Hoya Madness this year has devolved into actual madness.
Hoya Madness is normally an event for students to come together to rally in support of Georgetown’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, but numerous issues with the event have threatened the celebration this year.
Georgetown originally announced Hoya Madness last week with a video, although details on the event and performer were not readily available.
This Monday, Georgetown Athletics came out with the official time for Hoya Madness (doors opening at 9 pm, with the main event to get underway at 10 pm) and the performer who would headline the event, the rapper Fabolous.
However, as students on campus looked into Fabolous, they found that he had been charged (and later pled guilty in the case) to domestic violence last year. Students and on-campus groups began to protest the announcement of Fabolous as the featured performer at Hoya Madness, as Fabolous’s charges of domestic violence were serious and raised real concerns for students.
It became readily apparent that Georgetown Athletics hadn’t done its due diligence before hiring Fabolous as the performer. Even a cursory scroll of his Wikipedia page would’ve brought these issues to light; he has a whole section dedicated to his “legal issues”.
Or just Google “Fabolous controversy” to see if, yes, he had done anything controversial in the past. The first result that pops up when you Google that phrase is, “Rapper Fabolous arrested on domestic dispute charge.”
The backlash from hosting a man who pled guilty to domestic violence, striking his girlfriend seven times, was enough for Georgetown Athletics. Georgetown Athletics released a statement late Tuesday night announcing that Fabolous’s performance was cancelled. The statement said that Georgetown had hired him through a third-party booking agency, and that they were not aware of the charges against him at the time they had hired him.
On Wednesday evening, Georgetown Athletics sent an email to students announcing a time change to Hoya Madness. The event will now start early with doors opening at 6:30 pm instead of the previously stated 9 pm.
The time change is perplexing. Mr. Georgetown, the popular annual pageant featuring representatives from major on-campus clubs, is being held from 7 pm to 9 pm, conflicting with Georgetown Athletics’s new time for Hoya Madness. This was an entirely preventable conflict, and I’m not sure why they’d force said conflict to happen. If the goal of the event is to engage as many students as possible, the current event as scheduled fails to accomplish that objective.
In addition, it looks as if there’s no music act outside of the DJ, and the email seems to indicate that student performances have been removed from the event, since there’s no mention of the student performances remaining. Update (10/9/19: 11:14 PM): There are some student performances remaining. The sole student performances left in the event were a demonstration from the cheer team and GU Jawani, according to cheer team member Olivia Wilmarth.
Long story short, this is not a good look. It’s not a good look for the students who might be getting their first introduction to the program, it’s not a good look to the numbers of recruits that come to Hoya Madness every year, and it’s not a good look for the fans who were looking forward to celebrating their beloved Hoyas.
