Editorials

  • Letter to the Editor

    Editorials April 30, 2013 at 3:24 pm Comments are Disabled

    We are writing to formally make a complaint about the two articles in the April 22, 2013 edition of Broadside that contain blatant false statements of fact in the context of a clear intent to defame and/or dismantle Students Against Israeli Apartheid. Erez Cramer’s claims of anti-Semitism and hate speech are predicated on SAIA’s advocacy “through posters” that Israel should be eliminated. He states as a fact that these posters exist and also blame Jews for America’s problems. These posters do not exist. SAIA does not advocate any of these positions, and in fact has spoken against anti-Semitic and other types of hate speech. On April 13, the group posted its “Guiding Principles” to their Facebook page. The final paragraph states, “SAIA maintains a nonviolent and non-confrontational stance in both our actions and our speech. We reject any and all hateful speech, and will not be held accountable for such speech made on our behalf by non-members.” These principles were created before Hala Numan’s article ran in the Broadside. SAIA has not released any “anti-Semitism messages” in any form. Through his opinion piece, Cramer shows clear intent to designate SAIA as a hate group, which is not only damaging to […]

     

  • Celebrating Earth Day, Warts and All

    Editorials April 30, 2013 at 3:03 pm Comments are Disabled

    As most know, last Monday was Earth Day. A holiday focused on awareness of environmental causes, there were many activities connected to the global observance held at Mason. Celebrating the efforts to maintain a healthy environment on the third planet from the Sun are widely socially accepted. Exempting the occasional right-wing concerns over extremist environmentalism, most everyone either takes part in Earth Day or at the very least looks upon it ambivalently. This even though one of the major figureheads of the effort to create an Earth Day was a convicted murderer. Ira Einhorn, a bearded, bespectacled hippie was the master of ceremonies for the first ever Earth Day, held in 1970 as a rally at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. A self-described pacifist, as reported by Remy Melina of NBC News Einhorn’s stated disdain for violence did not extend to his girlfriend Helen “Holly” Maddux. In Sept. 1977, Maddux went missing. “It wasn’t until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn’s apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn’s bedroom closet,” wrote Remy Melina. “Inside the closet, police found Maddux’s beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had […]

     

  • The Great Gatsby and the art of crossing bridges

    Editorials April 30, 2013 at 2:37 pm Comments are Disabled

    My best friend is smarter than me, more talented than I am, most definitely taller and his name is Noah. He is two years older than me, which meant that in high school, he graduated just as I was leaving the phase of life that makes you want to stuff yourself in a locker, rather than waiting for someone else to do it for you. Since I have met him, he has acted as the older brother that I never had. He went through experiences two years before I had to deal with them, giving me several expletive-ridden accounts of his forays with college applications, girls and the real world. During my sophomore year of high school, the conversation of what would happen in the following year came up frequently. He was leaving Vermont for a liberal arts school in Ohio and things would be undoubtedly be different. Our advice to each other was consistently the same: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” Now, it is my sophomore year of college and Noah is graduating from that liberal arts school in Ohio. Since Christmas, the realization that he is actually graduating has hit me. We would talk about it, always with […]

     

  • Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

    Editorials April 28, 2013 at 6:50 pm Comments are Disabled

    You can’t please everyone. In this job, you can hardly please anyone. Approval and trust ratings for journalists have been rapidly declining, with some polls reporting that people think more highly of lawyers and politicians than journalists. Though perhaps for different reasons at Broadside, we feel similar animosity. Last year, while waiting in line for a replacement swipe key at the help desk, I overheard two boys chatting animatedly about Broadside. One expressed his excitement to see the new issue out, to the confusion and ridicule of his friend. He quickly explained that he only picked up the paper to mock the mistakes and laugh at the content. Kathryn Mangus, the faculty advisor for the Office of Student Media, often reminds me that as the student newspaper, we are the largest classroom on campus. Each week, our learning process and trials and error are printed for the entire community to scrutinize. Even the best students occasionally ask embarassing questions in class or bomb a test, it’s part of the learning experience. The only way that we can grow is to make those awful mistakes, whether it’s mispelling Virginia on the front page, printing the wrong date for an event or failing […]

     
  • The butterfly stretch stretches your groin. Sit on the ground and, instead of cross- ing your legs, place the bottoms of your feet together and move them inwards towards your body. Remember to keep your knees down to get the most out of the stretch. (JENNY KRASHIN/BROADSIDE)

    Workout of the week: Stretching

    Editorials, Sports April 23, 2013 at 7:28 pm Comments are Disabled

    Stretching: Static vs Dynamic Flexibility training is an important aspect of any exercise regime. Achieving your optimum level of flexibility increases your body’s resistance to muscular injury by allowing your joints to move through their full range of motion. Flexibility training targets two different tissue adaptations: elasticity and plasticity. Elasticity refers to the muscle’s ability to return to original resting length after a stretch. Plasticity refers to the muscle’s tendency to assume a new and greater length after a stretch, even after the force is removed. The primary goal of stretching is to produce a plastic deformation over time, which causes a permanent increase in our range of motion. To achieve this goal, emphasize stretching to the point of minor discomfort, hold the stretch for at least 15 to 30 seconds and stretch after you have sufficiently warmed up the muscles. There are many factors that influence flexibility, including joint structure, age, core temperature and activity levels. While not all of these factors are controllable, we can implement different practices to increase our flexibility. Traditionally, static stretches are completed during warm-ups for the majority of stretching: holding positions such as a standing quadriceps stretch, a hurdler stretch or a basic sit and reach.   […]

     

  • Play by play: Life lessons from sports

    Editorials, Sports April 23, 2013 at 7:20 pm Comments are Disabled

    So you messed up: bombed a quiz, embarrassed yourself in front of that girl, couldn’t close that sale. Or maybe you pulled it off and swept her off her feet, aced that quiz and landed a huge deal at work. While the outcomes are different, what you need to do to improve or keep improving is forget about it. There are too many things that happen in life to bother getting wrapped up in the outcome of one situation. You did it and it worked? Fantastic, now onto the next problem. Oh you screwed up? Well, let’s give the next one your best shot. Reflecting on the past is good it encourages growth and maturity. Dwelling on the past will create a mental crutch and stop you from moving forward. A teammate I deeply respect once told me “A good athlete has a short memory of both the good and the bad”. It is something I try to embrace whenever I step on the field. If you get hung up on a mistake it will tend to bring your whole performance down. You may start thinking of yourself as a loser or screw up, as someone who cannot be trusted. It […]

     

  • A case for fun: why the circus is not a slaughterhouse

    Editorials April 23, 2013 at 7:13 pm Comments are Disabled

    I love my dogs. Yet, I felt like a huge jerk when I took both of them from their mothers, just like how I felt like a huge jerk when I left them alone in their crate their first night away from their mothers. Unfortunately, that’s the best way we have to train our dogs, and I know that this training helped them develop their own little sanctuary in my house. In the end, what seemed cruel actually was beneficial for them. The training, or domestication, of dogs has been going on for just about as long as there have been humans. Fun fact for you, they were essentially the only animal domesticated in North America (something I learned in a book I’m reading right now, which magically connects this back to one of my earlier editorials). Wolves were probably first domesticated for their meat, but eventually humans began to realize the hunting capabilities and the potential for companionship. All of the other animals were brought over by colonizing powers or up eventually from South America. Since then, we’ve figured out how to domesticate everything from guinea pigs to dolphins. As impressive as that spectrum might be, the vast majority of the […]

     

  • Letters to the editor

    Editorials April 23, 2013 at 7:04 pm Comments are Disabled

    Boycott hate, not hummus George Mason University is an honored academic institution, a home of diversity and tolerance, that in light of events of this past week, deserves better. One student organization, Students Against Israeli Apartheid, has sought to advocate through posters in the Johnson Center that the State of Israel should be eliminated, while harboring classical anti-Semitism messages that Jews control America and are to blame for its problems. It’s time we stood up to these voices of hate and division, and make it clear that they have no place at Mason. SAIA politicized the International Week parade which is meant to be a celebratory event. Instead of participating in an event to celebrate and unify the diversity at Mason they chose to deepen the division amongst students. They ought to be ashamed, not only for spreading hatred, but for using the Palestinians as a pawn in their hateful message of intolerance. What is it that SAIA stands for on campus? They are not interested in peace, for if they were they would advocate for causes that support peace. Instead, as the name of their organization insinuates, they believe that the world’s only Jewish State, the only democracy in the […]

     

  • Drug education event makes mockery of university policy

    Editorials April 23, 2013 at 6:40 pm Comments are Disabled

    This past weekend, George Mason University’s WAVES office held an on campus event called “Pot Party.” It was held on April 20, at 4:20 PM. And no, I am not making this up. Here is the actual event description from George Mason’s website: “Come eat brownies, decorate pots and celebrate 4/20 by getting educated. Bring yourself and questions about marijuana and other drugs. *Per usual we will keep it real and event participants will follow all state, federal and local laws in addition to George Mason University Policies.” Wait, what? Was this a pro-pot event? We all know what is implied when someone “celebrates” 4/20, and we all seem to think that “celebrating” may involve brownies or Doritos for some reason. In fact, these are common punch-lines to poorly written weed jokes. We’ve all heard them before. Some kid gets stoned on pot brownies and then decides to eat a lot of junk food. Yeah, yeah, yeah… So, what exactly is Mason trying to do? According to pamphlets that can be found in the WAVES office, “all people are subject to being affected by [marijuana’s] negative health consequences.” It can cause “paranoia, distorted perceptions, and difficulty in thinking and problem solving… […]

     

  • Students Against Israeli Apartheid’s misguided outlook

    Editorials April 23, 2013 at 6:34 pm Comments are Disabled

    Amongst our diverse campus community, there is a student group that made politicized gestures during this year’s International Week parade of flags ceremony. This organization is known as the Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), a group that believes a complex multi-generational ethnic conflict can be solved if people stop eating certain types of hummus. Regarding student organization rules, it is strange that they are allowed to exist. According to Mason’s guidelines for student clubs, a new club “cannot in any way directly duplicate an organization that already exists.” SAIA was founded in 2012; the Students for Justice in Palestine of GMU (SJP) was founded years earlier and professes identical views and goals. Then there is their Facebook group, where they state their support a one state solution. It’s probably a typo, but if not, it makes one wonder who that one state would belong to. Like SJP, Student’s Against Israeli Apartheid’s main objection is Israel’s foreign policy regarding the Palestinian territories. Their answer to this longstanding conflict is to place all the blame on Israel and have a boycott- divestment-sanctions approach against Israel for its “apartheid” system. As with countless ideological organizations before them, SAIA uses extremist rhetoric such as deeming Israel […]

     
 
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