Articles by: skline

 

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  Merten Addresses Faculty Senate

  News1 April 4, 2012 at 4:25 pm Comments are Disabled

  The Faculty Senate met last Wednesday to discuss issues including parental leave and the possibility of video conferencing future Faculty Senate meetings. President Alan Merten delivered his final address as the top university official at the beginning of the meeting. The session was also Peter Pober’s last as chair of the Faculty Senate. Pober has been chair since 2009, and the Faculty Senate will elect a new chair at their next meeting. In his speech, Merten reflected on his time at George Mason University, expressed his love for the institution and said he plans on remaining involved with the university in coming years. Merten said he intends to teach an honors course at Mason dealing with technology in the modern world. Following Merten’s speech, Suzanne Scott, chair of the Academic Policies Committee, said in her report that the add/drop period will remain unchanged despite the Student Government’s recent request that it be extended. The Faculty Senate then discussed a new parental leave policy for faculty members. According to the Faculty Senate, the current economic situation means that unpaid leave is no longer a feasible option. The proposed parental leave policy would allow new parents to work half-time for one academic […]

   
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  Ron Grijalva Gives Speech on Public Health

  News1 April 4, 2012 at 4:22 pm Comments are Disabled

  “A communicable disease doesn’t understand that it needs a green card. It doesn’t understand that it should have checked with IAS before it came into the country.” Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva said this in an address to the George Mason University community Thursday, about the connection between health reform and immigration. Grijalva is the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives. He has served there since 2003. He recently caught the attention of the national media when he called on entertainers and sports teams to boycott Arizona in order to protest SB 1070, Arizona’s “papers, please” law, which will be considerd by the Supreme Court. The speech also came on the heels of the Supreme Court proceedings regarding the Obama administration’s health reform law, dubbed “Obamacare” by opponents. Grijalva said that striking down the legislation would have the greatest impact on immigrants and people of color. Hispanics are only 14 percent of the population in the United States, yet they make up 30 percent of the uninsured, according to the federal department of Health and Human Services. One issue Grijalva has with health care reform is that it doesn’t allow undocumented workers to buy into the system. […]

   

• Mason Not Allowed to Recognize Domestic Partnerships

  News1 April 4, 2012 at 4:21 pm Comments are Disabled

  Director of women and gender studies Suzanne Scott’s passion for social justice has earned her the respect of her colleagues. But unlike many of her peers, if either Scott or her companion were to become ill and leave the university, she would not be covered by her partner’s insurance. That’s because domestic partner benefits of any kind are illegal under Virginia law, which prevents George Mason University health insurance policies from covering the partners of unmarried employees. “It is a real hardship for people at Mason that they cannot offer it,” said Scott’s partner, Lynne Constantine, a professor in the School of Art. “At our ages, especially at my age, that kind of security is important,” Scott said. For many years, health insurance coverage for the couple’s children had hinged upon Scott’s employment at Mason. Although Constantine is for all other purposes a mother of four children, Scott is their biological parent. Constantine cannot adopt them because Virginia law only allows for the spouse of a birth parent to adopt a child. In Virginia, both gay marriage and gay adoption are llegal. This means that if Scott’s health insurance were to be terminated, Constantine’s insurance could not be extended to […]

   

• SG Election 2012: Meet the Executive Candidates

  News1 April 4, 2012 at 4:20 pm Comments are Disabled

  President Alex Williams Vice President Jordan Foster Presidential candidate Alex Williams, a junior government and history major, and vice-presidential candidate Jordan Foster, a sophomore government & international politics major, bring a wealth of experience to their Student Government campaign. Williams and Foster are running with the slogan “Putting the Student Back into Student Government.” According to Williams, he wants Student Government to focus on being an advocacy group for students. “At the end of the day, we are the biggest cheerleaders,” Williams said. “We can’t make decisions or set policy, but we can advocate our hearts out for something.” Williams also wants students to have more of a voice at the administration level. He believes that while students cannot make decisions vote on administrative matters, it is beneficial to have a student voice advocating for what students want. Foster would like to see students become more active with the Office of Student Involvement. “A very small fraction [of students are] involved, and those students are the face of the school,” Foster said. “You can have one student who’s the president of three different organizations. In a school with 30,000 students and 3,000 organizations, that doesn’t add up.” Foster has been […]

   

• Students Help Honduras

  News1 April 4, 2012 at 4:18 pm Comments are Disabled

  Many students spent spring break relaxing and vacationing, but six members of Students Helping Honduras used the time off from classes to complete a week-long service project in Honduras. Founded in 2006, SHH is an international organization aiming to raise awareness about poverty in Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, and to fund poverty reduction projects there. SHH members have the opportunity to experience life in Honduras firsthand, instead of simply donating money. SHH members at George Mason University used personal funds to finance the trip, freeing up the money raised by the organization earlier in the year to go directly to projects in Honduras. SHH members contributed to the construction of a school in Honduras. They also donated computers, books and other educational supplies to schools in Honduras. The SHH members who traveled to Honduras were history major Jessica Campbell, government & international politics major Jorge Carvajal, mathematics major Mallory Taylor, government & international politics major Kali Matalon, public administration graduate student Lauren Grimes and business graduate student Luis Sanchez. Campbell worked at a bilingual elementary school at the main project site, named Villa Soleada, where her knowledge of Spanish enabled her to translate for […]

   

• Women’s Rowing

  Sports April 2, 2012 at 4:24 pm Comments are Disabled

  A change to the 2013 NCAA rules will give the Mason women’s rowing team an advantage when it comes to the selection process for the championship tournament. Like basketball, the selection of the top 16 teams to vie for the championship will no longer be determined solely by the committees. Next year, conference champions will automatically secure a spot in the championships. “The new rules will really help us on the recruiting front,” said head coach Geoff Dillard, who has been with the team for seven years. “If we get the right people here, we can have the chance to go to NCAA championships. Our goal this year is to be in the top three teams for the CAA. It’s an attainable and achievable goal, and would be a major success for us.” The team rows home races, also known as regattas, at the Occoquan reservoir and occasionally travels to compete on the Potomac and in Philadelphia. Regattas are scored similar to a swimming or track meet. Individual boats are given weighted scores based on their ranking. Each boat, or shell, seats eight rowers. The added point total of the boats determines the team score. “We can have one boat […]

   

• An Undying Question: Football

  Sports April 2, 2012 at 4:23 pm Comments are Disabled

  We wonder about it every autumn Saturday afternoon. It is a question we all want answered. We are all dying to know. Why does George Mason University not have an NCAA Division I football team? “Football must fit strategically within the vision of the university,” said Tom O’Connor, director of athletics and assistant vice president at Mason. For years, the university has wrestled with the desire to start a football program. For years, most of the factors informing the decision of whether or not to start a team can be attributed to cost. That remains the case today, and as the landscape of college athletics continues to change, so do those costs. “Cost is the biggest issue,” O’Connor said. “It is very costly to be successful in a spectator sport like football.” The university’s 2010 estimate of the potential expenses associated with a football program included operating costs, the cost of additional women’s sports programs, potential conference movement and the cost of a stadium.   Where Do We Play?   If Mason does decide to start a football program, the greatest cost factor will arise from the conference and division the team would play in. Division I college football is […]

   

• WGM Who?

  Lifestyle April 2, 2012 at 4:13 pm Comments are Disabled

  With walls of CDs and a plethora of posters, the WGMU studio is a visual extension of the hard work and dedication that goes into ensuring George Mason University’s student-run radio station is always delivering the best content possible to the Mason community. “Currently we have 80 hours of programming every single week,” said Alex Romano, a senior and general manager of WGMU. “[We have] live and original programming created by students, hosted by students, and there’s everything from sports shows and talk shows to music shows and variety shows. There’s a little bit of everything.” Some of the shows that students can listen to include “Party Like It’s 9 Teen 90 Nine” with Alex Howard, “Girlfriends” with Le’andra Jones and Kala West, and “The Fearless Hour” with WGMU Program Director Monet Sutton. “Last year, taking the radio workshop class, we were supposed to come up with our own original show, and I did purely ‘90s,” Sutton said, “and doing that show was fun. But I also realized that there are a lot of bands that I listen to that I think are great that a lot of people don’t know exist.  So I decided to do a feature show […]

   

• Button Mashing – Afterthoughts

  Lifestyle April 2, 2012 at 4:12 pm Comments are Disabled

  Gaming has been a passion of mine since the tender age of 4. Gaming allowed me to retreat into a world where imagination had taken a physical form, where the fates of one or more characters were literally at my fingertips. Knowing this, I would remain vigilant and complete the objective whether it was a strenuous boss battle or simply clearing a stage, I was in it for the long haul. The reason behind this was simple: I enjoyed a game with a good story. Recently there have been a string of disappointments with this important element that should be in games. Flustered, I searched endlessly for a game or series (besides “Mass Effect”) that would give me that childhood nostalgia I wanted to feel again, and it was given to me a few weeks ago. During the well-needed spring break, I had the rare opportunity to throw the textbooks aside and focus on some much-needed game grinding. Although I had quite the pile to finish (Dead Space 2, Final Fantasy XIII-2), there was one game series amongs the others that induced me into a geek-like trance. The “Uncharted” series is an action-adventure platformer, mixed with basic shooter elements.  Developed […]

   

• Get Your Relay On

  Lifestyle April 2, 2012 at 4:11 pm Comments are Disabled

  “Cancer doesn’t sleep, and neither do we.” The motto for this years Relay for Life is telling of how much effort has been put into this year’s relay. The student-led organization puts on an all-night walk in which they hope to raise a lot of money to send to the American Cancer Society. The walks are created with the intention of raising money while having a good time, so it is carefully planned and crafted beforehand. “This years’ theme is Festivals Around the World, but we’re kind of focusing on Marti Gras in particular,” said Mackenzie Ellis, a sophomore government and international politics major. “We make these purple batons out of yardsticks, and each team gets one. You want to have at least one person from each team on the track all night because cancer never sleeps, and neither do we. We try to cater our events to our theme. So this year with the kind of festival Marti Gras theme, we are doing a limbo lap and you get a [Marti Gras] bead lap. We try to gear the kind of mini events that we have going on during the entire event towards our theme.” Teams typically consist of […]