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George Mason University elected a drag queen as Ms. Mason for the first time in the school's history.
Reann Ballslee, also known as GMU senior Ryan Allen, won the title as part of the Mr. and Ms. Mason contest, an annual competition held during the school's homecoming. Allen, who represents GMU's Pride Alliance and hosts the campus' annual drag show, received the title during halftime at Saturday's basketball game against the Northeastern Huskies.
"Personally, it's exciting," Allen told Connect2Mason. "But I feel like the win is bigger than me. It says a lot about Mason and the student body. Not only do we go to a very diverse school, but that diversity is celebrated regularly - even at the homecoming game."
While some GMU students share that sentiment, the Washington Post's report notes "others said his election was an embarrassing setback to Mason's recent efforts to revamp its image from a suburban commuter school to a distinguished institution of higher learning."
Nonetheless, GMU is "fine with it," according to spokesman Daniel Walsch.
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not being a GMU student, or even having followed this story closely, i just have to ask...does this warrant a "step forward" if most of the students who voted this way did so as a joke? i don't know if they did or not, but i know that's a possibility.
we had a learning-disabled student make it onto the homecoming court in my high school, and it wasn't out of any respect for her, it was because of kids in the school thinking "it'll be funny to have a retarded girl up there on stage with everyone else". it wasn't the finest moment for our school.
Hm. GMU elects a drag queen for homecoming queen? Where the hell are all the crackpot jeebus freaks going ape$h!t?
Oh, here they are. Good thing this didn't hit the WTOPNEWS.com comment threads. They'd blame it on illegal immigrants, Barack bin Laden, and Marion Barry's monkey-transplant kidney IN ALL CAPS!
"They're all going to laugh at you!" Carrie.
How exactly does having a homecoming queen (be they a bio female, drag performer, gender queer, or whatever) contribute to the image of "a distinguished institution of higher learning"? Does anyone really pick their school by thinking, "oh that's the school with the really hot homecoming queen"?
Besides, bish looks fierce in her sequinned dress, and she has great legs. I'd have voted for her.
My question is, how would having a drag queen homecoming queen possibly make you look like a commuter school rather than a "distinguished insitution of higher learning"? (Besides, as Bethesdaist points out, the fact that having a homecoming queen at all is kinda trashy and outdated.) I would think that one of the parts of getting away from the "commuter school" image would be embracing GLBT students and other minorities, as the nation's most prestigious colleges and universities have been doing for years.
They should be far more worried about their homecoming king's crappy dancing. When word gets out about that it's sure to hurt enrollment.
Everybody run, the homecoming queen has got a gun.
A. At my University, no one cared about homecoming outside of the Greek organizations and whatever other student organizations participated. Therefore, the homecoming winners usually were whoever was from the biggest group. Not taking anything away from Ms. Reann Ballslee, actually that's great that the Mason's Pride Alliance mobilized enough people to make it happen.
B. That asshole "admissions ambassador" is a total closet case.
Consider the bounds of heteronormativity challenged. We need to get some drag queens together and celebrate with a ‘Tape Back the Night’ event. Anyone with me?
Shouldn't that be "Tape Back the Knight"? As in, the little caped crusader?
There's a whole class of losers out there who do value schools based upon hokey "traditions" like "homecoming king/queens," the "Greek system," etc. People take it really, really seriously. All the more funny that this pokes a hole in all that silliness.
This is fabulous. You go girl!!!