By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
You could have rolled a bowling ball down any aisle in the basement of the student bookstore at George Mason University yesterday morning and not hit a soul.
Seated behind the counter, flanked by "Death in Venice" on the right and "Introduction to Paralegalism" on the left, Lauren Clare, a freshman English major partial to Jane Austen, patiently answered one phone call after another from what has become Mason Nation. They bay for T-shirts, caps, anything green and gold. "Yes, we do have infant wear," she said.
"We usually get our UPS shipments in after 10 a.m.," she told a caller asking about Final Four shirts.
"Hey," came a voice from the staircase, "You got any Lamar Butler jerseys?"
Sorry.
Clare is fine with it. "For the first time," she said, "I feel like we're a college."
From the administration offices to the switchboards -- where the recorded greeting is now "Welcome to George Mason University, home of a Final Four basketball team" -- the 34-year-old Fairfax school exulted in the Patriots' extraordinary upset victory over top-seeded Connecticut on Sunday. Off campus, Virginia's governor and legislature and the Fairfax Board of Supervisors also hailed the team, which will face Florida in the national semifinals Saturday.
It was the beginning of an improbable week at the summit of college basketball, and across the campus was the sense that no matter what the outcome in Indianapolis, this was a moment to savor.
"It's been pretty amazing," said Justin Procopio, 20, a geography major from Richmond, as he passed the statue of George Mason, now swathed in green and gold with "Go Kryptonite Kidz" emblazoned across his chest.
Classes seemed reasonably well attended, but it was hard to miss the wink-and-nod in Provost Peter Stearns's early morning e-mail to faculty:
"Without in any way wishing to distort our priorities," Stearns wrote, "I write to urge a bit of leniency in response to any absences from undergraduate classes today. Thanks for your understanding."
It seemed as if everyone had a way of spinning the team's triumph in the direction of their own aspirations and passions. Theater professor Ed Gero, who is seeking tenure, said he included a 2001 letter from Coach Jim Larranaga as a part of his application. "Coach L," as he called him, praised a class that some of the players took.
Jane Quill, a real estate broker for Re-Max who received a master's degree from George Mason, said it was a sure bet that the school's new prominence would boost property values in Fairfax County.
"Schools have a tremendous impact on real estate values," she said.
The locus of activity yesterday was the George W. Johnson Center, where students packed the food court at midday to watch a replay of the U-Conn. game. A few faces were etched with anxiety, as if the final score might somehow come out differently.
On the first level of the bookstore, a few feet above Clare, a line of about 250 people awaiting the first shipment of Final Four T-shirts snaked its way outside into the sunny afternoon. Two thousand shirts were frantically turned out overnight Sunday, with thousands more due in today.
Brandon Smith, 22, a senior finance major worried about an exam today "with about 8 billion formulas to remember," said he wouldn't be anywhere else.
"We're finally on the map," said Smith, a tad weary after being routed from bed by two bogus fire alarms, most likely pulled by revelers Sunday night at his Potomac Heights dorm. "Just the publicity the school is getting is awesome."
The effusive spirit was not confined to Fairfax. On satellite campuses in Prince William and Loudoun counties, students who normally toil with a feeling of detachment said yesterday they felt less remote.
"Now people know there is something called George Mason," said Suba Iyer, 26, eating lunch with three other bioscience students in the cafeteria on the office-parkish campus in Prince William.
And throughout official Virginia, it was a day to get right with George. In Richmond, where the General Assembly convened yesterday for a special session to discuss transportation, legislators competed to show their loyalty to George Mason.
Sporting a green Mason hat, Sen. James K. "Jay" O'Brien Jr. (R-Fairfax) took to the Senate floor to lord the Northern Virginia's school good fortunes over his colleagues.
"As you're thinking about all that traffic going to Northern Virginia, and I know how you feel about that . . . but that's where George Mason University is," he thundered. "We could not be more proud."
Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R-Fairfax), who received a master's and law degree from GMU, said he was "seriously contemplating" dying his hair green and yellow if the Patriots win the national championship.
Fairfax supervisors brought their George Mason caps to their bimonthly meeting yesterday and passed a resolution inviting the Patriots to visit. Supervisor Elaine N. McConnell (R-Springfield) said she hoped the county would hold a parade for the team "when" they win the NCAA championship.
The surge of devotion brought some eye-rolling from longtime fans, who wondered where all the arrivistes were when George Mason was not even a household name in Fairfax.
Scanning the crush at the Johnson Center, Jennifer Nemecek, 21, a senior majoring in psychology and communications, said: "I don't think a lot of these people even realized we had a basketball team."
Staff writers Michael Alison Chandler, Maria Glod, Rosalind S. Helderman, Stephanie McCrummen and Lisa Rein contributed to this report.
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