The more things change...

The student body at George Mason was once described as "apathetic," but it doesn't require deep research to find students and faculty willing to speak up when they are in disagreement with something on campus. Whether it is the first director Dr. Reid and his conservative uniform requirements and treatment of professors, protests against the Vietnam War, to the mundane like complaining about campus parking or the ugly new GMU logo in 2024, or speaking up against the radical Christian hate groups allowed to sermonize to students. George Mason students over the years have shown us one thing and that it is far from apathetic to what goes on around them.

My research has not explored far enough to know what became of O.M. Wood, when the C.B.A. stopped being a feature of the paper, when the Broadside shed off some of its risque articles, or when its political tone dropped before switching over to the Fourth Estate in 2013. Currently the Fourth Estate covers current events in a plane white background with muted fonts. The creativity the Broadside and Gunston Ledger has been filtered through several cycles of chlorination and what we have now no longer challenges its students. Instead when you ask a student, "Did you read that article on the Fourth Estate?" you're generally met with, "What's that?"

Perhaps it is a current indicator of what news has been ground down to today. Click bait, quick digestible stories, and memes. However, if this project tells us anything is that good journalists are out there, even at GMU. They just need a space to talk.

"So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here... there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms." - Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 Hunter S Thompson