two words, "Union" and "Confederate", alludes quite directly to their history.
  • My mistake on the ECAC. Since the Big East is the university's affiliation for most varsity sports, I think it will suffice to say something simple like, "Georgetown's student-athletes compete in 23 varsity sports in the Big East and other conferences."
  • I've read that Voice article on Healy and a lot of other stuff besides. The scholarship says his mother was a mixed-race slave, but that he likely did not think of himself as "black" and was only portrayed as such by the university years after his death; you'll note that I did not write "African American", though I did link to that topic; I wrote "American of African descent" to try to be wholly factual while skirting the issue of racial identity.
  • I included Barosso because of his inclusion on the Wikipedia alumni page, where he is noted as having received the degree of MSFS in 1998. Looking at his CV on the EC's site, I think that is likely incorrect because he claims to have been teaching at Georgetown from 1996-8. So we should probably remove him from the intro and the alumni page.
  • As for noting "well regarded" programs, my main desire is to point out which of Georgetown's programs are regarded as its strongest or which it is most known for. I think that's a point of interest to readers and that we should be able to find a way to convey that information without too much controversy if we word it in such a way as to avoid claiming certain programs are strong in some absolute sense or in relation to other universities'. As those of us familiar with the university are aware, there's certainly a sense that it is strong in some areas and not in others.
Anyway, on to the next round? Let's get this up somewhere we can edit it together so that we can rework things directly rather than just chat about them. Thanks again for the comments. —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 14:16, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I've copied this material into a suitable sandbox where we can work on this without disturbing others also working on this article. Please, everyone, join us in commenting on and editing this proposed new introduction! ElKevbo (talk) 15:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Citations 103, 104

The article states that Georgetown hosts a Buddhist clergyman; this is not correct. The links provided do not link to any evidence of this, but rather link to the recommendations of the Student Commission for Unity and the Campus Ministry site for one of the Buddhist student groups, respectively. Georgetown does not have a Buddhist clergyman - although there are two professors who specialize in Buddhism - but there are two student groups, the one linked to by citation 104 and a second group, which can also be located on the Campus Ministry link a few clicks away from the 104 link. I host this second group, and I have yet to hear the least mention of any Buddhist clergy on campus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.239.78 (talk) 21:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, there used to be a Buddhist Chaplin-in-Residence, he was American, and part of some American tradition, but anyway, I don't see any mention of him anymore. Is there a way we could mention Buddhists services that could be sourced to a current page?-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 23:47, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

"Jesuit Catholic private university"

Does anyone else agree that instead of describing the university as a "Jesuit private university", we should use "Jesuit Catholic private university" -- because many readers, from various countries, various backgrounds, may not know who Jesuits are but are far more likely to understand "Catholic"? --71.111.194.50 (talk) 09:31, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The first sentence is a tricky one. Finding the right sting of adjectives for the school that make it most comprehensible to as many as possible, while avoiding putting in too many, is difficult. Its been through several revisions, and I can't say that it's great as it is. "Jesuit private university" was worked out on the day this was the Featured Article of the Day, and that discussion is in the archive. But it still seems silly to me, since there can't be a "Jesuit public university". Adding Catholic in there makes it even sillier, since Jesuits are by definition Catholic. I do though see the point being that not all readers will know that. I would also note that the fourth sentence in that opening paragraph goes on about it being "Roman Catholic".
However describing it a Catholic or even Jesuit isn't exactly right. There are schools that are directly run by the Catholic Church, like CUA, and ones directly run by the Jesuit order, usually high schools, and I think there's a potential for confusion here because that's not what Georgetown is. I wrote the section on "Jesuit tradition" to try to flesh out the connection between the school and the church. So I guess what I'm saying is that you could add to the first sentence, but its probably neither necessary nor likely to elucidate the roll of the religion in the school.-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 07:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Just as trivia, there could theoretically be a Jesuit public university in some parts of the world where all educational institutions, even religious ones, are essentially under the jurisdiction of the state, and receive (some or all) funding from the state. --71.111.194.50 (talk) 19:16, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Now I believe you also asked me about the criticism sentence. Wikipedia, for its part, has a systemic bias toward highlighting criticism, and I'm not sure its all encyclopedic and worthy of inclusion. I believe that, for the most part, criticism of Georgetown's secularism has come from the Cardinal Newman Society. I don't think there's been as great a quantity, in newspaper articles or opinion pieces, from that side as there is criticism of Georgetown's policies on birth control, crucifixes, their rejection of Planned Parenthood and whatnot. Still, I bet we can tweak the sentence to cover CNS as well. However, I didn't like the way you had put it, using "some within the Catholic community" is way to vague to be useful, and CNS's criticism isn't because Georgetown is slipping on its heterodoxy. That would require new sources that I am unaware of.-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 17:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that all of these references should follow the wording on the school's website. Jesuit Universities often have very different op pinons on how their affiliation should be stated. For example, Saint Louis University requires that "Jesuit, Catholic" be used. However, Regis University in Denver requires "Catholic, Jesuit" to be used. Often times, the University image department for the school, places a lot of emphasis on this wording. They choose the wording to represent the correct image of the University at all times. Jhosch (talk) 06:55, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

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Oldest Catholic School in North America

I have trouble with the statement "Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in North America and one of the first post-colonial institutions of higher learning in the United States" that User:Misc11 (and their sockpuppet User:Gthoya) have added to the intro. The context for this statement is misleading, since in 1789, several Catholic schools were functioning on the continent. Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala was founded in 1676, Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino dates to 1538, while the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico can claim 1551 and the University of Havana 1721. Jesuits also founded Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in 1587. The issue with these being that they are either no longer Catholic (by virtue of various Latin American upheavals) or were subsumed by the state into a non-denominational school along the way. If any editors know of other examples, please list them.

Georgetown generally only ever claims to be the oldest in the United States. User:Misc11 did find a 2009 press release which includes the North America claim in its text, but its presented as a quote and the page's footer, common to their other press releases, says Georgetown is the oldest in "America", meaning just the United States. I don't expect to hear back from User:Misc11, they've been blocked for sockpuppetry, but did other users have an opinion on this claim? And while the school was founded after the Revolution, I have no idea what being a "post-colonial institution" does for us, and the claim isn't notable enough to include in the second sentence of the article.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 19:58, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we should revert the language to "oldest Catholic university in the United States". —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 04:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Law School Admissions Rates

There seems to be conflicting data on the admissions rate for the Georgetown Law Center. The Law School's website itself claims that 12,000 students apply for a freshman class of less than 600, leading to a statistical acceptance rate of about 5% based on those numbers. It is absolutely impossible, however, that Georgetown has such a low acceptance rate; Yale and Stanford are without question much harder to get into and both have acceptance rates in the 7-8% range. Most data I have researched have put Georgetown's actual rate at about 23%.

The article needs to be changed to reflect the actual acceptance rate. The question still remains: how does Georgetown get 12,000 applications a year for approximately 600 places? Are they including their part-time program and LLM programs? The acceptance rate should only reflect full-time, JD students, which is the common accepted practice when determining a law school's acceptance rate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.62.121 (talk) 16:36, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

We are not representatives of Georgetown Law and we cannot answer any of the questions that you pose. One thing that I am going to say is that nothing gives you the right to remove legitimate references and replace it with umm... nothing.--Misc11 (talk) 18:38, 16 July 2011 (UTC)


In typical usage, a school's "acceptance rate" is the number of accepted applicants divided by the total number of applicants, not positions available divided by total applicants, as you have wrongly understood. The latter number is generally called the "admissions rate", rather than the "acceptance rate", and though it is not often cited in America, it is in fact the number commonly advertised by British universities and by universities in other countries where acceptance numbers are generally not published.
The "acceptance rate" is almost always substantially higher than the "admissions rate", of course, because an applicant can apply to and be accepted by many schools but can attend just one; the fraction of accepted applicants who do matriculate is called the school's "yield". Because Georgetown Law's accepted applicants are mostly also accepted to other top-14 schools, Georgetown has a much lower yield than, say, Yale and Harvard, which accepted applicants usually prefer to attend; this means there's a particularly large gap between Georgetown's "admissions rate" and its "acceptance rate".
In any event, there is no error or discrepancy in numbers published on GULC's web-site; they are simply incomplete (the number of accepted applicants is omitted). Full data are available from the American Bar Association and the Law School Admissions Council.
In my opinion, the clearest way to present these data would be to write something like the following in the law school's article:
In recent years, Georgetown Law has received more applications than any other law school. For the class entering in the fall of 2010, Georgetown accepted 2,640 of 13,917 applicants (19.0%) for a class of 591 students.
(Source: "ABA Law School Data", PDF linked from https://officialguide.lsac.org/Release/SchoolsABAData/SchoolPage/SchoolPage.aspx?sid=54; N.B. that the number of full- plus part-time applicants given by the ABA does not sum to the total given, though the numbers of full- plus part-time applicants and matriculants do sum correctly; I've used the actual sum rather than the total given.)
That shows clearly what the 19.0% "acceptance rate" means, and you could then supply it without the underlying numbers in this article, where less detail is merited. (The "admissions rate" would be 591/13917 = 4.2%, if you want to include that as well.)
And I disagree, by the way, that it is appropriate to separate GULC's full-time and part-time JD admissions numbers for several reasons—first because separating out the part-time numbers does not change anything much (19.0% combined acceptance rate versus 21.2% for full-time only), second because GULC is the only top-14 school that has a part-time program (and one of only a handful of top-50 schools that do), and third because the part-time program, like the JD program as a whole, is one of the largest in the country (GULC's part-time program is 90% the size of Yale's entire law school, for example). In other words, GULC's peer schools report only their full-time numbers because they don't have part-time programs; to the extent that other, much more lowly ranked law schools report their numbers separately, it is likely because there are substantial differences between their full- and part-time programs, but no such difference exists in the case of GULC.
—Feis-Kontrol (talk) 22:05, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I have now updated the article to include the 19% acceptance rate, with appropriate citation. Please discuss here before further editing the article on this point.
—Feis-Kontrol (talk) 22:25, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Feis, thanks for your note. However, you have engaged in a semantically-based argument that is wholly unnecessary and that draws attention away from the fact that the page was inaccurate and misleading. I don't need a primer from you on the differences between "acceptance rates" and "admissions rates" and neither does anyone else. The reason why is that, simply put, the vast majority of universities in the United States adhere to a uniform measurement for admissions when correlating it with perceptions of quality: the "admissions rate." The previous statistics posted on the GULC page were misleading and inappropriate, granted that almost no other top law school measures its admissions process based on the total number of accepted students. This is like measuring the cost of an employee based simply on their income, without taking into account their real cost (which would also have to include unemployment taxes, 401k employer contributions, health care employer contributions, etc.)

In short, some universities engage in such practices as a means to artificially inflate their admissions numbers and enhance the perception of quality among the public. For example, some schools directly market to students who in turn believe they are competitive applicants, when in fact they are what admissions committees term "inappropriate" applicants. As a result more students apply and the school's entry rate is forced down. In reality the rate does not accurately reflect the general quality of the admissions pool. Schools in the United Kingdom have very strict quantitative thresholds that make the applicant pools highly self-selective, so it is hard to compare them to schools in the United States.

If you concede that the GULC data are incomplete, then you should also concede that they lack an appropriate context and are therefore not the most ideal for incorporation in a Wikipedia article. Going forward, it would be appreciated if Wikipedia editors stick to the basics and not try to quibble over semantics that direct attention away from what is important.

Finally, I never said anything about having to separate program types (full-time vs. part-time). You chose to make that inference. If the combined rate is 19% and the part-time rate is 21%, then that is what it is. But both of these rates are much higher than 5%, which is what the previous page cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.242.198.98 (talk) 17:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


As I explained above, I edited the article to reflect the "acceptance rate" that is conventional in the United States, based on data provided by the American Bar Association and the Law School Admission Council. I don't understand the point of the rest your ravings, which are inappropriate here. —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 20:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Athletic Graduation Success Rate

The athletics section briefly mentions that more than 90 percent of athletes graduate and cites a 2006 article from The Hoya. Additionally, it could cite the raw data of Graduation Success Rate from the NCAA. Pox202 (talk) 14:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused why 2004 is the current year they have data for, but I suppose that must be when current graduates start from. Here's the PDF I'll link to, but it gives three numbers, so do we say that Georgetown graduates 86%, 84%, or 94%? Or use their lingo and say Georgetown has a 94% "graduation success rate"?-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 01:56, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Athletic

This section briefly mentions the Georgetown basketball team's national championship in 1984, it should also give mention of the Women's Cross Country team of 2011. The Lady Hoyas, led by Coach Chris Miltenburg, defeated the Washington Huskies by 8 points at the 2011 NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, Inidana, to claim the school's second national title in school history. ToastyMcBiggins (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC).

Section updated, thanks for the suggestion!-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 01:56, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Benjamin Franklin

I found suspect the sentence "Because of Benjamin Franklin's recommendation, Pope Pius VI appointed former Jesuit John Carroll as the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in America, even though..." Citation #8 makes no reference to Ben Franklin. I removed the words "Because of Benjamin Franklin's recommendation. Relativelyso (talk) 01:46, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, facts in a paragraph can sometimes be covered by a reference at the end of the paragraph, even though typically, they are covered by the reference immediately following. In this case, the Robert Emmett Curran book is the source for Franklin's involvement. I've made that clearer with a "ref name" tag. Thanks!-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 03:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Intro

Hey Feis-Kontrol, I undid the edits because when I saw an IP address editor changing the intro I assumed it was User:Misc11, that's my bad, I should have been more careful. I have no concern with the content. That said, I do find the changes a bit flowery, with an "eponymous neighborhood" and "augmented campus", and some of the sentences do run on, like the first in the second paragraph and the last in the third. We also can't use the phrase "Today, Georgetown has...", that's from WP:PRECISELANG. Lastly, I don't think the number of states/countries is as important to include as the total student numbers, and thought "various geographic backgrounds" was a compromise. Part of that is also because the school only claims to get applications from all 50 states, and even if one incoming freshman does come from each state, students transfer and families move. We don't even make that claim in the prose, only highlighting the regions of the country students come from.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 03:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

And while I don't mind taking "Jesuit" out of the first sentence definition, I'm confident another user will eventually find issue with that.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 03:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Sorry I didn't notice I wasn't logged in. Revert or change as you see fit, but please do so to the parts individually rather than reverting the whole thing. I'd like at least to make some incremental progress.

Let me explain what I'm trying to accomplish (and hope to extend to the rest of the article if we can find a workable compromise). First, I think by far the biggest problem with the article at this point is its poor readability. The facts collected are mostly correct and pertinent, but many of them are haphazardly presented, or are presented without motivating context. The result is a confused mishmash, not a well written encyclopedia article. Particularly when it comes to the historical material and most basic, uncontroversial, hum-drum parts of the article, we can do much better.

For example, I changed several things in the second paragraph of the intro: I added back relevant context about John Carroll ("later the first American bishop") and Patrick Francis Healy ("second founder") and tried better to explain the mysterious 1634 thing ("in the face of religious persecution"). I feel context is needed in all of these cases to make clear why these things are being mentioned at all. Without that context, the names are just meaningless names, and the date is a real head-scratcher. Yes, the reader can click a link (in some cases) to gain more information about the referenced topics, but in general a paragraph should read well and provide the reader the minimal context necessary to understand how the facts presented are relevant and how they fit together without needing to read every linked article. Particularly in the introduction, if an ordinary reader could not be expect to be familiar with a referenced person/event/whatever, then either (a) the necessary context should be provided or (b) the reference should be deferred to a later section in which that context can be presented well. (This also helps with the overall organization of the article.) My rule of thumb: ask yourself whether a sentence/paragraph/section would make good sense in a dead-tree encyclopedia that couldn't use hyperlinks as an expository crutch. If not, edit appropriately.

As for my word-choice/style, of course feel free to rewrite or simplify as you see fit. I don't, however, think words like "eponymous" or "augmented" are particularly flowery. Yes, let's strive for simplicity and clarity, but this is not the Basic English version of Wikipedia (as I have pointed out previously) and we should not treat it as such. (Related: linked article titles should not dictate how we refer to a topic.)

I do take your point on "all 50 states", etc. I think I wrote the language it replaced, but it struck me as so vague as to be meaningless when re-writing it in the most recent edit. Wishy-washy stuff like "students come from a wide variety of backgrounds" is almost as bad as presenting over-specific, stale facts. If we can't avoid either of those outcomes, we should probably throw out these sorts of problem statements altogether. ... I also removed the reference to the number of students as that's pretty clearly infobox material, isn't it? ... On your point about the WP:PRECISELANG guidelines—well, I think you're misinterpreting them. The rule is to avoid presenting facts that are so temporally specific that they quickly become outdated. The admonition on language like "today" or "recently" is to that end. I led off the third paragraph with "Today ..." because a transition is needed there to signal to the reader that we're ending the historical discussion of the second paragraph. The word "Today" is not itself a problem, I don't think. But if what follows it violates WP:PRECISELANG and we can't fix it without ending up with a meaninglessly vague statement, then, as I mentioned previously, we should probably just throw that part out.

—Feis-Kontrol (talk) 05:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Right, it's not "Today" its "Today there are students from 50 states" that concerns me. Its a precise fact without a precise year/date. Which would be different from "Today Georgetown has students from a variety of backgrounds". Anyway I do want to make some changes, but I hope they're ones you can be cool with. Two that I'll comment on are "begun in 1634" and "born into slavery". Previously it'd said "dating from 1634", and certainly that's when our history starts, but when "efforts were begun" is probably too specific an action. If you really wanted we could go with 1640, when Ferdinand Poulton got involved and received Papal permission for his broader vision, but I've used "efforts of earlier Jesuits" because it was more of a continuous effort, with several starts and stops. Second, Healy's mother was "born into slavery", but she was bought by his father, who common-law married her. The law would say that her children could then also be slaves, but certainly Michael Healy never treated his sons as such. So "born a slave by law" is what I've used before, and I think that's the best, perhaps only, way we can put it.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 20:55, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm mostly OK with those changes. I might try to condense it a bit.
I think it's best to remove the reference to 1634 altogether, so I'm happy you did so. I left it in in deference to past arguments about it, as that came up when we rewrote most of the intro several months ago.
I understand the complexities surrounding identifying Healy as a slave. I don't think those complexities can be conveyed appropriately in a phrase, so I think your reasoning for using "born a slave by law" is somewhat misguided. I think simply "who was born a slave" is the most appropriate minimal rendering. The "by law" part, to me, creates more confusion than it resolves in this brief mention in the article introduction—where we should also strongly favor concision. I'm going to change this [Done. My edit—sorry, I keep getting logged out and it's not warning me on submitting an edit], but if you strongly disagree with it, go ahead and change it back.
Anyway, I think this is a step in the right direction. If I can find some time, I'm going to try to work through the rest of the article (or at least the section on history). Let's discuss whatever issues come out of this.
—Feis-Kontrol (talk) 22:02, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Georgetown University visual identity guidelines

The visual identity guidelines, which some have claimed mandate the black Georgetown seal, in fact prefer the blue seal. The updated guidelines can be found here [1]. While the booklet explains that one is allowed to use the black seal, the prevalence of blue seals in it suggests that blue is the primary color. The same is true for most of the updated Georgetown websites.

I do not see why people insist on black given that presently there is no such preference on the part of Georgetown regardless of what happened in the past. In fact, the website makes it clear that while "Georgetown University’s visual identity looks to the past for inspiration...[it] must remain relevant for the 21st century" [2] These redesigned features and colors are the 21st century identity of Georgetown.--Gtownsfs (talk) 06:41, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

IIRC we don't need to follow the visual identity guidelines. From a former discussion (Talk:University at Albany, SUNY): "This manual, however, is applicable to stationery, publications, websites, etc. under control of the University. It is not applicable to Wikipedia generally or to this page specifically. The use of the seal on Wikipedia is not subject to University approval." – Connormah (talk) 13:44, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
I agree that the school guidelines do not need to be applied here. That said, the guidelines do suggest that black is just as official as blue. I would mention that a Google Image search suggests black is more common than blue. However, if we do want to switch to blue, then we'd preferably get an official image of it, and not a GIF file that's been paint bucketed to blue. The color in the SVG version, at the very least, can be easily changed with a text editor, and then uploaded using a new file name to preserve the old file on the Commons as an option for other Wikis. Thanks!-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 14:23, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the color controversy. But I do want to point out that the SVG looks terrible at the displayed size. There is simply too much detail rendered and the result is a mess of overlapping lines in every browser and on every display I've tested. (That includes high-DPI displays where it should look better than otherwise.) If we stick with the SVG, we should try to simplify the file to a level of complexity appropriate for scaled-down use. I believe SVG editors like Inkscape can do this automatically, though I don't know how good the result will be. Feis-Kontrol (talk) 18:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I can change the color of the SVG, but I don't see the absolute necessity at this point. – Connormah (talk) 20:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
FYI, the seal was not painted blue. I cut it out of the seal I received in the email from the director of communications. If you have a more precise way of cutting it out, use one of the seals in the pdf.
That being said, I do not like how Connormah first argued that the black was mandated by the manual and now tells us that guidelines can be ignored. You can't just spit out whatever whenever it is convenient for your argument.
Similarly, I do not like how Patrick first argued that the problem was color while now the emphasis is on the quality of my work. It would be very helpful if we stayed consistent.
And feel free to keep the funeral colors...--Gtownsfs (talk) 20:45, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
I didn't argue that black was mandated by the manual, I said I had extracted it in that color from the manual. – Connormah (talk) 02:42, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
As for the guidelines, those are meant for university communications and such, not third parties like us - obviously the argument would be a bit different if we were using an old logo that no longer represents them, but I don't see a huge fuss over something like this. – Connormah (talk) 02:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
I agree, much ado about nothing. One thing that Feis-Kontrol does bring up is that the SVG looks squished in the infobox. I think the simplify tool in Inkscape would make it worse though. The PNG version looks better, but since we had the SVG I assumed it was preferable. You can compare them all on the commons. Thoughts?-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 03:52, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
The PNG does look better. And it's even smaller than the GIF version and smaller than the size the SVG is displayed at (172 pixels wide versus 190). Was the PNG drawn from the SVG? If so, can we get a version drawn at 190 pixels wide or so that (hopefully) will look even better (less scrunched)? —Feis-Kontrol (talk) 02:59, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
Could try our luck at WP:GL/ILL...some people there probably know what they're doing in terms of rendering more than I or we all do. – Connormah (talk) 04:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Update and cleanup needed

This FA appears at the top of the list of FAs in need of cleanup; everything listed is relatively minor, old data that needs checking (see every "as of" in the article), dead links need to be addressed, and it shouldn't take too much work to get this article updated so it won't appear at the top of the problematic list. Is anyone following this article who can take on this work? Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:17, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Featured article review needed

I left a note a week ago, and see no response. Most of the data in this article dates to 2007-- some is even older. The entire article needs updating. I've tagged a very small number of the outdated statements-- there are many more. I'll check back in a month to see if a WP:FAR should be initiated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:23, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am still working on this article. Yes, I am very busy in real life. I removed the one statistic from 2000 after seeing your note, and have updated the ones you marked today. Thank you for the heads up.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 03:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Glad you're working on it, Patrick; no hurry then! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:24, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Is this really how the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies was created?

If Barry Rubin is to be believed, Georgetown University "was the place that accepted tens of thousands of dollars from Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi--who was, of course, very active in promoting anti-American terrorism--to establish an endowed chair in Middle East studies." The campus "is flush with Arab money, full of apologists for anti-American Islamism, a place where no Israeli or pro-Israel student might dare to tread"

According to How to Turn a Campus into an Indoctrination Center, in 1975 Professor Carroll Quigley "explained that he had just come from a meeting where it was made clear that the university had a problem. They were getting Arab money, but on the secret condition that it was for teaching about the Middle East but none of it could be used to teach about Israel. How was this problem to be solved? Simple. They would call the institution to be created the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. It was explicitly expressed that this was how the problem would be dealt with. … Ever since then, I have referred to that institution as the Center for Contemporary Arab Money." Asteriks (talk) 17:34, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Is this a reliable source? Have other reliable sources also discussed this? ElKevbo (talk) 19:04, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Infobox

Hi guys, it seems one or more anonymous editors has taken an interest in the state of the infobox here. I've watched the changes develop, but lately I've seen a few that could be problems. Number one would be removing the ALT text for the official seal. For a good few years now, all images on Wikipedia have been supposed to come with ALT text that describes the image for screen reading software, used by visually impaired individuals. ALT text is a requirement during Featured Article candidacy, and I think it is a good goal to try to keep the article at that level. Second, just because there is a field for "name in Latin" does not mean we need to use it. Remember that the purpose of an Infobox is to summarize information elsewhere in the article, and Wikipedia's manual of style recommends excluding unnecessary content. There are some schools which do make use of their Latin name, but not this one. Further, "Universitas Georgiopolitanum" isn't the name used in the school seal or on diplomas, or even in Latin gender agreement, which would be "Universitas Georgiopolitana."

With the colors, I'm fine if we want to go back to the two box setup for the blue and gray. I scripted the striped color template box this summer for use in maps, but found it useful for situations that have two colors together, and a number of universities have followed suit. If we're doing the two boxes though, they're usually on a second line below the color names, which I do think are logical to link to the school colors section at Georgetown Hoyas, where readers can get a full explanation of the colors, rather than just a reference to the school's website. Again, per the manual of style, references aren't needed if the material has a citation below, which it has in the "Civil War" subsection. Lastly, I was also surprised to see Hoya Saxa removed from the box. Template:Infobox university comes with a "free" field, that lets editors add whatever they want, and I think this is an interesting part of Georgetown's culture that we can highlight up front. The fight song is a good option too, though I would point to the sports teams articles, which already link to that in their boxes. So let's discuss the changes, and what else we can do!-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 02:26, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

location map here File:Georgetown university overview map.svg Duckduckstop (talk) 15:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Patrick, while it's true that latin names are used more by medieval universities and certain institutions, Georgetown still uses its latin name in a number of cases -- the old Georgetown College (Collegium Georgiopolitanum) on the seal -- as well as in a number of (I'm not sure if it's consistent every year) yearbooks (Olde Domesday Bookes). Indeed, the very fact that the word Georgiopolitanum (Georgiopolitanum) exists--as the adjectival form of Georgiopolis or Georgetown--is a testament to the use of the latin name. And again, as to the medieval point, take a look at much younger universities and their pages--Cornell for instance, is much younger (established 1865) than Georgetown and yet still uses the latin name in the infobox. the same is true of Miami University (founded 1809). And these are not even Catholic universities where use of latin is both historically and especially contemporarily more common. See University of Notre Dame (est. 1842), Xavier University (est. 1831), Creighton University (est. 1878). And with St. John's and Villanova. Given your experience, I'll defer to you but I very much disagree. Jx242 (talk) 04:11, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I think some of the desire to add a "Latin name" here comes both from a sense of prestige of having an older college, and maybe from a sense of incompleteness, since there exists this field in the university infobox template for "Latin name" so surely it needs to be filled. Those might be well intentioned but I think both motivations are wrong here. I'm not sure if those other schools are using the "Latin name" field correctly, but just because other articles do something doesn't make it correct. As far as my research goes, Georgetown has never used the words "Universitas Georgiopolitana" for any purpose, and just because we can translate it doesn't make it official. The only thing we have are the words used on the seal (Collegium Georgiopolitanum ad Ripas Potomaci in Marylandia) and I don't think "Latin name" is the right place for those either, though I'd be curious to see what other editors think and perhaps its worth asking for clarification at the template talk page.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 16:24, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Remove Arab Studies Center

The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (linked as Arab Studies Center) in the chart of schools within the University (in the section labeled Academics) is very much out of place. The Center is neither a school nor a college and is not vested with the authority of nominating individuals for the conferral of degrees as the other schools are. Rather, the Center is an institution that may be classified a semi-autonomous sub-unit of a school. Furthermore, it is positioned as to give the impression that it falls within the jurisdiction of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences when, in reality, it is housed within the School of Foreign Service. It would be far more appropriate to describe the Center in prosaic form. Considering the flaws, I will remove the center from the chart if there are no objections. Ergo Sum (talk) 00:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Removed Arab Studies Center from chart. Ergo Sum (talk) 04:46, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart

Consider merge to the university's page Roches (talk) 01:58, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I am in the process of creating the Dahlgren article. Please do not merge yet. See article's talk page for more info. Ergo Sum 02:05, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
I have finished creating the Dahlgren Chapel article (i.e. I have contributed all that I can to it). It is now more appropriate to render a decision as to whether the article is fit for merging into the Georgetown University article. I do not believe that it should be merged. It is a fairly sizable start-class article that contains much information that would not be suitable for inclusion in the Georgetown University article. Additionally, the chapel is notable of its own right and is deserving of having a standalone article. Ergo Sum 22:40, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I concur with Ergosum -- it is a good article as of present, sufficiently notable, it does not fit easily into the Georgetown page, and it is as important a building, if not more so, in the context's of Georgetown's history than the other standalone articles about buildings on campus, like the Edward B. Bunn S.J. Intercultural Center or the Multi-Sport Field. Keep as is. Jx242 (talk) 02:07, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Likewise, it works better as a separate article, and I'm not sure what is (or would be) the argument for merging. Thanks Ergo Sum (talk · contribs) for taking this one on! If your happy with the article's current status, I hope you won't mind if I've gone ahead and nominated it for WP:DYK to get recognized on the front page.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 14:41, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Not at all. I think that's a great idea. Thanks for your work! Ergo Sum 14:53, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

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Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Georgetown University/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This is the central article for the group of articles relating to Georgetown University. There are many that branch off, but this needs to be complete in its analysis of the school. In terms of its role in the District, it is necessary to support the article's history section and Campuses section, both which are among it's stronger parts. It's weaknesses include an tendency to laud itself for its accomplishments and gloss over various controversial issues.

Last edited at 06:55, 29 March 2015 (UTC). Substituted at 20:36, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

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