Browse Exhibits (25 total)
Timeline of Student Protests at George Mason University
This exhibit is a collection of George Mason Student protests over the years, designed to demonstrate the issues that concerned students in a political, social, economic, or global sense. This effort intends to create a launching point for future research into one or more of the student protests made on campus throughout the history of George Mason University. While there are many events included, a brief context is the most that can be provided, given the large amount of events. The timeline will provide a more broad overview of the events found through the Special Collection Research Center, and the following pages are more specific events with context and specific archival evidence.
Mason's Mascots
George Mason University has a diverse and colored history, no least exemplified through its Mascots. Over the past 50 years, George Mason University has had an estimated five separate mascots. All composed of their own gimmicks, outfits, and personalities, yet little information exists surrounding the nature of these Mascots.
Fourth and Long: The Story of GMU Division I Football
This exhibit investigates the complicated history of Division I football at George Mason University, intending to understand why GMU ultimately never established an NCAA football program. Drawing on archival documents such as student publications, administrative records, and campus commentary, the exhibit explores the many factors that were under consideration when deciding whether or not to pursue a football program.
Central to this history are the diverse perspectives of the stakeholder groups who shaped the conversation. Students and alumni frequently expressed enthusiasm for football as a marker of school spirit and campus identity. Faculty voices often raised concerns about academic priorities and resource allocation. Administrators and staff evaluated feasibility, funding, and compliance with Title IX. Even community members and donors offered both pressure and hesitation on the issue.
By tracing these competing interests, the exhibit highlights which priorities held the most influence over the Board of Visitors’ ultimate decision. Financial sustainability, institutional identity, and academic mission each played a role, but it was the combined weight of cost, compliance requirements, and long-term institutional vision that steered Mason away from football.
Food Forest and Sustainabilty on GMU
This exhibit explores all the sustainability efforts on GMU's campus relating to greenhouses, food forests, and the gardens. This exhibit also makes effort to include recurring events and standalone projects which contribute to sustainability across campus. While looking through the archives, we discovered three things:
First, most of our evidence came from newspaper articles, which we did not expect. While we were able to find other sources in the archives the level of detail those sources went into obfuscated the larger picture and often lacked significant context.
Second, there was less evidence on the greenhouses specifically than we thought. When we first started this project we intended to investigate the Innovation food forest and Greenhouse however looking for general sustainability efforts proved much more fruitful.
Third, there were a lot more one-time projects than we initially expected. Many of the sustainability efforts on campus weren't long term ongoing projects but rather short bursts of initiative where a person or small group of people saw a problem and wanted to provide a solution.
For this exhibit we sifted through every document we could find surrounding campus sustainability, the most compelling of which we found from newspapers. This project attempts to tell the story of campus sustainability through the news, whether painted in a positive or negative light, following the introduction of the first campus greenhouse all the way to current sustainability efforts.
The Legacy of Krasnow: the Institute and the Major
The goal of the exhibit is to explore how the neuroscience major came to be and how the Krasnow Institute legacy continues to affect it to this day. It illustrates the history and present of this institute. It starts out by telling the story Shelly Krasnow and his role in the founding of the Krasnow Institute. Then the exhibit continues to show how the institute joined GMU and became an academic unit where neuroscience research and classes are conducted.