Editorials

• Deficit Talks Shed Light on Political Strife in Washington

  Editorials August 29, 2011 at 4:05 pm Comments are Disabled

  In academic terms, the U.S. just earned a capital “F.”

   

• Point, Counterpoint: Is Spotify Worth the Money

  Editorials August 29, 2011 at 4:04 pm Comments are Disabled

  I’ll come out and say it: I’m a Mac user. Have I always been? No, but I’m finding it hard to come up with a reason to ever go back — the sole exception being for certain computer games. I also use an iPod touch but, like the laptop, this hasn’t always been the case. Back in 2006 I hopped aboard the Zune train and I didn’t even bat an eye. Sure Apple had already secured its foothold in the market, but Microsoft’s competitor offered up something that was at the time unheard of in the mp3 market — unlimited music. The Zune Pass was a subscription-based program where a Zune owner could pay $15 a month and have access to all the music he or she could possibly want, and choose 10 songs to keep even if they no longer wanted to pay the subscription fee. I loved the program so much I even upgraded my standard Zune to the ill-fated Zune HD for a period of time. See, the Pass to me was the perfect answer to any music lover’s dilemma; the only problem was that it was only available for the Zune. So along comes Spotify, a […]

   

• Letters to the editor

  Editorials May 2, 2011 at 11:32 pm 1 comment

  Inside are five letters to the editor.

   

• The university wants as much money as possible

  Editorials May 2, 2011 at 11:29 pm Comments are Disabled

  It’s just a few weeks until graduation (or, if you’d prefer to signal your boorishness, commencement), and preparations are well underway. But no preparation is further along than George Mason University’s plan to extract every last cent from students on their way out the door. In economics, payments that come to you because of some privilege are called rents. When you try to accumulate more special privileges, your actions are called rent-seeking behavior. And no one knows more about rent-seeking behavior than the folks coordinating graduation. I’ve received three letters addressed to my parents (although I have been independent from them for over 10 years) advertising diploma frames. Most diplomas have a landscape orientation. In fact, just about any stock diploma frame available is built that way. Mason diplomas, however, have a letter orientation. If Mason diplomas were like all those others, you could pick up a diploma frame and mat at any office supply store. But a hard-to-find, letter-oriented mat will probably have to come from the university’s official supplier. Graduating in a black cap and gown is supposed to be a hallmark of completing university. Most schools leave the gimmicky colors where they belong: in high school ceremonies. […]

   

• If you want something to change, then change it

  Editorials May 2, 2011 at 11:29 pm 1 comment

  On any given day, if a student walks around George Mason University’s campus they are guaranteed to see advertisements promoting various different charity organizations or good causes. Students typically do not pay any attention to these advertisements. They walk right past them without giving them a second thought. Recently, I heard a conversation between two Mason students. One stated, “You shouldn’t go to the circus. They abuse the poor elephants.” The other student replied, “It makes me really sad that they do that to the elephants, but it won’t stop anything if I don’t go. So, I bought tickets anyway.” This sort of scenario happens too frequently. People are sympathetic to a cause, but they do nothing. They feel as if they will never make a change. If everyone in the world had this mentality, imagine how much worse the world would be. What people fail to realize is that change happens on a small scale. The power one individual has to positively affect another is exponential. People tend to forget this when they make decisions. I know of a student who lost touch with one of her friends. After not speaking for awhile, the student decided that she wanted […]

   

• Cyclists are a scourge on roads and pathways

  Editorials May 2, 2011 at 11:28 pm 1 comment

  Living, as most of you do, in the City of Fairfax, you probably don’t have many reasons to traverse Rock Creek Parkway in the district. It’s a lovely stretch of road, and if your excursions take you into the city, let me give my strongest recommendation to cruise the strip, even if it means going a little out of your way. Its serpentine-like single lane runs from approximately the Lincoln Memorial to Connecticut Avenue, whereupon it is rechristened Beach Drive and continues northward another several miles. It weaves through a well-preserved vein of lush greenery. The roadway itself gently twists and turns, rises and falls with the lulling nature of a hypnotist’s pendulum. And where the city has deigned to do road maintenance, the road is smooth and hums as you fly over it. At a touch over the sanctioned 40 mph, you feel like a racecar driver. You will have yourself a merry old time — that is, until you get stuck behind some damn cyclist out for a spin. You know the types: weekend warriors, dressed up in their too-tight bike outfits with the butt-shorts, looking like they think they’re Tron freshly escaped from the grid and training […]

   

• The new game room should be free for students to play

  Editorials May 2, 2011 at 11:27 pm Comments are Disabled

  So we have a new and pretty cool game room in Student Union Building II (which is now referred to as “The Hub,” even though the building signs haven’t changed.) Either way, the first week or two that the new Corner Pocket was open, there was free game-play for the things they traditionally charge for. This was great, yet it didn’t last long. I find it hard to believe that with subpar equipment the university has the audacity to charge its students $3 an hour to play ping pong and $5 an hour for pool. Even though the fee isn’t much, it’s the principle. I would be fully supportive of a fee to play as long as the equipment is new and not held together by scotch tape, as is with the ping pong equipment. Yes, hard to believe, but most of the paddles are missing a piece of the handle or are covered in tape. You would never buy a new car only to replace the parts with those from a used car. It makes no sense. So until they upgrade the ping pong equipment, it should be free play. Hell, it should always be free play. I pay […]

   

• The socialist parade on college campuses

  Editorials May 2, 2011 at 11:26 pm 12 comments

  Radicalism breeds on college campuses throughout the country. Extremism runs rampant and in almost every single instance, radical college groups come from the political left. But why? To answer that question let’s look at our own microcosm of iconoclasm here at Mason. The other day I was shocked to find a flier for the “Mason Socialists” while perusing a campus bulletin board. On it they refer to themselves as “revolutionary” and “radical” socialists while pondering the question, “What would need to happen…to actually abolish capitalism?” It’s not just my opinion that these self-described socialists are radicals; they proudly offer that mantra themselves. The parent organization of this student group publicly states, “To achieve socialism, the most militant workers must be organized into a revolutionary socialist party.” So here at Mason we have a group that actively recruits militant members for purposes of a socialist revolution. This misguided group of miscreants isn’t the first of its kind to tarnish this campus. Students for Justice in Palestine are another such faction. They denounce the Jewish state of Israel, accusing them of war crimes, apartheid and occupation. They spit in the eye of the Israelis and their constant struggle to defend their God-given […]

   

• Sometimes, you have to walk in someone’s shoes to understand their pain

  Editorials April 25, 2011 at 6:55 pm Comments are Disabled

  I used to be unsympathetic towards allergy sufferers. These are the people whose eyes always look like they just broke up with their long-time partner and whose nasal passages are as constricted as a boa (the snake variety, not the feathery kind).

   
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  Sub-par is too kind of a description for Mason’s wireless network

  Editorials April 25, 2011 at 6:53 pm Comments are Disabled

  Doesn’t it piss you off every time you have to log in to access wireless internet here at Mason? What’s even worse is when you have to re-login after you already logged in an hour or two ago. Just the other day a friend and I were working on on-line Spanish homework. He finished 35 questions on part of the assignment, and when he hit submit, it directed to the log-in page and all of his work was deleted. He logged into the system less than two hours before this happened. What sucks is that this isn’t unheard of and it’s extremely frustrating. It’s ridiculous that you have to keep logging in just to maintain access to the Internet. It actually just did it to me now when I went to refresh my Facebook page. I understand the whole idea for logging in is to provide safety and security to those on the network, but the network doesn’t even support the latest version of Windows, Windows 7; at least that’s what it says half the time I login. The IT department at Mason doesn’t seem to communicate well to the students, either, just like many other offices here on campus. […]