By Susan Katherine Corkran, Columnist Assigned reading is often viewed as an optional exercise. After a long range of pages crammed with small print appears ominously on Blackboard, questions like, “did you do the reading?” or, “are we going to…
By Natalie Heavren, Staff Writer Fourth Estate’s sports writer Natalie Heavren weighs in on fair pay for student athletes March Madness is circled on the calendars of people around the world. This tournament is hosted by the National Collegiate Athletic…
By Domenic Allegra, Contributor The lauded tournament run of the 11-seed Loyola-Chicago Ramblers (32-6) has come to an end after their loss to 3-seed Michigan in the Final Four. Loyola was in familiar territory in the Final Four, as their…
By Zara Farouk, Columnist We’ve all been there: it’s 8:45, your eyes are half sealed shut, it’s cold and the last thing you need is the added pressure of looking a certain way. The world we live in today pressurizes…
By Alexander Kenny, Columnist Spring in Fairfax welcomed us with 6” of snow. We shoveled, we received an irritating email about “make up days,” but this was a breeze compared to the nor’easter that knocked us back to the Renaissance…
By Dominic Pino, Columnist It’s midterm season, aka scantron season. We all love scantrons because it means there is a multiple choice exam on the horizon. We also love these little green or blue slips of paper for their low…
By Susan Katherine Corkran, Columnist Here’s an experiment: Walk from one end of Mason’s campus to the other and count how many languages you hear your fellow Patriots speaking. The long hours of pouring over vocabulary flashcards, translating simple texts…
By William Barnhart, Columnist With the recent closure and delaying of university operations, there has been a great deal of discussion of the choices made by the university. It is undeniable that the school was justified in closing Wednesday. But…
By Chris Kernan-Schmidt, Columnist Following an investigation into systematic and state-sponsored manipulation of anti-doping laboratories, the Russian Federation was barred from competing in this year’s Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Russia was not permitted to send any athletes to…
By Dominic Pino, Columnist On Feb. 14, a gunman opened fire and killed 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This we all know. However, there was a lesser known event on Feb. 20 that allows for…