Category: Opinion

The Hedonist’s Case for Reading Fiction

JACK HARVEY, ASSISTANT OPINION EDITOR A myriad of possible activities are jockeying for your time: Should you stay up-to-date on the Netflix show your friends have been talking about for the past week? Should you learn meal-prep? Learn about the…

Sandwiched Between Politics and Food

BY: ZOEHRIYA ANWAR “NUHA” STAFF WRITER It’s a Friday afternoon, a few hours before my chemistry exam. I am in Fenwick Library, exhausted from hours of studying the previous night. My stomach starts growling, making me hanker for a delectable…

New Year, (Mostly) Same Southside

BY ELI KOHN, STAFF WRITER New classes, new professors, new… Southside? Maybe you’ve noticed that Southside dining hall has been advertising “Southside 2020” — improvements they’ve made in the new year, most notably their shift to being open 24/7. What…

When They Run, They Win: Dispelling the Electability Myth

BY SAVANNAH MARTINCIC, STAFF WRITER Electability. What is it? Who has it? The word that appeared in almost every bit of news coverage of the 2016 presidential election has once again begun to dominate the national conversation surrounding the diverse…

There’s No Smiling at the DMV

BY SIDONIA CANNON, STAFF WRITER The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is where souls come to die. The waiting room is sopping with despair. Forgotten dreams and lost hopes hang in the air like the humidity on a muggy summer…

Housing Affordability and the Generational Divide

BY DAWSON WEINHOLD, STAFF WRITER Housing affordability remains a big issue for many Mason students. For upperclassmen, on-campus housing is far from guaranteed, and off-campus housing presents its own set of difficulties. With a growing population and one of the…

Letter from the Editor

BY DOMINIC PINO, OPINION EDITOR Dear Mason community, I’m honored to be your new Fourth Estate Opinion section editor. Writing for this paper every week was one of my favorite parts of school, and now I get to help put…

The Best Privacy Protection is Common Sense

BY CHRISTOPHER KERNAN-SCHMIDT, STAFF WRITER Social media platforms have made it easy to share our lives with family and friends, but the prevalence of oversharing on social media has opened Pandora’s box. Status updates, location check-ins, online rants and “private”…

Scholarships Don’t Just Grow on Trees

BY STEVEN ZHOU, STAFF WRITER Earlier this year, Stanford graduate students who had no other means of affording meals during winter break were reported to be foraging for food from trees on campus. As extreme as that example may be,…

How the Warren Campaign Wasted Two Good Scandals

BY JACK HARVEY, ASSISTANT OPINION EDITOR Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and her campaign staff have made waves in the media during the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses as two stories came out that pitted her against Bernie Sanders. The…