Tag: George Mason University

Deeds’ Daughter, Son Campaign for Father at Mason

By Broadside News Editor Amanda Cheek

Oct. 26, 2009

The children of Democratic candidate for governor Creigh Deeds came to George Mason University Monday to campaign for their father. Amanda and Gus Deeds were handing out flyers on campus and speaking with students.

“Young voters hold a lot of swing,” said Gus, 20, on why they are on the road for their father.

Amanda, 24, explained that they were handing out flyers with quotes from The Washington Post covering topics from their father’s campaign.

Amanda said that is was important to hand them out at Mason because The Washington Post is local and relevant. She emphasized that the flyers were “supporting Dad’s plan on transportation” which was an important issue in Northern Virginia.

“[We have] got to get our Dad elected,” said Amanda.

Gus said that they have been on the campaign trail with their father and have visited several universities across the state including William & Mary and Virginia Tech to hand out flyers.

“[It’s] getting the conversation started,” said Gus. “Getting it out that there’s a governor’s race going on. People, especially students on college campuses are busy and might not realize it.”

Gus feels that there is a lot of voter fatigue left over from the presidential race and that the campaign would have to “battle” it to get his father elected.

When asked how they deal with negative campaign ads about their father, Amanda said they are in the car a lot with him away from the Internet. She said they don’t have blackberries and try to watch as little television as possible. “We watch stuff like VH1 and Tool Academy,” said Amanda.

“It seems like Mr. McDonnell has a negative attitude on negative ads,” said Gus.

Amanda said they spoke with students today that were concerned with the negative ads. She said she doesn’t understand why people are worrying and letting the ads affect their decision.

“Bob McDonnell has spent more money on negative ads than we have on all our ads total,” said Amanda. “[He] just can’t be our governor,” she said.

Where Do Patriots Get Their Political Views?

By Mason Votes Staff Writer Ethan Vaughan

The George Mason University student body is home to a diverse range of political views and an equally wide set of beliefs about how those views are formed.

The students interviewed denied the conventionally-held notion that people’s political positions are determined primarily by their parents’ affiliation.

“My family and my religion influenced my beliefs initially,” said sophomore Tyler Stevens. “But that changed.”

Stevens said that, over time, he thought young people were likely to adopt political ideals opposed to their parents’.

“I definitely don’t follow the church so much,” Stevens said. “Entering high school, I started developing different views. My parents decided to start going to church more, and that kind of motivated. Everybody there put such a big emphasis on God and the Bible, and they took the Bible too literally. It had a negative impact, and it really turned me off. You can’t force someone to think a certain way.”

Stevens thought that friends’ political leanings were more important, theorizing that individuals gravitated to people whose ideas mirrored—and reinforced—their own.

Others agreed.

“My whole family’s Democratic, but that’s not the only reason I am,” said Senior Pujita Venkat. “That’s just a contributing factor. I went to a really liberal private school and most of my ideas came from my experience there.”

“I have always naturally tended to be liberal,” said Sean Jahan, a fourth-year graduate student. “I think it was more personality-driven than learned, although for most people it’s more nurture than nature. For me it was more nature.”

Overall, students tended to support President Barack Obama, confirming exit poll statistics from the 2008 election that showed 66 percent of 18-29-year-olds voting for the Democratic ticket.

“I wish health care reform was going through more quickly,” Venkat said, referring to the sentiment among some voters that the President is not enacting change fast enough. “But I can understand why it isn’t. There’s a lot of opposition. I honestly think it’s too early to judge him.”

Jahan said that political views were mostly set from an early age, and didn’t believe that subsequent life events in most cases had a major impact on them. “I don’t think that entering the workforce or starting a family really alters how you feel,” he said. “Most of my friends have the same political beliefs now that they did in college.”

Cuccinelli, Shannon, Address Crime, Economy

By Mason Votes Staff Writer Ethan Vaughan

Republican attorney general candidate Ken Cuccinelli and Democratic attorney general candidate Steve Shannon disagreed on economic issues during their Wednesday debate at George Mason University’s Prince William campus, with much of the divergence of views relating to job creation.

Cuccinelli called Virginia’s right-to-work laws, which prohibit compulsory union membership as a condition of employment, critical, and said he would defend them vigorously if elected attorney general.

“The government shouldn’t be creating jobs, it should be creating opportunities,” he said. “We need to reduce regulations and strip out those that don’t provide more of a benefit than a cost. I do not favor collective bargaining. I have a zero percent voting record with the AFL-CIO. My opponent has a 100 percent voting record with the AFL-CIO. That’s a job-killing record.”

Shannon responded that union members were hard-working individuals who deserved the right to work together for better wages and workplace conditions.

Both candidates said that the threat of gang violence is one of the most serious that faces the state.

Shannon stressed his courtroom experience as a Fairfax County prosecutor and stated that he would be ready to tackle hard issues, such as the proliferation of child pornography, the rise in violent crime, drunk driving, increased gang activity within the state and the growing prevalence of prescription drug abuse.

“I will not need on-the-job training to handle this position,” Shannon said. “I’ve actually sat in a court room with gang members sitting behind me as I argued a case against one of their own. I’ve had the sheriffs escorting me to and from the courtroom, checking under my jeep to see if there’s a car bomb there. I’ve presented the photographs of children who were beaten to death by members of MS 13. I’ve been through that.”

Shannon continued saying that nearly 20,000 computers in the state were being used to traffic in child pornography and that more resources were needed to crack down on sexual predators.

Cuccinelli denied that prosecutorial experience was necessary to execute the duties of attorney general, and responded that he had comprehensive plans to deal with many of the problems facing Virginia.

With regard to gang violence, Cuccinelli praised the efforts of Shenandoah Valley authorities, who appointed one person to coordinate anti-gang efforts across jurisdictional lines, suggesting that similar programs implemented in other parts of the state could also be effective.

Both agreed on the need to combat drunk driving and on defending Virginians’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.

College Democrats, Republicans Gear Up for Upcoming Election

By Mason Votes Staff Writer Ethan Vaughan

The College Democrats and College Republicans are readying for Virginia’s November 3 election with a spate of campaign events and public outreach.

Pakiza Nasher, president of the College Democrats called the election “the most important thing on our agenda for the 2009-2010 school year.”

Both clubs plan to pursue a policy of aggressive visibility at George Mason, with both regularly canvassing and the College Republicans operating a kiosk in the Johnson Center from 11:00a.m. to 3:00p.m. on Election Day reminding people to vote.

“We want to have a massive presence on campus,” said Amanda Johnson, chairman of the George Mason University College Republicans. “It was so sad on election day ’08, because there were all these Obama people all over school, and no one for McCain. This time, I want to make sure we do that.”

For both sides, the stakes are high. “The results of the election and the voter turn out will reflect whether the College Democrats reached out to the Mason community and put forth all our effort for the canvassing,” Nasher said.

“The current political climate has definitely caused people to be more assertive,” Johnson said. “The Republicans fell asleep during the ’08 campaign and were complacent. The Democrats kind of attacked and really showed us that they were coming with their teeth bared. The Republicans weren’t ready. There’s increased awareness that both sides have to be ready to defend their beliefs. People, now more than ever, are voicing that.”

College Democrats and College Republicans have also hosted and plan to host guest speakers, among them state candidates for office such as Republican attorney general contender Ken Cuccinelli, who spoke at the College Republicans meeting last Tuesday night.

Cuccinelli Speaks At College Republicans, Urges Mental Health Reform

By Mason Votes Staff Writer Ethan Vaughan

Republican attorney general candidate Ken Cuccinelli appeared at last night’s meeting of the George Mason University College Republicans and urged Virginia voters to stand behind him on the issue of mental health reform.

“This isn’t just a personal safety issue for these [mentally ill] individuals,” Cuccinelli said. “It’s a public safety issue. Some of these people are being victimized because they’re vulnerable. Often they suffer from petty crime.”

Cucinelli advocated what he called a “step-down” process, wherein doctors would have more authority to move mentally ill patients from in-patient to out-patient treatment.

“I worked as a court-appointed attorney in mental health hearings,” Cucinelli said. “It’s a slow, cumbersome process. If a patient in a detention order proceeding is found to be mentally ill, they can be held on an in-patient basis, or an out-patient basis. The doctor can’t move them from in-patient to out-patient without another hearing, and we should give doctors that kind of authority to move patients to a less restrictive kind of care. It would be more cost-effective, and it would have an enormous impact in giving more opportunity to patients.”

Cuccinelli also called for changes in the way the mentally ill are dealt with in the prison system, which he said “amounts to a mental facility of last resort.”

“I don’t want to minimize their culpability,” Cuccinelli said. “But there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be in jail in the first place if it weren’t for their mental health issues. We need to change the statutes we have and get these folks treatment that is more appropriate. Deputies aren’t trained to deal with mental health issues, so they resort to things like imposed isolation to handle it, and that’s a problem. We need to deal with these people in a way that’s more humane and more effective.”

Cuccinelli also called for a vigorous defense of Virginia’s right-to-work status, which he alleged is threatened by Democrats in Congress. He said that as attorney general, he would bring legal challenge to any attempts by the national government to infringe upon what he called a “sovereign right.”

The attorney general candidate credited right-to-work laws for heavily contributing to Virginia’s economic prosperity in recent years and said they have given it “an advantage economically over our sister states.”

Mason Lt. Gov Debate Canceled

The debate scheduled for tonight at George Mason University between lieutenant gubernatorial candidates Bill Bolling (R) and Jody Wagner (D) has been canceled.

After Bolling pulled out from the debate on Sunday, Wagner had stated that she would still attend the event. The organizers, however, which included Mason and the Prince William Committee of 100, decided to cancel it altogether.

Click here to read more about why Bolling withdrew.

Universities More Moderate Than Believed

By Mason Votes Staff Writer Ethan Vaughan

America’s universities are far more middle-of-the-road than commonly believed. That’s the conclusion of paper co-authored by George Mason University’s Solon Simmons and Harvard University’s Neil Gross entitled The Social and Political Views of American Professors.

Simmons, who is part of Mason’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, says that there are fewer radicals in the younger than in the older generation of university professors, which indicates that far-left-wing views in academia are declining.

“In general we find more liberals than conservatives among professors,” Simmons said. “That corresponds with literature going back to the ‘50’s. We’ve known that for a while. They’re not particularly radical, though. University professors tend to be left of center, but pretty pragmatic. They’re not really interested in overturning the current order.”

Simmons said that conservative critics of university culture have overstated to prevalence of extreme leftism in American colleges and he dismisses the idea that professors are indoctrinating their students.

“It’s always been the suspicion of many conservatives that there’s a Socrates effect,” said Simmons, “that these wise, older men and women are corrupting the young. The information I have seen shows that professors have little effect on converting people to different perspectives. They tend to frame views rather than convert others to their own views.”

Students agreed saying that while they acknowledged that some professors have been open about their beliefs, in general they felt the instructors were respectful of differing opinions.

“My college professors have been liberals and conservatives,” said Claudia Brito. “Each professor has their own views yet most of the time set aside their political preferences. My professors’ beliefs have made some contributions to my own political and personal philosophy. So far I have had good professors whose guidance and lectures have provided me with information that I was able to incorporate to my own beliefs. Their readings have been a great help and reference my own personal and political philosophy.”

Others said partisanship may play too large a role.

“Grading policies are highly influenced by [professors’ beliefs],” said Maria Tatarska who also said that her professors have changed her political views in the sense that they’ve made her aware of current events.

“I have become more familiar with political affairs, especially from the election.”

Generation Y Vote

GMU Talk Back – Sept. 16 Edition

Mason to Host Lt. Governor, Attorney General Debates

By Mason Votes Director Christian Smith

George Mason University has announced that it will be hosting two political debates this fall. The first will occur Sept. 24 between lieutenant gubernatorial candidates Bill Bolling and Jodi Wagner and will be followed by an Oct. 7 debate between attorney general candidates Ken Cuccinelli and Steve Shannon. The debates are being sponsored by Mason, Prince William Committee of 100, Prince William Regional Chamber of Commerce, Prince William County-Greater Manassas Chamber of Commerce and Northern Virginia Community College.

The Sept. 24 debate will be moderated by WJLA‘s Bruce DePuyt and will begin at 8 p.m. The Attorney General debate will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be moderated by Scott Thuman, also of WJLA. Both events will be held at the Prince William Campus‘ Verizon Auditorium.

Mason’s chapters of the College Republicans and College Democrats have been invited to provide questions for the candidates.