GW receives final test results
The main GW mailroom on F Street and the Mount Vernon Campus mailroom both tested negative for anthrax, University officials said Friday.
Director of Media Relations Gretchen King said GW considered having another firm test the facilities after waiting three weeks for results from MasiMax Resources Inc., professional health consultants.
King said MasiMax returned the results Friday afternoon after promising them within 72 hours of the Oct. 30 testing.
King said the University was pleased with the results of the test.
King said GW would retest University mailrooms if employees or students develop anthrax symptoms or detect other signals of anthrax scares.
MasiMax confirmed that mailrooms at GW’s Loudon, Va., campus, in Ross Hall and in the GW Hospital, also tested Oct. 30, were clean of anthrax last week.
-Kate Stepan
Student finds worm in salad
Freshman Donald Goodson found a worm in a salad from J Street Wednesday evening. Goodson said he bought a pre-packaged chef’s salad from Kaz Sushi Bistro and found the worm after eating about a third of it.
GW officials said although J Street venues are routinely inspected for health violations, incidents can still occur because of the volume of customers served every day.
“I just turned over a piece of lettuce and there it was,” Goodson said. “It blends in well with the salad.”
Goodson described the worm as one inch long and green.
After discovering the worm, Goodson said he called the Marvin Center who told him to find the J Street manager on duty.
Manager Danielle Maree declined to comment but did offer Goodson a refund and a free meal.
Goodson also filed an official complaint with Dining Services.
“I am never ever, ever, ever, ever eating a salad from there again,” said Goodson.
Senior Food Service Director Jim Gillespie said the city health department inspects J Street facilities twice a year, and the national chains that own stations in J Street also inspect their venues separately.
Gillespie said J Street venues buy most of their salads pre-cut. He described the worm in the salad as an isolated incident and “not something that would be unusual.”
“I’m sure you’ve bought produce and found a grub,” Gillespie said.
Gillespie said he did not receive a complaint about the worm.
“An average of 8,000 people go through J Street with several hundred salads going out everyday, the law of averages means that something like that could happen,” he said.
-Joseph Pollak
Pan Am Flight 103 author to speak
Author, lawyer and GW professor Allan Gerson will speak Nov. 28 about his role as a counselor for families of the Pan Am Flight 103 crash victims and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Pan Am flight 103 exploded Dec. 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, due to an explosive device placed in the cargo container. Eleven people on the ground and 259 people onboard died in the explosion. Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison for the attack but is currently appealing the conviction.
Gerson will discuss his new book, “The Price of Terror: One bomb, One plane, 270 lives,” and the victims’ families civil action against the Libyan government and will draw lessons from his experience to the current fight against terrorism.
Gerson is currently a research professor and co-director of the GW Institute for Peacebuilding and Development. He has also served as U.S. counsel to the United Nations and as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The lecture will take place at noon in the third floor Marvin Center Amphitheater and is open and free to the public.
Journalists to discuss globalization
Thomas Friedman and Robert Kaplan will discuss globalization and its impact on the world in a discussion titled, “Why does Globalization make so many people angry?” Dec. 5.
The best-selling authors will be speaking as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series at 6 p.m. in the Jack Morton Auditorium of the MPA building.
Friedman is a columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for the New York Times and author of “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” and “From Beirut to Jerusalem.”
Kaplan is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and has authored nine books on international affairs.
The series was kicked off by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen last March after being initiated by a grant by Robert J. Pelosky Jr. to attract more leaders and scholars to the school.
-Mosheh Oinounou
