Recent Posts

• 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 […]

   

• The worst week America has had in a really long time

  Editorials April 23, 2013 at 6:31 pm Comments are Disabled

  Albert Camus, the author of The Stranger and The Plague, once wrote, “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” I am confident when I say that the hearts around the world have done too much bending this past week. If you’re bothering to read your college’s newspaper, I am doubtful that you need a recap of the week’s events, but here’s one anyways: The Boston Marathon was bombed. A vote that would put into place a stronger background check on guns was shot down. A fertilizer plant in Texas exploded. Letters laced with poison were sent to both the president and congressmen. Earthquakes hit in Iran, and again in China killing over 120. 27 people died at a suicide bombing in Baghdad. A near 24-hour manhunt to find the suspects of the Boston Marathon bombers kept Americans glued to their televisions. An avalanche in Colorado killed five. These are our afflictions, our weaknesses. These are the things that seek to destroy us, to bend our hearts in directions we thought impossible. No one knows as much as they should. No one knows why these things happen when they do, or why they happen to whom they […]

   
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  Active Minds speaker shares personal struggles

  Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:24 pm Comments are Disabled

  Maggie Bertram was in college not too long ago. She was valedictorian of the small Illinois high school she attended, and she went to college at a small Illinois university. People knew Bertram as an athlete, intelligent and someone on her way to fulfill the dreams and goals that were laid out for her. “I came off as ‘put together.’ I was the person people came to when people needed help. I never thought about what I would like to do,” Bertram said. Bertram and her college friend decided that they had everything in their lives in fairly good order, but they needed one thing to make them truly happy – a man. The pair began exercising and dieting in order to lose weight and attract a guy. “It felt great to exercise again. It was nice to have that routine, and it was great to have people be like, ‘Hey, you look really great! Have you lost weight?’ and for me to say, ‘Yeah, I have!’” Bertram said. “But because exercise made me feel so much better about myself – gave me confidence – I was starting to exercise more and more and eating less and less. It started […]

   
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  Mason Makes Careers: Hasan Spall

  Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:19 pm Comments are Disabled

  Every week, Broadside features a student or alumnus with a great internship or job to highlight the opportunities and potential earning a degree at Mason offers.   NAME: Hasan Spall GRADUATION: May 2014 DEGREE: Finance INTERNSHIP: Shanghai, China 9-week internship with the Center for Global Education       Describe your day-to-day responsibilities? At the very beginning of the internship, my boss gave me a specific assignment — marketing project for his company “kakatong” — and every day I came in to work I researched other companies that were similar to the one I worked for and how they functioned daily and how they brought in customers and kept customers and so on. I also found ways that could make our company better. I also was tasked with converting their Chinese app for mobile phones for their company into an English version. How did your courses or involvement in student organizations at Mason help you with your job? One class that helped me a lot before going abroad was my Management 301 class. It taught me how foreign countries were going to be different to work for/with and how to approach things in a foreign country. The customs and the way […]

   
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  How to get to Mason from the other side Mason Makes Careers of the world: Part Three

  Editorials, Featured, Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:15 pm Comments are Disabled

  Over the series of three articles, Stepan Gordeev shares his experiences as an international student The previous part had ended right before the beginning of the semester. I was pretty nervous and curious at the same time. I was waiting for my first days of a very different college in a very different country to start, and I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out that there are a few things in US education that I wasn’t prepared for. When the classes started on Aug. 27, 2012, the first thing that surprised me was the incredible freedom — or lack of discipline, whatever you want to call it — in the classroom. Students can come and leave whenever they so desire, eat and drink in the classroom and do all kinds of stuff that would severely affect the student’s grade if he or she did it in a Russian university. It would be a lie to say that an average Russian college is the stronghold of discipline and obedience. It is not, Russian students love being free and independent just as their American colleagues. But the need for some sort of discipline in education is not being questioned or doubted. […]

   
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  Pot Party hosted by WAVES provides 4/20 alternative

  Lifestyle April 23, 2013 at 6:11 pm Comments are Disabled

  Event mocks marijuana celebration with light-hearted drug references On April 20, the Wellness, Alcohol and Violence Education and Services office held a mellow get-together to raise awareness about the dangers of drugs. 4/20, a day notorious for its association with marijuana consumption, provided the WAVES office with a platform upon which to educate the campus community about the risks associated with using or possessing cannabis. Aptly dubbed a Pot Party, the event’s coordinators utilized one of the substance’s more colloquial monikers as a double entendre, emphasizing the gathering’s intentions while explicitly stating its main activity: painting flower pots. “WAVES has both large scale and small scale programming,” said Lindsey Hammond, the education coordinator for the WAVES office who used the Pot Party as a way to approach students and provide them with literature about the risks of marijuana use and to offer education and support to students who are affected by drug use. “As well as one-on-one consultations with Licensed Clinical Social Workers who can work with students either in or out of the office.” With the atmosphere of an Amsterdam coffee shop, the relaxed attitude of both the staff and the guests helped to open up an honest dialogue […]

   

• President Cabrera answers questions on Reddit AMA

  News April 23, 2013 at 6:08 pm Comments are Disabled

  President Angel Cabrera sat down and answered questions from George Mason’s Subreddit as part of an Ask Me Anything chat on Friday, April 19. Here are several of Cabrera’s responses. Q: I actually went to GWU, not GMU, but I’m interested in knowing how you view your term in office? Is it similar to how President Knapp of GW works (donor focused, leaving the student affairs to the Provost), or more like a Trachtenburg (Student focused, furthering the “campus/student life” mission)? Cabrera: 5 year contract. Functions are both internal and external, with great people helping me on both sides, including our provost Peter Stearns who overseas all academic and student affairs. Q: I am coming from a Graduate Student perspective here, but what is your opinion on the support given to graduate students and their research? My research is heavily into retention and I’m ironically finding that there is not enough helping me stay on this campus due to competition for funding of tuition and networking. Cabrera: We have to do much, much better in graduate student support. It is a priority that we need to solve as soon as we can identify some funding. Q: How can you continue […]