Audrey Butler

Dr. Anthony Hoefer was recognized with the Teaching Excellence Award on May 7, 2021.

At the 2021 Outstanding Achievement Awards Ceremony, Honors College Director of Communications Richard Todd Stafford was recognized for his dedication to Mason's Mission.

Facing climate change, systemic racism, and resource inequity, ten Honors College students worked with peers from Mason and VCU to organize the second annual Virginia Environmental Justice Summit, held on Saturday March 27th, 2021.

“I think everyone should go to Mason… It’s the right size for people who are ready to make a difference.” - Tennille Parker (1997)

For political communication guru Lis Smith, working in politics is working to build a better world.

“There’s something grand about being able to shape American public life – to shape the policies that we live under every day,” she says to Robinson Professor Steven Pearlstein during the First Tuesday political talk series.

When a candidate chooses to run for public office, they are agreeing to place not only their policies, but also their character up for critique. 

People want to know who they are really voting for and the media will do its best to dig up all they can on what may lurk in their past. For that reason, the job of an “opposition media consultant” is imperative to have on the campaign team.

The political world is messy and frequently brutal, and the media swarms representatives and candidates constantly in search of failures to exploit. Those involved are accused of being corrupt, power-hungry, or underhanded, and the divide between parties often seems impossible to navigate. So, why would anyone willingly choose to run for an office?

What is the job of a political reporter in an age of widely spread “fake news”? “It is our job to tell the truth,” said Amy Gardner, who covers national politics for the Washington Post. Easy, right?

Sharing and consuming news has come a long way over the course of the past few political campaigns, where bias competes with accuracy for the spotlight, and every week seems to come with a new headline scandal that had been covered up by officials in public office. As Gardner detailed in her conversation with Mason Robinson Professor of Public Policy Steven Pearlstein in the First Tuesday series of webinars, many depend on newspapers to stay up-to-date with crucial information in a time where “all norms have been shattered.”