Don't Gamble with the Future: Golden and Forman

By Broadside Asst. News Editor Rebecca Fulton
Photo by Broadside Photography Editor Courtney Erland

Parking is a major concern among students at Mason. Zack Golden and Claire Forman assert that they are taking realistic steps to improve the parking condition. Among these ideas, they say they are going to increase the shuttle system which will take residential students to key locations around Fairfax.

“During the day it would go to local Fairfax businesses, malls, Wal-Marts, that kind of thing and then during the night it would turn into kind of a social thing and it would go to bars and restaurants and clubs,” Golden said. “Residential students, especially with rising gas prices, would have a reduced need to bring their car and it would open up the parking lots to non residential students.”

Golden and Forman want to increase the number of popular dining options on campus through Mason’s Sodexho provider. By doing this, they wish to replace unpopular dining options with national chains.

“Sodexho has a list of restaurants that they have approved and worked with before. [We would use] this list as the replacements for under-performing restaurants, which includes Quizno's for example,” Golden said.

One way that they believe they can increase student involvement and Mason pride would be through what they call a “University Life Hour.” This would be one hour during the middle of the week when the majority of students would be found on campus where there are no classes scheduled. They describe this hour being used for pep rallies, tail gates and university-wide programming in general.

“We think basketball’s a big thing that this school rallies around. If we could have more opportunities to use basketball to promote other campus-wide programming things, that would be great,” Golden said.

Current alcohol restrictions for people of age are something else that Golden and Forman want to change. They described the current restrictions for on campus students over the age of 21 as “overbearing.”

“Housing has a reasonable consumption limit; they give limits to how much alcohol you can have if you’re over 21,” Golden said. “It’s not really enforced too much except when you’re already in trouble. So, we think policies like that for example aren’t really necessary because they aren’t enforced until you’re already in trouble and it just gets students in more trouble so they’re not totally necessary to keep housing residence safe.”

Read more about these two at: zackandclaire.com.