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Active Leader Program Holds Skills Seminar

Lifestyle November 5, 2012 at 11:39 am Comments are Disabled

According to Nick Lennon, Director of the Leadership Education and Development Office, “Every student has the capacity to be a leader in some way.” The most difficult obstacle to overcome is the myth that you must hold a powerful position or claim some high rank in order to be a leader. There is much more to being a leader than most realize, and that is what Lennon wishes to teach students through his work with the lead office and its two pilot programs, Active Leaders and the SEED program. “This program has become sort of like my mission in life, more than just my job,” Lennon said. “I want to be able to look back and know that I helped to create a more positive world.” The Active Leaders program invites students to take part in a 10-week seminar that builds leadership skills through various activities and reflection both in groups and individually. The program is in its first year and the seminar began at the beginning of the semester. While the program covers a wide array of topics relating to leadership, it focuses on the importance of ethics, and incorporating ethics into every aspect of leadership decisions to facilitate […]
Documentary Features Controversial Chinese Artist

News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:35 am Comments are Disabled

A screening of the film “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” in the Johnson Center cinema Nov. 14 at 6:30 p.m. The showing is hosted by Mason’s Film and Media Studies department, in conjunction with the English Department and Honors Collegeand will be free and open to the public. This film, a documentary by first-time director Alison Klayman, depicts the story of a Chinese artist who expresses his beliefs and reaches out to the Chinese people through controversial works. Weiwei has continued his work despite government backlash, which has included beating, and the destruction of a newly built studio. According to a description of the documentary from Mason’s Film and Media Studies webpage, Weiwei describes his work this way: “As an artist, I value other artists’ efforts to challenge the definition of beauty, goodness, and the will of the times. These roles cannot be separated. Maybe I’m just an undercover artist in the disguise of a dissident; I couldn’t care less about the implications.” Beth Hoffman, an assistant professor of Mason’s English department, introduced the initial idea of this event. The idea spurred from an Honors 122 course she teaches this semester, Reading the Arts: Performance, Participation and Social Change. “The course […]
Early Identification Program Provides Help to Local Youth

News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:32 am Comments are Disabled

Sophomore Paula De Medeiros knew from the time she first visited the Fairfax campus in seventh grade that she wanted to attended Mason. “The first time we ever went to the Fairfax [campus] it was pretty cool, because I was like, ‘Oh college students,’” De Medeiros said. “It actually made it real for me.” For many of her peers, however, college was just a word; it carried no meaning. The Mason Early Identification Program (EIP) not only cultivated the meaning of college for De Medeiros at a young age, but it also produced long-time friends and the support of the organization’s community. When Lewis Forrest, Executive Director of EIP, walks into the EIP student lounge, he’s greeted with a chorus of “Hi, Mr. Lewis,” from the students whose lives have been changed because of the EIP. “It’s an extended family,” Forrest said. Mason EIP is a college-access program housed at Mason. EIP is designed to encourage students from seventh grade to have the opportunity to be their family’s first generation college student. In eighth grade and high school, students go through a series of classes and seminars to give them a leg up before they enter college. Once in college, […]
World Police and Fire Games to Bring Revenue, International Athletes

News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:29 am Comments are Disabled

In July of 2015, Fairfax, Va. will host the World Police and Fire Games, an Olympic-style athletic competition for public safety personnel from across the world. Mason’s Fairfax campus will host nine of the 68 sporting events during the ten-day event from June 26 – July 5. Founded in 1985, the World Police and Fire Games are a biennial event that offers international firefighters, policemen, customs and corrections officers a chance to showcase their athletic skills and represent their countries in a competitive arena. The games have been hosted all around the world, and will stop in Belfast, North Ireland in 2013, before coming to Fairfax. Though Mason has no obligation as the host site to entertain and serve the athletes and spectators, Benn Crandall, Director of Auxiliary Enterprises, is planning several business ventures for the event. “From a business perspective, it behooves us to do the best job we can,” Crandall said. Crandall hopes for the university to purchase a software program that would allow for the open summer dorm rooms to be rented out like a hotel rooms to athletes and spectators during the games. “For a very small investment, we can make up to a six figure […]
Pistol Marksmanship Popularity Grows

Featured, News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:25 am Comments are Disabled

One look at Mason’s course catalogue will reveal the plethora of classes available to students. Courses run the eclectic gamut from Ornithology to Illicit Trade, covering every discipline of study from mathematics to event planning. Among all of the classes available, it is interesting to discover that pistol marksmanship is in fact the mot popular one-credit course offered. An unconventional and unique class, Pistol marksmanship earns students one academic credit and is offered in both spring and fall semesters. To say it’s a relatively new class would be an understatement—it’s brand new. Offered for the first time in Spring 2011 through the School of Education and Development, the class filled immediately. To the chagrin of the students, it had to be cancelled due to the lack of an instructor, but this current semester it’s in session and in full swing. Any new class at Mason has to be approved by the faculty of the school in which it is offered. The idea for pistol marksmanship came into being about four years ago from a faculty member who has since left Mason. However, the School of Education and Development’s faculty still expressed interest in the idea, resulting in a round table […]
New Yorker’s Town Hit Hard by Super Storm Sandy

Featured, News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:24 am Comments are Disabled

For the first 18 years of her life, Elvira Razzano lived on the shores of New York in a town called Lindenhurst, next to the beach, the canal and her family. “I’ve lived there my entire life; that is, my entire life until college,” said Razzano, who is now a sophomore at Mason. Last week, super storm Sandy swept up the east coast, nearly washing away Razzano’s hometown away with it. Lindenhurst is on the south shore of Long Island, right on the water. Towns on the East Coast were buffered from the swells of wind, water and sand by Fire Island, but Lindenhurst had no firstline of defense. Residents were told to evacuate, but Razzano’s parents decided to stay. “They never listen,” Razzano said. “They didn’t evacuate during Irene and they thought this time would be just a little worse. But it was a lot worse.” Of the 15 houses on her street, her home is one of only two that were not devastated by the storm because of its position on an incline. There was flooding on the first floor, but since the family just uses the space for an apartment for renters and a laundry room, the […]
Jersey Native Laments Sandy’s Effect on the Shore

Editorials, Multimedia November 5, 2012 at 11:21 am Comments are Disabled

There is nothing more frustrating or painful than watching as your hometown is torn apart while you sit in safety several hours away. Hurricane Sandy struck my hometown, Toms River, N.J., on Sunday Oct. 28. The storm hit the shore full force and in the course of one night, everything that I loved about growing up on the Jersey Shore was completely wiped out. It may just seem like childhood memories to some, but my entire life was spent on the beaches and boardwalks that Sandy stole from us. The first roller coaster that I ever rode is now just a twisted piece of metal. The boardwalk that I have walked every summer since before I was old enough to remember is left in splinters, in the sections where there is boardwalk left, that is. There are some places where it is just gone all together. The ocean has completely overtaken the beaches that I used to lounge on for days at a time. It was where I laughed, and played and learned about everything that I love about life. From the comfortable bubble that is Mason, it is hard to see the true impact of Hurricane Sandy. Sure, it […]
Animal Life Remains Largely Unharmed by Natural Disaster

Featured, News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:17 am Comments are Disabled

Trees and telephone poles were crushed like sticks within the grasp of what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called a storm of unprecedented proportions. Water rushed like a river down paths created by city streets. Land that was once occupied by some of the most visited vacation-spots in the nation was replaced by murky waterways of sewage. Though it was no longer a hurricane, post-tropical superstorm Sandy punished the northeastern United States, leveling the Jersey Shore and killing more than a hundred people across 10 states. It whipped torrents of water over the streets of Atlantic City, pummeling the city’s fabled boardwalk, and set records in Lower Manhattan, where flooded substations caused a widespread power outage. Despite all of the damage, however, very little wildlife was observed that perished within the destruction. “Animals tend to flee,” said Dr. Alonso Aguirre, Executive Director of the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation, via an email interview. “They escape into the forest, deeper water or higher skies when they sense a natural disaster is coming.” Little experimental data is available to determine if animals have a sixth sense to predict and prevent being injured during an unusual weather event. Many people, however, have anecdotes about […]
Alumnus Witnesses Hurricane Destruction in New York

Featured, Multimedia, News1 November 5, 2012 at 11:15 am Comments are Disabled

Mason alumnus Alex Romano watched the devastation of Sandy unfold right before his eyes. Working with CBS News in Midtown, Romano worked throughout the night, coordinating coverage for the incredible storm and reviewing live shots taken from all across New York City. “I could see the storm evolve from all different parts of the New York metropolitan area at the same time,” Romano said. Romano, a native of Sea Cliff, NY, watched as Battery Tunnel in Brooklyn flooded. He sifted through video footage of power lines and trees being snapped in half. He saw roads and subways just down the street from his office pummeled by rushing water. “Every couple of minutes, there were new feeds coming in,” Romano said. “When you watch the live news, you’re only seeing clips that last a few seconds. We’re seeing hours of footage.” Completely swamped with work, CBS News had arranged for a number of its workers to stay the night in the Le Parker Meridian hotel. As a surge of videos piled in, Romano watched as the crane atop a luxury Manhattan skyscraper partly collapsed, leaving its arm dangerously hanging over West 57th Street. The New York Office of Emergency Management evacuated […]
Mason Exemplifies Future of Higher Education

Editorials November 5, 2012 at 11:11 am Comments are Disabled

Only at Mason. Many institutions across the nation cancelled classes early last week. They notified students and staff through various outlets with text alerts, emails, impersonal social media updates and web postings among the most prominent. Not at Mason. Only as Patriots can students and staff tune in to the Twitter feed of the university president to obtain such valuable information. Only as Patriots can we interact and inquire about certain decisions directly with those responsible for making decisions. Last Sunday evening, Dr. Ángel Cabrera took to the Twitter-verse to update students on the operating status of the university. He kept students informed by announcing the times during which the Emergency Operations group would be meeting to make decisions. He passed along hurricane survival tips and reminded his followers to charge their cell phones to prepare for a power outage. And, perhaps most importantly, Cabrera made himself available to students and answered questions regarding operating status. In addressing the Twitter-verse, Cabrera gave students instant, up-to-the-minute access to the decision-making process. His announcement came before the Mason website carried the information, and it came before the university social media accounts presented the information. Former president Dr. Alan Merten instilled a desire […]