A Visit to the George Mason University Campus | Part 1
- Jun 14, 2020
- 4 min read
This blog post will be the inception of my inquiry and investigation into Fairfax County, VA. I was raised for the majority of my life in Fairfax but have returned to the area after about four years of living in Northern California. My relocation has made me curious about this almost-familiar place, as I now see things through the eyes of a Landscape Architect, inculcated with new values with which to observe the built-environment. The summer following my sophomore year in college, I had the privilege to intern at Fairfax County Park Authority in the Planning Division and work on a variety of behind-the-scenes park stuff. Very top secret. More on this in another post. It was there that I began to get a wider picture of the spirit of our county and the complexity behind the work that allows 1,146,883 people to live in 406sq. miles, and that makes Fairfax County the second wealthiest county in the United States.
In the past couple of years I have grown in admiration for the county’s inexhaustible efforts and resources that make living in Fairfax County so valuable and, somewhat unfortunately, so competitive. It is only now, as a recent graduate, that I have had the time (the sweet, sweet time) to take a stick to poke around and get to know my hometown better. Almost as a way to ease myself from university life to, well..., life life, I found my first subject of interest the George Mason University Campus, which lies at the heart of the county.
The 817 acre George Mason University campus sits right to the north of Braddock Road, a busy four-lane thoroughfare that takes thousands of suburban Northern Virginians to and from work, their children’s school and after school programs, and most importantly, a place I try to avoid at all times of the day except for noon due to the almost ceaseless eye-watering traffic. For Northern Virginians, GMU is seen as everyone’s fallback school. There, I said it. That being said, I applied to GMU as a senior in high school and was at a point of my life where attending the close to home commuter-school was a favorable option for me.
Even though it is twenty minutes down the road from my house I had only been on the campus a couple of times, one of which was for my sister’s high school graduation where I fell asleep amidst loud, extremely satisfied TJ* families. In short, I knew very little about GMU except for its cushiony backup for ‘failed’ TJ students. After being accepted into the honors program at GMU back in 2016, I was given a thorough tour of the campus during which I almost found myself wishing not to get accepted to anywhere else as a way to tie myself to my momentary, indulgent dream. There were many things that worked to convince me to attend the university but the most salient of them was the campus itself. At that time, I did not have the vocabulary or breadth of knowledge to verbalize what I liked so much about the environment on campus. I probably would’ve said that I liked the buildings, the trees, and the layout of the school. I think those things all still hold true today but a couple of weeks ago, I went for a walk with my boyfriend around the campus to take a closer look at what made this campus special. Before I continue, I would like to say that I mean no offense to the students, faculty, and staff at GMU for my facetious remarks about the academic integrity of the school. My boyfriend attends GMU and has leveraged his education and connections there to be extremely successful and, more importantly, is a terrific person. That aside, let’s get into the good stuff.
(TL; DR) For those of you who would rather skip to the land annotations, go to Campus Observations
Context is very important when the goal is to understand a landscape. This is more than the geographic context of a site but includes the social, economic, and historical context related to it.. I’ve briefly gone into the social and economic aspects of GMU but to give further background, here are some statistics:
GMU is …
Has a total of 37,316 students, about a third of that number is graduate students
Costs $12,564 for in-state students
Has an 81% acceptance rate
Most popular majors are: psychology, criminal justice, information technology, accounting, and biology/biological sciences.
A very very very very brief history -
George Mason University had its beginnings in 1949 as an extension center to University of Virginia (in Charlottesville) with the goal to bring higher education to a quickly populating Northern Virginia. At that time, classes were being given at local high schools, the campus not yet a formal entity. The City of Fairfax (a quizzically separate entity from Fairfax County) bought and donated 150 acres for the campus to be built just south of the city’s border. While I don’t know why this was the case (tax deductions?? charitable gift??), my best guess would be that the City of Fairfax saw this as a good opportunity to boost their economy in the way of student dollars flowing through their quaint downtown streets. Even if that wasn’t their intention, the City of Fairfax is heavily patronized by Mason students and is a local hub for food, entertainment, and shopping. For more information about GMU or the City of Fairfax, I’d recommend poking around on the following websites:
Footnotes
* TJ is short for Northern Virginias (in)famous high school - Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Ranked for I don’t know how many years in a row as the USA’s top high school. Nerd stuff.
Campus observations:
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