George Mason University can trace its roots back to the 1950s when the legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia passed a resolution, in January of 1956, to establish a branch college of the University of Virginia in Northern Virginia. In September of 1957 the new college opened its doors to seventeen students, all of whom enrolled as freshmen in a renovated elementary school building at Bailey's Crossroads. John Norville Gibson Finley served as Director of the new branch, which was known as University College.


The City of Fairfax, Virginia, then the Town of Fairfax, purchased and donated 150 acres of land to the University of Virginia for the college's new location, which was referred to as the Fairfax Campus. In 1959 the Board of Visitors of UVA selected a permanent name for the college: George Mason College of the University of Virginia. The Fairfax campus construction planning that began in early 1960 showed visible results when the development of the first forty acres of Fairfax Campus began in 1962. In the Fall of 1964 the new campus welcomed 356 students.

Local jurisdictions of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church agreed to appropriate $3 million to purchase land adjacent to GMC to provide for a 600 acre Fairfax Campus in 1966 with the intention that the institution would expand into a regional university of major proportions, including the granting of graduate degrees.

On April 7, 1972 the Virginia General Assembly enacted legislation which separated George Mason College from its parent institution, the University of Virginia. Renamed that day by the legislation, GMC became George Mason University.

In 1979 GMU opened its law school in Arlington by acquiring the International School of Law, which was a private institution that had recently attained provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA). By 1981 the law school, now known as the George Mason University School of Law (GMUSL), gained full ABA accreditation.



Also, in 1979, the university moved all of its athletic programs to NCAA Division I. Enrollment that year passed 11,000. The university opened its Arlington campus in 1982, two blocks from the Virginia Square-GMU station in Arlington. In 1986 the university's governing body, the Board of Visitors, approved a new master plan for the year based on an enrollment of 20,000 full-time students with housing for 5,000 students by 1995. That same year university housing opened to bring the total number of residential students to 700.

Through a bequest of Russian immigrant Shelley Krasnow the University established the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study in 1991. The Institute was created to further the understanding of the mind and intelligence by combining the fields of cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and artificial intelligence. In 1992, GMU's new Prince William Institute began classes in a temporary site in Manassas, Virginia. The Institute moved to a permanent 124-acre site located on the Rt. 234 bypass, ten miles south of Manassas, by the year 1997, and is now known as the Prince William Campus. The university graduated more than 5,000 students that following spring.

While George Mason University is relatively young, particularly compared to established research universities in Virginia, it has grown rapidly, reaching an enrollment of 29,728 students in 2005, and has become the largest public university in the state of Virginia. The University's stated goal is to become the major public research university of the U.S. national capital area. According to a 2005 report issued by the university, enrollment is expected to reach 35,000 students by 2011 with more than 7,000 resident students. The university currently suffers from traffic and parking problems due to the large number of students who commute to attend classes.

In Iota XI Chapter v. George Mason University, 993 F.2d 386 (1993), the Fourth Circuit held that George Mason University, a state university, had violated the Sigma Chi Fraternity's First Amendment rights by suspending its privileges as a university organization. Sigma Chi is a leading appellate precedent in favor of expansive speech protection for free speech on campus.

In 2002 Mason celebrated its 30th anniversary of independence from the University of Virginia and launched its first capital campaign with a goal to raise $110 million. It concluded by raising $142 million, $32 million more than their goal. The George Mason University logo, originally designed in 1982, was updated in 2004.

George Mason offers more than 200 clubs and organizations, including sixteen fraternities, fifteen sororities, twenty-four International-student organizations, twenty-five religious organizations, Student Government, club sports, and student media. Mason also offers an Army ROTC program, called the The "Patriot Battalion."

Mason's club sports include:

Badminton - Bowling - Crew

Fencing - Field Hockey - Football

Ice Hockey - Lacrosse- Rugby football

Trap and Skeet - Ultimate- Underwater Hockey

Volleyball - Cycling

The school's sports teams are called the Patriots. The university's men's and women's sports teams participate in the NCAA's Division I, and are members of the Colonial Athletic Association, or CAA. The school's colors are green and gold. George Mason has two NCAA Division I National Championships to its credit: 1985 Women's Soccer and 1996 Men's Indoor Track & Field.

George Mason University was catapulted into the national spotlight in March 2006, when its men's basketball team qualified for the Final Four of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament by defeating the Michigan State Spartans, the defending champion North Carolina Tar Heels, the Wichita State University Shockers, and the top-seeded Connecticut Huskies (UConn). Their "Cinderella" journey ended in the Final Four with a loss to the eventual tournament champion Florida Gators by a score of 73-58 *. As a result of the team's success in the tournament, the Patriots were ranked 8th in the final ESPN/USA Today Poll for the 2005-06 season. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and USA Today featured the story on their front pages.

The Patriots, who had never won an NCAA tournament game before 2006, became the first team from the CAA to crash the Final Four and were the first true mid-major conference team since 1979 to do so (that year, the Larry Bird-led Indiana State Sycamores as a

1 seed, and the Penn Quakers as a
9 seed both reached the Final Four). The Patriots also tied LSU as the lowest-seeded team to reach the Final Four (both did it as
11-seeds; LSU did it in 1986).