As graduate students file in and out of Founders Hall on a daily basis, a pocket of undergraduate students is garnering the university’s attention on Arlington’s campus. This little-known group of undergraduates is a 25-student cohort that attends classes once a week on campus to discuss international affairs and meet global leaders from Washington, D.C.-based organizations.

The United States cannot sustainably spend more money than it takes in—period. There will be a point where we are so tragically in debt, countries will stop buying our bonds and investing in the American economy. At the point that the world recognizes our budgetary issues cause us to be an unsustainable black hole, America itself will lose potency and further degrade its reputation.

Mason Votes is a student-run organization that promotes political awareness and involvement (photo courtesy of Mason Votes).

Mason Votes, the George Mason University’s student-run political awareness organization, will receive the Democracy Cup Award from the Campus Election Engagement Project. Mason was recognized as one of the top four campuses within Virginia higher education to "engage their campuses and communities in the 2012 election," according to a press release.

"The CEEP is a national organization that tries to educate college campuses and students about the importance of being involved in the democratic process," said Shane Smith, executive director of Mason Votes and senior at the university. "We relied on them for the grant money that we applied [for] and received in order to do the things that made us successful in the end."

Recently, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the ban on women serving in military combat has been lifted, overturning the 1994 law that states that women cannot be placed in any combat unit lower in number than a brigade. This new development seems to be sometime in the making, especially considering that women make up around 15-20 percent of our nation’s armed forces.