Madeline Silva

COL ’17
Age: 19
Hometown: Portsmouth, N.H.
Major: Undeclared

What do you hope to get out of Georgetown?
I think these are my last four years where I get to take classes that interest me and participate in things that are interesting and fun before I start having to worry too much about the real world and jobs. I’m hoping to balance my desire to figure out what I want to do in life with remaining curious about all of the things I’m learning and the people I’m meeting.

What’s your favorite class you’ve taken at Georgetown so far?
I did an Ignatius Seminar last semester on the Constitution. We spent the first chunk of the semester learning about the constitution and reading books about it, and the second chunk we broke up into committees, and we worked as a bunch of committees to create our own amendments to the constitution, and then the last third we had a constitutional convention where we argued for or against each other’s amendments and ultimately vote on whether to include them in our constitution at the end. It was a lot of fun because we had people from many different ideological backgrounds.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned at Georgetown since coming here?
I think I’ve been exposed to a broader range of perspectives, not just political perspectives, but religious backgrounds and things like that. My senior year of high school I was surrounded by a pretty comfortably liberal community, and I think Georgetown has people from a broader range across the political and ideological spectrum. It’s been good because it’s challenging certain beliefs that I have that I haven’t had to defend in a while. Being tested on the things that I believe has been a good experience over the last year.

If you could lead a protest on any one thing what would it be?
Oh, everything! Only one thing? Something social justice related. I just went on an Alternative Spring Break trip called “Ethics of Incarceration,” and it was about ethical problems within our criminal justice and incarceration systems, which is something that I had already been interested in, and it reignited that. Maybe getting rid of the fact that felons can’t vote in a lot of situations, I think that’s a glaringly unjust practice in our society. But anything, really: poverty, feminism, racism, take your pick.

Do you feel like you fit in at Georgetown, and, separately, do you feel like everyone can fit in at Georgetown?
I think I fit in. I’ve managed to find a group of people I like spending time with and that I feel comfortable around, which I think is the basic criteria for feeling like you fit in somewhere. I do think that Georgetown is a big enough community that most people can find a niche to fit in with. That being said, I do think that there is a sort of more general Georgetown student – which is obviously a big generalization – that is preppy and career-focused that I’m not sure everyone fits in with, and I can see how that might be limiting.

Interview by Ben Germano