Students

With racial tension high in the United States, and the need for equity growing ever stronger, students and faculty at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School participated in a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge virtually in March and April.

The challenge, created by diversity expert Eddie Moore Jr., focuses on the Black American experience and is designed to advance deeper understandings of the intersections of race, power, privilege, and oppression, and guide participants in becoming more aware and engaged regarding racial equity.

Thank you, President Washington, for the invitation to speak today and for the honorary degree. This school is special to me for several reasons—many of my own students at NOVA transfer here.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it so most museums are closed, but students and researchers at George Mason University’s John Mitchell, Jr. Program (JMJP) are working hard to create a digital one that sheds light on civil rights pioneers with largely untold stories.

Thanks to an $8,000 grant from Virginia Humanities, the team is building a digital exhibit on the life of anti-lynching advocate John Mitchell, Jr., and his colleagues Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells. The grant is part of $181,500 in funding awarded to 25 nonprofits.

While online meetings often feel confining, for George Mason University students in INTS 304 Social Movements and Community Activism, the virtual environment actually opened doors for them.

Zach Fowler and five other students persevered through the pandemic to finish their postsecondary education at the four-year Mason Learning into Future Environments (LIFE) Program.

Graduating senior Nicole Herman said Mason made the world her campus.

The Class of 2021 will graduate on Friday, May 14.

Cyber security engineering major Mitchell Martinez is poised to become the first in his family to earn a college degree.

Malek Salhab, a neuroscience major and member of Mason’s Honors College, will attend medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University as an early selection candidate on scholarship.

In April, Natalia Kanos was elected Mason’s new student body president.