For years, I’ve been hearing about these big-time security breaches where hackers or somesuch mischievous types grab a hold of a whole bunch of social security numbers and crap like that. And for years I’ve been yawning and going about my business.

UNTIL TODAY!

Georgetown University, my alma mater, had some 38,000 names and SSNs stolen from the student activities office in the Leavey Center (GU’s wholly subpar student center). Friends have gotten this e-mail:

Dear Current or Former Students, Faculty and Staff:

We are writing to inform you that you are among a group of individuals whose personally identifiable information such as name and social security number may have been exposed due to a recent computer theft on campus. We regret this incident and wanted to alert you via email as soon as possible after completing our investigation of the nature and scope of the data at issue. Recognizing the seriousness of this incident and the concern we share for the personal security of those within our community, we are making arrangements to provide free credit monitoring services for you….

A thorough internal investigation of the data that was contained on the hard drive has now determined that the hard drive included personally identifiable information for students enrolled and some faculty and staff from 1998 through 2006. Since the files related to a range of cross-campus student financial transactions processed through the Office of Student Affairs, it pertained to students enrolled at the Main, Medical and Law Center campuses. No financial information, such as bank account or credit card numbers, was contained in the hard drive. This incident is limited to this one hard drive and does not extend to other University systems and services where personal data may be stored or updated.

Currently, I’m freaking the fuck out, fixated on how all my dreams of home ownership and car ownership and career success and old age and are all but certainly going up in flames! WHAT WILL I DO!?!?!

(Actually, I’m pretty chill, ’cause for all those years I’ve been hearing about these huge security breaches, I’ve yet to hear a single story about some dude who got his identity stolen because of it. And, hey, free credit monitoring! Long live blissful ignorance!)

This morning I was checking out an ad from Georgetown University in the Washington City Paper. Turns out that the U. is promoting some programs under its Georgetown Public Policy Institute. There’s the Master of Public Policy (MPP), there’s the Executive Master of Policy Management (MPM), and there’s the Master of Public Policy Evening Program (MPP-EP).

On that last one: How many graduates do you think leave off the “-EP” when it comes time to write up their resumes?

Hate crimes are practically becoming routine in the region these days, and local universities are ground zero: from the University of Maryland (the noose incident), to Georgetown (the early morning homophobic attack), to most recently Gallaudet. This morning’s District Briefing in the Post reports a “possible hate crime” at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on the Gallaudet University campus. Six white students and one black student scrawled “KKK” and swastikas all over a black student. I don’t quite understand what’s “possibly” hateful about this incident. Having symbols of vicious prejudice scribbled all over your body isn’t exactly a hobby.

Meanwhile, over at Georgetown, students gathered Monday to protest bias-related incidents at the university, according to school newspaper The Hoya. Members of a LGBT student group, GUPride, gathered signatures “for a petition supporting reforms to university procedure for addressing future hate crimes,” and three professors and college group leaders spoke at the rally. But the article didn’t mention any direct condemnations of Philip Cooney, the Georgetown student who was arrested in connection with the attack last month.

Is history at work here? Would Cooney have been spared if this crime had occurred prior to March 2006? The incident I’m referring to is, of course, the Duke Lacrosse scandal, which Cooney’s lawyer referenced to NBC 4.

“The police investigation was nothing,” he said. “You have a complaining witness who says he saw someone who he thought may have attacked him vis-à-vis the Web. That’s the investigation. Did they try to talk to Mr. Cooney before the investigation? No. Would you expect the police to do that? Yes,” he told NBC.

Allow me to rebut.

The Washington Post needs to keep shoehorning those brilliant pregame stories into the paper. As a Hoyas fan, I read every one, even though I concede they are the most predictably formatted items in the paper. So what: local team makes the big game, you flood the zone. That’s just the way it works. (Disclosure: I’m responsible for a piece of pre-game hype for a Washington Post Co.-owned property myself.)

Erik now comes into my office to argue that all these pregame stories are a waste of valuable journalistic resources. Yeah, because there’s so many other huge sports stories out there this week that having Eric Prisbell in Atlanta is going to preclude covering. Uh oh—Gary Williams has hemorrhoids! Where’s that Terps beat writer!!!

This is far from the worst waste of journalistic resources going on at the Post Sports section. What’s Tarik El Bashir up to right now? Caps fans won’t miss him for a few days—I want him covering Hoyas hoop. What about the team of Redskins reporters on Lance Briggs watch right now? Send them down, too.

For one thing, Emilio, if you don’t do it, you will have a mob of angry Hoyas fans on your ass. Oh wait, you already do.

I’ve been a fan of the North Carolina Tar Heels since my high school days. So watching them lose to the Georgetown Hoyas on Sunday was a bit of a disappointment.

But the real reason that I let out a big sigh on Sunday evening had little to do with team loyalties. No, it had to do media consumption: Now that the Hoyas were in the Final Four, I’d have to sit through a week of pregame stories in the Washington Post and other local media outlets.

Of all the genres of sports journalism out there in the world, no category is so thoroughly, so reliably lame as the pregame piece. It’s predictable, fluffy, filled with vapid quotes from players and coaches, and boring. I don’t care what news outlet you’re working for—the Post, the New York Times, Sporting News, the Dupont Current, WRC-TV: If you’re teeing up Saturday’s big game, you’re doing some awfully forgettable journalism.

Examples abound in Final Four week. Check out this abstract for a Post story on the other FF matchup this weekend: “Joakim Noah and the Florida Gators find defending their title is a tough proposition.”

OK, I haven’t read that piece and wouldn’t dream of doing it. But just as surely as ESPN Zone fills with meatheads, that story features a Florida player quoted saying something to the following effect, if not verbatim: “Hey, when you’ve won the title, everyone’s gunning for you.”

Same thing goes for the Hoyas coverage. Yesterday, the area’s dominant daily chimes in with a fluffer on the partnership in the G’town backcourt of Jonathan Wallace and Jessie Sapp. Here’s a sample:

As basketball players, they complement each other. Sapp thrives off of driving to the basket and is a blur when he gets the ball in his hands and has the open court ahead of him. Wallace never seems hurried and is very good at stepping out and launching that distinctive, high-arcing shot.

“I feel that every time he puts the ball up, it’s going in,” Sapp said. “I really feel that way about Jon. I feel that his shot selection is great.”

It gets even worse, of course, on the TV news. On her late-night sports segment on Tuesday, WRC’s Lindsay Czarniak chronicled the Hoyas’ reception on campus and snagged an interview with Coach John Thompson III. Czarniak asked Thompson something to the following effect: Tell me everything that’s been out of the ordinary over these past few days.

Bring on the Leno show!

Georgetown University is home to some of the most driven, most ambitious, and smartest aspiring young politicos in the nation. But don’t expect that to translate into a thoughtful, well-functioning student government. When elections for the all-but-powerless G.U. Student Association haven’t been plagued with voting fiascos, they’ve typically degenerated into beauty contests based largely on how well the tickets’ names roll off the tongue. (Last year, a guy named Twister got elected.)

But this year, the beauty contest went viral video. Candidates Ben Shaw and Matt Appenfeller put together a parody of a parody that became a campus sensation. It was enough to lead them last week to the first majority GUSA victory in five years: