From TPM:

Hackers broke into the email account of the George Mason University provost in Virginia, early this morning and sent out the following email:

Subject: Election Day Update To the Mason Community:

Please note that election day has been moved to November 5th. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Peter N. Stearns
Provost

According to Dan Walsh, a spokesman for the university, the hoax message went to the entire student body — more than 30,000 students — and about 5000 faculty and staff.

Stearns himself quickly sent out a followup message assuring recipients that it was a hoax, which was being investigated.

Walsh said the university had contacted campus police, who are working with outside law enforcement to look into the hoax.

(via Maud Newton)

In the annals of journalistic coyness, the Washington Post is legendary. Because it is a “family newspaper,” it’s long refused to print sensitive words no matter how crucial they are to understanding the story they ought to appear in.

For instance, today’s article by Ian Shapira on legal wunderkind Kiwi Camara refused to describe “racist remarks” that led to his rejection for a teaching post at George Mason University’s law school. There’s little indication of what these remarks were or what their context was. If you read to the end of the article, the president of GMU’s Black Law Students Association finally refers to “the n-word” in the penultimate paragraph but there’s no indication whether Camara had used it as a epithet against a particular person or had quoted from a secondary source or what—things you’d kind of like to know if you’re going to decide whether it’s fair that Camara is still being punished for something he wrote as a teenager.

So, in order to make clear what exactly this article was about, City Desk excerpts a contemporary account from the Record, Harvard Law’s student newspaper:

One of those outlines as well as a third outline used the abbreviation, “nig.” The issue in the famous Shelly v. Kraemer, for example, was framed, “Nigs buy land w/ no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?”

So, yeah, that was pretty bad. Post readers, consider yourself fully informed.

Boise State’s spectacular victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl Monday night was more than an instant classic, a rebuke of the BCS system, and a reaffirmation of hope and beauty. It was also the first real test of how ingrained George Mason University has become in the sports lexicon.

Since this March, just about every little team (or player) that could—or even might—has invoked comparisons to the Patriots’ incredible run to the Final Four. When Trinidad and Tobago tied Sweden in this summer’s World Cup, they were branded the George Mason of the soccer tournament. Kentucky Derby longshot Platinum Couple’s owners decided to race him on the reasoning that “if George Mason can do it, why can’t we?”

Well, because there’s a difference between a longshot and an underdog. That’s why even though George Mason could do it, Platinum Couple, Trinidad and Tobago, and all the other Mason wannabes couldn’t. But Boise State could. Like George Mason, the Broncos were articulate, good-humored overachievers with a killer instinct, led by an imaginative, gutsy, and principled coach (who sent a senior player back to Boise for violating curfew).

Commentators have rightly compared Boise State’s achievement with George Mason’s; some have even said that it trumps what Mason accomplished. College football now has its very own George Mason with which to compare future gatecrashers. But will the Broncos transcend their sport? Will Boise State eventually replace George Mason as the touchstone of choice when describing an athletics upstart?

No, thanks largely to a friendly gesture of goodwill (and serendipitously brilliant marketing strategy) from George Mason. Last week, the university took out a full-page ad in Boise State’s hometown newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, congratulating the Broncos on their season and wishing them luck in the big game. The ad, signed “From one Cinderella to another,” ran on Saturday, Dec. 30. Just about every media story that covered the game mentioned this ad, and Fox ran a short segment on it during the game. And each time someone brought up the ad, it subtly reinforced the fact that as sports Cinderellas go, the Patriots were the vanguard.

It all started about two weeks ago during the build-up to the Fiesta Bowl, when George Mason president Alan G. Merten noticed the media describing Boise State with the same kind of words as they had used during the Patriots’ Final Four run this spring. Merten, who has a heightened sensitivity for ascendant schools, decided to get in touch with Boise State President Bob Kustra to give his regards. The two presidents had a nice chat, and after a few moments of reflection, Merten called George Mason vice-president of university relations Christine LaPaille and suggested she put in ad in “the local paper in Boise.”

LaPaille designed the ad, got the thumbs-up from Merten, and a few days and several thousand dollars later, Fairfax had a sister city in Idaho.

Statesman advertising director Travis Quast was surprised to take an ad from George Mason. “It’s not unusual for schools to wish one another well, but it usually comes out of your own conference,” he says. “I think it was a very classy move for a university that went through the same grand thing of being a Cinderella.”

Merten had no idea that a spur of the moment gesture from one non-BCS school to another would generate so much attention. Since the game, he’s received dozens of calls and e-mails from people from Idaho to Iraq. “Yes, it was a great marketing success, but when I picked up the phone to call the president of Boise State, it was the farthest thing from my mind,” says Merten. “Did I sit down and think, how can we get our name referenced on Fox? Of course not.”

In fact, Merten didn’t even know Fox was going to run a piece on the ad until he was at home, about to turn on the television and received a phone call from his son-in-law in New York. “They just showed your ad on TV,” his son-in-law reported.

“Then I watched the rest of the game,” Merten says. “What a game.”

Before the George Mason University men’s basketball team’s home opener against Wichita State on Saturday, the sold-out crowd at the Patriot Center in Fairfax was treated to the unveiling of a sign commemorating the team’s Final Four berth. But not all the Patriots fans in attendance were so jazzed about the banner hoisted to the rafters.

Ticket holders in Row Z of Section 106 had their views of the scoreboard and the far basket blocked by the 16-foot-by-14-foot flag. Mark Sharp, a frequent GMU basketball attendee, had driven up from Oak Hill, Va., with his daughter and her friend. He hoped the banner would move at tipoff, but it didn’t.

“The seats were fine until they raised the banner,” Sharp says. “Then you realize that you can’t see the game, and it’d be like this the entire time. I had no idea it’d be like this when I bought the tickets.”

Sharp moved to some vacant seats, but about five minutes into the game, the rightful seat-owners showed up. An usher shooed them away, but not before Sharp demanded that his party be moved to some unobstructed seats. Despite the sellout, the university holds a block of seats for just this type of situation, and Sharp et al. were relocated to new, and much better, seats.

John Besanko, assistant general manager of the Patriot Center, says that the facilities staff, new to the whole basketball royalty thing, had only been able to make a test run of the banner-raising the morning of the game.

“This was all brand-new to us,” he says. “It’s our first time going to the Final Four, the first time raising a banner.…If we’ve got only 16 seats needing to be relocated, that’s pretty good.”

Besanko also says that the snafu was a one-time-only thing; after the game, the banner would be moved to a less intrusive location.