The GW
HATCHET
March 2, 2026 Vol. 122
Iss. 21
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904 • ONLINE AT GWHATCHET.COM
GW SELLS VIRGINIA CAMPUS
ARWEN CLEMANS | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR The Innovation Center balcony overlooks the Virginia Science and Technology Campus.
A GW School of Nursing display on the second floor of its building.
ARWEN CLEMANS | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR
VSTC sale to fund Granberg’s strategic framework, alleviate finacial woes GIANNA JAKUBOWSKI ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
GW sold the Virginia Science and Technology Campus to an undisclosed buyer Friday. The deal will help fund GW’s new strategic framework and strengthen its fiscal health as the University navigates a period of financial instability, Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes told The Hatchet Thursday, though he said the sale “won’t solve” the University’s structural deficit. The agreement permits the VSTC, which houses the School of Nursing and 17 research labs, centers and in-
stitutes, to retain the 120-acre property for up to five years as officials work to relocate operations without shrinking programs or the campus’ over 850 faculty and staff. Officials declined to disclose the buyer’s identity or price point for the land, citing “confidentiality provisions” in the agreement, which closed Friday. Fernandes said several interested buyers approached GW roughly 18 months ago about purchasing the property, which officials started to “seriously consider” amid rising land prices in Ashburn’s Loudoun County, where the campus is located.
He said officials will use the profits from the sale — which the Board greenlit in October — to create a new quasi-endowment for University President Ellen Granberg’s strategic framework initiatives, including her planned investments in research, teaching and student financial aid. Prior to the framework’s October launch, Granberg said officials would have to hold off on funding the plan’s “fancy initiatives” because of GW’s financial instability. Fernandes said officials will also use money from the sale to fund a one-time bonus for eligible faculty and staff.
“This is a pivotal moment for the University,” Fernandes said in an interview. “This transaction will bolster our financial resources and provide us critical opportunities to deal with our priorities going forward.” GW used a donation from former trustee Robert Smith to open VSTC in 1991 with a single building on 50 acres of land. Officials expanded the campus over the next two decades, purchasing a final 22.5 acres in 2012 to transform the space into the 120-acre campus it is today. The campus houses more than 20 degree and certificate programs and 17 research
Pentagon terminates GW military fellowship ELIJAH EDWARDS
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
The Department of Defense will bar senior military officers from a fellowship placement at GW starting next academic year, citing the University’s alleged “anti-American resentment and military disdain,” a memo confirmed Friday. The memo, signed and released Friday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing terminations across 22 universities, identified one current GW participant in a DOD Senior Service College Fellowship — a partnership with a higher education institution that high-ranking military officers complete to strengthen analytical and strategic skills — that the department will terminate starting next academic year. The move comes weeks after an internal DOD memo, first obtained by CNN last month, labeled GW as one of 34 universities at “moderate to high risk” of losing graduate military tuition assistance for the 2026-
27 academic year due to alleged bias against the U.S. military and “troublesome partnerships” with foreign adversaries. “We will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very values they are sworn to defend,” Hegseth wrote in Friday’s memo. Friday’s memo does not address GW’s eligibility for the DOD Tuition Assistance program — the focus of Hegseth’s Feb. 6 memo, which allows active-duty service members across all branches to receive tuition support for off-duty education programs. As of Sunday, a DOD tuition assistance database still listed GW as an eligible institution. Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a Friday release individuals currently enrolled in an SSC Fellowship at one of named universities will be allowed to complete their courses of study. The Pentagon canceled a total of 93 fellowships across 22 universities and
research institutions that exhibited “wicked ideologies,” according to the memo and an accompanying video, and suggested potential new partner institutions for military fellows. SSC fellowships give senior service members opportunities to study national security policy, strategy and operational issues to “substantially enhance” their ability to perform their duties in the national security field, according to the United States Army War College. Fellows attend more than 60 host institutions that the department selects and reviews each year based on their “strategic focus areas, academic excellence and resident national security professionals.” “They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness,” he said in the video announcing the cuts. “They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology.”
labs, centers and institutes, including the nursing school, the Avenir Foundation Conservation and Collections Resource Center and the University’s main data center. Several University offices also operate out of VSTC, including the Office of the University Controller, the Office of the Registrar and the Office of the Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Loudoun County’s commercial land values rose 55 percent over the last year, with the average price per acre hitting $3.76 million in 2026 — a $1.4 million increase since 2025 — which Fernandes said officials wanted
to “capitalize” on. Fernandes said officials will “ideally” move the nursing school to the Foggy Bottom Campus over the next five years and will spend the next few months creating plans for other operations, including the University’s data center and storage for The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. Fernandes said he doesn’t expect the deal to impact current and future research GW conducts on the campus, though it’s “too early” to tell, as officials haven’t spoken with community members about the sale.
Bass departs SMHS, leaving behind complicated legacy ARJUN SRINIVAS
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
HANNAH MARR MANAGING EDITOR
Retiring School of Medicine & Health Sciences Dean Barbara Bass concluded her tenure marked by a consequential leadership legacy on Saturday. Bass — who GW tapped to lead SMHS and the Medical Faculty Associates in January 2020, two months before the COVID-19 pandemic upended hospitals and universities nationwide — guided the school through one of the toughest modern moments in healthcare and also led the MFA as it struggled with deep financial losses that reached $107 million in her final fiscal year at the helm. The Hatchet reached out to over 500 physicians, SMHS faculty members and former MFA officials and found mixed assessments of her leadership, with some commending her crisis management and academic initiatives, others describing a distant, occasionally disengaged approach that
strained trust and communication across the enterprise. In an email, Bass described her time through the lens of resilience, saying the community forged that theme almost immediately in its response to the pandemic. She said physicians, staff, students and faculty met the COVID-19 crisis with “courage” and “sheer brilliance,.” Bass declined The Hatchet’s request for a sit-down interview, a tradition most outgoing deans partake in, but shared written responses indicating she views the pandemic as the defining moment of her tenure at both SMHS and the MFA, which she stepped down from in May 2024 to allow GW to bring in an executive better suited at addressing its losses. In answering nearly every retrospective question, Bass cited the “global upheaval of the COVID pandemic” and the unprecedented “financial impact” across GW’s clinical and academic operations as the central successes, challenges and hardships of her time leading the two institutions. See PHYSICIANS Page 4
US-Israeli strikes on Iran trigger protest, celebration across District NATALIE NOTE
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
RYAN SAENZ
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Protests and celebrations erupted across D.C. on Saturday after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran that killed its supreme leader, with demonstrators divided between fear of escalating U.S. involvement in the region and hope for an end to repression in the country. Demonstrators near the White House condemned the operation as a move by the U.S. government to impose another “endless war” in the Middle East, drawing parallels to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and accused President Donald Trump of plunging the military into war without CongressioWHAT’S
INSIDE
nal approval. Meanwhile, crowds in Georgetown and at the World War I Memorial celebrated the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeing the action as a potential turning point against a repressive regime responsible for the deaths of thousands of protesters over the last month and widespread crackdowns on civil liberties. The United States and Israel launched a major campaign of strikes early Saturday targeting Iranian government and military sites — including locations in and around Tehran — after President Donald Trump said U.S. intelligence showed Iran was preparing attacks on American targets overseas and moved to “defend the American people.” Outside of the White
NEWS The union representing GW Hospital nurses says hard bargaining from the hospital’s owner has slowed progress. Page 2
House and Lafayette Park Gerima and his fellow organizers stood on the back of a white pickup truck, leading the crowd in chants and inviting speakers to address the group of roughly 200 demonstrators. Gerima said the organizers planned the protest within hours after U.S. and Israeli missiles hit Iran early Saturday morning, viewing the move as an attempt to further entrench the U.S. military in the Middle East. Demonstrations celebrating the death of Khamenei also cropped up throughout D.C., including on M Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown and at the World War I Memorial near the White House. Hundreds of people at both locations chanted “USA” and “Thank you President Trump.”
A woman marches in a protest Saturday against U.S. airstrikes in Iran.
OPINIONS The editorial board urges students to reevaluate the Student Government Association’s advocacy power. Page 5
CULTURE The 47 students comprising GW’s pep band keep the energy up at basketball games with diverse set lists, instruments and blowups. Page 6
JESSIE ZHAO | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
SPORTS GW’s basketball program is pushing marketing campaigns to grow turnout at games. Page 7