Recent Posts

• It Gets Better, Freshmen

  Editorials September 16, 2012 at 1:47 pm Comments are Disabled

  It was three years ago, nearly to the week, that I turned off Rt. 123 and made my first move toward the independent life of a college freshman. I was excited, yet terrified, for what the next four years had in store for me. Like many of you, I was moving into a crowded, uninviting room with someone I had never met and I was unsure about the prospect of living with a complete stranger. You might be experiencing some of these feelings right now. They are completely natural. Within a week of enduring this new life, I was ready to tap out. I was trapped within the walls of my cinderblock room and was forced to listen to my roommate convince his girlfriend that she did, in fact, love his big, voluptuous rooster. I was forced to shimmy my way around dirty clothes and piles of trash when entering and exiting my room. And I was forced to sit and smell the stench that reeked throughout our room. I do not do well with starting conversations, so it was an increasingly difficult task for me to develop friendships. That was it. I was ready to pack up my things […]

   
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  Federman Beats Cancer

  News1 April 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm Comments are Disabled

  When Jacob Federman, a junior sports management major, went out to celebrate his 21st birthday last weekend, it wasn’t at some dimly lit dive bar or at a glitzed-out, neon tourist trap. He went to the George Mason University Relay For Life. The now-21-year-old doesn’t have the proclivity for strong drink or smoke that characterizes many people during their college years. He doesn’t want to subject his body to that after twice beating Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Relay For Life was held in Federman’s honor two years ago, when he was mired in his second fight against cancer. Federman first beat Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a cancer of the lymph tissue — when he was in high school. After chemotherapy treatments and radiation knocked out the cancer, his doctors told him that if it were to return, it would come back within a year.  Three and a half years later, Federman, then a freshman at Mason, was back home in New York for spring break. He went in for his routine visit, and that’s when the doctors found something during their checkup. They said they would be in touch when they knew what it was. “I went back to Fairfax the next morning […]

   

• Health Care Reform Architect Gives Lecture at Mason

  News1 April 23, 2012 at 3:42 pm Comments are Disabled

  Health care in America will be much better in 2020 than it is today. This was the message delivered by Ezekiel Emanuel in a lecture given in a crowded Johnson Center Cinema. Emanuel, an oncologist and former White House advisor, was also a key player in drafting the health care reform law. “Why can I make that [claim] pretty confidently? Assuming the Supreme Court behaves rationally, all of our people will have health insurance,” Emanuel said. “They’ll have access to an exchange, and they’ll have subsidies to buy health insurance.” The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare to critics of the bill, is up for review by the Supreme Court for the same reason that Emanuel cites as a major strongpoint: the mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance. While the media focuses on the individual mandate, said Emanuel, a more important provision of the bill is its incentives for doctors to bundle payments. Bundling payments will allow patients to pay for an entire episode of care, such as a hip replacement, instead of paying per procedure. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that bundled payments will reduce  health care costs by 10 percent. The Recovery Act, also known as […]

   

• April Brings March for Dimes

  News1 April 23, 2012 at 3:42 pm Comments are Disabled

  The Mu Omega chapter of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority is raising money for March of Dimes. The sorority will collect change at its kiosk in the Johnson Center every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until May 4. According to Alexandra Walker, president of the Mu Omega chapter, March of Dimes aims to raise money for research regarding premature babies and prenatal care. Sigma Gamma Rho’s longstanding partnership with March of Dimes at the national level falls under the sorority’s H3 initiative. “[The H3 initiative comprises] healthy living, health choices and healthy generations. March of Dimes falls under healthy generations,” Walker said. The George Mason University community has responded enthusiastically to the sorority’s efforts to benefit March of Dimes. “We’ve gotten a lot of people to come up without knowing anything about us and give us change,” Walker said. “Also a professor came up and gave us dollar bills for donation.” According to Elizabeth McDougal, vice-president of the Mu Omega chapter, other Greek organizations contribute to the change drive as well. The Mu Omega chapter’s fundraising efforts are not limited to change collection on campus. The chapter recently won first place in a stroll competition at the University of Maryland, earning […]

   

• Walk/Run Planned to Raise Awareness for Victim’s Rights

  News1 April 23, 2012 at 3:39 pm Comments are Disabled

  The 16th Annual Victims’ Rights Run & Walk in Collaboration with the Aimee Willard Endowed Scholarship Fund will be held Friday at noon to raise awareness of victims’ rights and to honor the memory of Aimee Willard, a George Mason University student-athlete who was raped and murdered in 1996. “Not many people are aware of the fact that victims have rights,” said Rachel Lindsey, outreach coordinator of Sexual Assault Services. Beginning in 1999, the Mason Department of Intercollegiate Athletics held the annual five-kilometer fun run to honor Willard and to raise money for a scholarship fund in her memory. Meanwhile, Sexual Assault Services had been organizing a separate walk/run to promote awareness of victims’ rights. In 2005, however, Mason Athletics and Sexual Assault Services merged the two events. “We decided that since [the events] tended to happen around the same time and had such similar motivations and purposes, it made a lot of sense for us to join our efforts,” Lindsey said. “The goal is to highlight that victims have rights and to focus very specifically on a member of our community who was made a victim.” In an effort to increase Mason students’ participation in the event, the fun […]

   

• Design Students Battle to Impress Potential Employers

  News1 April 23, 2012 at 3:36 pm 2 comments

  The premise of Design Battle is simple: Five graphic designers are challenged to take an ambiguous theme and create a graphic in under 20 minutes. When the time is up, they are judged by a panel and eliminated over several rounds. Similar contests have been hosted around the nation, particularly in Los Angeles, but this one is special. Not only is it George Mason University’s first, but designers and branding executives from around the Washington, D.C., area were in Fairfax’s Icons Grille to watch Mason’s best graphic artists at work. The event is managed by Erik Hansen, an instructor in the School of Art who teaches corporate branding, and whose expertise helped bring Tomás, the founder of the reknowned corporate branding firm Ripe to the contest. Along with Hansen is Mason’s American Institute of Graphic Arts program, a professional design association assisted Hansen in organizing the event. The group’s leader, senior art and visual technology major Adey Chaplin, described the event as the perfect showcase of the amazing talent at Mason. She believes that Mason’s art and visual technology program can and will be elevated to Corcoran status, the group of city schools that specialize in design. Chaplin believes Mason […]

   

• From NFL Manager to Mason Professor

  Sports April 23, 2012 at 3:35 pm Comments are Disabled

  Nothing came easy for Charley Casserly. As a 26-year-old coach at Minnechaug High School, Casserly lost everything he owned in a house fire. He had just $500 in the bank, a car with 120,000 miles on it and various pieces of old furniture that he acquired from Goodwill and the Salvation Army. “I didn’t have a lot,” Casserly said. “But I had enough.” After paying his own way through both high school and college, Casserly developed a strong work ethic at an early age. He picked up a variety of different jobs, selling newspapers and working at a local grocery store to pay tuition at Bergen Catholic High School. He held down three jobs during the summer to help pay for his education at Springfield College. And at age 28, he finally caught a break. Casserly was offered an unpaid internship with the Washington Redskins, where he worked directly with legendary coach George Allen. “I had been in the working world for a long time,” Casserly said. “But when I had the opportunity to go to the Redskins, I knew it was an opportunity of a lifetime.” Casserly originally planned on spending seven months as an intern before making a […]

   

• Recruiting Profile: Julius Rosa-DiStefano

  Sports April 23, 2012 at 3:22 pm Comments are Disabled

  After a three-year absence from postseason play, the Patriots look to gain a boost next year from incoming freshman soccer recruit Julius Rosa-DiStefano. Rosa-DiStefano committed to George Mason University in August 2011 and has since been utilizing his experience as a two-sport athlete to prepare for the upcoming challenge of being a Division I college athlete. “I’m really looking forward to playing in college,” Rosa-DiStefano said. “I look forward to playing with players who are better than me and getting better as a player. Hopefully, I will get to start and earn some playing time.” Throughout high school and his earlier years, Rosa-DiStefano participated in both club soccer and basketball. During his high school career, Rosa-DiStefano played soccer for Southwestern Youth Association. He also made the freshman, junior varsity and varsity basketball teams for Westfield High School in Chantilly. Rosa-DiStefano enjoys the diverse attributes that the two sports add to his overall athleticism. “Playing basketball and soccer helps me since they both bring something different,”Rosa-DiStefano said. “Soccer helps with my endurance and speed, as basketball works with my jumping and athleticism.” Courting Rosa-DiStefano was not an easy task for Mason. Rosa-DiStefano was aggressively recruited by many Division I schools for […]

   

• The Not-So-Lucky Ones

  Lifestyle April 23, 2012 at 3:20 pm Comments are Disabled

  After weeks of wonderful outings to the box office, it was only a matter of time before a weekend arrived without any appealing films to be seen. Of course, that’s just one opinion, albeit one shared by many. Of the two films opening this weekend, “Chimpanzee,” the documentary about a chimp separated from his family, will easily elicit the more heartfelt, emotional response from moviegoers. But when your competition is a lifeless, soulless “The Notebook” wannabe (irony?), accomplishing such a feat is not hard. “The Lucky One” stars an all-grown-up Zac Efron as a Marine who manages to survive three tours in Iraq, thanks in no small part to a photo of a mysterious woman who Efron thinks is — you guessed it — his good luck charm. It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly what aspect of this film doesn’t work. Maybe it’s the early -90s/late-‘80s tropes of creating unwarranted tension by simply not doing the right things. Everyone watching knows where the tension lies, knows what’s coming eventually. Yet, like the season six reveal in “Dexter,” it’s just too drawn out. You’ll realize you’ve checked out before the opening credits have finished rolling out. First of all, as a veteran […]

   

• Coming Soon: TEDx at Mason

  Lifestyle April 23, 2012 at 3:19 pm Comments are Disabled

  The world-famous Technology, Entertainment and Design conferences feature the most brilliant minds in the world discussing a wide range of topics from green technology to the changing face of humanity. The conferences have featured such speakers as Bill Clinton, Bono, Bill Gates and Richard Dawkins. The TED website features 1,050 free, groundbreaking talks that taken together have been viewed over 500 million times by people from all over the world. Their slogan, “Ideas Worth Spreading,” fits nicely with George Mason University’s tradition of innovation, which is exactly why TEDx is coming to the Fairfax campus for the very first time. TEDx is a series of licensed events under the TED brand, which takes place just about anywhere in the world that the desire exists, including many at neighboring universities in Northern Virginia. Producers of TEDxGeorgeMasonU—its official title— Andrew Hawkins and Joe Renaud, have been working hard for the last year on bringing the spirit of TED to Mason. They have brought together eight members of Mason’s distinguished faculty to give talks on Sunday, May 6. “We wanted to strive to [showcase] the brilliant minds here at Mason while bridging the gap between humanities and the sciences,” said Renaud, a co-producer […]