F O U RT H E S TAT E April 29, 2019
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY'S STUDENT NEWSPAPER
Volume 6 Issue 22
DENIM DAY: SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS page 10
News page 6-7
LIVING IN LIMBO
KEEPING MY
Sports page 18
GPA ABOVE MY ERA
@ivestate | gmufourthestate.com
T-SHIRT GUY COURSE
Culture page 12
EVALUATION DISCONNECT Opinions page 22
Fourth Estate is a free publication, limit one copy per person. Additional copies are 25 cents payable to the OfямБce of Student Media.
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04.29.2019
FOURTH ESTATE
ALEXANDER SHEDD Editor-in-Chief
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
BASMA HUMADI Managing Editor
Dear Patriots,
Dear Patriots,
I’ve worked at Fourth Estate for about two years now—half of my college career, and the majority of my time at Mason. I was first a staff writer covering movies and politics. My first big story was about the Charlottesville riots and their impact on the gubernatorial election.
This marks our last issue for the school year as well as my last letter from the editor to you all. Needless to say, this is very bittersweet. As I myself come close to graduation, I am feeling nostalgic, reflective and grateful for my time at Mason and Fourth Estate, and to be your managing editor this past year.
That Fall, I became the assistant news editor under previous Co-Editorsin-Chief Fareeha Rehman and Sosan Malik. They taught me how to write like a journalist and work in a professional newsroom environment. The following Spring, we printed our three-part series on Koch influence at Mason, something that next year’s co-EIC Dana Nickel and I had been working on for nearly nine months. That was my proudest moment in college up to that point and the day I knew I wanted to be a writer for life. And then I became editor-in-chief. This year has not been easy. We have had staff shake-ups, legal threats and drama with other student groups, and have faced both criticism and praise for our coverage. Sometimes we made mistakes, and sometimes we got it right—I think that is the best anyone can hope for in the end. While I cannot yet say if I will miss the often-tumultuous responsibilities of this job, I can say with the utmost confidence that I will miss every single one of the talented and brave people in the Fourth Estate newsroom. I could not have done this job without the people I work with, and I leave you in good hands one last time. Sincerely,
As briefly as I can, I wanted to take the time to thank everyone from Fourth Estate for being the heart of this paper. From staff changes to the infamous Slack chat and, more specifically, the ive-out-of-context slack channel to constantly living on a deadline to numerous personality quizzes (and a “What Fourth Estate editor are you?” Buzzfeed quiz) to heated arguments over astrology, among other things, we managed week in and week out to not just produce a newspaper, but also to both put out hard-hitting content and make this paper better than what it already was. When I started here as a freshman, Fourth Estate was typically an eightpage paper. Now, we are consistently a 24- to 28-page paper on a weekly basis. I am certain that, next year, the paper will continue to grow under our new co-editors-in-chief, Dana and Hailey, along with numerous editors and staff writers, both old and new, who will play a part in the paper next year. A big shout-out as well to our old editor-in-chiefs from last school year, Fareeha and Sosan, for setting the foundation for this paper to grow. Anyway, we had our semi-annual Ivee awards again this past Friday at the Rathskeller, which is always fun to celebrate. For this last issue, we have articles from “The Voice of Mason Korea” and NOVA and stories covering anything and everything from Mason’s new gift agreement policy to a Mason student who has been collecting free T-shirts, an opinion piece on course evaluations and underwater hockey—along with a couple stories by me(!). It’s been real,
Alexander Shedd
GMUFOURTHESTATE.COM @IVESTATE
IZZ LAMAGDELEINE Copy Chief LIZ ELKIND Assistant Copy Chief SARAH LURIA BEN STOVNER Copy Editors DANA NICKEL News Editor ABIGAIL ADCOX Assistant News Editor MONICA ECHOLS Culture Editor HAILEY BULLIS Assistant Culture Editor CHRIS KERNAN-SCHMIDT Opinions Editor NATALIE HEAVREN Sports Editor DOMENIC ALLEGRA Assistant Sports Editor LAUREN SULLIVAN Investigative Editor ALLIE THOMPSON Photo Editor ALEXANDRIA MCALPINE Art Director
Basma Humadi
Editor-in-Chief
BILLY FERGUSON Online Director LAURA SCUDDER Social Media Editor DOMINIQUE BERNARDINO Multimedia Editor
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04.29.2019
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MASON HOLDS SEXUAL ASSAULT TOWN HALL
Q&A Addresses Kavanaugh, Pober, Title IX and more IZZ LAMAGDELEINE COPY CHIEF
Members of the panel included President Ángel Cabrera, Provost S. David Wu, Vice President for University Life Rose Pascarell,
FOURTH ESTATE IZZ LAMAGDELEINE
“What are some ways you guys will work to reduce the workload of the few staff that work in the Title IX
administrators came together and heard student concerns about their safety on campus and personal stories from students meant to show exactly what is at stake.
office, and when will these changes take place? William & Mary has five officers, even though their students population is less than one-fifth the size of George Mason’s,” freshman government and international politics major Elijah Nichols asked. However, this question was not written by him, just as much as the answer was not solely for him. Nichols was the host, speaking for students who had submitted questions online and wanted answers. It was the first query made on a night aimed at increasing transparency between Mason and its community, as well as decreasing the concerns about the response to sexual violence at Mason. The event was formed in response to new student-activist group Mason For Survivor’s second published demand, that Mason will “hold a Town Hall to discuss [Supreme Court Justice] Kavanaugh’s hiring and implications for students and the university including a public comment section.” From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., a panel of
questioned whether she should attend the school following the announcement of Kavanaugh attending, while current students asked about safety mechanisms that could be put in place around campus. One student, psychology major David Hamlette, asked the panelists how many had children. All but one raised their hands. He then asked, “If any of this happened to any of your children, would you guys truthfully feel … comfortable having someone who has allegations like this in this close proximity with your children?” Price was the only panel member who raised her hand without hesitation.
Mason’s law school’s Senior Assistant Dean Alison Price, Interim Title IX Coordinator Elizabeth Woodley, Chief of Police Carl Rowan and Chief Housing Officer Dr. Chris Holland. As well as listening to students, all were there to shed light both on what had been happening behind the scenes in the hiring of Kavanaugh and what they planned to do moving forward. Before the event began, it was made clear that this was a space where all members of the community could share their feelings and stories without feeling attacked or judged. “There is a level of civility and respect that we need to keep in this room, not only for survivors, but for the panelists, the people in this room, we just want to share that there is a sense of safety and security in this room,” Nichols said. “Don’t feel like you have to censor yourself. This is a moment to speak directly to [the] university administration, as well as ensure that your voice is heard as a student [and] as a community member.” Students in the audience shared many different feelings. One potential Patriot
P a s c a r e l l explained that it would depend on “other signs than this one moment” at any school her child was thinking of attending for her to make that decision. Price had been questioned earlier in the night by sophomore Student Senator Monet Ballard. Ballard asked Price how students were supposed to believe that Mason stands with survivors when organizations that have donated to Mason and the law school, such as the National Rifle Association and the Federalist Society, adamantly fought for Kavanaugh’s appointment. Price responded, “I suspect, but I can’t say for sure, that you have donors on both sides of many issues, including these issues. And ... there are law students who are sexual assault survivors who are not opposed to the law school offering class with Justice Kavanaugh.” She went on to state that the law school is going to offer more services
for survivors with their own funds, that they had been asking for more money for a long time and they were trying to support everyone. Both Price and the rest of the panel gave no indication that Kavanaugh would be removed from his position with the school, nor the study-abroad class he is currently scheduled to teach in England this summer. When asked by Student Government member Sean Diment how the hiring of Kavanaugh would affect survivors, Wu said, “I’m sure the law school faculty, when they made this decision … they have many of the context of the background ahead of them, and they have made their collective judgement based on the information that is available to them. And once they made that decision, unless they are in direct violation of university policy or ... [there are] legal reasons, there is no reason for the university administration to override a decision of that nature.” In response, Diment said that he hoped greater consideration would be given in the future. Students also raised questions about both Peter Pober, the former Forensics coach at Mason who has been accused of sexual assault and was charged with four felony counts of embezzlement by the university before they were dropped and the student who apparently recorded women on his phone in Innovation Hall’s fourth-floor bathroom. “This was a tactical issue under the
prosecutor’s office,” Rowan said when asked who chose to drop the charges Pober faced. “What I can tell you is nothing is over, and it was strictly a tactical issue involving speedy trial issues. But everything will be back.” Rowan also commented on the Innovation Hall incidents. “It is not against the law in Virginia to actually walk into a bathroom and film,” he said. “It’s only if you are capturing private parts and that sort of thing that it becomes criminal. You might get punched in the nose, but it’s not criminal, and it’s certainly a Student Conduct issue.” Both Rowan and Pascarell stressed that, though the results of the investigation could not be discussed publicly, the student was referred to the Office of Student Conduct, where they dealt with it accordingly. Rowan also mentioned that the incident lasted a short amount of time and that, if he could discuss the issue, “You would be a lot less concerned about it than you are now or may have been after a media story kind of blew it out of proportion.” After the town hall, Nichols said that it was imperative that Student Government continues to provide resources for students. Recently, a resolution for action to be taken against perpetrators of sexual violence and for more resources was passed, including survivors being able to move housing if needed and having access to rape kits and free STI testing.
FOURTH ESTATE IZZ LAMAGDELEINE
On Tuesday, April 16, Mason for Survivors hosted a town hall to address student’s concerns with sexual assault issues, in conjunction with Student Government and other offices on campus.
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STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES PROVIDES INSURANCE FOR MASON STUDENTS
SHS partners with UnitedHealthcare StudentResources LAURA SCUDDER SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR
all international students are required to have health insurance in order to attend the university. Typically, such students go through SHS in order to secure a provider.
UnitedHealthcare contract that allows them to be a PPO, the student receives 60/40 coverage, meaning the insurance pays 60 percent and the individual pays 40 percent for services.
Those who have difficulty securing a plan have issues with the plan’s monetary elements. They are not denied coverage for any medical reason.
In addition to receiving medical attention via an in-person PPO, UnitedHealthcare StudentResources provides a 24/7 toll-free number that connects students to physicians, counselors and nurses for help with either physical or mental health. Through the UnitedHealth Allies discount program, additional services such as gym memberships and skin care products can be discounted for students.
FOURTH ESTATE VJAY IYER
“It’s an Affordable Care Act-compliant plan, so they can’t be turned down for any preexisting conditions,” Jarrett said. “They just have to be able to pay for the plan.”
Student Health Services (SHS) offers insurance to students at Mason. Any student taking three or more credit hours is able to purchase the insurance plan, provided by UnitedHealthcare
StudentResources, the college sector of UnitedHealthcare. Della Jarrett, an insurance program administrator at Mason, explained that
She continued, “It’s an 80/20 plan, where the insurance pays 80 percent and you pay 20 percent for coverage services after you’ve met the deductible, which is $200.” According to Jarrett, this 80/20 plan is used for those who go with a preferred provider option (PPO). If students seek out a physician without the
Jarrett explained how great of a deal the plan is for the money. She recounted the story of one student here at Mason who is taking the three credits required to be on the plan provided by SHS. It ended up being a cheaper option with better coverage than the insurance the student received through the Affordable Care Act, which was
$1,500 a month for services. For domestic students, insurance through SHS is $2,466 for a year of coverage, according to its website. Jarrett went on to explain the importance of healthcare and why students should use the SHS plan. “It’s used very frequently by the students who purchase it,” she said. “Students who have health conditions or who have families with health conditions generally really understand the need for health insurance, but since most people that are in their 20s don’t have huge health issues, students don’t understand how expensive healthcare can be and how important it is to have coverage even if you don’t use it.” Students are not required to purchase the healthcare plan in order to receive help from SHS for any illnesses or injuries.
LAST WEEK IN POLITICS Monday, April 22 President Trump and his business sue House Oversight chairman to block subpoena for financial information. Myanmar’s highest courts rejects appeal to dismiss the case of two Pulitzer Prizewinning Reuters journalists.
Tuesday, April 23
Wednesday, April 24
Professional gambler James Holzhauer wins “Jeopardy!” for the second time, making him only the second person going home with more than $1 million from the show.
2019 has the highest recorded number of US measles cases since the disease was declared eliminated nationwide.
Sri Lanka Easter bombings were found to be carried out by a “radical Islam group,” according to defense minister. Federal investigators say that a faulty gas vent was to blame for 2016 Silver Spring apartment explosion that killed seven.
The Boy Scouts of America believe more than 7,800 former leaders were involved in sexually abusing children, CNN reports.
Thursday, April 25 Former Vice President Joe Biden announces his 2020 candidacy for president. FBI undergoes search of the home of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh following scandal over children’s book sales. Pepsi Co sues four farmers for copyright infringement over the potatoes they grow, claiming they are exclusively for Lays chips. Delaware girl bit by “kissing bug.” First report of this bug, which can spread Chagas disease, confirmed in the state.
Friday, April 26 NRA president Oliver North announces he will not be renominated after a dispute with the CEO. Kids2 rocking sleepers recalled after five infant deaths. Mall of America boy who was thrown off a thirdfloor balcony is “alert and conscious,” family says. Majority of Americans oppose impeachment, but a majority also say Trump lied to the public, Post-ABC poll finds.
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04.29.2019
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MASON COMMITTEE REVIEWS GIFT AGREEMENTS
“All gift agreements are subject under FOIA” says Mason task force DANA NICKEL NEWS EDITOR
Bethany Letiecq, a faculty senator and president of Mason’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), broke down the process of Mason’s Gift Acceptance Committee to Fourth Estate. Letiecq explained that this committee developed in March of this year. “Following the university’s Internal Review Committee report and findings, the provost came back with a new gift acceptance policy and sought guidance from the faculty senate on some of the key areas,” she said. Mason’s University Provost David Wu presented the first draft of Mason’s new gift acceptance policy to the faculty senate in February. At this meeting, the faculty senate was able to select which members would be on the Gift Acceptance Committee. Both Betsy DeMulder, vice president of AAUP, and Letiecq were selected by the faculty senate to serve on the Gift Acceptance Committee. Letiecq stated that Keith Renshaw, the chair of the faculty senate, was also selected by Wu
MASON WEEKLY CRIME LOG
to serve on the committee. “[Renshaw] also served on the Internal Review Committee and had a good working knowledge of gift acceptance issues,” said Letiecq. In addition to Letiecq, DeMulder and Renshaw, a few members of Mason’s administration served on the committee. Wu, Kathleen Diemer, associate vice president of advancement relations, and Trishana Bowden, vice president of Mason’s advancement and alumni relations and head of the GMU Foundation, also served on this committee. “We had to work really fast,” Letiecq recalled in regard to the committee forming in March and presenting a solution by the April faculty senate meeting. “We were just so determined to have [a new gift acceptance policy] done by the end of this semester.” Along with news that Mason’s gift agreements will now be public record, Letiecq explained that the policy also created a criteria list that would help crack down on class, faculty or department “capture” by the agendas of big donors. “Based on the Internal Review Committee’s findings, the new gift acceptance policy now has this list of new criteria that would require a Gift Acceptance Committee review,” Letiecq said,
Additionally, Letiecq explained that the Gift Acceptance Committee is a public committee where “the [GMU Foundation] comes together with the university to talk about acceptable gifts to the university. So [the Gift Acceptance Committee] is basically this transactional body. Now, with the new gift acceptance policy, there’s an escalation list.” This list creates a set of standards for potential donors to review before giving a gift to Mason. It also explains that donors would have to meet with a development officer to review the terms and conditions that come with their gift.
Letiecq explained that the Gift Acceptance Committee was very happy with this new policy. “So far, people have been thrilled,” she said. “The provost did lead this task force with the goal of increased transparency. Historically, that might have been harder to achieve. This is a good example of different departments coming together and making consensus
on a hard topic.” In addition to crediting Wu and other members of Mason’s faculty and administration who were eager to make this change, Letiecq stated that Transparent GMU’s lawsuit against Mason and the GMU Foundation increased awareness on the issue of gift acceptance at Mason. Transparent GMU’s case will be heard by Virginia’s Supreme Court this summer.
“The officer would go through the list of criteria, and if there [are] any unclear ter ms, the donor’s gift would have to be reviewed by the Gift Acceptance Committee,” Letiecq explained. Under this new policy, all meetings between potential and current donors and M a s o n’s
Wednesday, April 24, 2019- Roberts Road
Thursday, April 25, 2019- Fairfax Campus
Drug/Narcotic Violations: Subject (GMU) was issued a releasable summons for possessing illegal drugs.
Stalking: Complainant (GMU) reported receiving unwanted contact from an unknown Subject (GMU) on multiple occasions. Due to confidentiality of reporting, limited information is available regarding this incident.
Case 2019-004406- Cleared by Summons
CSA Report #042519- Information Only Thursday, April 25, 2019- Johnson Center, Men’s Restroom
Thursday, April 25, 2019- Mason Pond Parking Deck
PHOTO COURTESY OF MASON POLICE
development officers would be made public, along with all meeting minutes with members on the Gift Acceptance Committee.
FOURTH ESTATE DANA NICKEL
Mason’s Gift Acceptance Committee presented the new gift acceptance policy to Mason’s faculty senate on Wednesday, April 24. The new policy rules that any gift agreement with a signature from a representative of Mason will be completely subject under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Destruction/Damage/Vandalism of Property: Complainant (GMU) reported intentional damage to a parking garage gate arm.
Simple Assault: Complainant (Non-GMU) notified Mason Police that an unknown male Subject touched the Complainant’s leg while using the restroom. Complainant declined to make a formal report or cooperate with an investigation.
Case 2019-004468- Referred to OSC
Case 2019-004439- Referred to Title IX
Thursday, April 25, 2019- Fairfax Campus Stalking: Complainant (GMU) reported receiving unwanted contact from a known subject (GMU) on multiple occasions. Case 2019-004433- Referred to Title IX
Thursday, April 25, 2019- Dickerson Hall Drug/Narcotic Violations: Subject (GMU) was referred to Office of Student Conduct (OSC) for possessing small amount of illegal drugs. Case 2019-004468- Referred to OSC
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LIVING IN LIMBO
Looming fears from pro-Palestinian activists on campus and inconsistency from Mason BASMA HUMADI MANAGING EDITOR
bunch it altogether,” Rodriguez said. “But a lot of it is untrue. They take things that I definitely did not say or that somebody else may have said and then play with the words and make it look really bad. And they’ll explain why it’s wrong. Mostly just to villainize. If you look there, there’s not much content.”
One student activist organization, Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), has dealt with issues each year that are facing pro-Palestinian activism at large. Instances of surveillance, harassment and difficulty in securing funding are matters they have had to take into consideration, which in turn cause strain for SAIA speaking out and navigating how to go about running an organization.
Rodriguez knew, prior to being posted about on the website, what Canary Mission was, as a number of Mason students and faculty who were part of SAIA or Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were already on the website. He found out he was on the website from his sister, who had been checking the site. Once Ro d r i g u e z also logged on to his Twitter account, he discovered that the Canary Mission Twitter account had been drafting and tagging him in accusatory tweets.
Canary Mission One website, Canary Mission, is an example of surveilling college campuses across the nation. The website keeps tabs on all universities across the U.S., and users can filter through and look at their school to see professors, students and organizations critical of Israel or of the U.S. In its own words, Canary Mission is described as a site that “documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.” Information is taken from public sources—which can be anything from personal social-media sites or college-organization biographies. Potentially, for example, it could impact your employment or background checks for a future job. In one case, it was used by the FBI to interrogate a college student on their support for Palestine. One Mason student, Lucas Rodriguez, was the target of a profile on Canary Mission. Rodriguez served on the executive board for Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) in the 2016-2017 school year. There are posts on other Mason students and faculty also on the website. “They take a whole bunch of stuff from anyone you’re affiliated with and
“It’s anxiety-driving to find out people are looking to post about you and your stuff online, basically these [vulnerable] people to find,” Rodriguez said. “In some ways, it hasn’t affected me too much, but in other ways it’s just the fear. And I get that’s the point of having a blacklist—it’s supposed to be a fear tactic.” An article from The Intercept, written by Alex Kane, stated, “Since it first splashed on the web three years ago, the blacklist has taken a remarkable toll on activists’ mental health and ability to engage in free speech and public advocacy on Palestine. A survey of over 60 people profiled on Canary Mission, conducted by the group Against Canary Mission, found that 43 percent of respondents said they toned down their activism because of the blacklist, while 42 percent said they suffered acute anxiety from being
placed on the website.” After being targeted, Rodriguez changed his social media usernames and privacy settings. According to Rodriguez, the majority of the individuals posted on the site are people of color and/or Muslim. In turn, the website falls into Islamophobic tropes and racial profiling. “I knew it was just a blacklist that Zionists had created to make activists look bad,” Rodriguez said. “Their basic approach is to say that all these people are anti-Semitic. As soon you look onto the website all the people
We aggregate this information into a concise and easily searchable format, providing free access to the general public. Before publication, all content is verified, meeting our high standards of accuracy and authenticity.” There is no reported process for how their content is verified and meets standards of accuracy or authenticity. There is no published contact information for who runs the website, and content is not credited to anyone, so it is difficult to trace the individual(s) who run and gather information for Canary Mission. The site and its affiliates do not directly reach out to targeted individuals, and biographies are posted without their consent. R e c e n t l y, according to an article from FOURTH ESTATE BILLY FERGUSON
It is no secret that Mason student activism exists and has been advocating for a number of issues. From Transparent GMU to Turning Point USA to GMU Student Power, a variety of concerns are represented and students are working to gain traction and speak up about concerns important to them.
there are basically Muslims and Arabs, Palestinians, so it’s very clearly racially profiling, for the most part.” Zionism is “the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Canary Mission’s tactics have gotten more advanced, said SAIA member Noah Black. “Canary Mission used to be just for people who are pro-Palestine, but they’ve gotten a lot [more clever] and now add people who are actually White supremacists to the site,” Black said. “So they’re trying to implicate people who are pro-Palestine and pro-human rights with actual White supremacists and group them all together.” According to the website, it “gathers content from publicly available sources.
MintPressNews, a lawyer named Howard David Sterling was found to be the owner of the domain name of canarymission.org. Harassment In addition to the fear of being listed on Canary Mission, as part of the organization, SAIA members have been subjected to harassment on- and off-campus. According to Facebook messages obtained by Fourth Estate, the group has received messages from random accounts saying, “We are now watching you!” and that they are “shutting them down soon. Anti Semitic bastards!!” In a recent statement against claims of anti-Semitism, SAIA said the following: “SAIA is founded on the belief of the equality of all and the supremacy of none. We firmly reject any type of discriminations, be it racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, anti-Semitism,
etc. Our membership believes that the liberation of one marginalized people is contingent on the liberation of all.” It continued, “We reject the notion that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are inherently tantamount. Firstly, because Jews are a group diverse in nationality, culture, and thought, and may or may not align with Zionism. Secondly, because Zionism is a specific political movement borne out of 19th century European ethnonationalism, whose modern application entails the promotion of Israel despite its flagrant oppression of the Palestinian people. We uphold the fact that self-determination for all people, including Jewish people, is a human right. We oppose the idea that the establishment of Israel justifies the loss of Palestinian lives and freedom.” It ended, “We point to Judith Butler’s quote on the danger of conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: ‘If the charge of anti-Semitism is used to defend Israel at all costs, then the power of the charge to work against those who demean and discriminate against Jews, who do violence to synagogues in Europe, who wave Nazi flags and support anti-Semitic organizations is radically diluted.’” SAIA previously had a confrontation with a racist person who came up to one of their kiosks in the JC. “We did have like a White supremacists come to one of our kiosks,” Rodriguez said. “We didn’t realize at first; we just thought he was coming up to ask questions.” He continued, “But then he started saying all this stuff. Basically he was looking for justification of his anti-Semitism, so he was coming to us like, ‘The Jews are doing this and that,’ and we were like, ‘No, look, we’re against apartheid and occupation; we’re not anti-Semites; there are Jewish people in our group.’” After a while, the individual left the kiosk and SAIA informed campus security of the incident. Rodriguez added, “So even from this other side, [we have had] these people kind of harass us from multiple angles … which is really concerning.” Story Continued on page 07
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Inconsistency allocation
in
funding
In the past, there was a trend with SAIA having difficulty getting events passed or getting funding allocated by the Student Funding Board (SFB) for their organization. “It’s kind of difficult to point to one instance, because the university has a system of rules specifically around funding that are really arbitrary,” said Black. “So if we apply for funding … basically, they can reject funding for any number of reasons, and it’s hard to find out if it’s like you messed up one tiny thing, and someone’s just being annoying about your application for funding, or if it’s for a political reason.” Black worked as treasurer for SAIA for the 2017-2018 school year. He said, “Sometimes, [it’s because] it’s a student funding board, so it’s made up of undergraduate students, and in my opinion, because those are appointed positions, there’s no real
accountability.” In general, Black noted that their organization tends to be held to more critical standards than others are. “But I would say the trend of our funding being denied almost every time we apply for something,” he continued. “And then, I go back and check the application, run through every little detail with someone who’s part of the funding board, and they say the application is perfect, and then it gets denied again. There’s a clear pattern of rules being arbitrarily applied to some people and not to others.” Black added, “[It is] possibly specifically on the basis of what people support politically, [and] if it threatens university money, they’ll say no, et cetera.” SAIA noted that, when they attempt to bring in well-known non-Mason individuals or organizations that they typically run into issues. In one case, when the organization held a National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP)
conference November 4-6, 2016, it was difficult for them to book a space on campus. The organization reached out to book a space months in advance but was turned down in the end on the justification that their event was held by an outside organization. “There were a lot of times when the university went back on what they had originally said,” Rodriguez said. “We were originally going to host an event in JC Dewberry Hall, and basically, that was made impossible. We actually had to rent a space last-minute outside of the school, in the elementary school on the edge of the campus, because they said that this conference was being held by an outside organization. Which wasn’t true, because we as SAIA were hosting it.” Rodriguez added, “Yeah, we were bringing people from outside, but they asked us to pay full price for Dewberry, instead of letting us rent it out as a student group. Which is like, ‘What?
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We are a student group..?’” Due to these issues, the NSJP conference took place at the Main Street Child Development Center in Fairfax. Another event that SAIA hosted and reached out for funding was not able to be finalized until a few days before the event. SAIA hosted a guest speaker and attempted to cover their speaking and travel fees. The event ended up taking place Feb. 27, 2018. Initially it was intended to take place in November 2017, but it had to be rescheduled because of delayed funding. Messages obtained by Fourth Estate show that the event was initially denied funding for SAIA failing to placed it on Get Connected and not specifying how many days the speaker would be in a hotel. After Black responded with the correction that the event was, in fact, on Get Connected and specifying the hotel days, a response on Feb. 19 said that the SFB was waiting to hear back from supervisors, because it was
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a unique circumstance. Funding was officially allocated on Feb. 21, six days before the event was set to take place. In general, there seems to be a pattern of inconsistency in obtaining resources for events. “Because the university rules are not applied evenly, they can just claim, ‘We were just applying this rule in this case,’ but they do not apply it in every case,” Black said. “And yeah, we, [SAIA,] also don’t have money [as an organization]; we have to [rely on asking] the university for money.” SAIA does not collect dues from students to be a member of the organization, nor do they receive funding or sponsorship from an institution or individuals. The Student Funding Board did not respond when Fourth Estate reached out for a response on these matters.
TOWN HALL ADDRESSES RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION ON CAMPUS Faculty members emphasize need for nuance and radical listening BASMA HUMADI MANAGING EDITOR
Topics of conversation at the town hall included contextualizing the history of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, personal experiences with Islamophobia on campus, the importance of community and understanding nuance and power hierarchies. The following faculty members also spoke at the panel: Randi Rashkover, Judaic Studies; Char Miller, Schar School of Policy and Government; Sumaiya Hamdani, History; Marc Gopin, S-CAR; Maria Dakake, Religious Studies; Huseyin Yilmaz, History; Lisa Breglia, Global Affairs; Noura Erakat, School of Integrative Studies; and Hatim El-Hibri, Film and Media Studies. This was the second town hall that took place on the topic. The first occurred Thursday, Dec. 6, in The Hub.
The aim of the town hall, described by Haddad, was “to weed out as much as possible, by working together, any sort of discrimination that undermines that environment here at George Mason in any way, shape or form.”
“It is being present with the person who is speaking, consciously, intently and person-to-person … and suspending judgments, which is hard to do if you have a discussion where you don’t agree,” Maulden said.
of the incident, she had also recently signed a petition with other colleagues asking Mason to revisit the employment of a faculty member who had expressed anti-Semitism, and she found the entire encounter paradoxical.
He continued, “We don’t all have to agree on everything, but we do have to agree on the rejection of discrimination of all sorts.”
Hamdani spoke of her own experience with Islamophobia as a faculty member on campus.
Erakat noted the difficulty in “trying to walk this tightrope of being inclusive, tolerant, beautiful, salad-bowl multicultural, [while] at the same time, we actually have an allergy to naming what the problem is and naming power and the way that it is affecting us. So I think that doing that obfuscates the way that we can be victims and perpetrators at the same time.”
Haddad noted that, when it comes to addressing political issues, accusations of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have come about. “Honestly, whenever we talk about things such as Saudi Arabia or Israel here on campus, people yell at us and accuse us of being Islamophobic, ’cause someone criticizes Saudi policies, or anti-Semitic, because someone criticizes Israeli policies,” Haddad said. Mason President Ángel Cabrera made opening remarks before the panel began, thanking everyone who organized the panel and noting the importance of exemplifying dialogue in practice. Maulden began the panel by noting the importance of a concept called radical listening, the idea of intentionally quieting our internal monologue when someone is speaking.
As a professor of Middle East history, she noted that she “describes the Zionist colonization of Palestine, and apparently, one of my students remembered that.” She added, “Subsequently, the tragic synagogue bombing occured in Pittsburgh, and … one of my [Jewish] students was asked by [Fourth Estate] about how he or she felt about being on this campus. And that student recalled to the reporter [at] Fourth Estate that I had sort of articulated anti-Semitic comments in my class. As a result, the newspaper was asking me for my response to this.” The matter was dropped after the student was unable to recall anything explicitly anti-Semitic. As a Muslim professor, Hamdani questioned whether, because she discusses the Middle East and Israel, something she might say would be automatically perceived as anti-Semitic. At the time
El-Hibri, the final panelist to speak, made a closing statement about looking intently to see where these perceptions grow and how there is nothing inevitable about this kind of bigotry. El-Hibri continued, “Certainly we need to talk about collective models of emancipation, solidarities, which push back against this effectively, but we also need to look back on this very carefully at what kind of ties can be formed [that] can make things like anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment unimaginable and not ground on which they could crumble.”
FOURTH ESTATE BASMA HUMADI
A town hall discussion, “Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Discrimination in the Name of Religion (Part 2),” took place Thursday, April 25, in Merten Hall, moderated by Director of Middle East and Islamic Studies Bassam Haddad along with Associate Professor and the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR)’s Director of the Dialogue and Difference Project Patricia Maulden.
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WALKING FOR WATER
The African Student Association raises money to help provide clean water for Burundi MONICA ECHOLS CULTURE EDITOR
“The Burundi Water Mission Project that we’re working on is our initiative for the year,” explained Mariem Abadir, ASA’s outreach/fundraising chair. “Each year, the African Student Association picks an initiative to focus their community service and fundraising efforts to. What we’re doing this year is we’re working with a company that makes water filters for a large scale of people. We know that Burundi is a small nation in the continent of Africa, but it has really low access to clean and drinkable water.” Throughout the year, ASA has been raising money for their Burundi Water Mission Project to donate to Water Mission, an organization that helps provide clean water to countries around the world. The money will be used to help fund a water filter for a
village in Burundi. So far, ASA has raised about $800 out of $5,000. The organization is also partnering with UNICEF GMU and New Life International United Methodist Church to help raise money. During the Walk for Water, students checked in outside of Merten Hall, where they received two empty gallonsized bottles of water. They carried those bottles from Merten Hall to the Mason Pond, where there was a bucket of water waiting to fill them up. Afterward, they walked back to Merten Hall while carrying the full bottles. Abadir said that the experience of carrying the water was “supposed to give us a fraction of the experience that [people in Burundi] have to go through every single day to get access to clean and drinkable water. …That’s what we wanted to do for the Mason community here, to give them a little bit of the experience that we had and that the people back home have, too.” The ASA Walk for Water was inspired by other Walk for Water events. “The first Walk for Water was focused
on Tanzania, and I was born in Tanzania,” said Egette Indelele, ASA’s secretary. So [a] newspaper came out and they contacted me … and I just had an idea, like, ‘Oh we should have this on campus.’” Unlike other Walks for Water, where participants walk for three miles with the empty water bottles, return to their starting place, fill up the bottles and walk another three miles with full bottles for a total of six miles, participants in the ASA Walk for Water walked about three miles total. After completing the walk, Deja Redding, a junior accounting and finance major, said, “The walk was really cool. I think that it definitely brought awareness to what someone has to go through on a daily basis trying to get water for their family. So exactly what the event was supposed to do.”
FOURTH ESTATE ALLIE THOMPSON
Mason’s student organizations are not just about having fun. Many of these organizations also find creative ways to give back to their community. One organization, the African Student Association (ASA), hosted a Walk for Water on Saturday, April 27, in support of their Burundi Water Mission Project.
Although the Walk for Water is the biggest event they have had in support of the project, ASA has also had other fundraising events throughout the year, including a date auction. They will also continue to accept donations through the rest of the semester.
LIFE AFTER COLLEGE
Mason senior students share their plans after graduation Most college students have heard the cliche phrase that once a student graduates, they are “stepping into the real world.” It all becomes part of a flashback as
you reminisce about orientation day or the first day of school as a freshman in college, the nerve-wracking feeling of getting to meet new people and roommates and having to decide which student organization to join
KATHYA MENDEZ STAFF WRITER
and be part of within the Mason community. Looking back can bring nostalgia, but looking to what the future holds for graduation is exciting. Graduation is a time of cherishing the moment, but for some seniors, these celebrations do not seem to be happening.
FOURTH ESTATE BILLY FERGUSON
Shelley Mendoza, a senior majoring in criminology law and society, said, “I feel like I’m not graduating because I have always been in school, so that is the scary part for me, of how it will feel the next day after grad.” Post-graduation plans can vary from person to person. Some may have a summer internship, an entry level job or go into grad school, while some might take time off. Others might not have a solid plan, but intend to work through the opportunities that are available. Mendoza said, “I’m joining the
airforce for four to six years to get some experience, and then I will apply for the FBI and law enforcement. To get into the FBI you need four years of experience, and I know that having [a] military background will help me get in.” Tamera Toney, a first-generation psychology major with a concentration in clinical and educational psychology, said, “I’m ready for the next step. Right after grad, I will be pursuing my masters in [the] School of Psychology to become a licensed school psychologist.” Going into college as freshman, students do not often think about plans for their future post-graduation. Instead, college becomes a process for exploring new opportunities, expanding horizons to help society and networking. “When I started college, I wanted to be an educator or psychology professor, but when I learned about the school
to prison pipeline and school psychologist role in dismantling it," Toney said. "I decided to go that route.” Other students, like senior Golsana Ziaee, who is majoring in criminology, law and society, continue to add future plans after graduation. “Because of my major, it is hard to stick to one choice, but that is why I have open options,” she said. “My plan after graduation is to be in a local police department as a K9 officer to get some experience for few years, and then go to a federal job," Ziaee said. "My goal is either the FBI or DA’s office." Ziaee is also looking into applying to law school either at George Washington University Law School or Georgetown Law School. Having graduation in less than a month can make students feel all over the place, but soon seniors will be walking across the stage, ready to step into a new chapter in life.
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REACH FOR THE SKY WITH NESMITH.
Senior Jason Nesmith talks about the inspiration for his music and more IZZ LAMAGDELEINE COPY CHIEF
“I don’t often write music about myself. That’s a fact I usually tell people, and they’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ ’Cause they’re always like, ‘Who’s “Reach” about? What’s “Back To Life” about?” he said, referencing the two singles he has out now. “Often, I usually tell people my songs were either stories I’ve heard, stories I’ve wanted to tell or stories I’ve wanted to be my own. … When you listen to the music, you’ll probably hear that, and you’ll go, ‘Oh, I can see how that works.’”
As well as being the song that he used for the competition, “Cliche” is also his favorite song to work on so far. However, that will probably change soon.
A sense of nostalgia is inherent in Nesmith’s songs, as he works to ensure that all of his music makes listeners wish for the past while remaining fresh. “I’m really making music that I would listen to,” Nesmith said. “I guess every musician might be, but I like the essence of, ‘This feels familiar.’ But I also feel comforted by an essence of, like, ‘Oh, I recall this from some memory a while ago,’ but it’s been incorporated in a way where I’ve never heard it before.” He hopes that this essence can be heard in “Reach” and “Back to Life.” Currently, “Reach” has over 29,000 streams on Spotify. “Back to Life” is a collaboration with artists Jay Macadocious and Saï T. A third song that has been performed live but has not been formally recorded yet is “Cliche,” which Nesmith submitted for NPR’s Tiny Desk contest.
“I would probably call it my favorite one right now, but it literally changes,” Nesmith said. “Every new song I write, that’s usually my favorite one, and as soon as I start recording it, I’m in love with it in the moment. … Since I haven’t fully recorded that one, once I get into the studio it will continue to be my favorite. The next one, whatever next one happens, is taking its spot.” Even though the performer has only the two singles out now, he has been making music for several years. After Nesmith graduated from high school, he lacked the confidence to create a project all his own. He still wanted to make music while having the support and shared responsibility of a band, so he co-founded The Local Pyramid, a duo he described as “largely an alternative project.” “I think for a while, within the band, I was like, ‘Oh gosh, all these great genres that I had known in high school and had been exposed to me, I’m really missing out on them, particularly R&B and jazz and soul, neo-soul,’” he said. “I was like, ‘Man, I really want to get back into these genres.’” When The Local Pyramid started to come to an end, in the beginning of his college career, he had become a better writer, leaving him more prepared to have a solo career.
He has also continued to develop his musicianship by arranging songs for Mason Some Noise, an acapella group that attended the prestigious ICCA semifinals for the first time this year. Nesmith is a senior graduating this semester. In the future, he plans to either stay in the area, move to New York or head back to Richmond, depending on where he finds a job and what happens after graduation. The only common factor in all of these possibilities is music, as he plans to keep working on it at night while holding a full-time job during the day. “It’s been my short[-term] goal to get a lot of singles out first,” Nesmith said. “I only have technically one of my own, and one’s a feature. So I’m hoping to get maybe two or three more singles out this year, and that’s just the goal for this year. ... And then hopefully, fingers crossed, beginning of next year, I’ll be on track for an EP that’ll drop in spring, or maybe late ... fall [or] late winter.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF JASON NESMITH
“Tiny Desk came out kind of just on a whim,” he said. “I think I’d always wanted to submit something to Tiny Desk, but I never felt fully comfortable with the music I was making to submit there in the past. This year, particularly, I was like, ‘Cliche’ is such a tune that I feel like I would see on Tiny Desk, and I would be like, ‘Wow, I really dig this song; where can I go download it?’ So I saw the Facebook ad, and I was like, ‘Hey, Tiny Desk is doing auditions now,’ and I literally was probably two weeks out from when we had to submit, and I just started hitting people up.”
He continued, “It can always change. But right now, I have several—almost a crazy amount of tunes that are just sort of sitting, and they just need to be revised and fleshed out and then recorded. … Realistically, I think I’m on track for that goal. I just need nothing bad, nothing to go wrong.” As Nesmith grows musically, he wants to grow in other areas too, including his brand. He wants to be instantly recognized and known, like Ariana Grande or Erykah Badu. “The goal at the end of the day is sort of showing myself, showing what Nesmith. is … and figuring out a way to put that up in front of people, so that they … can connect with that, who I am, as well,” he said. Nesmith. can be found on Spotify and Apple Music, where his two singles are out now.
PHOTO COURTESY OF JASON NESMITH
When thinking about how to answer a particularly challenging question, Jason Nesmith does not just say, “Uh, uh, uh”—he sings it, sounding like he is recording a new part for one of his songs rather than at the end of a long interview. After he sneezes, he rolls out his shoulders in one fluid movement, almost like a dance move, like he’s performing even when he’s not. For the 21-year-old singer from Richmond, who performs under his last name, “Nesmith.,” music is everywhere, from the people walking around campus to what is happening in the world at the moment.
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DENIM DAY RAISES AWARENESS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
Sigma Psi Zeta holds Denim Day on campus to help bring awareness to victim blaming and sexual assault TRAVIS MCMILLAN STAFF WRITER
Mason’s Denim Day is headed by the Sigma Psi Zeta sorority, who sell buttons and self-care kits to raise money for different donations each month for various charities that share their message. The sorority’s national philanthropy is “To Combat Violence Against Women in all of its varied forms,” according to Sigma Psi Zeta’s website, “This includes, and is not limited to, rape, incest, domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, exploitation,” and more. The sorority also uses the term “womxn” to include “trans women, non-binary women, anyone who identifies as a woman as well,” said Sarah Woodward, one of the philanthropy chairs of the sorority. The sorority explained that the origin for Denim Day comes from Italy in 1992, where an 18-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by her 45-year-old
driving instructor. She reported the assault, and the man was promptly arrested. Years later, he appealed the conviction by stating it was consensual because the girl helped him remove her jeans. Because of this, he was let free, and this became known as the “jeans alibi.” “I think Denim Day is so important to raise awareness and to be in solidarity for sexual assault survivors, or survivors of sexual violence in general,” Theresa Hoang, another philanthropy chair of the sorority, said. She explained that sexual assault can happen to anyone— both women and men—in any type of clothing, denim or not. The sorority hosted a meetup in Buchanan Hall on April 25 to create a safe space for survivors, sorority members, or anyone wanting to learn how to help raise awareness. At this event, they also shared tips on warning signs of sexual assault as well as ways to support someone who has been sexually assaulted to students. One of their main goals for Denim
Day was to “bring awareness to students too that we do have students who are sexual assault survivors, who are survivors of domestic violence,” Hoang said.
remind them that what happened is not their fault. The sexual assault hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-4673.
concluded the event with having everyone attending write an empowering message on a scrap of denim.
The members of Sigma Psi Zeta
Some warning signs for a person who may have been subjected to sexual assault could be depression, low self-esteem, falling grades, withdrawal from relationships or self-harming. If you also notice their partner pressuring them or controlling them to do certain things, they could be a victim. Ways to support someone who has survived a sexual assault are to offer your presence, foster a safe and private environment to talk about their feelings, allow the survivor to make their own decisions and
FOURTH ESTATE VIJAY IYER
Denim Day was held on April 24 to raise awareness of sexual assault. Students wear as much denim as they can the whole day to send the message that there is nothing anyone could do or wear to deserve sexual assault.
CHANGING THE HOLE MIND
Mason Professor Researches the Effects of Solitary Confinement on Inmates AHMED FARID STAFF WRITER
The idea behind Rudes’ research first started when she was conducting other research nearly six years ago in Pennsylvania. While conducting interviews with inmates, she found a discrepancy between the views of prisoners in solitary confinement and those in general confinement. Those in solitary confinement, who were basically in what Rudes called a “prison within a prison,” held very different views about prison than other inmates.
Intrigued by her findings, Rudes decided to begin another research project, this time with a focus on solitary confinement. However, the new focus would be more difficult
for her to undertake. The reason is that researchers are not generally allowed to interact with prisoners in solitary confinement, due to how big of a commitment it would be for the
FOURTH ESTATE ALEXANDRIA MCALPINE
For the past two years, Professor Danielle Rudes has led a team of researchers including 12 undergraduate students, seven graduate students and two professors in an effort to determine the effect of solitary confinement on inmates. The project, titled “Changing the Hole Mind,” attempts to understand how inmates held in solitary confinement view prison.
officers to escort the prisoners out of their jails to their interviews. The staff at Pennsylvania Department of Corrections are very “progressive” and “reform-minded,” according to Rudes. Wanting to follow an evidencebased approach in a field that does not have much research for them to base their decisions around, they decided to allow Rudes to conduct her research. While the research is not yet completed, there are some preliminary results. One interesting finding in Rudes’ research was that some inmates chose to commit offences while in prison in order to be placed in solitary confinement. This came contrary to her previous belief that all prisoners resent being placed in solitary confinement. Another finding was the inmates’ perception of their rights and privileges—a generally grey area. Prisoners were sometimes led to believe that
some of their rights are privileges that could be taken away, according to Rudes. This area in particular caught Rudes’ interest, and she is considering making that her next research topic. Rudes realizes that some of her ideas may not be implemented. Even so, she hopes that her research can offer an outsider’s perspective to assist correctional facilities as much as possible. “There are some things that they, as part of the staff, may decide against,” she says. “I don’t want to tell them how to do their jobs, but I hope I can offer them an outsider’s perspective.” In the end, even if all her observations do not lead to direct policy changes, Rudes hopes her research will further understanding of the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, leading to a better process of helping prisoners change and live better lives in the future.
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BEST TIMES AT MASON
PHOTO COURTESY OF YIDAN ZHAO
Saad Qureshi, information technology major
Sarah Medley, global affairs major
My life in Mason is both fun and busy. What’s interesting about it is that you can participate in activities that can be happy. It’s busy because you have some tasks or activities after joining some organizations. But no matter what, these activities have helped me a lot, and those tasks can make me develop myself better. My college life is very busy, but I also found happiness in my busy schedule. I love Mason. It is the home for every [Patriot].
My experience in Mason was great overall. I made so many friends while taking different classes. Mason is a like a second home for me. I have been to many events [at] Mason, but surely the most memorable event would be a cricket tournament which was organized by the Pakistani Students Association. I captained my team and won the tournament.
I would say my best event at George Mason University would have to be [from] when I was a child, going to sport camps in the summer at the Freedom [Aquatic and Fitness] Center in Manassas. … Years later, I remember working out at the Freedom Center after submitting my college application to George Mason months earlier, and receiving an email while on the treadmill, and stopping everything I was doing just to open it. Needless to say, it has been the best moment of my life here at Mason.
Saira Flores, social work major
Jinwoo Kim, economics major
Bei Yan, nursing major
One of the best things I have experienced at Mason is its student diversity. I think getting to meet individuals from different backgrounds and cultures had (sic) made me more aware and open-minded of new perspectives and experiences …Exposing myself to a diverse environment has promoted personal growth, mindfulness and tolerance, which allows me to see and understand the world in a different manner.
The most interesting event while studying at Mason was Mason Day. On Mason Day, students all had fun with lots of things to see and eat, including rides, food trucks and colorful performances. The various prizes we gave to some of the participants through the lottery were also the highlight of Mason Day.
I remember when I was a sophomore, I had an environmental class, and the professor asked us to go to the campus and pick up cigarette butts on the ground. I have never felt so many cigarette butts in our school before. That experience took three hours, and I bent over, picked it up [and] collected it.And when I got home, I felt like I was falling apart. But I think this activity is very impressive and meaningful. I hope no one throws away cigarette butts again.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BEI YAN
PHOTO COURTESY OF JINWOO KIM
PHOTO COURTESY OF SAIRA FLORES
Yidan Zhao, accounting major
PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH MEDLEY
YIJIE ZHU STAFF WRITER PHOTO COURTESY OF SAAD QURESHI
Students recount their most memorable experiences at Mason
HIDDEN HANGOUTS: H MART IN FAIRFAX
A mere 10 to 15 minutes away from the Fairfax campus, H Mart is a hidden gem tucked along Fairfax Boulevard near Duck Donuts and Rita’s Italian Ice. H Mart is broadly categorized as an Asian grocery store with its fresh produce, imported snacks and miscellaneous home goods. Three things about this store are not always the most advertised, making this the perfect hangout spot for students in the area. Sheet face masks are all the rage these days. They are the perfect component for rest and relaxation amid all the final exams, papers and presentations coming up these next two weeks. H Mart has a small beauty section within
the store that carries a boatload of face masks to choose from, among other beautiful goodies. The options are endless, with varieties that range from about $1 to $3.50 per mask, not to mention hot offers like a “buy 10, get 5 free” deal, or even a “buy 10, get 10 free” deal. Aside from beauty products at H Mart, the food court at this store is top notch. Still affordable, the food is kept at reasonable prices, like $9.90 for a big plate of fried rice and $10 for tonkatsu, a deep-fried pork cutlet served with rice, sauce and salad. Spicy noodle soup, stews and bibimbaps are among some other menu options. The quickly-made, yet tasty food is served with pickled ginger and kimchi on the side, plus free self-serve soup is available to customers.
ANGELIQUE ARINTOK STAFF WRITER
The hot foods at H Mart are not only delicious Asian treats, but also friendly to college budgets. Right next to the food court is a haven for boba lovers. The H Mart sells fresh iced teas, lemonades, smoothies and boba, serving a wide variety much like Kung Fu Tea, but at the fraction of the price. The menu includes items like a taro smoothie with boba, blueberry smoothie, thai tea and chocolate latte. Going to H Mart solely for groceries would be such a waste of resources. This spot is so ideal for hangouts, food excursions and shopping that is budget-friendly for all students.
FOURTH ESTATE ANGELIQUE ARINTOK
A one-stop shop and nearby hangout spot
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GOTTA COLLECT ‘EM ALL
Senior Peter Nguyen tries to collect as many Mason t-shirts as possible MONICA ECHOLS CULTURE EDITOR
Most Mason students leave the school with a sizeable collection of free Mason T-shirts, but very few can claim to have nearly 200 of them. Peter Nguyen can. Nguyen, a senior computer science major, has collected 184 free T-shirts during his four years at Mason. Like many students, Nguyen first started collecting T-shirts during his freshman year. “I think I started kind of like how anybody starts with going to the Spring Preview or going to orientation or going to welcome week where they give you free T-shirts … in the beginning of the school year,” he said. “I thought, ‘Woah this is really cool,’ and I just kept getting T-shirts like anybody else would, but then it got to the point where during Thanksgiving or winter break, I had like 10 Mason T-shirts.” He ran out of room in his dorm closet for both his Mason T-shirts and his regular clothes, so he decided to take most of his regular clothes home and keep the Mason T-shirts. When the spring semester started, Nguyen had mostly only Mason clothes left.
People noticed that he was almost always wearing a Mason T-shirt, so he became known as the “T-shirt guy.” “People would send me Instagram or Snapchats like, ‘Hey did you know about this T-shirt?’ And I’d be like, ‘No, I didn’t, but I’ll put it in my calendar,’” he said. “I just collected all this information ... so whenever I see something, like I’m walking through the dorms and I see a poster, it’s like, ‘Oh hey, free T-shirt, I’ll put it down in my calendar.” By the end of his freshman year, Nguyen had a collection of 24 Mason T-shirts, but it wasn’t until his sophomore year that he decided to try to collect them all. “Freshman year … I thought, ‘I’m onto something,’ and just leading into sophomore year I thought, ‘OK, I already know about all these different T-shirts events, all these Mason events, so I know which ones to go to,’” he said. “I think sophomore year was more of a conscious decision. … It was sophomore year that I thought, ‘OK … I might spend a little more time on this just trying to collect T-shirts.’” Nguyen keeps most of his T-shirts at
his home in Virginia Beach and only brings some of his favorites with him to school. One of his favorites isn’t actually a T-shirt, but the Spring 2019 Homecoming Hoodie. “Homecoming T-shirts are always good,” Nguyen said. “This past homecoming, Spirit Squad came out with a limited edition hoodie for homecoming, like a really nice athletic hoodie. Only people in Spirit Squad had it but they did like a competition, a social media competition, where if you posted about #mymasonmemory you were drawn into this raffle. Roughly 10 people won this hoodie, me being one of them, and that’s one of my favorite Mason gears.” After graduating, Nguyen plans to turn some of his T-shirts into a quilt. “I’ve always had this dream … if I ever get my own apartment by myself or my own house, I’m hoping to have a room full of Mason memorabilia, or Mason memory stuff,” he said. “I want that room to have a T-shirt-memory quilt and … maybe take the best of the best T-shirts and put [them in] a frame. … I think that would be cool, that way I could just walk and reminisce [on] the
memories.” For him, the T-shirts represent more than just an item of clothing. They also hold many memories of his time at Mason. “I have so many stories of how I collected all these T-shirts, like if you point to one T-shirt, it’s very likely— about 80 percent of these t-shirts I can probably tell you how I got it,”
Nguyen said. “There’s a story behind it, and that’s kind of what I love about collecting T-shirts. … Looking at all the [T-shirt’s] collectively is kind of looking back on my whole entire college experience in general, like the clubs I’ve been a part of, the games I’ve gone to, the events I’ve gone to. It’s just great.”
DIFFERENT STORIES, DIFFERENT CULTURES, SAME EVENT
The Middle Eastern Student Association and other organizations put on Alf Laila w Leila HAILEY BULLIS ASSISTANT CULTURE EDITOR
On Wednesday, April 24, the Middle Eastern Student Association hosted Alf Laila w Leila, or “1000 and 1 nights,” in Dewberry Hall. The Sudanese Student Association (SSA) and the Pakistani Student Association (PSA) were also part of the event. It allowed attendees to learn about different cultures through food, music, dancing and a fashion show. Senior biology major Kiran Aslam, the event coordinator for PSA, said the event itself was important because it gave the organizations an opportunity to showcase each other’s culture, “to [collaborate] together, to have a festival to show each country’s beauty [and] culture. Just a way for everyone to get to know each other, with good music, and [to] see each other’s outfits and everything.”
This is partly why PSA joined the event. “We just wanted to collaborate with other people, [not] just the club, just to get to know each other, to … be like, ‘Hey, we’re here. We all are a part of George Mason. We all should collab and become one,’” said Aslam. Jasmine Khalil, the upcoming president of SSA, agreed with Aslam’s statement. “I feel like it unifies us as one student body regardless of our different cultures,” she said. The events’ fashion show highlighted different Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian cultures through their traditional attire. The fashion show marked its end by having the different representatives come out with the flags of different countries. The fashion show also showcased the wider collaboration between all the
organizations, and pulled students from multiple organizations and cultures in order to highlight them at the event. “The Middle Eastern Student Association and the other clubs at Mason asked who would be willing to model from each organization, or from each country,”said Khalil. “So there were Sudanese students modeling, and they wore our traditional, colorful Sudanese dresses.” After the fashion show, attendees could grab dinner before a belly dancer, known as Sonia, performed. From there, the organizations such as PSA and the Afghan Student Union (ASU) put on different performances to popular Middle Eastern songs. The night ended at the front of Dewberry Hall, where the organizations came
together to dance the night away with audience members. Aslam described the event as an opportunity to get to know other cultures. “Everyone’s story is different,” she said. “Everyone’s culture is different. Countries are different. Like … diversity itself, you learn a lot from it, you learn their culture, you learn their people’s stories. You learn the struggle and the achievements each culture has achieved.” She continued, noting that Mason has a lot of different cultures on campus. “Mason itself is very diverse. There’s a lot of different people from a lot of different countries, and coming to see all of them together, you will see there’s a lot of culture happening at George Mason University.”
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A DISCUSSION ON SLOW FASHION A sustainable fashion panel discussion is held in the MIX@Fenwick
As opposed to fast fashion, slow fashion values every aspect of clothing manufacturing, from the seeds that grow the cotton to the hands that sew the piece together. More and more, there is growing discussion surrounding the harmful fast fashion industry, as well as the emergence of influencers who commit to making the industry more sustainable. Many Mason faculty and students are among these influencers. This dedication sprouted the Upcycled Fashion Challenge at Mason that asked students to create a new piece of clothing from an old or thrifted item. On Wednesday, April 23, the MIX@ Fenwick hosted a sustainable fashion panel as the conclusion to the challenge. The panel was moderated by Sharon Spradling, a professor of environmental and sustainability studies at Mason. The panelists were comprised of four people committed to bringing awareness as well as combating the many damages that fast fashion does to the environment and the lives of people.
One member, Avedis Seferian, is the CEO of WRAP, which is one of the world’s largest factory-based social compliance programs, dedicated to ensuring that factories around the world are safe and humane. Trisha Gupta is a printmaker and artist who advocates for the ethical manufacturing and usage of dyes in clothing. The last two members, Emma and Mary Kingsley, are the mother-daughter duo who founded Lady Farmer, a sustainable fashion label. Slow fashion addresses all of the negative of fast fashion. “It turns the whole industry on its head,” Mary said. While fast fashion focuses on the speed at which a product is made with the least expense attached, slow fashion pays attention to the actual process of making clothing. It considers every step. So why is it important? Fast fashion is a mega industry that millions of people partake in every day, while not aware of all the environmental and social concerns that are attached to it.
Slow fashion also addresses the cultural heritage aspect as well. Gupta spoke of the dyeing communities in India. “There’s a lot more interaction, there’s a lot more reflection,” Gupta said. Fast fashion eliminates all of that. “[Fast fashion] is a symptom of the
FOURTH ESTATE NICOLAS MACOTTO
NAYOMI SANTOS STAFF WRITER
building collapse in 2013 in Bangladesh was also brought up. “[The collapse] raised the profile of the importance of the issue,” Seferian said. The building collapsed as a result of a structural failure, and killed 1,134 people—mostly female garment workers. It was later revealed that the building had shown signs of failure, yet workers were forced to continue working. “There was a personal connection seeing all the brands attached to the factory,” Emma said.
problem,” Seferian said. It is possible to make that amount of clothing without taking all of the damaging shortcuts, yet companies feel the shortcuts are a necessity, Seferian explained. “The supply must meet the demand,” he said. Therefore, consumer attitude is also an important aspect in the process as well.
The collapse placed the horrors of the fast fashion industry in the spotlight, and began the fashion revolution. The movement is dedicated to changing the industry so that both people and the environment are valued. In fact, Fashion Revolution Week this year was April 22-29, to coincide with the 6-year anniversary of the Savar collapse.
During the discussion, the Savar
Each of the panelists hailed from
different backgrounds, bringing different expertise to the fast fashion issue. “We look at the problem from different boundaries,” Gupta said. Her expertise is in dyes and printmaking, as well as understanding the environmental concerns that each raise. Her work is in teaching people to dye more ethically and bringing traditional Indian dyeing practices to America. She teaches art and dyeing in various locations, such as schools and prisons. “I’m not limiting myself to certain populations,” Gupta said. Similarly, Lady Farmer also seeks to bring awareness to the fast fashion industry by encouraging a sustainable lifestyle. “[We] want to source fabrics domestically and regeneratively,” Emma said. Their brand wants to be sustainable from the “ground up,” placing an emphasis on sustainable farming that does not hurt soil. Still, Emma realizes the problems that could arise with sustainable products. “[It] becomes a privilege issue,” she said, due to the high cost of many of the products.
APRIL HOROSCOPES
How each sign should spend their summer MONICA ECHOLS STAFF WRITER
Taurus (April 20-May 20)- Happy Taurus season! The sign of the bull is known for loving luxury and material pleasures, but it takes money to spend money. Make sure to get a job or paid internship so you’ll be able to treat yourself all summer long.
FOURTH ESTATE ALEXANDRIA MCALPINE
Gemini (May 21-June 20)- Geminis are known as the social butterflies of the zodiac. Summer is the perfect time to invite your friends over for a party or cookout. Cancer (June 21-July 22)- Many people don’t know this, but Cancers love food and are always down for a good meal. Summer is the perfect time to visit new restaurants or even food trucks with friends to find the best food in town. Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)- Bold, adventurous Leos love to visit new places. If you have the means to do so, plan a trip abroad to really push yourself out of your comfort zone. If money is a little tight, you could also take a quick road trip to a nearby city or state.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)- Meticulous Virgos should try to take on some fun DIY projects this summer to create some new decorations for your home or your next dorm. Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)- Libras tend to be hopeless romantics. Put yourself out there and go on a few dates this summer. You never know if a summer fling might turn into a long-term relationship. Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)- Scorpios are not afraid to do their own thing. Take a solo trip and explore your city. You might discover a a cool new hangout spot. Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)Restless Sagittarians love a challenge. Take a trip to the nearest amusement park or town fair to test your bravery on the rides or compete against your friends on the games. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)Dedicated Capricorns might have been so busy with school work that they didn’t
have time to watch their favorite shows. Take advantage of summer break to catch up on all of your favorite shows or binge watch a new show. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)Independent Aquarians can sometimes seem a little detached. Take advantage of the nice, warm weather to get in touch with yourself and nature by going camping or hiking. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)- The Pisces is one of the most introverted signs of the zodiac. After spending the entire school year surrounded by people, spend some time alone and engage in some serious rest and relaxation this summer. Aries (March 21-April 19)- Highly energetic Aries are always on the move, but everyone needs to recharge at some point. Slow down a little this summer by incorporating yoga or meditation into your life.
CULTURE FACES OF MASON delves into the lives of Mason students, faculty or alumni, and organizations every week. This week we take a close look at faculty Kristin Samuelian, Lisa Marie Gilman and Giovanna Chesler and Justine Suegay, and the faculty organization AAUP@Mason INTERVIEWS BY IZZ LAMAGDELEINE
FA C U LT Y O R G A N I Z AT I O N , A A U P @ M A S O N How did AAUP@Mason form? So, AAUP’s chapter is an advocacy chapter, because we’re in a right-to-work state. But the advocacy chapter has its origins around 1971, so it’s actually been on campus for a long time. But as these chapters go, they can kind of go dormant for a time, and then they might be reinvigorated. And so there are (sic) sort of a tempo of trying to sustain the chapter. [It] can be challenging, because it’s essentially volunteer labor. And so you're only as good as the people who are willing to devote [a] considerable amount of time and energy to sustain the chapter. But it had been dormant for a number of years, and with the Scalia law school renaming, I was really frustrated at the lack of faculty power to do anything about it. The Faculty Senate was working really hard to try to slow the roll of the renaming, but the administration and the law school just really ran roughshod over any faculty concerns about the renaming. It didn’t feel like voices were being heard, and so I looked around and said, ‘What’s that organization that is lacking here?’ And I asked folks who had been a part of the AAUP@Mason for a long time if it was OK to reinvigorate the chapter, and move it into a bit more of an action-focused space, and with their support I started to try to build back the chapter here. And we actually just
got our rechaptering papers from the AAUP rather recently, which just means that we reintroduced our bylaws and have a Facebook page and have some web presence and the sorts of things that—and you have to have a certain amount of members to have a chapter. How will you all continue to fight for what you stand for in the future of the organization? There are lots of ways. So you can continue to fight from within to support your position through things like the faculty senate, or by engaging with the administration, to have those tough conversations. And by rights, they are willing to have many of those conversations. The door isn’t closed, and I appreciate that. And their pressures are different too, and I acknowledge that. … But just like we started this conversation, talking about how do you ensure all interests are acknowledged and heard and upheld? And I think that is part of the challenge. So when faculty voices are diminished, when you don’t feel heard, when you feel too afraid to share your story because you fear retribution or you fear it will bring harm to you, that’s when the AAUP can play a clear role to articulate those concerns, to help to raise those voices so that we can champion those faculty who are concerned but maybe don’t feel in a position to push back against the administration.
FA C U LT Y, K R I S T I N S A M U E L I A N What made you interested in the topics that you teach and research? What I work on has changed over the years since my Ph.D. … I started working on the literature of the mid-19th century in Britain, novels, and it’s moved … back, so I’m sort of now early-19th century, even late-18th century. And I guess what got me interested in what kind of stuff I do is I’ve always really, really liked history. I’ve always been really interested in the relationship between a literary text and its historical context, and when I was first in graduate school I didn’t know that that was a legitimate area of scholarly concern. And when I realized that it was, then I sort of began to look into ways to talk about the way in which literary texts interact with their historical world, their cultural moment. So it started in graduate school and evolved from there. And you’ve done it ever since? Yeah, so I can remember taking a class when I was a graduate student in the Victorian novel, and just I hadn’t read any of these big, huge, fat novels … and I just, I loved it and the idea of just sort of immersing myself in these big, long texts. So at first, I just came at it from a love of reading really big, thick novels. But then I had professors in graduate school who were really interested in talking about those novel’s interactions with their cultural world. And the more you look at them, the more connections you see. So,
yes, it started in graduate school. With the version of [Jane Austen’s] Emma that you edited, what was the best part about working with and editing it? Well, truthfully, I’m biased. I think Jane Austen is one of the greatest novelists ever in any language, but especially in the English language. So the best part of it was when I got to do close readings of bits from the novels [themselves], from that novel itself, because I think her novels are unbelievably rich. And what I particularly love about Jane Austen is … the way her narrator functions in those novels. And when I teach those novels—I teach Austen’s fiction in various places—I always talk about the way in which the kind of narrator that she employs [is] this sort of disinterested narrator who is omniscient but can sort of report one character's thoughts, and then sort of migrate over and report another character’s thoughts. But that was a relatively new phenomenon, and that she really just made it her own and really exciting. So I love to talk about point of view and think about point of view when I’m working on Austen’s fiction What’s your favorite thing about teaching and coordinating in the English program? Interacting with students. Especially students who really like what they are doing and are really interested and are really engaged in something.
CULTURE FA C U LT Y, G I O VA N N A C H E S L E R How did you get started in making documentaries and film? Basically, my passion for film was pretty much lifelong. And film was something that made me feel normal because I could see the worlds in which I wanted to live. But it wasn't something I thought I could do. Then I had a professor when I was in undergrad who said to me, ‘You should be a filmmaker.’ And I was studying archeology at the time, and women and gender studies. And when I got to San Francisco, I started studying doing work, taking classes and things out of an organization called Film Arts Foundation. It was a non-profit that supported local filmmakers and 16 millimeter. Then I went to film school. But for several years, I just freelanced, worked on sets, figured out what positions I wanted, figured out what I could handle. And realized that I wanted and needed to make films, but that my [direction] was as a director, because it was really hard to be on the crew as a woman. And I was in camera departments primarily, and it was just demoralizing to be the only technician on set who was a woman, because they treated me so poorly. But the first set I went on, I volunteered on, and it was all women and trans folks. It was an indie film, and it just totally showed me what was possible. So I’m really glad I had that experience, because it then made me want to create those film sets myself.
that make in terms of yourself and the students you work with? Well, the last awards I won were all for ‘The Pickup,’ and that film comes through the talent of students. So I feel that film, those awards, are shared by all of us. … I’m just ... psyched on the films, being able to tell stories again, and be part of this program. A friend of mine was like the other day, ‘You really love your job, don’t you?,’ and I was like, ‘I do, I really do,’ and I hope that lasts for a long time. And I feel like Mason is a part of that, because when they were hiring me, I spoke my truth. I was like, ‘These are the things I care about. I care about who can access media, who can tell these stories, how to break apart the canon, how to make the film look like the world in which I live and which you live, and it needs to speak to us, for us, about us, all of it. And so that’s the program that I would want to run and build with you all.’ And they said yes. And so being hired for that vision, and being able to do that once you get here—’cause I’ve been here six years now—and see the faculty and staff who signed on for that, the students that are coming now because that’s what they want, they’re writing about it in their portfolios, and so I feel like the message is getting out there that this is the place for you and—to explore and learn but also express yourself.
You’ve won a bunch of awards for your work. How does
FA C U LT Y, L I S A M A R I E G I L M A N What got you interested in studying folklore? So, every folklorist has … their story of when they encountered folklore, so I’ll try to tell you mine in a very short snippet. [It] goes all the way back to when I was an undergraduate student, and I was taking—I was a political science major, and I was taking my gen-ed requirements, and I had to take a certain number of humanities classes—so I took a sequence in English that included a folklore class, Intro to Folklore. And I took the intro class just to fulfill my gen-ed requirement, sounded like it might be interesting,and I had one of these classes where I was having epiphanies and I was walking down the street and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s folklore all around me.’ And I realized that I was very interested in politics, but I was much more interested in how politics affects people on the ground than I was in learning about the political structures. I mean, I was interested in learning about the political structures, but in terms of where I was really interested, I wasn’t so much interested in the power structures, I was more interested in how people on the ground are affected by politics and then how they interact and engage with politics. ... So I realized that, and I was at a school that had a certificate in folklore but not a major, so I had to finish my major in political science, did some independent studies with professors, and tried to be able to look at the arts and politics and integrate some folklore into my studies, and then completed the certificate. And then, interestingly enough, many, many, many years later, if you look at all my scholarship it’s exactly about that. It’s about how people on the ground intersect with various political, social, economic forces. So that’s my short version of the tale.
You produced a documentary about veterans who were working against the Iraq war. How did you get involved? That was kind of a passion project. … The project that led to the book ‘My Music, My War,’ where I was interviewing veterans about music listening, was really intended not to be political. I really wanted to talk to people about their experiences and not make it political, ‘cause so much that was coming out of the media about the troops was either they’re patriotic heroes or they’re victims, and I didn’t want to do that. I really wanted to think about not the political issues, but really who are these human beings, and how do they experience war, and what’s the impact of war? So I was kind of avoiding people who are involved on one political side or the other. But through that research, I learned about this organization that was in Washington called Coffee Strong Rights outside of Joint Base Lewis-Mcchord, and I was a peace activist in college. I myself, I try to be respectful of different people’s perspectives, but my own perspective is that there’s more productive ways to resolve conflict than war. And so I went up and I visited this organization, and to me the activism of people who had been to war themselves, who had made the decision to join the military and that had gone through some transformation and were now sitting outside of an army base organizing against the war and providing services to veterans and active-duty military was just really, really compelling. And I wanted to tell their story and help to contribute to what they were doing. So I kind of took a break from the book and then spent quite a lot of time working on that project, which to me was one of the most powerful projects that I’ve done in my career so far.
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WE ARE NOT (OCTO)PUSHOVERS
Underwater hockey excites and challenges as a team Underwater hockey … that’s an actual thing? You bet it is. Underwater hockey, or Octopush, as it is commonly referred to in the UK, is played at both national and international levels. Mason has its very own Underwater Hockey Club. As one of 10 collegiate underwater hockey groups throughout the United States, the Underwater Hockey Club pairs with the Capital Region Underwater Hockey club (CRUWH) to improve the skills of its members. “They help us out a lot,” Brennen Leresche, the president of Mason’s Underwater Hockey Club, said. “They help coach us, because they’re typically the better players who actually participated in world level tournaments, so that’s pretty cool.”
Equipped with snorkels and flippers, players use underwater hockey sticks, which are about a foot in length, to push a two-and-a-half-pound puck into their opponents’ goal. There are no goalies, so it is the responsibility of all of the players to defend the goalmouth. “Backs are kind of like defenders,” Leresche said. “They’re always right behind the puck, right behind the play. They always have a full visual, as opposed to forwards, who are always looking for that pass behind them.” Forwards always try to attack the puck, taking positions on the near, center and far sides of the pool in order to best their opponents.
PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Underwater hockey is played with six players in the water, with each playing
the position of either a forward or back―or a mid position, depending on the setup of the players.
Mason’s Underwater Hockey Club is open to all skill levels, as many people who come to school here do not have underwater hockey experience. Leresche and a friend of his were intrigued by the sport when they learned about it at freshman orientation. “We heard them talking about underwater hockey … and we decided we wanted to try something a little wacky.” The club is responsible for about 30 percent of its own funding, as the rest is taken care of by Mason Recreation. The dues to be a member of the team are $100 per semester. Money is allocated to the equipment for rookies and communal equipment for those looking to try the sport out. It is also used for the transportation and hotels necessary for competing in tournaments. Though the sport is not the most common, that does not mean that its players do not take it seriously. The team practices three times a week, incorporating scrimmages into practices to make up for the lack of competitive games that are played in the college scene. Leresche is in charge of such practices, making sure that the team starts and completes drills and activities in a timely and effective manner. Though the Underwater Hockey Club does not see a lot of game time, the group participates in about four tournaments per year. The club traveled to UMass Lowell for one this past
weekend to compete in a two-day tournament. Underwater hockey is an intense sport. According to Leresche, there are players who still have pains from past encounters with the puck. The puck can be quite painful if it comes into contact with a player, particularly if it hits them in the face. This is where the protective gear such as gloves, ear plugs and mouthguards comes into play. Much like injuries, penalties can pop up when people play too rough. Leresche explained that underwater hockey, while competitive, is not exactly a contact sport. Bodychecking someone or slashing at their hands can earn a player a penalty,
but simply playing for the puck while being competitive and aggressive is not something that gets people in trouble. The team atmosphere that the club cultivates is refreshing. “We all make fun of each other in the water so much, but out of the water, we’re always pretty good family,” Leresche said. “So we always forgive each other for the stuff we say.” Why should people play underwater hockey at Mason? “You probably will never have another opportunity to,” Leresche said. “You either like it or you don’t like it, but you can say you tried underwater hockey once.”
UPCOMING SPORTS May 1 Baseball vs. Mount St. Mary’s (MD.): 3 p.m.
May 3 Baseball vs. Fordham: 3 p.m.
May 4
May 5
Softball vs. UMass:
Rowing: George Cup (All Day)
12 p.m. & 2 p.m. (DH)
Softball vs. UMass: 12 p.m.
Baseball vs. Fordham 3 p.m.
Baseball vs. Fordham: 1 p.m.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE MASON RECREATION
LAURA SCUDDER SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR
SPORTS
GMUFOURTHESTATE.COM @IVESTATE
04.29.2019
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EDDIE AYERS IS A TEAM PLAYER IN A SOLO SPORT
Junior standout discusses past, present and future
PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE MASON ATHLETICS
ROSS SHINBERG STAFF WRITER
From Bethesda, Maryland, to San Antonio, Texas, to Fairfax, Virginia, Mason Men’s Tennis star, junior Eddie Ayers has come full circle.
his freshman season.
Ayers was born merely 20 miles away from Fairfax, in Bethesda, but spent a lot of his childhood moving around due to his parents’ military obligations.
Ayers was met with stiffer competition in his sophomore year, but he played well despite the increase in difficulty.
After graduating with honors, and as the 2014-2015 San Antonio ExpressNews Boys Player of the Year, it was once again time to find a new home. “Choosing a university or college was difficult for me,” Ayers said. “I wanted to know everything about each school.” One of the most significant factors in Ayers’ decision was based on one of Mason’s premiere selling points: location. “My major is economics. One of the reasons I came here is because I really wanted to use that to get into politics.” Although his interest in politics has faded in the years since he arrived at Mason, Ayers’ tennis game is as strong as ever. In his career at Mason, Ayers has a 55-33 record in singles matches, including a career-high 21 wins during
His signature win that year came at the ITA Regional Championship in October 2017. He defeated the No. 15 seed, Matthew Lord from the University of Virginia, and reached the Round of 32.
“I think that was the first time I ever clinched a match,” Ayers said, reflecting on the victory. “[Benjamin] is a really good player, so it was definitely a challenge. But I just enjoyed it, because I knew I had my teammates behind me. I knew, win or lose, they would support me.”
with his primary doubles partner, junior Jakob Nielsen.
Aside from his teammates, Ayers finds inspiration from two professional players.
Both singles and doubles matches play a role in deciding the A-10 tennis championship.
“[Growing up,] I was an avid tennis follower,” Ayers said. “One of my idols has always been Novak Djokovic. Both men and women that I’ve followed a lot [have] inspired me, but he’s probably been the most inspiring.”
This season, Ayers led his team to the No. 6 seed in the A-10 Men’s Tennis Championship, which took place last week in Orlando, Florida.
On the women’s side, Ayers looks up to another tennis superstar: Angelique Kerber. Ayers mentioned how their game styles are similar and that he likes how she plays the game.
Ayers won his doubles match with his partner, graduate student Giuliano Buzoianu. He was up one set in his singles match, which did not finish, due to La Salle clinching the series while his match was in progress.
“I like her competitiveness,” he said. “Same with Djokovic, the competitiveness.”
With the 2019 season officially over, Ayers is preparing to enter his final year with the program.
When looking for a source of inspiration, one cannot go wrong with two players who have each won the Australian Open, the U.S. Open and Wimbledon.
Aside from his and his team’s ultimate goal, winning the championship, Ayers said the thing he most wants to do next year is simply to relish the moment.
One area in which Ayers has found lots of success, unlike his two idols, is in the doubles game. This season, Ayers reached a careerhigh of 12 doubles wins, 10 of them
So far at Mason, Ayers has racked up 31 wins in doubles. “I definitely think I’ve gotten better [in] my time here,” Ayers said.
In the opening round, Mason fell to the No. 11 seed, La Salle, 4-2.
“I just want to enjoy every moment that I’m on the court or with my teammates or in the classroom,” he said. “I’m really appreciative of the opportunity. That’s what matters to me, just to appreciate it and enjoy it.”
For his efforts during his sophomore season, he was named to the All-Atlantic 10 Second Team. Despite the impressive accomplishments in his first two years, Ayers reached new heights in his junior year. Three weeks ago, Ayers was named the Atlantic 10 Player of the Week for the first time in his career. Speaking about that honor, Ayers remained humble, saying, “It’s great and all, but I enjoy being on this team. When you’re out there by yourself, you do focus on yourself. But then I just try to get back to the team atmosphere, because I’m playing for the team.” One of the biggest wins of his collegiate career occurred Saturday, April 6, against Dayton’s Jordan Benjamin, the reigning A-10 Player of the Year.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE MASON ATHLETICS
In high school, Ayers found a home in San Antonio and at Ronald Reagan High School.
He also shined on the doubles court in his freshman year, going 11-7 overall and 5-1 in Atlantic 10 play.
In that series against Dayton, the No. 4-ranked team in the A-10, Ayers scored the clinching point to put Mason over the top, 4-3.
Ayers and the rest of his teammates embrace a team-first approach to the game. He said, “We don’t care if we win or if we lose. As long as we’re there for each other as a team, that’s all that matters. That’s how it’s been all season.”
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“JUST TRYING TO KEEP MY GPA ABOVE MY ERA”
Junior Bekah Ansbro succeeds in the classroom and on the field NATALIE HEAVREN SPORTS EDITOR
Ansbro started playing Little League Softball in fourth grade after participating in a variety of sports before that. She tried ballet, horseback riding, soccer and swimming, but one thing was missing: the feeling of being on a team. “I was the kid that was the worst on the team, so I just got stuck in right field, because I had to play at some point,” Ansbro said with a laugh. “I just really liked the team aspect of it. … I liked being outside, being with the team, being loud and cheering, so [softball] just kind of stuck.” She added, “My parents were really surprised that’s what I wanted, because I was not good.” However, over time, Ansbro did begin to improve. “Eventually I got bumped up from right field to left field,” she said with a smile.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE MASON ATHLETICS
“But when you’re in Little League, no one really hits the ball to the outfield, so it was always really boring. So I
decided that I wanted to play; I wanted to touch the ball. ‘[Should] I be a pitcher or a catcher?’ And I remember the thought process being, ‘That catching gear looks like it really sucks on a hot day, so let’s try pitching.’” After telling her parents she wanted to try pitching, she and her dad started watching college softball to try to figure it out themselves. Her father worked at James Madison University and, over time, came to know Kama Tucker and other members of the softball and baseball coaching staffs. Tucker later became Ansbro’s first pitching coach. “That’s when I think I started getting a little bit better than the worst one on the team,” Ansbro said with another laugh. Though she grew up attending JMU softball games because the campus was just half an hour from where she grew up, she looked up to Olivia Galati of Hofstra University. “I was never a pitcher who threw the ball very hard, but I always put really good spins on the balls and hit my spots,” Ansbro said “She was kind of the same. She wasn’t throwing gas past anyone, but she spun the ball really well, and she was able to be effective against hitters that way.” Ansbro, a native of Woodstock, Virginia, succeeded both academically and athletically during her four years at Central High School. The team enjoyed sustained success during those years, including going to
the state tournament her senior year. She also reached a high level of individual success and was named to the All-Area, All-District, All-Conference and All-Region teams her last three seasons. She was named the Bull Run District Player of the Year and named to the All-State team in both her junior and senior seasons.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE MASON ATHLETICS
Bekah Ansbro, a junior on Mason’s softball team, chose her number for a very specific reason. “In high school, I wore 17, because our jerseys only went up to 22, and that’s just what I had,” Ansbro said. “But in travel ball, I picked 72, because Title IX was enacted in 1972, and without that, women wouldn’t be afforded the opportunities we have today. And there’s still a lot of progress to go, but we’re in a better spot now than we were before 1972 in terms of athletics.”
At the end of Ansbro’s senior season, her jersey was retired. “It was a big honor and not something a lot of people can say happened to them.” She continued, “Everyone told me they saw it coming and of course I wanted to see it coming too but I didn’t want to expect it and then it not happen.” Ansbro later added, “I remember standing up on the stage and just seeing all of my friends at our athletic banquet and all of the coaches there, and they looked so genuinely happy. It felt good. There were a lot of people rooting against me, so to see all of the support that I had at the end of my career was really nice.” When it came time for Ansbro to make the decision of where she wanted to attend college, it came down to the campus, Mason’s Sport Management prog ram and the fact that her parents would still be able to drive up to see her play. “It didn’t really hit me that [Mason] was the right choice for me until my first
college softball game when I looked into the stands, and my parents were there,” she said. “And when I saw that, I was like, ‘I’m so glad I didn’t go far away, because they wouldn’t be able to come up every weekend, and they wouldn’t be able to come to midweeks and all of our other games.’” As a freshman, she started 16 games and pitched in 29 total games for a total of 101.0 innings. She had the second-best ERA of Mason’s pitchers at 3.67. As a sophomore, she finished the season with 127 strikeouts and was named to the Atlantic 10 All-Academic team. This season, Ansbro leads the team and is second in the conference with an ERA of 2.33. However, it’s not the on-the-field moments that have stuck with her the most; it’s the team moments off the field. “As much as the on-the-field stuff is nice, and it’s fun, some of the off-field memories we have together are sitting in the back of the bus singing ‘99 Bottles of Soda on the Wall.’ Giggling in the dugout … Last year we did this Navy Seal training, and it helped with our team-building, but being up at 4 a.m. and going to the field was not too fun, especially because it was that point in the year when everyone’s getting a cold,” Ansbro said It was wet
and raining and freezing, but we laugh about it now and bond over it, like, ‘Ugh, that sucked. That was the worst,’ but it’s fun to look back on now.” Ansbro believed that, while the Navy Seal training was difficult in the moment present, it helped the team improve during the season. “It definitely challenged us mentally. It helped us on the field, eventually, to think back to―if I can do that, that was probably one of the harder things you’ve had to do; you can go up to an at-bat and feel confident in yourself. You can field the routine, the ground balls you’ve always fielded.” Though Ansbro is a junior, she is graduating in May with a degree in sport management and will spend her fourth year of eligibility finishing up her accelerated master’s. After she graduates, she hopes to work in college athletics―more specifically, in internal operations. Ansbro will spend this summer and fall interning with American University in their compliance department. Ansbro’s Twitter bio begins with the phrase, “Just trying to keep my GPA above my ERA.” Ansbro said, “I made the joke to our coaches once, and they were like, ‘Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty good goal.’ “I would say there’s a little more space between them now that I’ve gotten a little bit better at softball.”
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THE VOICE OF MASON KOREA Opinions do not reflect the views of Fourth Estate.
THE ORIGIN OF BOSHINTANG AND CURRENT PUBLIC OPINIONS
SOOYOUN KIM STAFF WRITER
Brigitte Anne Marie Bardot, a French animal rights activist, once said that Koreans are “dog-eating barbarians” who love consuming dog meat. Pet lovers might agree with her statement, but Koreans would respond that it is part of a tradition that is deeply rooted in history. Furthermore, the current generation is striving to break down stereotypes that many people have towards the Korean dog eating culture. PHOTO COURTESY OF NEWSTOMATO
Tracing back further than the fourth century, Boshintang, also known as “dog meat soup,” came to existence centuries ago. Korean ancestors defined dogs in two different ways. [Gyeon] represents dogs that were used for guarding their houses and [Gu] means for dogs that are used for meat. Korean ancestors needed provisions that could replace cattle and pigs. Cattle were significant to agricultural society in order to let them plow a field, and pigs were only eaten during the special days. Therefore, they came up with dogs, which could be easily obtained and are nutritious.
gradually diminishing, since public opinion and people’s perspectives on Boshintang have altered. On June 24, 2018, 177,549 people supported a petition to create a new law for prohibiting dog and cat killings.
However, Korea’s old tradition is
Unfortunately, not many non-Koreans
are aware of this, and continue to believe this about Koreans. There have been increasing numbers of dog owners in South Korea recently. According to research taken from “Last Chance for Animals” in 2015, 21.8 percent of South Koreans responded that they are raising pets. This is a
4.4 percent growth compared to prior research, which was 17.4 percent in 2010. Due to this, there has been a decrease in the dog meat industry. It was estimated that approximately 199 producers shut down. Boshintang itself is deeply embedded
in South Korea’s history, and many Koreans nowadays are striving to let go their practices and save stray dogs from slaughter. It is vital to understand their cultural background without stereotyping through one’s own culture, and try to keep up with the current trends in the issue.
CHINGU PROGRAM: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC STUDENTS ON THE MASON KOREA CAMPUS DAHYUN KIM STAFF WRITER
During the excursion, program participants were able to try different foods from Yeouido Park’s famous food trucks, as well as walking around the park grounds while taking pictures of the cherry blossoms. “Not only did I learn something from international friends, but also I was able to teach them about Korea and its culture,” Youngseo Park, sophomore conflict analysis and resolution major as well as a frequent participant of
Chingu Program events, said.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MINWOO KIM
On April 6, the George Mason University Korea Chingu Program hosted an outing to the annual Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival. Seventeen Mason students joined the Saturday Seoul outing to enjoy the seasonal cherry blossoms together.
Established in 2017, the Chingu Program hosts an outing or event each month. Participating in the Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival was one of the many outings of this spring semester. The Chingu Program allows domestic and international students to broaden their perspectives on multiculturalism through both learning and teaching their cultures to one another. “Chingu” is the Korean term for “friend,” which captures the Chingu Program’s ultimate aim to create relationships that go beyond cultural differences. Graciela Lara, a sophomore global affairs major and one of the three Chingu Program board members for the spring 2019, said, “As a Chingu
board member, I create events that can bring Korean and International students together.” She also revealed her goals of both expanding the program and getting more domestic and international Mason students to participate in the monthly events, saying that she hopes to be able to visit “other major cities in Korea, like Busan.” For the spring 2019 semester, the Chingu Program has also hosted the Incheon Tour Bus and Giant Archery events, as well as a booth for Mason Day. For any inquiries about the upcoming events of the spring semester, please visit the Chingu Program office in room G407.
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THE VOICE OF MASON KOREA
GMUFOURTHESTATE.COM @IVESTATE
Opinions do not reflect the views of Fourth Estate.
A$AP ROCKY DELIVERS A HARD-HITTING PERFORMANCE IN SEOUL
ALEXA BITUIN STAFF WRITER
The concert started off with a white sheet descending from the ceiling lights, which was used to create a silhouette of A$AP Rocky dancing while the song “A$AP Forever” blared. He performed several songs from T esting,
as well as several other hit songs, such as “Peso” and “Wild for the Night.” A$AP then dedicated his hit song “F--kin’ Problems” to all the women in the crowd. A$AP encouraged crowd participation and mentioned returning to Korea because of the energetic vibes the crowd created. To calm the rowdy crowd, A$AP Rocky performed “L$D” in dedication to all trippy people, saying, “I want you to feel drugs flowing through your body.” A$AP Rocky also held a moment of silence for his deceased friend, A$AP Yams, a business associate who helped A$AP rise to fame. Afterwards, A$AP hyped the crowd up once again by performing “Yamborghini High,” a
song dedicated to A$AP Yams. As a long-time fan of A$AP Rocky, I felt a personal connection to the rapper. His energy, vision and confidence made the concert memorable and hard-hitting. Using the crowd’s energy, he created a dynamic performance that had everyone swaying. A$AP is not afraid to experiment with his music and fashion. Being a renaissance man, A$AP Rocky created a unique performance by displaying his personality and experimental values.
PHOTO COURTESY OF HYPEBEAST KOREA
On April 5, American rapper A$AP Rocky performed at the Jamsil Arena in Seoul. The Harlem native had just kicked off his international “Injured Generation” tour to promote his third studio album “Testing.” The album was released in 2018, and although it received mixed reviews, it is noted for its experimental elements, which were apparent in his concert performance. This was the second time he had performed in Korea since 2013.
EXPAT AND KOREAN WOMEN EMBOLDEN EACH OTHER AT THE 2019 WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP SUMMIT HYUNSEON KIM STAFF WRITER
The event was hosted by the Expat Professional and Business Women’s Network (EPBWN), George Mason University Korea, Global Green April Festival (GGAF) and Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ). It encouraged women to participate in a social dialogue about building confidence and experiences in Korea. The event program had four different panel sessions, followed by a gala. The first session was moderated under the theme of “the importance of building strong social networks for expat women.” Robin Carney, president of Seoul International Women’s Association (SIWA), mentioned that building networks is a big challenge for expat women, because they used to be professionals before but are unable to get a position to work due to visas and other circumstances.
Victoria Botvin, J.D. and academic at the University of Utah, talked about the struggles and stereotypes she faced during her transition from building litigation experiences in Washington D.C. to creating a new identity through marriage. She advised fellow expat women to not be afraid of reaching out, and to “find, keep and use connections.” The second session, Professional
and Personal Strategies for Women’s Leadership, centered around empowerment. Yvonne Prempeh-Ferguson, CEO of Cambridge Consultancy Services, emphasized how education is conducive to growth as well as setting clear targets so that the modern workplace can embrace change, honesty and transparency. Anne Choe, advisor for SIWA, stated that group dynamics and a culture
of women supporting each other at work will be the key to success in women’s leadership. For establishing such working culture, Global Start-Up Campus Coach and Mentor Neet Virmani remarked on the need for an increase in “What are inco-spraing spaces?” inco-sparing spaces in Korea, like Female Quotient (FQ Lounge) in the U.S.
International Organizations in Supporting People, Planet and Prosperity” presented an active dialogue on climate change. Senior Officer of the Global Green Growth Institute Annick Nzambimana pointed out that climate change is also a social issue, and that there needs to be a lot of girls to go into the field and find ways to adapt and mitigate to counter its effects.
The third session on the“Role of
“When it comes to energy, transport, water, all these impact [vulnerable societies], and interventions are important,” Nzambimana said. PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY KOREA
What would life in Korea as an expat woman be like? Her Excellency Matilda Swilla Masuka, the ambassador of Tanzania, mentioned the impact of helping others in her welcoming remarks at the Women’s Leadership Summit & Gala, which was held on April 19 at George Mason University Korea.
The final session discussed “The Advancement of Women and Gender Equality in Politics and Diplomacy,” and looked at ways and efforts towards greater gender equality. The speakers agreed that spotlighting women’s voices to be heard in as many institutions as possible was imperative. Her Excellency Sripriya Ranganathan, Ambassador of India to the Republic of Korea, ended the summit with a saying, “I am a wife or mother, but at the same time, I am also me, contributing in my own rights,” highlighting the purpose of the Women’s Leadership Summit & Gala.
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THE NOVA NIGHT SCRIBBLER Opinions do not reflect the views of Fourth Estate.
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CREATING A CULTURE OF CARE
New NOVA program aims to help students with tuition, housing and textbook costs ROGER HINCAPIE STAFF WRITER
Dr. Frances Villagran-Glover, who had previously worked at NOVA for 11 years, is now back as the vice-president for student services, a brand new position in the college, after working at Houston Community College for two years.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROGER HINCAPIE
Villagran-Glover and the Office of Student Services at NOVA are currently working on the development and future implementation of what they refer to as “The Culture of Care.” This culture will engage both NOVA
staff and students who want to give back and help struggling students at the college thrive as they face obstacles in their careers. The objective of this strategy is to create an atmosphere where the students can feel both that they belong and that the people in their community care about them. For students, worries about college come mainly from the high costs of tuition and books, and, especially in the NOVA area, housing. According to CNBC.com, tuition costs have been increasing up to 213 percent since the ‘80s. According to the Bureau of Labor, the cost of textbooks has increased to 88 percent from 2006 to 2016, creating a difficult environment for students who are unable to pay the increased costs. Some students even mentioned that they are forced to risk their grades by not purchasing one
or more of their required textbooks because they simply cannot afford them.
they have been doing it independently with no coordination between each other.
But there are even worse obstacles that college students face. Some of them cannot even afford to eat properly during the day, or must work two or three jobs in order to pay for all the costs that come with being a young college student.
Food pantries, advisors and counselors do their best, and even offer to help with the students’ tax returns, but every campus has also doing it their own way. The new implementation will create an equity between campuses, making the efforts more cohesive.
“If you’re worried about what your next meal will be, or if you will be able to eat,” said Villagran-Glover. “If you’re worried about how you will pay your rent, you simply cannot focus.” He identified housing and food insecurity as two of the greatest academic barriers for students in need.
For example, if the Woodbridge campus has a food pantry called the “bird nest,” all campuses should have one named the same. In this case, even the name chosen becomes crucial, as students are often ashamed about asking for help or admitting that they need it. There is a stigma about needing support that extends to something as simple as the word “pantry.”
All the six campuses at NOVA Community College have their own programs and ways to address those needs for their students. Until now,
This is where the “culture of care”
would play a major role in creating a sense of belonging as well as a welcoming environment, trying to banish those biases and prejudices. Everyone in the NOVA staff will be trained about what resources are available for the students. “We want them all to have that attitude of caring about students, so if any student comes to us for help or assistance, we will not turn away,” said Villagran-Glover. The participation of students will be valuable in the implementation of this new culture, as they could provide more support when required. Their feedback and experiences will be key in order to improve this strategy and learn what works the best for them, as well as make the culture something that can help the Nighthawks become a more united and caring college community.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROGER HINCAPIE
NOVA Community College is focusing on an entirely new approach to what students know as student services. In a previous interview with Dr. Mel Schiavelli, interim president of NOVA, he mentioned that “the focus for community colleges is now to help students make the right choices on their careers.”
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OPINIONS
04.29.2019
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Opinions do not reflect the views of Fourth Estate. Submit opinions to ckernans@gmu.edu
DISCONNECT BETWEEN PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS ON COURSE EVALUATIONS
DOMINIC PINO STAFF WRITER
There is a clear disconnect between students and faculty on course evaluations.
professor even mentioned eliminating the student information section of the form entirely.
On Wednesday, April 24, the Faculty Senate (see if you can follow this) passed a motion to recommend advancing a proposal of the revised Course Evaluation Form to both the Office of Institutional Research & Effectiveness (OIRE) and the Provost for pilot-testing next academic year.
The only exception was computer science professor Daniel Menasce, who wanted to add an item to the Course Evaluation Form that said, “The professor seemed knowledgeable about the subject.”
The changes to the Course Evaluation Form and the proposals passed in the last Faculty Senate meeting weaken students’ voice in the course evaluation process. This time, debate was more contentious than in the last Faculty Senate meeting. Professors raised concerns over whether questions on the Course Evaluation Form were applicable to classes of different sizes. Professors were also concerned about whether the pilot-testing would apply to non-tenured faculty. Multiple amendments were proposed, but only one passed, and it was merely to change the motion’s wording. Concerns were various and sundry, but they all shared one characteristic: they weren’t about students. In fact, one
Menasce said, “My students appreciate it when I go beyond what’s in the textbook.” He explained that when students feel like the professor doesn’t know anything beyond what’s in the textbook, the classroom experience is much worse. As a student, I agree
His faith is not widespread. At long last, the Effective Teaching Committee (ETC), which wrote the recommendations, responded to questions from me over email. I encourage you to read the full question and answer online. It is clear they do not believe students to be capable of rating teaching. The ETC wrote, “Student learning is the ultimate goal of a course, and experienced students are in a good position to assess their own learning through candid self-assessment. Students are less prepared to understand how people learn and how to objectively compare pedagogical approaches used in a learning environment that
ETC also wrote, “We believe that student voices are important. Therefore, we are suggesting that faculty collect student feedback more than once per semester.” They go on to say this could include midterm evaluations. The School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) already does midterm evaluations of teaching. A student in an S-CAR class described
There is no recognition by ETC that students are consumers of a product here at Mason. wholeheartedly. Foreseeing a possible objection that students would not have an accurate sense of the knowledge of the professor, he simply said, “Our students are smart enough.” It was refreshing to see a professor acknowledge the student voice, and have faith in students’ ability to rate professors.
facilitated or hindered their learning outcomes.” If you had to read that a few times to make sense of it, it’s not because you’re dumb. The ETC is saying that students are good at assessing their own learning, but bad at assessing teaching overall. Aren’t teaching and learning two sides of the same coin? Isn’t it true that each student learns differently, and what works for one student may not work for another? The Course Evaluation Form doesn’t ask how people learn generally. It asks how you learned individually. That’s why the Course Evaluation Form is filled out individually by each student and then averaged. ETC continued to say, “In addition, students have a good sense of liking or disliking a course or an instructor, and there is a risk that likability may substitute for an objective understanding of facilitated learning outcomes or teaching effectiveness.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF PIXABAY
tell me likability doesn’t play a role in students’ final grades —the expression “teacher’s pet” was not conjured from the ether, and the students to whom it applies get fantastic grades.
What’s wrong with that? Students pay thousands of dollars to take a class, so if they don’t like it, they have the right to be able to say so. There is no recognition by ETC that students are consumers of a product here at Mason. Part of providing a product effectively is making sure the consumer likes it. If student voices matter, part of that voice is saying whether students like or dislike a class. Plus, you can’t possibly
to me what that was like. Since this student is currently enrolled in that class, I do not want to jeopardize this student’s final grade, so I will keep this student anonymous. The professor invited students to write strengths and weaknesses about the class on the board and then left the room for about five minutes. The students in the class wrote things on the board, and the professor returned to the classroom. The professor, visibly upset, then went through the list of weaknesses and refuted each one. “I couldn’t believe there was so much conflict in a conflict resolution class,” the student told me. The concerns of midterm evaluations are obvious, at least to students. However, the ETC wrote: “Research suggests that student feedback can best be used for formative purposes, that is, for improvement of teaching. Summative evaluation, which takes place at the end of the semester, is too late for faculty to make improvements so that the current students will benefit from them.” As the example above shows, providing honest, negative feedback about a professor in the middle of the semester is extremely risky because that professor has authority over the student’s final grade. The end of the semester allows a time for honest feedback precisely because the professor will not see that feedback
until the course is over. Why does the ETC not see these concerns? Because they are looking at course evaluations as a professional performance evaluation tool. When asked if they view final course evaluations as analogous to students’ final grades, the ETC said no, writing that, “Course evaluations are used for a variety of purposes, among them being to make career decisions such as contract renewal, granting tenure or promotion and merit pay. As such, they are subject to federal and state laws on employment discrimination and must be shown to be valid and reliable measures of faculty performance.” The first sentence of that answer is also true of students’ final grades. How? Final grades could affect whether a student meets prerequisites for higher level classes, graduates on time or gets accepted into graduate/law school— all of which impact students’ career decisions tremendously. The second sentence of that answer seems difficult to believe. Discrimination laws were never mentioned in the ETC recommendations. Their claim is that the overall rating questions are biased against women, minorities and the disabled. Those questions have been on Mason’s form for many years, and are certainly on the evaluation forms of universities all over the country. Have they all really been breaking federal law for years without any consequences? And if Mason is currently in violation of federal law, why are we taking our grand old time to make changes? According to the ETC, these proposals are five years in the making. On Thursday I spoke with Joshua Erlich, an attorney in Arlington specializing in employment law, on the phone. I asked him about the ETC’s statement that course evaluations are subject to employment discrimination law. “By saying they are subject, I am not quite sure what that means,” Erlich told me. “If a faculty member is looking at responses, and those responses are discriminatory in some way, if they are racist or sexist, that could contribute to a discriminatory work environment. Certainly, if you Story Continued on page 23
OPINIONS
Opinions do not reflect the views of Fourth Estate. Submit opinions to ckernans@gmu.edu were a teacher of color and you were looking at evaluations that were openly racist, I could see someone coming into my office for that.” I asked ETC if they were aware of any specific cases of discrimination based on course evaluations at Mason. Answer: none. Erlich also said there could be a question of systemic disparate impact, which is when a neutral process produces discriminatory results. “If they found through analysis that members of protected classes were getting harmed, it could be a disparate impact issue,” he told me. “Taking proactive steps is the appropriate thing for an employer to do.” I asked the ETC about bias in professor peer-review. If the alleged discrimination is implicit bias having a systemic
disparate impact, having professors evaluate instead of students would not fix the problem since professors and students are both human beings. The ETC wrote that they plan “to prepare faculty for peer review by providing training in this process in order to limit bias and ensure the reliability of results.” So they can train the bias out of professors but not out of students? Are students more racist than professors? I also asked them if there was any research where Mason professors are the population of interest. “We are unaware of any reports or published research on Mason instructors,” they wrote. If only there were a university standing committee or an entire university office that could do some research here.
The ETC sees course evaluations as a matter of professional performance evaluation and limiting bias, but course evaluations should be a matter of consumer feedback for students who are paying thousands of dollars for an education. And students aren’t going to give up their voice easy. Camden Layton, student body president, told me Student Government’s plan of action going forward on this issue. The changes aren’t due to take effect until next year at the earliest, so Layton hopes to get a resolution through the student senate in the fall. “Going forward, we will definitely try to work more with the administration to make sure students have a voice in this,” Layton told me. “We want to be a part of this process.”
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In attendance at the meeting were sophomore Mackenzie Nelson and freshman Sami Gibbs, chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Student Senate University Academics Committee. They met with Professor Lorraine Valdez Pierce, chair of the ETC, before the meeting and said it was productive. They told me they hope to meet with her and others in the fall.
the privilege to have a voice in evaluating the product?
We don’t need to leave this issue only to Student Government. First, fill out your course evaluation forms this semester while you still can. Second, make your voices heard by sharing this article on social media. It’s really easy to take our voices away if we don’t use them.
FOURTH ESTATE VIJAY iYER
GMUFOURTHESTATE.COM @IVESTATE
I don’t have to tell you how expensive a university education is. Shouldn’t those thousands of dollars at least purchase
KAVANAUGH’S HIRING IS PART OF A BIGGER ISSUE AT MASON BASMA HUMADI MANAGING EDITOR
Since the news broke that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will come to Mason as a distinguished visiting professor with a threeyear contract, the pushback from the community at large has been overwhelming to say the least. This hiring comes amid recent lack of notice from Mason police to notify students about a Mason student found recording women in a bathroom on campus, in addition to complaints of an understaffed Title IX office and ongoing issues with donor transparency. Kavanaugh’s hiring, rightly so, is another amalgamation of these issues that spark outrage from the student body.
FOURTH ESTATE IZZ MAMAGAGDELEINE
In an interview with President Ángel Cabrera by Cody Borden on Mason Cable Network, Cabrera maintained the position to not fire Kavanaugh, saying he is “very respectful of the many views about Justice Kavanaugh, and I don’t intend or
pretend to change anyone’s views.” Cabrera then added, “My decision is not to hire him or not hire him. It is to respect the judgement the law school faculty has done. They know what’s best for the law school, and they decided this is in the best interest of the students, and I respect that.” In light of mass pushback from the student body and student-led advocacy groups like Mason for Survivors, Mason recently approved funding to add two more Title IX coordinators. Even with the extra staff, the office is still not equipped to serve the university’s 34,000-student population. However small it may be, it is still a slight step forward. Yet, through the town halls, mainstream media coverage from publications such as The Huffington Post and mass student-led petitions—with now more than 11,000 signatures— Mason administration remains firm in allowing the Antonin Scalia Law
School to have the freedom to stand by their decision. Cabrera remains firm in maintaining neutrality to not interfere or infringe upon that. First, allowing hiring decisions to be decided by the faculty and staff in a law school that already has gained much skepticism from the general public over donor influence from the Charles Koch Foundation does not help to restore trust or transparency to a skeptical community. This is especially true considering that one of the groups that publicly campaigned for Kavanaugh’s confirmation was a group funded by the Koch brothers known as Americans for Prosperity, according to The Intercept, as well as Mason’s law school receiving millions in funding from Koch donations. Maintaining a position of noninterference in the name of academic liberty afterwards essentially upholds that entire power structure. How much correlation is there between academic liberty, private interests and political leaning? Even so, the argument that having Kavanaugh, a sitting Supreme Court justice, teach students, providing them with an unique opportunity and a high honor, is weak to say the least. Given his history and track record, Kavanaugh’s conduct throughout his appointment to his position, where he demonstrated a willingness to retract, misinterpret and even lie, makes him a poor example of a Supreme Court justice and a faculty member at a university.
When Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in regards to his track record on environmental regulations and interests, he said, “In some cases, I’ve ruled against environmentalists’ interest, and in many cases I’ve ruled for environmentalists’ interests.” In fact, according to The Intercept, “an analysis by the environmental law firm Earthjustice found that of 26 EPA-related cases in which Kavanaugh wrote opinions, the judge came down on the side of rolling back protections for clean air and water 89 percent of the time.” In 16 out of 18 cases, Kavanaugh’s ruling would result in less protection and more pollution—which demonstrates just one instance of embellishment and lies on his own track record. Kavanaugh also said during his hearing that “I got into Yale Law School. That’s the No. 1 law school in the country. I had no connections there. I got there by busting my tail in college,” when in reality Kavanaugh was a legacy. Even in other details over his alleged drinking history in high school, or relationships with old friends, it seems there are a lot of attempts to misinterpret or add deliberate ambiguity to his past. According to the code of conduct for U.S. Judges, one is expected to “act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” and that “the duty to be respectful
includes the responsibility to avoid comment or behavior that could reasonably be interpreted as harassment, prejudice or bias.” During his hearing, Kavanaugh was immaturely angry, going so far that when asked a question on if he had ever blacked out while drunk, failed to answer the question and snapped back, “I don’t know, have you?” With both his years of experience and background in his job, Kavanaugh should at least be accustomed to more rigorous questioning. If you are to be appointed into the highest court in the land, that experience is merely expected. It is a challenging, expecting and demanding position. Those who are appointed to be leaders in high and powerful positions must be able to withstand that responsibility and pressure, so we have dignified people who are able to serve their country at large. Among the law community, both his unprofessionalism and poor conduct has also been called out. More than 2,400 law professors previously signed a petition saying that Kavanaugh is unfit to be appointed as Supreme Court justice. As judges are expected to evaluate evidence, have credibility and make fair decisions to the best of their ability, Kavanaugh’s behavior and record is more than enough to discredit and invalidate his appointment to both the Supreme Court and his appointment to come to Mason as a professor.
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OPINIONS
04.29.2019
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THE IMPORTANCE OF MASONOMICS JACE WHITE STAFF WRITER
Mason economists also have a habit of making thought-provoking contrarian arguments. Books like Professor Bryce Caplan’s “The Case Against Education,” or Professor Garett Jones’ upcoming “10 Percent Less Democracy,” challenge ideas that many consider to be beyond criticism. Mason economists don’t just discuss their ideas with themselves. Professor Don Boudreaux writes in his popular blog Café Hayek, “GMU Econ is indeed unique. But we’re working hard to make it less unique—not by us changing what we do, but by us persuading others, through word and example, to change
mainstream economics and policymaking. In a field where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 5-to-1, organization is crucial if right-leaning voices are to be heard.
what they do.” Mason economists want to use their ideas to change the norms of their profession, as well as the norms of society itself. There has been some controversy about the ethics of how the economics program is funded. The department has attracted money from donors who both agree with and wish to expand the promotion of many of the views Mason economists hold. There are still questions about the involvement of the Koch foundation within the university that need to be addressed, but many have used those lingering questions as an indictment of the department and its views. Is it a threat to academic integrity to have a department that has a clear political slant?
When professors are able to collaborate with one another, they create a community that is greater than the sum of its parts. If the rare conservative economists were all scattered across the country, without access to the benefits of like-minded peers that their leftleaning colleagues enjoy, their ability to contribute to the conversation would be limited. Thankfully, there are places like Mason, where the best minds in libertarian economics can go to learn from one another. They are better because of it, as are their opponents, who benefit from more organized, articulate dissent that helps to strengthen their own arguments.
It is important to have dissident views within any discipline. Resolving disagreements is the best way to bolster the arguments being used by all sides. Masonomics can be viewed as a kind of organized opposition to
economists are serving an important role. If you zoom in close enough, and ignore enough of the relevant context, you would see a department that stubbornly promotes its own views at their students’ expense. But Mason doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It stands in stark contrast with the rest of the profession, pushing back against
the tide of the status quo. In that sense, the strengthening of Mason’s department is a strengthening of the profession as a whole. It is a valuable part of the economics community that should not be written off because of its political stance, because that stance is precisely why it is so important.
PHOTO COURTESY OF RON AIRA/CREATIVE SERVICES
Mason has a unique position in the world of economics. “Masonomics” is a well-defined school of thought that believes in free markets and free people. Its emphasis on marketoriented solutions means that the policies it promotes tend to be either right-wing or libertarian in character.
If you accept the notion that spirited opposing views strengthen the discussions within a field, then Mason’s
NO STUDENT SHOULD HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HOW TO GET TO CLASS EACH WEEK
IZZ LAMAGDELEINE COPY CHIEF
The class in question is in Arlington, a commute that I make from Mason’s Fairfax Campus by various transport. I first take the transportation that Mason provides free of charge to all students, the shuttle to the Vienna Metro station, and then a short rail trip of around 20 to 30 minutes. I do not have a car and have no plans to acquire one in the near future. Even though it is not a
long trip at all, it costs me about $8 to attend class each week. This is an amount that sounds so small that it should be doable, but this cost also adds up each week, especially if I have not been paid in a while or have other bills, such as groceries, that I need to take care of. I have at times fallen short of being able to pay the whole fee to get through the turnstile and have lied to get through, feeling sorry for the Metro staff I told I would be right back to pay my fee when I knew otherwise—but also knowing I would probably not be able to get home that night if I’d paid. I should not have to shortchange my education, miss class or lie because I cannot afford to commute that week. If a student is studying at this school, then they should be able to access any class that they wish, regardless of funds. Mason should provide a shuttle system for all students to use that would take them from the Fairfax campus to Arlington, like the SciTech shuttle does for its students, transporting them from Manassas to Fairfax and vice versa.
Even though the Arlington campus is for graduate students, more programs of study are offered on its campus than at SciTech—28 to 21. There are several programs, including one that I’m in, the Schar School of
PHOTO COURTESY OF EVAN CANTWELL
Earlier this week when I was in my Ethics and Human Rights class on the Arlington campus, my professor made a point to mention to me the cost of a bus system that went nearly as far as the Metro rail system, which he stressed was cheaper for passengers. Normally, this would have made me feel uncomfortable. This same conversation would have felt deeply inappropriate if my Tort Law professor started talking about my financial status two minutes before class started in front of all the other students there. However, I didn’t mind this time—because the week before, I had had to email him that I could not attend class because I did not have the money to afford it.
Policy and Governance, headquartered in Arlington, making it even more imperative that students have a direct source of access to the campus. Also, adding the shuttle itself makes sense. According to Google Maps, without traffic, Arlington is only a
26-minute drive away from Mason’s main campus, while SciTech is slightly farther at 30 minutes. Even with traffic being absolutely terrible in this area, if one campus can receive a shuttle from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. during the week, why can’t the other? Besides the fact that it simply makes sense for Mason to do this, it is also the right thing to do. My Arlington class ends at 10 p.m., forcing me to leave immediately to catch one of the last Metro trains so I can get home that night, regardless of whether if I have a question for the professor about the material covered during class. After catching a train, I have to catch a shuttle back to campus, as all of the Metro and CUE buses have already ended service for the night. With the times of the shuttles arriving late at night on a Wednesday, it often forces me to wait in a dimly lit area at 11 p.m., as I wait 10, 20, 30 minutes in order to get home for the night. Even though I doubt that anything bad will happen to me, those who commute from a Mason school on
weeknights should not have to worry about waiting in a dark parking lot late at night for a bus. However, if there were a service that took students directly from one Fairfax to Arlington, this issue would not exist. It would be a problem I would not even have to think about. I would have my peace of mind back, as well as a shorter commute home that would allow me to be in bed before midnight. As both the semester and school year prepare to wind down, my commute is soon coming to an end. I am going to miss the professor, the other people in the course and the class itself. However, I am not going to miss the worry about whether I have enough on my SmarTrip card to get me back home, the time spent going there and back again. If Mason offers classes in Arlington and wants Fairfax students to access them, it should step up with a shuttle to ensure that all can attend— or stop giving undergraduates the supposed opportunity to learn at its school in the first place.
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OPINIONS
GMUFOURTHESTATE.COM @IVESTATE
04.29.2019
Opinions do not reflect the views of Fourth Estate. Submit opinions to ckernans@gmu.edu
PROTECTED CLASS? NOT SO FAST: THE EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS WITH DISABILITIES SARAH PATNAUDE CONTRIBUTOR
Everyone has that one thing that fires them up. For me, it’s knowing that I am not protected under the law as I enter the workforce.
In the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, the rights and protections of workers were set. The federal
PHOTO COURTESY OF MICAH GARBARINO/U.S. AIR FORCE
The government continues to systematically discriminate against me and my peers with disabilities. While preparing to graduate with my master’s in social work, I have continuously engaged in conversations regarding
both the barriers within employment and the impact of income. However, the discussion around employment and income is typically about racial and ethnic identities, gender and sometimes mental health. Often, disability is left out of the conversation.
minimum wage, currently held at $7.25 per hour, is one of the protections workers are entitled to under FLSA. Did you know that this protection is not guaranteed if you have a disability? That’s right: employers can legally pay their workers with disabilities below the minimum wage. Through a provision in the law, Sec 14(c), employers can obtain special wage certificates from the Department of Labor that allow them to pay their workers a fraction of the wage their coworkers without disabilities are paid—sometimes just pennies per hour. Wages are based on timed-tests given to employees. However, these tests are set up for employees to fail. For example, Harold Leigland, who is blind, sorts and hang clothes by color at Goodwill Industries. His job doesn’t help him to be successful. Making matters worse, Harold’s productivity was tested by his ability to sort toys by similarity—a task which was also inaccessible—resulting in his wage dropping to $2.75. The practice of
paying workers
with disabilities subminimum wages stems from misconceptions and stereotypes that are rooted from the beliefs and culture of 1938. Often, society equates disability with both low productivity and low competence. That cannot be further from the truth.
needs cost money. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the current living wage in Virginia is approximately $14 for one adult. If $7.25 is not enough for those who are not disabled to live on, then why are we expecting those with disabilities to live off of even less? Through this practice, we are not only telling people with disabilities that they are inferior, we are keeping them in a cycle of dependency that is difficult to leave. The fraction of a wage,if we can even call it that,people with disabilities earn due to this practice creates and fosters barriers in surviving and thriving.
Workers with disabilities can work alongside their nondisabled coworkers in competitive, integrated work environments. Subminimum wages are not a comparable compensation for the work people with disabilities produce. Instead, they are an expression of the low expectations both the government and employers have for people with disabilities, as well as a modern day form of exploitation.
Disability is an issue of income. The current policies in place continue the cycle of oppression for people with disabilities, preventing us from living the lives we have the capacity to live, as well as further perpetrating damaging stereotypes of people with disabilities. Let’s not forget about people with disabilities as we continue to discuss the issues surrounding income, employment and the fight for equal and fair wages for all.
Putting on the social work hat, this policy is not only discriminatory, it is oppressive. How can someone live on a wage that is just pennies or dollars an hour, or wages that change every few months? The simple answer: they can’t. Food, housing, transportation, healthcare and all the other services and products we need to meet our
WILL RAISING THE MINIMUM AGE FOR TOBACCO STOP UNDERAGE USE? OWEN FERGUSON STAFF WRITER
No one is oblivious to the fact that teen nicotine use has been on the rise for years now since vaping products have taken over the market. Companies like JuuL Labs have become increasingly popular with teens across the nation, with some even saying they specifically market their products to appeal to teens. Although steps have been taken by the government both on the federal and state level to deter teens away from
nicotine, will increasing the minimum age to 21 work? I don’t think so. Let’s start with teens under the age of 18 that vape or use tobacco products regularly. The minimum age requirement to buy or possess these products has done nothing to stop them from getting their hands on it. I don’t believe that raising the age minimum will produce any large-scale drop of teen nicotine consumption in the future. Setting age restrictions on things like alcohol, tobacco or nicotine vapor products does make it harder for underage people to get a hold of them, but the possession of these products can be difficult to enforce. Although some may see these policies as a step in the right direction, I think there are other ways to go about this. The marketing of these products is the most prevalent issue regarding teen nicotine consumption. For example, one of the main reasons many teens started using nicotine vapor products were the flavors available. When Juul e-cigarettes were beginning to rise in popularity, they offered flavors like
mango and cucumber, which appealed to teens. The company came under an enormous amount of pressure, which led them to discontinue selling all such flavors that had larger appeal to underage p e r s o n s . Many e-cigarette companies have a large social media presence they use to portray their product in a way that appeals to teens. Even before social media, many tobacco companies did the same thing by putting ads in popular magazines, on radio and on TV. With the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act passed in 1970, ads of tobacco products have been banned from TV, radio or any other publications that have a
large audience under the age of 21.
in 2016 passed the Deeming Tobacco Products to be Subject to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. This act makes both nicotine vapor products and electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) subject to the same rules as traditional tobacco companies in regards to advertising. I see this as a more effective move towards decreasing teen nicotine use rather than simply raising the minimum age to 21.
Even in places where the ads are allowed, there are numerous
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM TRACY
On Feb. 21, Virginia governor Ralph Northam signed HB 2748 into law. This bill changed the minimum age for the sale and possession of tobacco and nicotine vapor products to 21, excluding active duty military personnel. Virginia joins 11 other states and at least 450 other localities in raising the minimum age for buying tobacco and nicotine vapor products to 21, as many state legislators across the nation are trying to do all they can to curb teen nicotine consumption. With this new law going into effect in Virginia on July 1, 2019, people are wondering if it is enough to deter teens from vaping.
guidelines for them. Some include the Surgeon General’s warning, which states that warnings have to take up at least 20 percent of the space on an ad. As nicotine vapor products grew in popularity, the FDA took action, and
Although advertisement restrictions have been put in place, it is hard to regulate trends among young people. Vaping has become a normal and acceptable thing, as smoking cigarettes once was. The key to stopping this trend is time. The effects of vaping are still being completely fleshed out and found. Researchers need time to produce results that show whether vaping is as damaging as smoking tobacco is. It is hard to determine how to curb this teen vaping issue, but I believe there needs to be stricter advertising laws for nicotine vapor products, or even regulations on what flavors can be sold.
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Got a COMIC? We are looking for comic artists for the 2019-2020 school year! If interested email: masonfour thestate@gmail.com
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FOURTH ESTATE BILLY FERGUSON
HAVE A GREAT SUMMER! S4M3: Thanos
FOURTH ESTATE SONYA NATASHA FLECHA MONGE
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THIS WEEK’S ANSWERS because this is the last issue of the semester! no peeking!! Enjoy your summer :)
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