Tim Ashwell, a senior lecturer in the department of kinesiology at the University of New Hampshire at Durham, attended GW from 1966 to 1970.
I’m writing in response to the column, “When exploring D.C., look past the headlines” by David Meni (Sept. 10, online).
I hope every GW student and members of their family, especially nervous parents of new students, take a few minutes to read David’s insightful piece on exploring the city. If you take the kind of reasonable precautions he suggests and exercise a bit of common sense, getting to know D.C. is one of the greatest benefits of a GW education.
We heard the same warnings from our parents and loved ones to be safe and cautious in the District when I was a GW undergraduate. At that time, D.C. was considerably more unstable, and real estate developers hadn’t renamed the nondescript area between Foggy Bottom and Dupont Circle the West End.
As a freshman in the fall of 1966, I attended GW football home games. I’d routinely get up bright and early to walk the nearly five miles from my residence hall on 19th Street — now known as Mitchell Hall — to what was then called D.C. Stadium, now RFK Memorial Stadium, near the Capitol and Lincoln Park. Back then, we had to navigate the city without the help of the Metro, which hadn’t yet been built.
Those walks helped me understand there was a city beyond Foggy Bottom, the Mall and the Hill. When I passed the Capitol and headed east on East Capitol Street, institutional and monumental Washington turned into a different kind of city. Families lived here. Small shops and businesses I’d never heard of were tucked around corners.
I met some nice folks, many of whom were no doubt curious why a white college boy was strolling down the street. Some even helpfully volunteered directions, convinced I must be lost. When I told them I was headed to a GW game — and reminded them that tickets were much cheaper and more available than they were for the Redskins games — a few even said maybe they’d take in a game sometime.
As I walked, I was sidetracked by the occasional touch football game in the street from time to time. I never ran into any of the “trouble” we’d been told surely awaited us in certain questionable neighborhoods.
Like most GW students, I spent a lot of my time in Foggy Bottom with occasional forays into Georgetown. I visited the museums on the Mall (definitely should have spent more time there) but I also saw James Brown and the Temptations perform at the Howard Theater. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was still alive when I was a freshman and sophomore, so the fires of 1968 were still in the future. But we didn’t see anything wrong with journeying to T Street for the sake of music. I’m glad we did.
I don’t know whether we were more courageous back then or just more trusting. I teach these days at the University of New Hampshire, a tranquil campus in a small town an hour north of Boston. I sense that many of my students would never dream of hiking off alone through a major city. In fact, many rarely go to Boston at all, and, when they do, they never venture far from Fenway Park, TD Garden, or the museum or theater they’ve been assigned to visit.
I’m not advising students to loiter on street corners late at night. Take care of yourself and be aware of your surroundings, but don’t let unfamiliar people and places stop you from exploring Washington. It’s a great city, and probably one of the reasons you wanted to come to GW in the first place.
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