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Photo courtesy of Mercy Wolverton

One of the newest and fastest-growing sports at Mason

BY SAM DOUGLAS, STAFF WRITER

Mason has a variety of sports available on campus. Some are more well known than others, such as men’s and women’s basketball, which fills the many seats at the EagleBank Arena. However, there are a number of unhonored teams at the school filled with talented and passionate athletes.

Mason’s Women’s Club Ice Hockey team was founded in 2019 but was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t resume operations until 2023. Senior Serena Robinson took over as president with the goal of revitalizing the club. “I restarted the club from two people to getting it to more or less the point it is at now,” Robinson said.

Currently, the club consists of 16 people and practices are held at SkateQuest in Reston. They compete in the Delaware Valley Collegiate Hockey Conference (DVCHC) Division III section. This season is their first time competing since the pandemic. “We’re very excited for the season, and we’re looking to get GMU back into a hockey school,” Robinson said.

The team doesn’t get a lot of funding from the school since they are not a Mason-sponsored sport. The funds they got from Mason were only enough to cover the cost of using the arena for practice.

Photo courtesy of Mercy Wolverton

“Everything else we had to [raise] from fundraising dues or other means of allocation, all on our own,” sophomore Mercy Wolverton, the team’s current president, said.

Even with limited funding, the club is still able to make trips to play teams in Maryland and Pennsylvania as part of the DVCHC.  The club continues to grow, as they have three experienced coaches on board. “We’re definitely doing even more than we were able to do last year and hopefully that will continue to be increasing,” Wolverton said.

No experience is required to join the team. More information about Mason Women’s Club Ice Hockey can be found on their website.

Viviana Smith/ Fourth Estate

BY PHILLIP KIM, STAFF WRITER

Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers, discussions of mental health and mentions of sexual and physical violence.

The release of “Joker” in 2019 was a landmark moment in film history.

The psychological thriller won the prestigious Golden Lion prize at the Venice International Film Festival– a first for a comic book adaptation– and went on to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie prior to the release of Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine.” After such overwhelming critical and commercial success, many considered a sequel inevitable.

When the long-awaited “Joker: Folie à Deux” arrived in theaters, it was met with harsh criticism.  Fans and critics alike have labeled it an insult to the first film and previous iterations of the titular villain. “It’s almost as if they made an active effort to ruin everything that made the first one great,” one IMDB.com user wrote.

Is it really?

“Joker Folie à Deux” opens with a disturbing sequence in which prison guards brutally mistreat a visibly weak and dispirited Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). Subsequently, the jester-turned-murderer encounters two women: his attorney Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), who advises him to repress the murderer inside him, and a self-claimed fan, named Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga) who encourages Fleck to do the opposite.

Fleck’s fragile state may surprise those who expected him to have evolved into a criminal mastermind after the events of the previous motion picture. However, “Joker” never explicitly suggested such a future awaited its protagonist. 

At first, the depressed criminal’s fear of capital punishment forces him to follow his counsel’s recommendations to claim insanity. Then, assured by Quinzel that the public will love and admire Joker, Fleck fires Stewart and fully embodies the new persona. Citizens erupt in thunderous applause, welcoming back their mascot.

Director Todd Phillips continues to show deep empathy for society’s outcasts. He portrays Fleck’s yearning to be understood and embraced, causing his vulnerability to Quinzel’s manipulations. Through promises of affection and sexual pleasure, Quinzel pulls Fleck further into the depths of madness.

The performance quickly comes to an end when Joker is confronted with the reality that he was not a hero nor an antihero. Former co-worker Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill) testifies in court he always considered Fleck a friend but was traumatized after witnessing his crime. The failed comedian is shaken, then returns to prison to be physically and sexually assaulted by his jailers.

Fleck could no longer claim he had no choice but to turn to evil. He could no longer argue that his actions were merely retaliations against the bullies. He was just a common criminal driven by self-pity and self-loathing. Any remaining delusion of superiority is shattered when the great Joker finds himself helpless against simple violence by ignorant warders.

As the film comes to a close, Fleck once again stands in the courtroom and takes responsibility for all his murders. “Joker was a made-up character,” he says. “I am just me.” All the fans, including Quinzel, quickly dissipate. They cared about the revolutionary, not the actual man behind the illusion.

In this moment, the sorrowful comic is making one last call for redemption. He is not the leader of a movement rallying for support, but a broken man crying for help. Society denies him this final wish.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” is painfully honest. If one were to ask what the most realistic course of events to follow the ending of “Joker” is, the answer wouldn’t deviate much from what unfolds in this film. Phillips could have easily abandoned the realism for a more conventional action adventure storyline but chose instead to honor the spirit of the first movie. He continued to scrutinize how cruel society can be to people like Fleck to the very end.

The filmmaker also honors previous iterations of the character by eliminating any possible ties between them and Fleck. He clearly understands that Joker, such as one from “The Dark Knight,” must not have a defined backstory nor a known origin. Fleck is a completely separate character, merely inspired by the comic book villain.

Most importantly, “Joker: Folie à Deux” serves as a warning. It shows why violence cannot be the way out for those struggling with pain and misery. It asks viewers to look around and take care of each other, as that may be all it takes to prevent someone from becoming the next Fleck.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” is a divisive film that makes little effort to entertain. What it does offer is a thorough psychological portrayal of loneliness and self-destruction. It is a scathing critique of society’s lack of genuine concern for its members and a plea for change. This is not a film for everyone, but for many, it will strike a deeply resonant chord.

Sam Douglas/ Fourth Estate

BY SAM DOUGLAS, STAFF WRITER

On Nov. 1, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Foundation (PETA), sent a record request letter to Mason leadership. PETA demanded Mason deliver documents that PETA requested in February regarding animal experimentation and research on campus.

“If PETA does not receive the responsive records by November 15, 2024, it will be compelled to pursue its legal remedies under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act,” said the letter, written by PETA’s Chief Legal Officer and Mason alum Jeffrey Kerr.

 On Feb. 21, the organization sent a public record request for information including veterinary records, incident reports and photographs. The request was related to a November 2022 incident where expired antibiotics were “suggested” to have been used in surgeries on animals. Kerr explained that they learned of this incident through publicly available documents from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Despite this, a representative from the NIH Office of Extramural Research said that “NIH generally does not publicly post self-reported cases of noncompliance… and NIH discusses such cases only with the people and institutions involved.” 

After being told that the FOIA request would cost $700, PETA sent a check on March 12; however, they didn’t hear back from the university until Sept. 23– more than six months later.

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act states that if a FOIA request is not responded to within five days, that public body “shall have an additional seven work days,” to complete the request. If the public body does not complete the request within 12 days, a reason must be given to the requester. The public body can further “petition the appropriate court for additional time” but this is only applicable to “an extraordinary volume of records”, a large search time, or if the search prevents the public body from “meeting its operational responsibilities.”  This is reflected on Mason’s FOIA Requests page under “Mason’s Responsibilities in Responding to Your Request.” 

“We had a breakdown on communication internally,” GMU Vice President and Chief Brand Officer Paul Allvin said. “We screwed this one up.”

According to Allvin, there was a disconnect between PETA’s check coming in and the university’s FOIA officer at the time, Susan Harris. Harris hadn’t been alerted to the check coming in, leading to the request going into the university’s “paused” queue. 

“That’s ridiculous… just reprehensible,” Kerr said. “The university delay undermines the very purpose of the Virginia FOIA Act.”

Allvin attributed the further delay to redacting private document information in accordance with Virginia’s privacy laws and said that the incident caused the office to change the way that they are notified when payment comes in. “We wish this hadn’t happened,” Allvin said.

PETA received a batch of 58 PDF documents from the university on the morning of Nov. 5. Despite this, Kerr was still not pleased.

“It’s the legally required outcome. It’s not a good outcome to suggest that the university failed in its legal obligations for eight months. A good outcome for PETA would be for GMU to stop doing useless experiments on animals,” Kerr said.