Students Camping Out For Tickets

A Studied Celebration of Hoyas

Students said they were excited. But that didn't mean they were going so far as to blow their studies or anything. Georgetown is the kind of school where students bring their Arabic and biochemistry homework to do while they're waiting for basketball tickets. They spell each other in the ticket line so nobody has to miss too many classes. They don't burn couches, like some celebrators at other schools; they bring them along. "We did get stopped by somebody who wanted to know if we were stealing it from a dorm," said Emre Ozen, 21, a junior who supplied a black leather love seat for the camp out. "But I said it was mine."

Any college campus goes a little batty when its team does what the Hoyas just did, defeating a couple of tough competitors and coming within two games of winning the national college basketball championship. But Georgetown is a place that educates future Supreme Court justices, presidents and diplomats, and people take their studies -- and, arguably, themselves -- very seriously.

Senior Nick Miede was as thrilled as anybody about the university's victory Sunday over North Carolina, which put the Hoyas in the NCAA Final Four in Atlanta this weekend. He and a couple of friends camped yesterday outside McDonough Arena for tickets to the games, which go on sale today. Yet they were not planning wild overnight parties as they waited -- not this bunch.

"I'm going to write my thesis on microfinance and social capital," said Miede, 22, as he settled into a chair about noon, utilizing the time to work on his thesis. Nobody acknowledged skipping class to celebrate. Some said their professors even nudged them to loosen up and enjoy themselves. "I actually had a professor say we'd be idiots not to go to the game," Miede said.

. . . .

The Hoyas' homecoming, about 2 p.m., drew several hundred more students to the parking lot to cheer the players responsible for the excitement. Emily Solis-Cohen and Alison Randall had cut French class to be there -- with their professor's blessing. When Solis-Cohen, a freshman, received an e-mail that the team was arriving in 30 minutes, Professor Jean-Max Guieu decided to release the 15 students in his "Cultural History of the French People" class. "He knows how important this is," said Randall, also a freshman. "He said, in French, that this is a unique time in our lives."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032602131.html