PSA Program

This talk draws from a book chapter analyzing representations of the “racialized middle,” or "Brown" population, in mainstream U.S. discourse about race and racism. While the chapter focuses most of its attention on whether the aggregated population of people the U.S. Census categorizes as Asian, Hispanic, American Indian/ Alaska Native (AIAN), Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander (NHPI), and people of “two or more races,” this presentation shares findings regarding three specific Brown populations: Latines, Asians, and people of mixed descent. While my content analysis found that, within the sub-set of race group mentions coded as “Brown,” Latine mentions made up a significant majority (55%) of all mentions, followed by Asian mentions (36%) and mixed race mentions (5%), it also revealed how Latine, Asian and multiracial news coverage has each followed a different arc over time—although all of these populations steadily grew in the United States between 1968-2020. More specifically, I found an inverse relationship between Latine coverage and the size of the U.S. Latine population, a U-like trajectory for Asian coverage, and no meaningful growth or decline for mixed race news. This disaggregated data on Brown representations underscores that there is no relationship between population size/ growth and inclusion in U.S. race discourse. This helps explain why, in spite of the fact that they compose the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population, the racialized middle continue to be left out of national discussions on race and racism, while Whites and Blacks remain center-stage. And, this raises the question of whether (the lack of) representations of Brown people in the U.S. race discourse—together and on their own—reflect and/ or influence Brown young adults’ political consciousness and agency.

Our research tracks changing discourse on multiculturalism through media content, assessing shifts in salience and semantics associated with the concept. Specifically, we focus on measuring the presence of multiculturalism in discourse, the extent to which representations are positive or negative, how it is defined and linked to various associated concepts, and how each of those variables (and relationships between them) shift over time. Our findings are based on systematic content analysis of articles indexed under the heading "multiculturalism and diversity" in two major print media outlets (the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times) from 1992 to 2002 – essentially the decade including and following the discursive peak of multiculturalism in the early 1990s. Our findings suggest that declining salience of multiculturalism as a representation of an aspirational model for post-assimilative race/ethnic relations was accompanied by shifting semantics that narrowed its meanings and made it more accommodating other aspects of surging neoliberal politics.

The influx of Caribbean immigrants to Canada in the 1970s brought about significant changes to the success of Canada on the world stage of track and field. Between 1970 and 2000: Angela Bailey, Marita Payne, Jillian Richardson, Charmaine Crooks, Molly Killingbeck, Ben Johnson, Donovan Bailey, Bruni Surin, Mark Boswell and Desi Williams were among Canada’s premier track and field athletes who began to bring back medals for the country. Each of these athletes was born in the Caribbean but arrived in Canada under the age of fifteen. These elite athletes all had a similar story of being an esteemed “Canadian” athlete who could enjoy some material and social privileges when they were successful and winning metals on the world stage. At any sign of trouble with the law or authority figures these elite athletes were quickly demoted back to their Caribbean “ethnic” origin and no longer seen as esteemed “Canadians.” This paper is concerned with examining the roller coaster of “identity” politics among the elite Caribbean Canadian track athletes during the 1970-2000 periods. We are also interested in exploring the effect of these elite track stars on the self-esteem and consciousness of second generation non-athlete Caribbean-born Canadians. Using Canadian census data, immigration statistics, media accounts, the athletes personal web sites, biographies, and interviews we examine how Caribbean-born elite level track athletes dealt with racism and sexism both on and off the track in Canada.

Under the guise of "market neutrality," neoliberal policies have set the framework of operation for every major social institution, including education, sports, media, economy, culture, and medicine. The idea is that the world is a giant marketplace and everything is a commodity to be sold and traded at the right price. In short, everyone is a consumer who has the right to participate in any social circle of their choice. As long as the consumer can pay for any service, they will not be left out. Obviously, this outlook is based on the myth of meritocracy and supports competitive individualism while covering up the nasty reality of social inequalities that are produced and reproduced through structural/institutional racism, sexism, classism, and so on. The idea is that the individual controls their destiny while the social is nothing but an abstraction that needs to be eliminated. Against the backdrop of this scenario, the West/North have been engaging in unconscionable acts of violence on the rest of the world, namely the South/East with respect to hoarding and wasting valuable resources that end inevitably in tragic loss of lives of those that are in the "peripheral" countries. Two events, one seemingly more serious than the other (the handling of COVID vaccines and the Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest), will be the focus of this talk that represent the obscene nature of the unequal relationship that exists between the West/North and the South/East. Indeed, neoliberalism eviscerates any ties that bind.

In 1968, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (WSRA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Johnson. The Act, which reflects the environmental ethos of the Wilderness Act of 1964, was the result of socio-political conflicts seeking compromise between preserving rivers with “outstandingly remarkable values” and the economic and political imperative of dams and large-scale water transfers. Specifically, the WSRA privileges the preservation of rivers with outstandingly remarkable ‘scenic,’ ‘recreational,’ ‘historic,’ ‘cultural,’ ‘fish and wildlife,’ ‘geologic,’ or ‘other similar’ values. However, in deconstructing the cultural imagining of ‘wilderness’ and ‘wildness,’ researchers have observed wilderness does not reflect “nature” as much as it reflects our own unexamined longings, desires, and environmental anxieties. The ideograph of "wild" has been identified as settler-colonial, raced, classed, and gendered. Preservation may be a worthy goal, but the means through which preservation is enacted are telling of dominant values central in privileging certain ecologies, ecological knowledges, and the people connected to them. As such, through a content analysis of the 228 designated rivers, this research seeks to identify the ways in which “outstandingly remarkable values” – especially the socio-political values – are framed and codified in designation. It also questions which, and therefore whose, cultural priorities are worthy of protection within official discourse; that is, what recreational, scenic, cultural, and historic values are outstandingly remarkable and privileged within the WSRA?

In this study, I explore how environmental challenges, particularly resource scarcity and displacement, impact patterns of domestic violence in households in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. By focusing on this critical connection, the research aims to illuminate the intricate dynamics in urban areas, specifically addressing challenges associated with resource deserts. In Dar es Salaam's urban context, resource deserts become a focal point, encapsulating the urgent issues stemming from a lack of essential resources. These challenges are compounded by overpopulation, resulting in a complex network of socio-environmental stressors. With the rapid growth of urban spaces, the strain on available resources intensifies, exacerbating the effects of environmental challenges, including water scarcity and pollution. This confluence of factors sets the stage for a comprehensive examination of how environmental stressors impact households, manifesting as patterns of domestic violence. Through an analysis of the interplay between resource scarcity, displacement, and domestic violence, the research aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the challenges individuals and families face in urban settings like Dar es Salaam. Furthermore, this research seeks to contribute to closing the literature gap and provide informed, targeted interventions. I emphasize the urgent need for comprehensive strategies addressing the complexities of resource deserts, overpopulation, and environmental challenges in urban Dar-es-salaam. The insights derived from this study are intended to guide policymakers, urban planners, and community advocates, offering practical recommendations for creating more resilient and harmonious urban environments in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania.

How is climate change affecting smallholder farmers and agribusinesses, how are they responding, and how is this pattern of response influenced by the structure of the political economy? This case study in China's Pearl River Delta examines agricultural activities in an agrarian village where more than 90 percent of the residents are engaged in agriculture. Bringing a perspective on the intertwined nature of climate change and agricultural policy, the researcher conducted 35 semi-structured interviews and participant observation with respondents including subsistence smallholder farmers, temporary wage laborers, contract farmers, and an agribusiness entrepreneur. The study aims to provide empirical evidence for understanding inequalities in agricultural vulnerability to climate change given the political economy structure. It also seeks to provide a critical perspective on whether large-scale agricultural development is beneficial to farmer survival and food security in the region.

Under the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC), the Department of Defense has closed over 400 military sites across the United States and territories. War and defense-related operations contribute to devasting environmental problems including groundwater and soil contamination. The National Priorities List (NPL), also known as the Superfund list, is a federal program that allocates specific sites to be cleaned-up. Removing the pollutants from contaminated areas is resource-intensive and expensive, and failure to clean up toxic sites can contribute to health and environmental issues from pollutants seeping into neighboring areas. However, less is known about the systematic patterns of federal environmental cleanup efforts for military sites. Using government documents, web scraping, and historical census data, this study analyzes census tracts within a one-mile centroid buffer of 96 major closure BRAC sites. Difference of mean tests for the year 2010 show BRAC facilities in Black communities are less likely to be chosen for NPL site status and thus to participate in federal cleanup Superfund programs. Results from a random-intercept logistic regression of tracts between 1970 and 2010 reveal environmental cleanup disparities. For the neighborhood demographics model, the conditional odds for a given tract to have NPL site status is greater for White, higher-income, less female-headed households, and higher education attainment, all else equal. In terms of place characteristics, the conditional odds for a given tract to have NPL site status is greater for nonurban areas and weapons-related sites, all else equal. These results show the distribution of current federal cleanup efforts of closed military sites across neighborhoods and shed light on state actions toward hazardous waste management especially for sites used for defense purposes.

Profligate application of antimicrobial chemicals in medical and agricultural settings has led to their accelerated self-obsolescence in what can be described as micro-ecological rift. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the evolutionary process by which microbes acquire the ability to withstand antimicrobial drugs, poses an escalating and existential threat to global public health. Despite the apparent biomedical and evolutionary aspects of this process, its acute acceleration in recent decades can only be explained as a social, political, and economic problem. Critical social scientific interrogation of the drivers as well as the proposed solutions to the threat of AMR is one necessary step towards addressing the broad public health challenges facing humanity in the Anthropocene. The pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, recognizing their primary role in bringing about this crisis, have mobilized heavily to maintain control over society’s response to AMR. Consequently, actions taken to combat AMR have tended to gloss over industry’s preponderant role in accelerating the process, promoting voluntary industry self-regulation and focusing instead on prospects for antimicrobial stewardship among interested stakeholders. This paper provides a theoretical and empirical critique of antimicrobial stewardship, an account of the political organization of the industries involved in its conception, and examines alternative frameworks for studying and addressing AMR from an interdisciplinary perspective. Metabolic Rift theory is joined with Structural One Health approaches to examine the potential for industry-led Antimicrobial Stewardship efforts to address the problem of AMR in the coming years.

Multiple chemical sensitivity is a contested environmental illness. Those with multiple chemical sensitivity experience physical, often debilitating, symptoms from chemicals common to everyday life like car exhaust, laundry detergents, and perfumes. Through an ethnographically informed interview project, I trace how these chemicals come into contact with people’s bodies and the impacts this has on their health, emotions, relationships, and ability to occupy public and private space. People with multiple chemical sensitivity articulate commonplace chemical exposures as pollution, explaining how “low dose” contact is capable of immediate, embodied harm. These contacts can occur within polluted spaces or through interaction with other bodies that are contaminated by chemicals. By explaining their inseparability from their environments, and by showing how their bodies absorb chemicals usually viewed as harmless, those with multiple chemical sensitivity deepen our understanding of environments as waste sinks. In this case the body is a sink, absorbing chemicals that enter into the environment. As exposures become pollution, the body becomes a sink for waste. People with multiple chemical sensitivities are left to manage this pollution in a social and political system that sees chemicals as only capable of causing specific forms of harm and where the body is rendered invisible.

This study examines how high school dress code policies criminalize Chicanx students by labeling them as “gang related” based on their attire. Specifically, I draw from 10 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Chicanx individuals who graduated high school in North County San Diego between 2005 and 2015. Findings illustrate how Chicanx students utilize fashion as self-expression to represent their social class, ethnicity, regional pride, and affinity for sports. Additionally, findings detail how dress code policies criminalize Chicanx students’ fashion as “gang related” attire, which authorizes school officials to punish students wearing prohibited clothing items on campus. These findings expand previous literature regarding how school officials police and stereotype students of color who wear professional sports jerseys and hip-hop style clothing by examining how Chicanx high school students experience punitive treatment for wearing lifestyle clothing brands such as DyseOne, Joker Brand, and Tribal Gear. Consequently, Chicanx high school students developed oppositional attitudes towards education and hostility towards school officials as they didn’t feel welcomed in high school settings. Despite knowing the consequences for wearing their clothing, Chicanx students continued to dress the same to openly express their disagreement with dress code polices. Ultimately, this study illustrates how Chicanx students utilize clothing to challenge institutional racism, and how school officials reproduce inequality through dress code policies that ostracize Chicanx culture and justify disciplinary measures against Chicanx students stereotyped as “gang related.”

This study aims to capture the lived experiences of Latino/Chicano men from the barrio in higher education as they seek to cultivate and construct identities that aid their success in academia. The academy is intricately structured to produce feelings of isolation and oppression that greatly affects the way Latino/Chicano men navigate the academy. Utilizing LatCrit Theory, a framework that examines experiences that are unique to the Latinx community like language, immigration, culture, and ethnicity. Using this school of thought will aid in understanding and analyzing the experiences of Latino/Chicano men in academia. In hopes to further improve retention rates of Latino/Chicano men, listening to the experiences along with utilizing LatCrit framework, can help DEI policies be more serving towards this subgroup especially in Hispanic Serving Institutions.

This research studies the multifaceted impact of silent films on technology, filmmaking, feminist movements, minority communities, and everyday life. It offers new perspectives on the leadership roles of American women filmmakers during the last decade of the silent film era. Silent films were a frontier for technology, filmmaking, and women in the workforce; however, not for people of color because of the abundant racist and sexist propaganda spread throughout America. This study focuses on the under-explored contributions of American women directors in the silent film industry. It investigates databases of 54 American women directors, underscores the enduring contributions of behind-the-camera female filmmakers throughout the silent film era, and challenges the assertions of “no women director in 1925” and “influential women directors’ involvement was over by 1925.” Osborne’s statement (1925) “no women director in 1925” was the foundation for feminist notions of “no women director in 1925” and “over by 1925.” “Over by 1925” states that the period of influential women directors in the silent film industry was over by 1925, except for Lois Weber and Dorothy Arzner. This study identifies a women director, May Tully, and her film “That Old Gang of Mine” in 1925 and argues that influential women directors’ involvement ended by 1922, rather than 1925. This is the first study to uncover the directorial work of American women in 1925.

Art and athletics are two categories of time-use that tend to foster interpersonal connections and reduce stress. This study explores the relationship between engagement in art and in athletics, while paying attention to the specific activities engaged in (such as drawing, painting, playing sports, or jogging) and controlling for numerous sociodemographic characteristics. An original survey is used, sampling 507 young adults, ages 18-33, from the United States and Thailand. Linear regression with robust standard errors revealed a statistically significant but small positive relationship between time-use in art with time-use in athletics. This supports the ‘complimentary hypothesis’ of engagement in art relating positively with engagement in athletics. This significant finding that time-use in art affects time-use in athletics draws attention to the need to further analyze the relationship between engagement in art and in athletics, as there may be similarities between the two that could expand our understanding of their previously observed stress-reducing and prosocial effects.

The racist scandal that took place in the Los Angeles city council in October 2022, spotlighted 4 Latino leaders trading racist jokes and comments about black, indigenous, and other racial and ethnic communities in the city during a political strategy meeting. This incident revealed what many Latinos in the U.S. have routinely experienced and witnessed throughout our everyday lives with family, friends, co-workers, and communities, but which we rarely examine critically or discuss publicly: that racist ideologies, feelings, and emotions among Latinos are routinely expressed through what I describe as “amused racial contempt” (Pérez 2022), or the use of racist fun, amusement, and humor to reinforce the affective dimensions of racial othering and belonging in the U.S. What role does the use of racist humor/amused racial contempt among Latinos reveal about the racialized emotions harbored and expressed within this racialized community? How does this practice serve to reproduce and reinforce racialized notions of inclusion and exclusion among Latinos within the larger cultural and racial fabric of a racialized social system? And how does such humor contribute to feelings of anti-blackness and anti-indigenous racism and "cruelty as citizenship" among Latinos in the U.S.? This paper aims to theorize how amused racial contempt is used by Latinos today, and how the use, impact, and consequences of such humor are similar and distinct from white racist humor on the processes of racial othering and belonging. This paper will analyze the use of racist humor among Latinos in the U.S. in 3 key contexts: 1) In the workplace, 2) In the criminal justice system, and 3) In the political arena. By focusing on the “pleasure of racism” among Latinos, this paper aims to advance a theoretical approach that highlights how and why racialized and marginalized communities also take joy and pleasure in racial ridicule and abuse, and are complicit in reinforcing racial dehumanization, in order to move our understanding beyond the “racism as hate” model in the study of racism and racialized emotions.

Research shows that Mexican Americans often feel that they are “ni de aqui, ni de alla,” not feeling a sense of belonging among Mexicans nor among Americans. In the U.S., they are racialized as Mexican due to their physical features or their assumed cultural traits. As a result, some play-up their Americanness as a defensive strategy to prove they belong in the United States. For others, attachment to a Mexican ethnic identity ameliorates their feelings of exclusion as Americans by providing them with a feeling of belonging to their ethnic group. Yet, their Mexicanness is often questioned by co-ethnics who do not see them as “Mexican enough,” or see them as too Americanized. Based on interviews with 150 Mexican American young adults ages 18-29 years old, this paper examines how “Mexican” ethnic boundaries are defined, how they are policed by coethnics, and how Mexican American youth who are not “Mexican enough” negotiate the contestation of their ethnic identity. Data analysis shows that Mexican American youth share a common understanding of the criteria that define who is Mexican, and they apply these criteria to themselves and to others. For them, the ability to speak Spanish, knowledge of Mexican culture, and the practicing of Mexican traditions are measures of ethnic authenticity. When asked “How Mexican are you?,” most youths used percentages to denote their degree of ethnic authenticity. Those fluent in Spanish, who know Mexican culture and engage in Mexican cultural practices score high in the ethnic authenticity scale and their Mexicanness is less likely to be contested by coethnics. In contrast, those lacking these cultural traits, and being in their own words “too Americanized,” score low in ethnic authenticity, and their claims to being Mexican are not based on language, cultural knowledge or practices, but rather center on their Mexican ancestry or family origin. These youths feel more strongly that they are “ni de aqui, ni de alla” since they are deemed “not Mexican enough” by coethnics while simultaneously being racialized as “Mexican” by white Americans.

This study explores how Mexican Americans encounter Indigenous authenticity policing as a specialized stressor and its consequences on health. Settler colonial mestizaje racial projects in Mexico and the U.S. reinforce a mestizo ideology that centers whiteness and European ancestry but marginalizes indigeneity as inferior—which shapes complex notions of Latinx identities and discrimination of Indigeneity. As Latinx Indigenous resurgence continues to grow, more Mexican Americans are seeking their Indigenous roots among the tribes of Mexico and the southwest in the U.S. Yet, we know little about how claiming a marginalized Indigenous status creates additional stressors that exacerbate Mexican American health. Using qualitative methodology, I draw from 52 in-depth interviews with Mexican American adults, from Los Angeles and the Central Valley of California, who are reconnecting to their Indigenous roots. Findings reveal: (1) embracing Indigenous practices and claiming Indigenous status creates identity-based stressors including authenticity policing that stems from mestizaje ideologies; (2) Mexican Americans who claim Indigenous status encounter multiple forms of authenticity policing from both Latinxs and Native Americans in society including within cultural and ritual spaces; and (3) Indigenous authenticity policing becomes an additional stressor that exacerbates social and psychological indicators of health such as anxiety, confusion, alienated, and depression among Mexican Americans. This study contributes a critical Indigenous-based framework to minority stress process theory to study intra- and inter-group health disparities among Mexican Americans. I conclude by discussing implications for interventions to increase support systems and protective strategies to improve health in Mexican Indigenous communities.

This paper analyzes the experiences of Chicanx/Latinx faculty at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), using a campus of the California State University as a case study. Grounded in intersectionality theory and based on in-depth qualitative interviews with twelve Chicanx/Latinx faculty, this study explores whether Chicanx/Latinx faculty feel a sense of belonging on their campus and in their department. Findings reveal that Chicanx/Latinx faculty who teach at HSIs often experience a sense of alienation and disconnection from their institution. Respondents shared experiences with microaggressions, inequities in the retention, tenure and promotion (RTP) process, a hostile campus climate, and other inequities. These findings call into question the adequacy of the “HSI” designation for measuring equity, diversity, and inclusion of Chicanxs/Latinxs in higher education.

The gamification of love and romance in modern video games enables players to experience virtual relationships. Stardew Valley, a popular farming simulation game, is known for its complex relationship mechanics and diverse marriage options. This study explores romance gamification by analyzing the Stardew Valley subreddit. It uncovers the multifaceted nature of in-game romance and its interaction with player experiences related to gender and sexuality. Key themes identified through user-generated posts and comments include: 1. Player Preferences and Dynamics: Discussions revolve around character development, dialogues, and how player choices shape virtual romances concerning gender and sexuality. 2. Personal Significance of Inclusive Relationships: The study explores the real-world meaning of inclusive in-game relationships. 3. Mechanics and Benefits: Participants exchange insights regarding the mechanical advantages of in-game marriages, highlighting the game's inclusivity, accommodating diverse player experiences regardless of gender or sexual orientation. 4. Strategies for fast Marriages and Divorce: There's a focus on strategies to expedite in-game marriages. 5. Diversity of Opinions: The subreddit captures a spectrum of viewpoints regarding the significance of in-game romantic relationships. 6. Humor and Coping: Humor and sarcasm are pervasive in discussions, reflecting how players use levity to cope with monotony or relationship challenges. The study seeks to contextualize the gamification of romance within ‘the real world’. What are the potential implications of treating love as a game? It is also a piece of a larger study which looks at romantic gamification in other more ‘mature’ game settings. (also fits in pop culture section)

Sociology continues to grapple with how gender impacts our everyday lives and decisions. It especially struggles with disentangling to what extent inequality is based on external policing and expectations rather than socialized internal preferences. This project aims to understand how inequality such as that seen in work, leisure, and home life, manifests in a space with reduced external factors due to normalized anonymity: Online video games. This paper aims to understand how gender shapes people’s activities even in anonymous online video game spaces. While video games offer the opportunity to exist and play with reduced gendered expectations, gender still shapes how we play. Drawing on 4,676 surveys and 60 interviews with adults who play video games, I find that gender identity and expression are related to the type of games we play, the roles we select within games, and our goals for play. Even in a space where embodied differences and gender expectations are reduced, gender shapes our involvement in activities.

Despite the well-established gender bias within the culture of video games, video games have become increasingly integrated into everyday social interaction. Thus, as a modern hub for interpersonal connection, video games may be reflective of modern experiences of gender. This research explores several concepts shaping the perspectives of feminine-identifying video game consumers. These gamers, all self-identified feminine people, have previously played video games in any capacity. Of the most prominent themes from this research; are the construction of gamer identity, modes of resistance, and the agents of empowerment of feminine gamers. Using eight semi-structured interviews, this research investigates the hypermasculinization of video games, prevailing gender inequities within modern gaming spaces, and how feminine gamers navigate the challenging culture sustained by gendered dynamics within gaming spaces. In asking why or how gender and video games intertwine, this research contributes to the normalization of feminine presences within video games and contributes to making video games more inclusive for feminine-identifying gamers across many platforms of video game engagements.

Social media platforms provide opportunities for people to participate, share, and express their opinions on issues that are not easily voiced publicly in offline contexts. This study examines the phenomenon of “slut shaming” in online social media (Sills et al., 2016), with a focus on misogynistic discourse against women. Specifically, it analyzes 3064 misogynistic comments posted in response to 42 TikTok videos about a minor female singer who was raped by an adult male film celebrity in Nepal. Employing feminist critical discourse analysis and grounded theory, the study explores several underlying themes in these videos and comments to offer a rich and nuanced analysis of how power and ideology operate within discourse to uphold hierarchical gendered social structures (Lazar, 2007). The findings highlight the normalization of the male celebrity-perpetuator involvement and the stigmatization of the minor, despite the legal acknowledgment of the case as a statutory rape. The study uncovers how social media users collectively reinforce structural sexism, engage in gender trolling, and perpetuate victim blaming to justify rape culture. The analysis further reveals that social media defend the perpetrator by validating the rape while simultaneously demoralizing and “canceling” the survivor. Ultimately, this research argues that the misogynistic comments reflect deeply ingrained patriarchal thinking rampant in online communities. The study's implications are discussed in relation to the importance of analyzing discursive details to better understand gender and sexuality in the context of celebrity culture as they manifest in the digital space.

Humor is deeply entrenched in culture, offering a lens into a society’s dispositions and values. The relaxed performance style of stand-up comedy, in particular, provides a unique site of cultural (re)production, one that is explicitly public but feels very personal. Increasing scholarship demonstrates comedy’s social importance, but there is minimal work on gender identity construction and performance within and through professional comedy, especially regarding gender nonconformity and transgender identities. Drawing from a content analysis of 50 stand-up comedy specials released on HBO, Comedy Central, and Netflix between January 2021 and June 2023, this research explores how stand-up comedians, trans- and cisgender, construct and embody gendered and sexualized identities within their sets. Despite increasing demographic diversity, including more specials by openly queer and transgender comedians than ever before, I argue that comedians are often unable to escape the web of American cisnormativity and sex essentialism. Although an increasing number of comedians offer pushback to these norms, their voices are still a minority within the broader landscape of professional stand-up comedy. Even then, cultural cisnormativity often requires gender nonconforming comedians, cis and trans, to acknowledge and atone for their presentation in order to become visible and legitimate actors. As such, gender nonconformity becomes weaponized within comedy sets as a site of gender performance used to reinforce cisnormative standards of expression and experience.

The Kabul Airlift in August 2021 added to the already expanding numbers of newly arriving Afghan refugees and SIVs to the U.S. The American Community Survey estimates that 42% of Afghans in the U.S. reside in California. Controlling for factors such as length of time in the U.S., education, English proficiency, and disabilities, Afghan refugees have higher rates of poverty, child poverty, and unemployment, and lower family incomes and lower earned incomes among working age adults than other foreign born Californians (Stempel, Alemi, & Zamani 2023) and many other immigrant and refugee groups in the U.S. (Stempel & Alemi 2021). We report initial findings from focus group and semi-structured interviews of Afghan refugees (recently arrived and longer term residents) aimed at understanding the challenges they face securing good jobs and educational opportunities. Interviews gather narratives of resettlement, including economic and non-economic challenges, obstacles, and successes, and ties/commitments to family in Afghanistan. This analysis focuses on employment and educational goals and experiences after arriving in the U.S., linking these to sources of support and resources (e.g. co-ethnic ties, cultural brokers, institutional support) and constraints (social structural, personal, and institutional) shaping their economic strategies and outcomes. We focus on pathways into the labor force among Afghan women, experiences in precarious occupational niches (e.g. Uber driving, security guards) among Afghan men, experiences with discrimination/stigmatization among longer term residents, and the difficulties many who earned advanced degrees in Afghanistan face getting their credentials and work experience recognized by U.S. employers and credentialing bodies.

One of the ways Qatar stands out as a nation-state is by having the smallest proportion of nationals in its total population – a little over 10% of people in Qatar are citizens, and the rest are non-citizen residents. The non-citizens are allowed to enter the country and stay depending on their employment and sponsor (known as the kafeel), none of which offer long-term residency. Yet, many non-citizens remain in Qatar their entire working life and raise their children for whom Qatar is their home despite having the citizenship of their parents’ origin country. In a similar socio-political context in Dubai, Neha Vora (2013) observes how the Indian diaspora creates spaces of belonging without citizenship. Following Vora’s observation, we looked at a new group of non-citizens in Qatar – international students – and explored their experience of belonging. Based on 18 interviews with current international students in the Education City, a small-scale survey, and participant observation of three undergraduate student-researchers, we observe that these students experience varying degrees of inclusion and belonging to Qatar. We identify cultural factors (i.e., religion and food) and structural factors (i.e., residence, sporting facilities, and student center) that foster a sense of inclusiveness, leading to experiences of belonging. Our findings contradict the expectation of international students reportedly feeling out of place and like a stranger in Qatar due to the theoretical assumption of citizenship as a precondition for belonging. We also identify various mechanisms these students adopt to deal with exclusions and feel out of place. Our findings offer important insights into understanding how non-citizens strive to experience belonging in a national context characterized by their permanent temporariness, a condition for an increasing number of people in this age of hyper-globalization.

This paper examines the occupational experiences of undocumented Mexican immigrant men employed in the understudied field of demolition. I draw on a year of ethnographic field work and 20 informal interviews with demolition workers to examine how everyday work in demolition becomes precarious and how it is exacerbated by an undocumented legal status. The work is precarious along two dimensions: structural precarity and work precarity. First, undocumented Latino men in demolition experience structural precarity through their position in the United State labor market. Their social positioning at the bottom of US race and class stratification forces them into occupations where exploitation, by white bosses and co-ethnics, is rampant. Second, undocumented Mexican men experience work precarity within the labor-intensive and dangerous job of demolition. On the job, undocumented Mexican men are forced to ignore workplace injuries due to fear of losing their job and exposing their undocumented status. Their injuries are exacerbated by and through the performance of gendered norms of masculinity. Another form of work precarity comes in the evasion of law enforcement agencies. Workers who seek to advance financially in the demolition business must evade law enforcement agencies that can lead to economic punishment.

While migration industry literature has mostly focused on the “commercialization” aspect of migration, this research focuses on the creative role of the migration industry to circumvent the state controls of immigration, specifically in labor migration. I take the case of the Vietnam-South Korea migration corridor, where the destination state takes part in not only designing immigration policies but also enforcing the logistics of labor immigration. The paper asks how the migration industry creates alternative labor migration pathways under restrictive migration policies. To answer, the paper pays attention to the overlapping pathways between labor, education, and family migration. First, the labor exporting agencies directly create alternative ways of working in Korea by persuading prospective migrants to become students, which is faster and more flexible. Another alternative pathway is family invitation through marriage migration. Marriage brokers ease Korean men's anxieties and Vietnamese women’s emotional burden attached to economic support for women's families by promoting family invitation opportunities and preparing paperwork. Considering its flexibility to extend the stay, this is a stable source of higher income for the families of married migrants back in Vietnam. This research draws from 18 months of fieldwork in Vietnam and South Korea, including interviews with Vietnamese migrants including marriage migrants, labor migrants, and international students to South Korea as well as migration industry actors. This research shows that the state categories of migration pathways can work to make the boundaries messier and can be manipulated by the migration industry actors who create revenue opportunities from immigration administration.

The process of immigrant integration is multifaceted, involving layered components of employment, social networks, health outcomes, education, cultural adaptation, language acquisition, among others. In general, immigrants are not approaching the process of integration in a proactive and strategic manner. By sending their children to school, befriending their neighbors, finding employment in the mainstream economy, learning the host country language and incorporating cultural idioms into their vernacular, they are “integrating” just by living their daily lives. As such, integration is generally a process that takes place subconsciously and unfolds over time. In fact, according to the National Academies of Sciences, full immigrant integration is not complete until after three generations of immigrants have resided in a host society. This is not the case, however, for all immigrant groups. International students, particularly those who want to remain in the U.S. after graduation, are under heightened pressure to integrate to increase their odds of securing employment and a secure visa status after graduation. In this sense, international students are attempting to truncate the integration timeline from three generations to four years. I will demonstrate in this paper the integration strategies international students use while in higher education to maximize their opportunities for remaining in the U.S. after graduation. Drawing upon theories of “strategic assimilation” and “one-up assimilation,” I will show how international students demonstrate their deservingness over native-born students, make calculated decisions regarding their academic choices, and develop deliberate networks to assist in their postgraduate journey.

One continuing cultural issue discussed in globalization is identity. Theorists have argued for the homogenization of a global identity, the rise of national and ethnic identities as a reaction to globalization, and even that there is no such thing as any type of cultural identity. Essentialist, non-essentialist, and hybridity perspectives have been argued. This paper looks at the use of pilgrimage in the maintaining and the recreating of religious identity specifically, and of national and cultural identities more broadly. The role of pilgrimages to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan, and birthright tours to Israel, as ways that strengthen not just religious identities, but national and cultural identities as well are discussed. It is argued that some identities are stronger, more authoritative than others, especially those that have an attachment to place and space. These are the ties that bind.

As Pacific Islanders try to move or have moved forward into this post-colonial stage, many are still faced with the struggles and dismantling the ideologies and methods from the imperial powers. The late and renowned Pacific Scholar Dr. Teresia Teaiwa in her essay, "Scholarship from A Lazy Native" attested to the notion of decolonization and colonization describing that, "We have been written about, talked about, photographed, medically dissected, biologically and anthropologically classified, and our bones have been displayed in museums" (Teaiwa 1995, 59-60). Therefore, Pacific Islands Studies allow Pacific Islanders and Non-Pacific Islanders to have a sense of belonging and ownership towards their knowledge and understanding towards their knowledge and understanding towards Pasifika. There is a delicate balance between indigenous and western epistemologies that makes Pacific Islands Studies unique. Here, I will articulate my journey within the social spaces and social permissiveness, within and between the Va, as a recent graduate student in the CPIS program and how it has enabled and equipped me to activate and (re)active the Va as a site of creativity, potential, and wonder.

There has been a systematic displacement of marginalized communities throughout the history of interstate highway expansion in the United States. This paper discusses the mechanisms used to create, maintain, and reinforce urban segregation, the dispossession of community land and homes, and redevelopment efforts that erased decades of Black historical tradition in favor of “urban growth” models. By exploring the development of the interstate highway system, we illustrate similarities between the destruction of self-sufficient African American communities in both New Orleans and Las Vegas. Both of these cities provide case studies on how state-sponsored use of eminent domain was used to seize Black homes and fracture Black communities to support tourism-based urban and economic growth. We draw on theories of urban geographic trauma to show that patterns of transportation redlining caused by the physical construction of interstate highways through African American communities led to physical destruction and urban racial trauma for Black residents in both New Orleans and Las Vegas. As one of the dominant forms of state-perpetrated violence on communities of color, highway construction continues to be used as a form of oppression on Black neighborhoods in the United States.

Merida, Mexico experiences heavy rain and flooding, when these are compounded with other stressors, like pandemics, underserved communities face many challenges. My doctoral research investigates how a community kitchen in Southern Merida, Mexico improves food security in their community. Comedor Tortuga (referred to as comedor) started in 2020, during the early stages of the pandemic. The comedor was started by mothers because of their shared struggle of attempting to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through their efforts women at the comedor have improved food security in their community and have provided opportunities for their children that would typically not be available to them. I conducted initial field work at the comedor in 2023, where I conduct semi- structured interviews, participant observations, and participant activities. I will present preliminary data on how the comedor has ameliorated food insecurity, what benefits the women involved obtain, and what future aspirations they have. Lessons learned include how women’s groups organize to meet community needs and how compounded disasters impact marginalized communities.

Starting from a position that environmental critiques of capitalism can be a paradigm for environmental justice I explore how I approach the following areas of teaching environmental sociology. 1. Defining capitalis and it’s component parts (rationally exploit labor, commodity production, expansion); 2. nature and labor as the source of value; 3. technological fixes and the Jevons paradox; and 4. metabolic rift and ecological imperialism. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for environmental justice students and the possibility that a better world is possible.

The importance of place in social processes has gained increased attention within sociology. The place we are situated in shapes our shared understanding of events and interactional processes. How can we use those insights related to place to make our introductory sociology courses more accessible and equitable? In this paper, we reflect on how we incorporated examples from the places and communities we reside into an open educational resource textbook for introductory sociology. We use examples from Sociology of Everyday Life to illustrate ways “place” can be used to develop a shared understanding of sociological concepts. By drawing on recent events, rituals, laws, and social patterns, in the Pacific Northwest, we attempt to make the content more relevant to student lives. We will discuss the successes and pitfalls of a place-based approach to introductory sociology.

Student learning assessments often do not ask students to reflect on how classroom knowledge connects to their own personal experience. This is often because dominant understandings of knowledge privilege perceptions of objectivity over experiential ways of knowing. However, this can delegitimate students’ knowledge gained through experiences, especially experiences rooted in structural oppression and exclusion. Historically, testimonios were an oral or written narrative in which oppressed groups voice their lived experience and challenge dominant narratives that typically silenced subaltern voices. Moraga and Anzaldúa (1981) described them as “theory of the flesh,” meaning they are knowledge gained by experiencing the world through our bodies. Different bodies produce different experiences and therefore different knowledge. Sharing testimonios facilitates community, consciousness-raising, and action towards social change. Testimonios in the classroom assess student learning while centering students’ knowledge gained through their bodies. I have developed a body testimonio assignment that students complete in an undergraduate sociology course. Students explore course topics through scholarly literature, but they also each engage in a testimonio about their own lived experience within their body as it relates to a course topic. My in-progress research presentation will discuss how the testimonio project is implemented, examples of testimonios, and preliminary data analysis that addresses the following questions: 1). To what extent do students connect their lived experiences to knowledge gained through classroom learning? 2). To what extent does the body testimonio assignment facilitate students’ sense of empowerment and personal transformation?

In this presentation, I will share strategies I employ in my classes to enhance student learning and to foster social connections among students. At the core of these strategies are group-centered projects. I show how structuring courses around group projects, when implemented properly, can contribute to greater student learning in the courses and help build lasting connections among students that support their success even after the course. Rather than make group projects something students do outside of class, group work is integrated into the classroom learning environment. Peer evaluations and scaffolding assignments that require submissions from individual students help to ensure that students are prepared and contributors. After a review of these key strategies, I draw upon student comments from end-of-the year course evaluations to highlight the positive impact these group projects have on student learning and on their social connections with other students.

The Endowment and Retiree/Emeritus Committee have organized a joint panel on financial planning. The panel will cover financial planning from an industry perspective and that of faculty about the steps needed to plan for retirement and other financial needs. Faculty panelists will present their experiences with financial planners and/or coaches. Apart from their recommendations panelists will discuss recommendations, successes and pitfalls, and address audience questions.

Prior research has mostly centered on the possible psychological dispositions and political leanings associated with conspiracy beliefs rather than underlying and potentially consequential status dynamics. Drawing on prior scholarship and recent national survey data, I analyze the social patterning of conspiracy beliefs and their variations by several status attributes. Notably, and rather than the typical assumption that such beliefs are mostly held by those of lower education, my findings point clearly to a bimodal (U-shaped) distribution by socioeconomic status. Specifically, and unique to my results, there exists a cluster of graduate degree holding white men who display a penchant for conspiracy beliefs. Further examination highlights important variation between specific beliefs, with distinctly taboo beliefs being exceptionally popular among those in this highly educated group—a pattern corroborated with additional data sources. I conclude by discussing potential mechanisms as well as avenues that future work on conspiracy beliefs might consider.

Aspirations to creative careers (i.e., in the arts, culture, and related fields) can be at odds with the social, cultural, and economic realities that unequally permit entry to the creative workforce. This study investigates inequalities by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) in creative arts capital—the amalgam of social, cultural, and human capital cultivated through participation in home- and school-based creative arts learning experiences—and its association with creative career aspirations in adolescence through early adulthood. Using the National Center of Education Statistics Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), this study followed a nationally representative sample (n=15,200) through four waves of data collection in 10th grade, 12th grade, and 2 and 8 years after high school. Results from our bivariate regressions and block-entry hierarchical linear probability models showed that female, White, and higher SES students tended to gain greater creative arts capital than their counterparts, with considerable racial/ethnic and SES gaps in most creative arts capital indicators. Several home- and school-based creative arts capital indicators were also significantly and positively predictive of creative career aspirations. This study contributes nationally representative documentation of inequalities and associations between creative arts capital and longitudinal creative career aspirational outcomes.

In this study, we analyzed survey data collected from a large, diverse sample of Arizona residents ages 18 to 30 collected as part of an ongoing mixed-methods longitudinal study of young adults’ political activities and outlooks, to explore how features of neighborhood environments during adolescence shape subsequent political identities and voting preferences. We build from Yamagishi and Yamagishi's conceptualization of neighborhood trust, as well as recent literature linking decreased neighborhood and institutional trust correlates to the rise of populist and nationalist political movements, to consider how perceptions of neighborhood trust are connected to broader patterns of residential segregation and social homophily. We find that young adults who planned to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 reported higher levels of neighborhood trust, particularly among those residing in areas with relatively small non-white populations. This snapshot into the changing youth and neighborhood dynamics of Arizona helps to explain why young voters, especially those located in diverse urban communities overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential election.

Medical insurance and parental leave are essential for all new parents, but especially for women during their prime fertility years. Women who lack these benefits may face considerable consequences, such as extreme financial burdens or greater risk of maternal and infant mortality. In the US policy context, employers are a key route through which people access these benefits. Thus, the life course timing and trajectories of access to benefits directly impacts workers and their families. How does the timing of childbirth, specifically first births, overlap with the age trajectories of employer-provided benefits? In this article, I show how fertility and benefits align or misalign as well as educational and racial/ethnic inequalities in the alignment of fertility and benefits. I use panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (Baby Boomers ages 20-44) and 1997 (Millennials ages 20-37) to estimate the evolution of benefits across the fertility life course. I show that access to benefits increases with age, however, most women have their first child early in their career when access to benefits is low (even among women with a bachelor’s degree). The mismatch is much worse for Millennial women relative to Baby Boomers. This timing mismatch exacerbates racial/ethnic inequalities because, Black women and Latinas are less likely to have a bachelor’s degree (which is associated with greater access to benefits) and more likely to have their first child earlier in their career than White women.

It is no surprise that universities often struggle to engage with critical issues on an institutional level. The reasons for this range from bureaucracy to politics and are often heavily influenced by the surrounding community. When a university in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia Canada, declined to fly the pride flag during the school’s performances of The Laramie Project, one of the university’s research centres chose to show support for the LGBTQ+ community by lining the sidewalk to the campus theatre space with small pride flags. These pride flags were repeatedly vandalized and stolen and twelve incidents were reported to local police. The institutional response, primarily through silence, necessitated an analysis of the challenges and opportunities associated with campus activism and the fundamental role of universities as sites of contestation. The recent protests on campuses across North America highlight the significance of this discussion irrespective of the specific example being used. This presentation will discuss the vital role of the university by using the increasingly hostile anti-LGBTQ+ activism in Canada and particularly in the Fraser Valley as a case study to examine voice, silence, assertions of “safe” spaces, and collective resistance.

Losing her smile to synkinesis after unresolved Bell’s palsy changed how Faye Linda Wachs was seen by others and her internal experience of self. In Metamorphosis, interviewing over one hundred people with acquired facial difference challenged her presumptions about identity, disability, and lived experience. Participants described microaggressions, internalizations, and minimalizations and their impact on identity. Heartbreakingly, synkinesis disrupts the ability to have shared moments. When one experiences spontaneous emotion, wrong nerves trigger misfeel and misperception by others. One is misread by others and receives confusing internal information. Communication of and to the self is irrevocably damaged. Wachs describes the experience as a social disability. People found a host of creative ways to reinvigorate their sense of self and self-expression. Like so many she interviewed, Wachs experiences a process of change and growth as she is challenged to think more deeply about ableism, identity, and who she wants to be.

In 2013 British Columbia (BC) enacted new legislation that introduced “compulsory conjugality” wherein couples who reside together for two years or more are automatically enfolded into the marriage regime for the purpose of property division and spousal support, often without their knowledge and/or consent. BC is one of the first jurisdictions globally to put into place an “opt-out” as opposed to “opt-in” system of conjugality. Couples must officially say “I don’t” via formalized legal mechanisms otherwise their “I dos” are imposed upon them by law without consent or an affirmative gesture. This paper reflects on the discourse of consent and coercion by putting BC’s compulsory conjugality legislation in conversation with the 2011 BC Charter Reference (Reference) on polygamy that was held determine whether the criminalization of polygamy was consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter). Of central focus in the Reference was the question of consent, or more specially, whether women from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint (FLDS) community in Bountiful, BC, were capable of offering free and informed consent to participate in polygamous unions. Free agency and consent are fundamentally important in Western democracies such as Canada, yet the contradiction between the presumed benevolence of forced conjugality by virtue of BC’s Family Act and the presumed nefarious coerced conjugality of FLDS polygamist women creates a curious tension that sheds light on marriage as a neo-liberal technology of governance.

This research examines community-oriented policing in Sonoma County through a combination of focus groups and surveys collected from a sample of both law enforcement officers and community members. The project aims to define community-oriented policing from the perspective of the Sonoma County community and law enforcement population to discover whether there are gaps between the groups with respect to definitions of community-oriented policing practices.

Most of the early scientific exploration of community resilience has focused on communities' coping capacities and recovery in the aftermath of a natural hazard or disaster. Much less consideration has been given to identifying what makes communities resilient to more long-term, chronic adverse outcomes such as crime-related behaviors. Drawing on theories from environmental criminology, this research identifies neighborhood-level characteristics that promote resiliency in neighborhoods of Pomona with disadvantageous socioeconomic settings. Previous work in environmental criminology has largely focused on identifying neighborhood-level risk factors in the social and built environment that leads to an increase in opportunities for crime. In contrast we identify neighborhood-level characteristics that make communities more resilient to criminal behavior despite their theoretically disadvantageous settings. We begin by highlighting a number of environmental criminological theories that could be used to better understand what drives resilience among communities. We then detail the construction of a crime resilience index for Pomona that quantifies levels of resilience in each area of the city. We use the index to examine relationships with neighborhood characteristics of the built and social environments to better understand what makes certain neighborhoods ‘overachieve’ in terms of low crime rates, in the face of various neighborhood-level crime risk factors. We use crime (2010–2023) and socioeconomic data to develop a resilience index for Pomona. Understanding why communities respond differently in similar environments can enable communities/cities to respond more effectively to such stressful environments and consequently build resilience. Identifying location-specific resilience factors can be effective in reducing crime in neighborhoods.

This paper reports on an exploratory, mixed-methods study of family literacy practices among participants in a Los Angeles-based community reading program.  Data were obtained from intake surveys for 222 parents, who answered questions about their personal and household characteristics, literacy practices and attitudes, and residential conditions. Several factors that correspond to positive and negative perceptions of neighborhood safety were identified; to account for the effects of actual neighborhood safety on perceived safety, respondents were categorized as living in low-, medium-, and high-crime neighborhoods based on the reported crime rates for their residential zip codes. Across all categories, a majority of parents (75%; n=163) report feeling safe despite inhabiting high-crime neighborhoods. While parents who reported feeling unsafe tended to cite neighborhood conditions (such as criminal activity) when describing their perceived safety, parents who reported feeling safe often cited their own individual choices, abilities, or circumstances – and not, notably, a lack of neighborhood crime – as making them feel safe. We tentatively propose that whereas consistent exposure to crime via media narratives may erode viewers’ perception of safety (e.g., “mean world syndrome”), the consistent exposure to high-crime neighborhoods experienced by their residents may both inflate their perception of safety and normalize what may be extraordinary personal accommodations that parents make to ensure the safety of their families. Further, insofar as safety strategies include an avoidance of public resources such as libraries, parents’ personal accommodations may have detrimental effects on childhood literacy and academic achievement.

As millions of individuals with disabilities in the United States participate in childrearing, concerns regarding their caretaking abilities place them at an increased risk for interventions by social services and legal institutions. Drawing from the Double ABCX Model with insights from the Family Ecology Framework, Goffman’s concept of stigma, and the sociological understanding of religion, this ongoing research plans to utilize a quantitative methodology to explore the mediating effect of disabled parents’ religiosity on the relationship between their perceived discrimination and how close they feel to their children. The study aims to explore whether these parents utilize informal social support and resiliency development from a religious lens and if it buffers the impact stigma and stress disability may create on family functioning and disabled parent-child relationships. By elucidating the complex interplay between religiosity, coping strategies, and social support, the research intends to contribute to the body of literature about the nuanced understanding of parenting with a disability alongside social and policy approaches for developing support systems to improve these families’ well-being.

Previous research on the effects of religious and political conservatism on nuclear families has primarily explored the way it impacts individuals within the family—for example, the work/life balance of the father, the participation of the mother in the workforce, or the children’s educational attainment. Surprisingly few studies, however, have examined the effects of religious and political conservatism on how families as a whole are structured and operate. In this study, we examine the joint effects of this conservatism on the extent to which families operate as total institutions—that is, when every aspect of life takes place in the same location and under the same authority. Additionally, we explore the ways that social and political distrust within families shape the relationship between conservatism and the extent to which families operate as total institutions. This study will deploy a quantitative online and paper survey within conservative, moderate, and liberal households, both theologically and politically. Such a study will extend the body of research on the effects of religious and political conservatism on families, and the implications of social and political distrust in the context of families and the manner in which they function.

Religion has long been seen as a source of social solidarity and cohesion. However, participation in organized religion, such as American Evangelical Christianity, has been declining in recent years as participants disaffiliate with their faith (Cooperman 2022). Previous research speaks to this decline in religious affiliation through studying the experiences of those who switch religious orientations (Smith 2011; Packard and Hope 2015; Ammerman 2013). However, prior studies have failed to specifically study the process in which people disaffiliate from American Evangelical Christianity (AEC). This research study draws on grounded theory methodology to examine the experiences of people who were previously involved with AEC and have since minimized their involvement. Eight semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted to explore crucial beliefs, participation, and factors relating to both the decision to minimize involvement and resulting individual action. Participants were recruited through offline and online networks designed as spaces for faith deconstruction. Findings reveal that the process of minimizing involvement consists of more than the physical act of no longer attending church. Rather, such an undertaking requires examination of the instillment of beliefs in religious upbringing. Many participants describe “pulling threads” from the fabric that often enwrapped them since birth while forming individual identities and ex-evangelical communities. These findings suggest that the process of religious disaffiliation can unify people in a new manner, while also uncovering ways that religious institutions contribute to social formation.

This research project serves as one dimension of my dissertation proposal, as it explores the multifaceted experiences and needs of current cancer patients undergoing treatment and those who have been in remission within the last five years in San Diego, CA, and Phoenix, AZ. This presentation will address one question from the overall survey: How do cancer patients perceive and experience their physical symptoms, emotional well-being, and quality of life during treatment and/or once they are in remission? There is a gap within sociological literature (Kerr et al. 2018) as the experiences of cancer patients are multifaceted and include physical, emotional, and social tolls, it is vital to document and understand their experiences through shifts and negotiations of identity disruption and adjustment, familial and communal care, and emotional responses to their diagnosis, treatment, and remission. By exploring these themes, this study aims to contribute insights into the experience of cancer patients, enriching our understanding of the challenges faced and the factors influencing their well-being throughout the continuum of care. This is an ongoing project, I do not have a final count of participants.

This study seeks to understand how college students experienced the period of physical distancing in 2020, particularly with regard to wellness practices. Emerging adulthood is characterized by instability, self-focus, and identity explorations, which we found in our interviews. We conducted 31 semi-structured interviews of college-age young adults in the United States who were students in the 2020-2021 and/or 2021-2022 school year. Through this process, we found respondents used the physical distancing regulations in 2020 to pause and assess their life and priorities. In particular, we found students noted that the time they had away from others and social distractions allowed them to focus on what was important to them and make changes to improve their lives. Many respondents discussed changing their priorities, taking care of their health in a new way such as psychotherapy. Other respondents mentioned how they found ways to engage in self-care in personalized ways, for example going for walks, journaling, and taking cold showers. While some respondents indicated they started their practices during the period of remote learning, others noted that they adapted habits to what worked for them upon returning to in-person learning on college campuses.

Worldwide, there is still a considerable problem with maternal mortality, although it is most prevalent in countries with poor incomes, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa. Malawi is one of the countries that battles with one of the highest rates of maternal death worldwide. This research will focus on Rumphi district, located in the northern part of Malawi. In this particular area, women's cultural practices and beliefs have a substantial bearing on the frequency with which they seek out maternal health services. Therefore, the purpose of my research is to investigate the intricate relationship that exists between cultural norms, women's behaviors, and their utilization of maternal health services in rural Rumphi, Malawi. This study will be qualitative because I would like to concentrate more on the breadth and depth of the data. To accomplish this goal, I will be conducting interviews that are semi-structured. In addition, I would also like to record the most recent experiences of the women who have just given birth in the last 3 years. These interviews will include local women, traditional leaders because they are believed to be the gatekeepers of culture, and some medical workers. The main goal of the study is to find useful information that will help guide actions and policies that aim to increase the use of maternal health services in low-income countries. Another goal is to create an intervention model that combines modern and traditional approaches with the ultimate goal of making mothers and children in Malawi healthier and safer.

American universities are increasingly expanding their online course offerings, claiming this is a strategy aimed at improving access for diverse student populations. This fits within higher education institutions’ larger claims toward diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB). Universities believe that belonging happens in both physical and online classrooms. But it is not clear how underrepresented minority (URM) students experience belonging in online classes. Whether or not online higher education is delivering on its promise of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging warrants further attention. Using survey results from 210 Latinx undergraduate students and follow-up in-depth interviews with 45 participants during the COVID-19 pandemic, I show that student belonging suffers significantly in online settings. While universities may excuse this as a one-off caused by pandemic conditions and note that during normal times, online students make the choice to take online courses, I argue that many are forced into online higher education due to accessibility challenges. This study reveals three primary findings: First, when forced online, students can no longer interact with peers naturally, struggle with networking, and do not make friends in class. Second, students struggle with the lack of a clear delineation between school and home; this presents motivational challenges. Finally, online students no longer feel they are a part of the university, rather, they feel they are an ‘online student.’ Survey analysis reveals that belonging as discussed by students here is not a function of time spent at university, but rather particularly affected by attending classes in the online context.

Latines are the largest racial-ethnic minority group in the US, comprising 19% of the US population, yet they made up a mere seven percent of all doctoral degree recipients. Little is known about Latine who apply to Ph.D. programs but do not enroll, creating an inaccurate and linear depiction of Latine Ph.D. pathways. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated the barriers Latines experienced when applying to Ph.D. programs, given that Latine had the highest unemployment of any racial-ethnic group after the onset of the pandemic and were also most likely to contract COVID-19 or become severely ill. This paper sought to understand the forms of social capital that influence the doctoral pathways of Latine who enrolled into Ph.D. programs and Latine who did not enroll as well as the impact of COVID-19. This study employed semi-structured interviews with forty-five Latine who applied to Ph.D. programs fall of 2021. The findings suggest that COVID-19 amplified existing inequities in Latine academic and social opportunities, and some universities responded to the pandemic in ways that mitigated these inequities in the application processes while others exacerbated them. Further, the study underscores key differences in the social capital of Latine who enrolled in Ph.D. programs versus those who did not. To better support Latine doctoral pathways universities must intervene to mitigate the long-term negative impact of COVID-19, ensure that existing research programs are equity focused, and create research programs that cater to students not currently enrolled in higher education to provide a second chance for minoritized students whose opportunties are often limited by oppressive structures.

Despite significant policy effort, postsecondary pathways that do not directly admit students to a 4-year bachelor’s degree granting institution, such as those which instead emphasize career and technical education certification or community college dual enrollment, remain stigmatized in the popular imagination. Community colleges are not only seen as less prestigious but are underutilized by the target populations they seek to support. While researchers and policymakers know pathways to community college, like dual enrollment, can be made more effective, especially for low-income youth of racially minoritized backgrounds, they remain unsure about how the myths that people tell about them, such as the documented stigma associated of community college attendance, plays a role in their ineffectiveness. Further, practitioners are not well equipped to respond to this barrier and require guidance on how to shift mindsets and cultural barriers around educational and economic opportunities. In this paper, I address this gap in the literature by analyzing original ethnographic data gathered from Iranian, Armenian, Filipino, Mexican and Salvadoran-origin students in Los Angeles. I illustrate how policymakers and practitioners can design and implement strategic communications campaigns on their campuses to reduce the stigma around community college opportunities and thus, lower the cultural barriers to greater participation and success in them. Specifically, I ask, “how does high school campus culture guide college readiness for students typically underrepresented in higher education, and what can high school leaders do to influence it?”

In this study, I focus on how students make the decisions to pursue graduate school. Much of the literature has focused on how high school students make the decisions to pursue college and the various factors involved. Less research has been conducted on low-income minoritized college students’ post-baccalaureate decision-making. While college is deemed accessible for all, there are still many barriers for low-income minoritized students in pursuing graduate school. Thus, in this study, I ask the research question: what factors influence low-income minoritized students’ aspirations to pursue graduate school? Data comes from in-depth interviews with 42 Hmong-, Mexican-, and Chinese-American students at two public research universities in California. I argue that low-income students of color are more independent in making post-baccalaureate decisions because of the lack of connections and support they have. Many students make the decision to pursue graduate school for personal reasons such as their chosen career. The few who do have mentors develop aspirations through their mentors as they are guided toward graduate school. Family also influences students’ aspirations toward graduate school. While family serves as an inspiration, a majority of students’ families do not pressure or provide directions for post-baccalaureate goals since many of these students are first-generation students as well as first-generation professionals in their fields.

Postsecondary institutions have the opportunity and obligation to prepare informed, engaged citizens who can contribute to a stronger, more inclusive democracy. To this end, it is essential for colleges and universities to have a more complete understanding of what students want to change and how they see change happening. Using survey data collected as a part of a larger mixed-methods longitudinal study of Arizona residents ages 18 to 30 (N = 1,538), this study explores the relationships between types of college enrollment and a student’s political efficacy and political priorities. We find unique patterns within and between student groups that point to the role that higher education institutions play in preparing engaged citizens. Notably, young adults with 2-year college experience tend to give more priority to economic issues, while graduates of 2-year and 4-year institutions report greater political efficacy in comparison to current students. A more nuanced understanding of the political priorities and political efficacy of 2-year college students and graduates, 4-year college students and graduates, and transfer students are presented.

Our research analyzes the impact experienced by students in Computer Science introductory courses at a community college and state university that are both Hispanic Serving Institutions in Southern California. The data is derived from the GOALS in Computer Science project (Giving Ownership of Active Learning to Students in Computer Science), which was a grant-funded 3 year-project that redesigned the traditional computer science introductory classroom to be student-centered, build on students’ assets and “community cultural wealth”, and included culturally sustaining and responsive activities/content. While the project met the goal of creating more inclusive and culturally representative CS classrooms for students of color (Clark-Ibáñez et al. forthcoming), further analysis focused on the impacts between men and women, revealing equity gaps based on gender (GOALS Project, Report 6, 2023). Our research focuses on women in the sample by analyzing the impact of the redesign on women of color and white women. In this presentation, we discuss five key areas of women’s experiences in CS redesigned classrooms: efficacy, career interest, active participation, student validation, and cultural relevance between females of color and white females (N=79). The research findings center on the following: (1) Efficacy, (2) Career Interest, (3) Active Participation, (4) Validation, (4) Cultural Relevance. Our research demonstrates that there are still equity gaps based on the intersection of gender and race, however a culturally sustaining redesign approach does show a promising impact on women of color.

Italy's 2022 snap elections resulted in the election of Georgia Meloni - the Italian leader most closely tied to fascism since Mussolini. Meloni and her party, Fratelli d'Italia, rose to prominence in a political climate in which the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean was at the forefront of discussion. By examining the Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook posts made by Meloni and the three additional center-right parliamentary coalition leaders from 2014-2018, I have found thus far that she and Matteo Salvini have utilized social media to cultivate an ethos of right-wing populism in which xenophobia is centered. Silvio Berlusconi's reliance on more traditional forms of media and Maurizio Lupi's less inflammatory discourse have prompted their influence in the coalition to wane. The sociopolitical climate in Italy's Second Republic has ultimately created the proper conditions for such neo-fascist discourse to thrive over truly "center-right" expressions of conservatism. A noteworthy consequence has been the humanitarian neglect of migrants from former Italian colonies, which embodies Achille Mbembe's theory of necropolitics.

There are over 400 gangs and 400,000 gang members in the Los Angeles area. They are divided among neighborhood and racial lines. There are many consequences for young men joining gang membership, which in many cases includes imprisonment and even death. The reasons young men join gangs often outweighs societal norms due to lack of support, systematic inequality and under resourced neighborhoods and schools. In this pilot study the focus is on why young men in low-income areas join gangs, even though they are aware it involves high stakes and violent crime. It concentrates on face-to-face unstructured interviews with former and current gang members from the East Los Angeles area. By studying current and former gang members from this area it emphasizes firsthand knowledge from the population intended. The results will conclude systemic inequality in a neoliberal educational structure has caused a school to prison pipeline that is exacerbated by gender ideals of masculinity, where young men search for solidarity among their fellow gang as well as the urban effect witnessed in low-income areas. The study is important in hopes of reformation and education for future generations of young men from these areas. A limitation of this study is it is not generalizable to gang members outside the Los Angeles area.

While growing scholarship has been crucial in understanding gang policing’s nature and impacts, there is currently limited research focusing on how policing relies upon fragmenting communities and perpetuating divisions within them. Gang policing claims to respond to conflict and rivalries between “gangs,” but how does this policing produce and perpetuate these community divisions? This paper seeks to understand how gang policing tactics perpetuate divisions and fragment communities while simultaneously producing criminality. This study used a qualitative approach, interviewing eight participants in Berkeley, San Diego, and Los Angeles who are perceived by law enforcement as “gang members” but who self-identify instead as Homies. Findings suggest that gang registration, civil gang injunctions, unofficial forms of harassment and intimidation, and other policing tactics cause Homies anxiety, paranoia, and other harmful mental health implications. Due to constant exposure to policing tactics, Homies’ interpersonal and community relationships are negatively affected. Participants in this study explained how they became distant and separated from family members, friends, and the community---creating feelings of alienation. The policing of “gang members” results in the policing of entire communities.

Over the past two decades, online crime solving groups have become a normal public response to the perceived “crime wave” in the United States, partly influenced by “true crime” media. With the growth of forums, such as Websleuths and Reddit, amateurs and professionals join to discuss true crime cases. Individuals enter into these online communities to engage in discussions from theorizing and speculation to rumor sharing and parody. These so-called web sleuths try separate themselves from the “free riders” and “joy seekers” that engage in discussion forums for their own amusement and entertainment. Web sleuths use the internet to search for information about a person or an event, basically acting as a detective while trying to crime "solve." Even though online crime solving groups usually focus on speculation and theory-sharing, occasionally these discussions can lead to answers within cases. This paper focuses on individuals who often begin as anonymous strangers, but find a space of like-minded true crime enthusiasts and advocates who engage in case discussions and develop their learning skills to enhance crime research. This paper examines the online sleuthing phenomenon by focusing on the University of Idaho Murders (Nov 2022) and the Facebook Case Discussion Group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/420574516931538/. As researchers, we examine the means (how) and perspectives (why) used by the Case Discussion Group to determine the likelihood of potential suspects from the initial beginnings of the group (Nov 2022) to the arrest of Bryan Kohlberger, the accused (Jan 2023) and the ongoing criminal legal proceedings.

Mass shootings that occur in a public space are a distinct form of targeted violence. These incidents instill fear and uncertainty in American citizens because of the seemingly randomness of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These attacks happen in spaces where the general public feels comfortable and free, yet these spaces are selected by the perpetrator based on specific, often personal or ideological, reasonings. The study will utilize a convenience sample of 32 mass shooter legacy tokens from 28 perpetrators. These were journals, letters, videos, and blog posts left before a shooter commenced an attack. The legacy tokens were publicly accessible on social media and SchoolShooters.Info,a site with information about school and mass shooters. A thematic codebook was created within NVivo 12 to code the words of the shooters into the themes surrounding their relationship and reasonings for selecting their particular public space for the attack. The qualitative narrative presented with examine how individuals selected and identified with their target location. This information could give insight to explain how perpetrators select, identify, and interact with the location for their attack, while expanding upon how individuals interact within place and space.

This paper analyses the presence and influence of Africa in French hip-hop music over time, giving particular emphasis to recent years where the continent has motivated deeper connections and more meaningful manifestations of one’s heritage culture in songs and video presentations by popular artists. Contemporary rappers in France have been linguistically and stylistically shifting their sounds away from trends present in the United States as they increasingly focus their attention toward the African continent as a way to celebrate the duality of their bicultural identity. This international and transnational musical alteration of their sound toward Africa provides them and their fans much needed comfort against the marginalisation that they face at home in France. Thus, these thematic types of transnational musical shout-outs to the African continent provide rappers and their consumers hailing from ethnocultural communities a means in which to confront the racism and exclusion they face in a country where youths of colour are frequently viewed with suspicion and where issues relating their unique diverse social constructs are routinely ignored or dismissed by the French State.

TikTok has simultaneously become a space for solidarity amongst under-represented groups, such as Black-Asian multiracials also known as “Blasians,” while also being a space where stereotypes and offensive jokes are proliferated. In this study, I analyze 56 videos using content analysis by applying Berger’s typology of 45 techniques of humor to uncover common themes and strategies employed by Blasians and non-Blasians. Three common themes emerged from the data. First, the most common jokes were those made by Blasians who were sharing racist experiences with whites and non-whites. Second, non-Blasians predominantly targeted the physical appearance of Blasians in their jokes. Third, the most common techniques used by both groups were stereotypes and mimicry. The decision of Blasian creators to disclose racist experiences with whites provides additional insight into how they experience racism in the current racial order. Additionally, their recounting of racist encounters with non-whites provides an understudied insight into the relationships between “monoracial” minoritized groups and their multiracial members. Moreover, the fascination and mockery of Blasian and other multiracial phenotypes highlight the persistent salience of corporeal features in a society where racism has been otherwise transforming into covert and subtle colorblind racism.

This study explores the mobilization of individuals of African descent during the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, focusing on their use of social media platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit. The research aims to understand how these users documented their experiences, challenged misinformation, and built global alliances using the hashtag “#AfricansinUkraine”. The study blends digital sociology with big data text analysis and digital ethnography, combining API-generated data with direct platform collection where necessary. The subsequent analysis identifies patterns of collective identity formation, coalition building, and other mobilization aspects, providing valuable insights into how marginalized communities utilize digital spaces during political crises. This methodology enables a comprehensive approach to analyzing large volumes of user-generated content, while also providing the means to manage and analyze digital media files, thereby offering a nuanced understanding of social movement mobilization in the digital age.

This study utilizes data initially collected by evaluators at Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services to create a secondary data analysis to investigate the opioid use and misuse among Black residents of Dane County. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg (2018) defines the term social infrastructure as the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact. This study analyzes conversations of Black women, men, and youth throughout Dane County as they discuss the role of social infrastructure, specifically Third Spaces, as a contributing factor to drug abuse. Using a phenomenological design to analyze eleven focus groups and interview transcripts, this study helps fill the gap in scholarly literature of first-hand accounts from Black residents who have been impacted by the opioid crisis. Interviewees reveal that opioid use in Black communities throughout Dane County is exceptionally complex and involves multiple systems and structures that reach far beyond individuals’ choices and behaviors, which are often alluded to as the root of drug abuse. The first-hand accounts depict the impact of being denied access to spaces and how the absence of social infrastructure has impacted their lives. The results of this study help support arguments for easily accessible social, economic, and political resources in Black communities to reduce opioid abuse.

According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, adult African Americans are 20 percent more likely to report serious psychological distress and more likely to experience feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness compared to their white counterparts. Despite these concerning statistics, there remains a significant stigma surrounding Black males seeking access to mental health services and resources. In an effort to combat this stigma and proactively address mental-emotional health, two Black-led nonprofit organizations have initiated culturally specific group therapy sessions for Black men within barbershops in Sacramento. Sociologists have long recognized Black barbershops as a unique "Third Space" where Black men informally congregate, exchange information, and share resources. Seeking to bridge the gap between Black males and healthcare, medical professionals have utilized the barbershop as a location to address disparities specific to Black males. These often-local public health initiatives have been successful in providing hypertension, cancer, and diabetes screenings specifically for Black males. More recently, studies have explored the feasibility and effectiveness of barbershop interventions focusing primarily on mental health. The implementation of this innovative health model to reduce health disparities within the Black community and enhance the mental-emotional and social well-being of Black males in Sacramento presents a compelling opportunity for further investigation. This exploration aims to shed light on how Black Third Spaces can be leveraged to tackle disparities in Black communities nationwide.

Based on discussions on mental health in K-16+, institutions in the field of education provide simplistic methods, such as counseling centers, extracurricular activities, and a list of mental health hotlines. While these resources are important, they still do not address the institutional or systemic issues (i.e., racism and ableism) that may contribute to the high levels of stress that students, faculty, families, and communities face. In addition, with the pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusivity in education, efforts for multicultural relevancy are encouraged. However, multicultural relevancy remains in foundational concepts and analysis, such as its representation in curriculum, community days, or room decorations. While, “best practices” can be offered from research-informed methodologies, it can also overlook the importance of direct community insight. We provide an innovative, framework with participatory research and community methodologies that address the systemic and multicultural necessities when addressing mental health considerations. We suggest that those most impacted by mental health concerns need to be active participants in recommendations that would be considered “best practice.” Essentially institutional practitioners need to include both community struggles and insight for solutions to improve support. In this way, individuals and institutions are held accountable for their actions that contribute to systemic consequences. This framework encourages impacted community members to take the lead in developing solutions collaboratively with their educational institutions and leaders. To conclude, we created a recommended approach within practice that allows for community-specific mental health support.

In mainstream society, “Okinawans” are considered an ethnic group in Hawaiʻi but not in the continental United States. This presentation explores the various structural factors that have contributed to the maintenance in Hawaiʻi and lack in the continental United States of an ethnic boundary distinction between “Okinawans” and “Japanese.” Based on over 50 interviews with people of Okinawan heritage residing in the continental United States and 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Okinawan communities in the United States, I argue that “Okinawan Americans” are not a group (or category) in the United States and I provide some possible explanations, including Japanese colonialism and the structure of Okinawan community organizations in the US.

In navigating the legal challenges of formal work, undocumented workers often contend with employment that is not commensurate with their qualifications. The effects of this structural barrier, among others, are mostly viewed as negative and exclusionary in the general literature, although more recent studies, specifically among formal and legal workers, have also found positive and integrative outcomes. However, to my knowledge, no studies exist on the perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes of undocumented workers towards their sustained periods of underemployment. To address this gap, this paper draws from a broader study of 41 in-depth interviews of undocumented Filipino workers (New York, Las Vegas, and Bakersfield) to highlight the various ways in which the respondents come to terms with, reshape, or overcome the realities of their underemployment. This paper introduces the concept of virtuing to examine how respondents invoke and enact a range of virtues (or moral practices)—within the frameworks of performative, conformative, reformative, and subversive virtuing—to strategically, dutifully, critically, and resistively navigate the challenges of their marginal employment.

Based on preliminary data analysis from an ongoing SSHRC funded research project , and drawing on the conceptual frameworks of transnational migration and intersectionality, this paper explores the experience of social reproductive work of Chinese immigrant women professionals from Hong Kong and Mainland China to Canada. In particular, the paper examines how these women do their eldercare work, both locally and transnationally, and the strategies they devise to accommodate their eldercare work and other responsibilities (paid work, childcare, housework etc). The paper elucidates how eldercare work is shaped by social, economic, political, and cultural processes in an era of neoliberalism, complicated by the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, class, age, and immigration status; and mediated by individual woman’s agency.

Although immigrant groups to the U.S. are often expected to become socially mobile over time, a group's unique contexts of reception can shape group members' social, economic, and political resources and opportunities and lead to diverse socioeconomic outcomes. Although past research has rightfully challenged the myth of the Asian model minority, some of this research, by emphasizing the disadvantages of more recent groups such as Hmong, Lao and Cambodian former refugees, provides us with only a partial picture of the complex, dynamic and varied social and economic resources, opportunities, and outcomes of these latter groups. Building upon the insights of segmented assimilation theory and theories of political incorporation and using recent data from the 2020 American Community Survey, my paper examines the socioeconomic attainment of Hmong Americans across several U.S. states and counties. Preliminary results suggest that Hmong Americans' annual earnings, home ownership, and educational attainment vary between states and that, within states, they vary among different counties. These findings highlight the significant roles of place and contexts in general in conditioning groups' and individuals' socioeconomic outcomes. I discuss the roles of labor markets, schools, racism and political disincorporation in shaping Hmong Americans' socioeconomic resources, opportunities, and outcomes. This research is important and timely considering the U.S. Census Bureau's recent misclassification of Hmong Americans as "East Asians" in the 2020 American Community Survey.

Gay villages or "gayborhoods," are experiencing profound transformations, marked by gentrification and the closure of gay bars and other LGBTQ+ owned establishments. These closures signal broader cultural shifts and demographic changes within LGBTQ+ communities. Gentrification is affecting the social and cultural fabric of LGBTQ+ communities. Gay bar closures are closely intertwined with the larger gentrification trend in cities. Some scholars studying gay villages have recognized their mobile and relational nature, constantly reconstructed and regrounded through the flow of people, knowledge, and capital. The impact of these changes on LGBTQ+ communities is significant, with implications for their social, economic, and cultural well-being. Actor-Network Theory offers a valuable framework for analysis. This theoretical approach provides a lens to understand the interplay of actors and entities involved in these communities and their transformation. It emphasizes the agency of both human and non-human actors in shaping social phenomena, aligning with the dynamic and multifaceted nature of urban transformation. ANT enables an exploration of the complex relational networks and power dynamics between various actors, including community members, urban developers, policymakers, and cultural forces, interacting and influencing the restructuring of LGBTQ+ spaces. Therefore, through Actor-Network Theory, this study seeks a comprehensive understanding of the closure of LGBTQ+ businesses in gentrifying gay villages, identifying the diverse actors and forces involved in this transformative process. Understanding these changes and their implications is crucial for developing strategies to preserve LGBTQ+ spaces and support LGBTQ+ communities in the face of gentrification and cultural shifts.

In a relatively short span of U.S. history, LGBTQ+ identities and practices across the country went from private and hidden to public and open. Visibility of LGBTQ+ in public spaces generally continues to be uneven and contested. Within the last five years multiple cities around the U.S. have elected to fly Pride flags during Pride Month (typically June), but within the last year many of those same cities are reversing their decisions. The reasons for these reversals are not entirely clear and vary across regions. This paper considers why contested public space discourse sometimes results in cities and municipalities continuing to fly the Pride flag during Pride Month and other cities to ban them outright.

This study expands on existing research on drag performances and the close relationships they co-create among each other within their drag communities. This project explores how drag performers experience Kinship and placemaking while navigating the emotional labor associated with aspects of drag performance. Academic research on wages and emotional labor rarely considers drag performance as a form of labor. Further, family research does not address the emotional labor associated with the nuanced ways that drag performers engage in placemaking and create Kinship through creating or joining a Haus or “House.” I argue that examining queer employment, particularly in contexts like a drag, requires a departure from traditional labor analysis, emphasizing the importance of emotional commitments in work and personal life connections while distinguishing it as "werk" from normative employment termed as "work." Historically, drag and ball culture has provided spaces for queer communities of color to gather and rejoice in safe places. Additionally, those in attendance, hosting or performing in these places often went out of their way to do more than provide a general gathering place; they opened their homes. This research seeks to understand the relationship between drag performers and emotional labor using an intersectional approach to understand the relationship between perceived labor and place-making. This research seeks to answer the following questions: what factors influence drag performers' engagement and experience with emotional labor? How do these factors impact their well-being and professional success within their local drag scenes?

Objectives Pláticas have a long trajectory in the lives of Chicana/Latina feminists and other Women of Color feminist circles that have engaged dialogue and community building as central to organizing and activist efforts. Though pláticas are a familiar cultural practice within Latina/o/x families, our understandings of pláticas are guided by Chicana/Latina feminist frameworks that add a feminist sensibility to how we engage with pláticas both personally but also within our academic work. More specifically, pláticas reflect a form of relationality and reciprocity that is actively discouraged in traditional qualitative research methodologies. Through a discussion of emotions, language, and the relationship between feminista pláticas and testimonio, we illustrate how this methodology can be used to heal from and resist traditional research approaches that are rooted in whiteness, colonial logics, and white supremacy. We build on the contributions made by Chicana/Latina scholars that have written explicitly about the methodology of pláticas in research (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016; Flores & Morales, 2022; Flores Carmona et al., 2021; Gonzalez, 2001; Hamzeh et al., 2020), and the explicit ways in which pláticas asks us to engage in vulnerability, reciprocity, and going beyond typical research approaches of extraction and instead centering our interconnectedness. Theoretical Framework & Methods As four Chicana researchers and scholars, we are each drawn to Chicana/Latina feminisms because of the ways that it speaks to our ontologies, epistemologies, and how we perceive and make sense of the world. Furthermore, as academics, we seek and are drawn to theoretical and methodological approaches in research that allow us to express our whole selves, while at the same time push us to be accountable not to the institutions that we work for, but rather the communities that we seek to build with. In critiquing and combating dominant research paradigms and approaches, we align ourselves with the long herstory of feminists and particularly Women of Color who have disrupted (and continue to disrupt) research that demands the split of our body and spiritual selves from the work that matters to us (Calderón et al., 2012; Lara, 2005). Reflecting on who we are and our positionality is a constant process that requires us to be vulnerable, open, and transparent about what brings us to our research. Indeed, a plática methodology is shaped by the positionality, the power relations, and all the identities a researcher brings to the research process. We are transparent and continue the reciprocity other Chicanas/Latinas have modeled in sharing who we are and our use of pláticas. Findings & Scholarly Significance The findings theorize how Chicana/Latina feminist pláticas are a methodological disruption that forefront our theories in the flesh, requiring vulnerability, bringing in our wholistic selves to the research process, and providing opportunities for healing and resistance. Specifically, we consider how the concept of bodymindspirit (Lara, 2005), a form of theorizing in the flesh, asks us to center our emotions that carry embodied knowledge. We examine how a plática methodology can create a linguistic disruptive space where the hegemony of the English language is challenged. Lastly, we discuss the relationship between pláticas and testimonio as standalone and collaborative methodologies that forefront healing and resistance. Our goal is to provide scholars with a more comprehensive understanding of a feminista plática methodology, as well as underscore areas to be further explored.

Objectives Women of Color (WOC) have a rich history of producing creative writings, in the form of personal letters, to document their movement through social spaces, chronicle their resistance stories, and articulate futuritive visions for tangible social change (Anzaldúa, 1981; Cisneros, 2018; Lorde, 2012; Collins, 2016). In alignment with this community-based healing tradition, this paper uplifts a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis (CRFEP; Escobedo & Camargo Gonzalez, 2022), a writing-based methodological intervention nestled within anti-racist and social justice lineages. Throughout this paper, the author positions a CRFEP as a methodological healing tool that embodies a humanistic praxis sustained by researcher reciprocity, reflexivity, and vulnerability. The author argues, when scholars embed a CRFEP into their research, they honor research collaborators as co-writers and uplift their creative productions in a move to affirm Women of Color ways of knowing and being. Theoretical Framework & Methodology This paper draws theoretical inspiration from Critical Race Theory in Education (CRT) and Chicana/Latina Feminisms (CLF) to inform a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis. A CRFEP is guided by five principles which characterize its application. The contours foreground that a CRFEP: (1) Is theoretically grounded in a Critical Race Feminista tradition; (2) Honors research collaborators as co-writers by uplifting their creative productions in a move to center WOC perspectives; (3) Is a racially microaffirmative (Solorzano & Perez-Huber, 2020) tool that centers a care imperative and offers a textual space for potential healing; (4) Calls on Chicana/Latina women to pen themselves and their everyday life experience into existence for the purposes of historical recovery; and (5) Embodies a humanistic praxis sustained by researcher reciprocity, reflexivity, and vulnerability. Data Sources This paper draws data from two studies that examine the teaching and learning processes that take shape between 19 Chicanas/Latinas who attended higher education institutions in the U.S. Qualitative data presents as 17 individual pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), 11 group pláticas, and 46 epistolary writings. Findings & Scholarly Significance Findings reveal a CRFEP is a racially microaffirmative (Solórzano & Perez Huber, 2020) healing tool that creates space for Chicanas/Latinas to nurture community as they respond to everyday racism, and other interlocking systems of oppression. While they document, through letter writing, their experiences of exclusion and resistance, Chicanas/Latinas engage in an explicit practice of healing and care for the self, and for community. In line with the PSA 2024 call for producing research that fosters mutuality and reciprocity, this paper details how a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis can harness methodological efforts directed at nurturing healing and community collaboration.

Objectives Late 19th-century anthropologists used ethnography to “understand” the culture of people through participant observations (Merriam, 2009). Since then, sociology and education scholars have used ethnography to understand systems impacting the everyday lives of people (e.g., school-prison nexus, for-profit recruiting practices) (Cottom, 2017; Flores, 2016; Rios, 2011). As two Chicanas/Latinas who bring our cultural intuition (Delgado Bernal, 1998) to the work, we recognize ethnography has historically pathologized, objectified, and harmed Communities of Color. Thus, we draw from critical ethnography while recognizing that critical ethnography does not honor our Chicana/Latina feminist sensibilities. For this reason, grounded in our Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE), we offer collective guiding contours of what we name a Chicana/Latina Feminista Critical Ethnographic (CLFCE) methodology. We argue this methodology has the potential to engage in research with community and cultivate ties that bind “researcher” and “participants” through respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. Theoretical Framework & Methods Borrowing from the work of Chicana/Latina feminist scholars, we ground this paper using Chicana/Latina Feminist Theory (CLFT). CLFT centers the experiences of Chicanas/Latinas and seeks to challenge racism, sexism, and other systems of oppression (Delgado & Elenes, 2011). CLFT helps us analyze how Chicana/Latina feminist scholars have embodied and employed critical ethnographic research that disrupts Eurocentric research practices. Drawing on CLFT, we use our CFE (Delgado Bernal, 1998) to challenge traditional western notions of objectivity and call for others to use a CLFCE approach. To conceptualize a CLFCE, we drew from – 1) a 60-minute reflexive plática discussing how our CFE shapes how we employ critical ethnography in our research, and 2) previous scholarship from Chicana/Latina feminist critical ethnographers. We first analyzed our plática using initial coding for themes to emerge organically (Saldaña, 2009). We then applied pattern coding to identify emergent themes. After analyzing our plática, we looked at previous literature to consider similar themes. Emerging themes from our plática and previous literature include reflexivity, care, social justice, relationality, and reciprocity, to name a few. Findings & Scholarly Significance Through our plática and review of the scholarly contributions of Chicana/Latina critical ethnographers, we conceptualize six guiding contours of a CLFCE to include: Draws from Chicana/Latina and Women of Color critical theories and epistemologies. Is in continuous reflexivity of power and positionality for researchers working with Chicane/Latine and Communities of Color to engage in more humanizing research practices and stay accountable to research collaborators. Cares for the humanity of research collaborators by tending to their needs, capacity, and engagement with the “research.” Engages in movidas with research collaborators to survive and navigate the systems of oppression within the rules of research and within our lives. Comadreando to learn from and with research collaborators as co-creators of knowledge. This work is a political act of love and thus social-justice driven. While we list these contours separately, by no means do they occur in isolation. In fact, many of these contours work simultaneously together like a trenza. This paper urges scholars to consider methodologies that challenge research approaches that harm collaborators and further reinforce systems of power and domination. Instead, to use methodologies driven by social justice research that create ties that bind researchers and participants. The authors hope readers take up a CLFCE as an enseñanza and apply it to their future work.

Objectives In 1909, California became the third state to embark on a political eugenic regime that was designed to cage, control, and punish those deemed eugenically “unfit.” This paper contends that these eugenic-based policies were not just a by-product of contemporary scientific thought but were deeply rooted in racial prejudice. Mexican-origin women, in particular, were ensnared by a web of stereotypes that depicted them as intellectually inadequate, morally corrupt, and sexually deviant. These characterizations provided a seemingly scientific veneer to the institutionalized racism, sexism, and xenophobia of the era and has set a foundation of the contemporary institutional (mis)treatment of Chicana/Latina women . The objectives of the paper are to : Transform Historical Insight into Future Wisdom: Show how understanding this specific historical context and guidance from the dead can provide valuable insights for addressing ongoing issues of racial and gender injustice in society. Activate Chicana/Latina Community Action and Awareness: Encourage future research and action in the field of education by revealing the potential of incorporating Chicana/Latina spiritual wisdom and ancestral voices in understanding social phenomena. Theoretical Framework & Methods This paper employs a Chicana feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal, 1998) as a theoretical prism to elucidate the complex intersection of gender, race, and class that defined the lived experiences of Mexican-origin women targeted by the eugenic policies. In stark contrast to state-dominant narratives that decontextualize these women's experiences, this framework enables us to meticulously unpack the layers of systemic oppression they faced. Alongside the state archival material explored, oral histories were facilitated with descendants of victims of eugenic violence. Findings & Scholarly Significance A countermemory (Foucault, 1977) was collaboratively birthed as an effort to contest and reframe the historical narrative pushed forward by state archives. It shifted the process of uncovering and uplifting versions of these women that had been eclipsed by eugenic violence. By integrating familial narratives of those in the after into the larger discourse, an urgent need was activated to decentralize authority, challenge traditional power structures, and remove ghosts encountered in archives from the state’s ownership. Given that institutional archives often carry epistemological underpinnings steeped in white supremacy and colonial violence, this paper uplifts anti-eugenic methodological and theoretical possibilities when engaging with state archives. Part of my quest involves acknowledging the ethical responsibilities entailed in cherishing and elevating the voices of those who have passed, those immortalized in the archives. In this journey, I find my guide in the Spirit, as I counter the institutional limitations placed on the bodies and memories of Mexican-origin women who were victims of brutal eugenic regimes in the American Southwest. I draw from visceral experiences with the archive to reshape knowledge and move us closer to healing the violence and trauma perpetually reproduced at academic archival institutions.

Drawing on survey data from the Pierce County People’s Project, this paper compares multiple cultural indicators from two populations: a random sample of Pierce County residents, on the one hand, and students attending the University of Puget Sound, on the other. Pierce County, with a population around 1 million residents, covers a large area, including Tacoma, Washington, as well as substantial suburban, exurban, and rural areas outside the city. The University of Puget Sound, a national liberal-arts college, is situated in a residential neighborhood inside the city of Tacoma. The views of students will be compared to the random sample of Pierce County residents on issues of race, favorability of leaders and establishment institutions, and trust in media. Differences between the groups will also be considered regarding opinions on the key social problems like climate change, crime, student debt, and homelessness facing American society.

This case study investigates how DUI checkpoints in Escondido, California, reproduce and cultivate Latinx racial and immigrant inequality. The literature informing this study suggests that local and federal politics and mechanisms of control have been used to target and incarcerate those from a Latinx and/or immigrant background in Escondido. As a mechanism of control, DUI checkpoints have been used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Escondido PD to detect, interrogate, and deport undocumented individuals. In this presentation, I plan to discuss the results of my qualitative research and the impacts of DUI checkpoints and other mechanisms of control on Escondido residents.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a social issue that affects all women, irrespective of their race, class, sexual orientation, and other demographic characteristics. However, research suggests that Black women experience IPV at higher rates than other racial groups. Evidence pointing to Black women as mostly victims of abuse establishes IPV as a structural phenomenon rooted in patriarchy, racism, and poverty. Black women who suffer from IPV experience severe physical, sexual, economic, and mental health consequences, leading them to rely on social control institutions for assistance, such as shelter, housing, food stamps, childcare, and medical care. However, social control institutions play a complex role in how they assist and control women’s lives. Using thirty (30) in-depth interviews and five (5) participant observations, the study explores Black women’s experiences with IPV and their interaction with social control institutions such as social welfare, health, child welfare, and criminal justice for help in Arizona. Although justified, the existing IPV research in Arizona has focused vastly on dominant groups, rendering the literature on Black women scant. Meanwhile, the demographic shift in the state after the 2020 census makes it imperative for research to focus on Black women’s unique experiences with IPV and help-seeking. Since social control institutions are racialized, and Black women are oppressed by systems of power that impact their interaction within institutions, I investigate how Black women’s interaction in one social control institution propels or pushes them to interact with another institution through the lens of intersectionality.

There is a growing segment of parents who are interested in intentionally challenging the gender binary through their parenting —children who will have the opportunity to opt-in to gender normativity instead of opting out. This project interrogates the variation in gender-neutral parenting, a strategy without well-defined practices but which confronts dominant gender performances for children beginning at birth. My research asks: How do parents identify with, negotiate, and enact gender-neutral parenting strategies? What practices do parents see as challenging gender stereotypes, and what gender norms do they uphold? For my research, I am conducting in-depth interviews with parents in Orange County, California. Interviews ask what it means to do gender-neutral parenting and why parents are (not) doing it. I explore how parents make decisions about language use, clothing, extracurricular activities, and schooling in relation to gender norms. This research adds to the work on non-binary gender identities, a salient topic in Orange County as many school districts have recently adopted or are considering “parental notification” policies where parents to be notified of gender non-normative behavior in their children. These policies are at the center of my conversations with parents about gender-neutrality. Preliminary findings suggest parents do not claim to be doing "gender-neutral parenting" even if their strategies do challenge the gender binary, in an attempt to distance themselves from more "radical" parenting styles. My research contributes to literature about (un)doing gender throughout the life course, bringing to attention a new cohort of children entering the world outside the gender binary.

Middle-class housing systems in the United States are built around the idealized nuclear family model. Given the 21st century shift in economic opportunities and explosion of diverse family forms, housing systems have not kept pace with the financial and social needs of a diverse population. One group that is often left out of the nuclear family ideal is asexual people (i.e. those who experience little to no sexual attraction to people of any gender). This study asks, what housing arrangements do asexual people have? What are their housing ideals, and what barriers are preventing them from achieving their desired housing arrangements? Using data from a mixed-methods, community-engaged study of asexual intimacies, this study finds that asexual people have a wide range of desires when it comes to housing, though they are often limited by financial means, social expectations, and housing infrastructure. The term “queer commune fantasy” is used to describe the communal housing arrangements to which many asexual people aspire, representing safety and emotional connection outside the bounds of amatornormativity (i.e. the expectation that long-term, monogamous, sexual and romantic relationships are ideal). Asexual housing ideals offer a lens through which researchers and policy-makers can examine the changing nature of families and the needs of queer populations.

One of the most salient markers of adulthood, as denoted by life-course scholars, is the transition to living independently. With the percentage of young adults returning to live with their families after living independently increasing sharply in the past two decades, the meanings of adulthood are potentially shifting in American society. In examining this population of young adults who return to their family home after living independently, I explore what this population looks like descriptively, as well as what factors predict the likelihood of returning to one’s family home. Using data from the Child and Young Adult Sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 1994 to 2020, I conduct a Cox proportional hazards model to predict the timing of the return to one’s family household given demographic predictors such as age/cohort, gender, ethnicity, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, and romantic relationship history. These demographic and social factors have been found to dramatically shape life-course trajectories and the transition to adulthood; however, there has been very little research on how these factors predict the specific outcome of returning to live with one’s family. In a survival analysis, I find significant differences in the timing of returning to one’s family residence between individuals with different demographic and social characteristics. This research attempts to fill a significant gap in the literature in which little attention is paid to this emerging adult population and what constraints they face in their transition to adulthood.

Scholars have examined the role that non-migrant families play in providing transmigrant families with resources to alleviate migration challenges. However, the provision of transnational care also evidences the disruptions that occur as a result of the different cultural and generational forms of mothering. Exploring the disruptions experienced by non-migrant family members generate questions about the impact of migration on origin countries. How do non-migrant grandmothers (mothers of migrant mothers) experience the differential ways in which their migrant daughters mother their children? What are some areas in which the differential cultural and generational change in understandings of motherhood and mothering are experienced? How do grandmothers navigate dislocations in what they consider an appropriate way to mother? This paper provides an overview of the experiences of 14 non-migrant grandmothers from high socioeconomic backgrounds in Colombia. Defined by Nedelcu (2009) as “Zero generation grandmothers,” the women in this study have the resources to foster strong transnational bonds – they travel frequently and for extended periods of time visiting and assisting their daughters in the U.S. while retaining their primary residence in their origin country. I found that the practices of motherhood of migrant mothers disrupt traditional definitions of motherhood in Colombia. This results in grandmothers’ efforts to re-conceptualize gender, motherhood, and class status. Through navigating strategies to cope with novel ideas and practices of motherhood that result from migration and generational change, grandmothers engage in self-reflexivity, grief, and admiration.

Museums are medians in which the realms of academia and non-academia are able to intermix. Traveling through the timeline we call history, experiencing the various cultural artifacts and stories of the past. Lawerence Foana'ota explains that, "...is not a place for dead objects only, but a place where cultural, historic, and natural heritage materials are protected, preserved, and promoted for the people and the nation at large" (Foana'ota 2007, 39-40). Thus, I posit that museums are a key component in showcasing and giving voice of the various cultures and history to the public. It allows the promotions of multitude of cultures by cultivating and showcasing the cultures key elements in a vessel that is easily accessible to all.

Museums are the site of public memory. They are where our collective memories are stored as an inventory of our past. These memories are said to display the human condition and educate the public of history. Throughout its many exhibits, museums often remind the public that “history repeats itself” as if human existence simply unfolds as individuals watch on the sidelines. The focus of this presentation is that museums, rather than a place that houses “factual events,” are sites of contested narratives that are made to seem objective. Through meticulously crafting a narrative of “self-evidence” to events, peoples, and cultural artifacts, museums perpetuate the idea that history simply “is” and “happens.” By imposing a selective forgetfulness on parts of history that hides the dominant narrative, possibilities of resistance become obsolete. Our remembrance, via the museums, becomes an organized categorization of what was hand-picked and altered directly by those who are narrating the story. Indeed, this process isn't simply an erasure of the past, but rather a reconstruction of our memory where our nostalgia and current memories are controlled based on the manufacturing of a history that almost guarantees antipathy towards liberation. This routinely defeats the freedom and justice that could be cultivated, and instead, relegates the revolutionary spirit of remembrance to mere boxed lights. As the stewards of “factual history,” museums participate in what George Orwell in his classic, 1984 notes, “those who control the past, control the present and those who control the present control the future.”

Zygmunt Bauman's notion of liquid modernity provides a helpful framework for understanding creative expression, consumption, and social class as it exists today in America and abroad. Key parts of liquid modernity that will be explained include the separation of power and politics, necessary tension between artists and managers, the existence of redundant skills and labor capacity in contemporary capitalism, and market forces creating a society of individualized consumers. The goal of this presentation is to prompt a discussion about these key parts of liquid modernity as they relate to creative expression, consumption, and social class in 2023. Many possibilities for empirical research exist that could further clarify how these key parts of liquid modernity can be seen in everyday life. Observing the present moment through Bauman's lens can help to maximize both freedom and security in an increasingly precarious economy for individuals.

In this paper we introduce two new concepts for understanding the incorporation of immigrants and their descendants into societies: the symbolic-consequential ethnicity continuum and the ethnic core. Based on qualitative and quantitative evidence from the Mexican American Study Project, we first describe the intergenerational incorporation process of four+ generations of Mexican Americans, regarding language, identity, and politics. The two concepts - the symbolic-consequential ethnicity continuum and the ethnic core are used to conceptualize the heterogeneity of their ethnoracial experiences, from near assimilation (symbolic ethnicity) to the lasting ethnicity of many of them (consequential ethnicity) well into the fourth generation. Contrary to the assimilation model that predicts only symbolic ethnicity by the third and fourth generation, we show how a series of forces creates, reinforces, and perpetuates ethnicity into later generations. These forces include racialization, ethnoracial organizations, classification practices, proximity to Mexico, and immigrant replenishment. We collectively refer to the these structural and institutional forces as the ethnic core, which pulls against the assimilative forces of the American mainstream. We compare Mexican American experiences to those of European Americans and discuss the potential of these concepts to inform the integration of other ethnoracial groups within and beyond the United States.

As scholars show for many other racial and ethnic groups, Filipinx-American ethnicity predicts educational attainment. For this group, attainment over time has shifted significantly over time, as shaped by overlapping racial, class, and nativity status hierarchies. Because individuals may hold positions of relative privilege or domination in multiple hierarchies simultaneously, racial status alone may not accurately predict individual educational attainment. Further, groups’ perceived level of education over time may affect their racial status—educational attainment, itself, has shaped the racial position of other Asian groups over time, symbolic capital (Zhou and Lee 2015). In order to analyze the impact of race, I analyze the impact of Filipinx ethnicity, net of other social positions. To better discern how status positions in multiple hierarchies interact, I use changes in migration policy to ask how nativity and racialization pattern Filipinx educational attainment before and after the 1965 Hart Celler Act. My hypotheses about attainment will be based on prior theory in intersectionality, racial ideologies, and social capital. Borrowing from basic intersectionality theory, I plan to examine how attainment may be predicted by multiple hierarchies. I then discuss how perceived assimilability may accrue as symbolic capital, constituting a controlling image / racial ideology that, when discordant with individual experience, harms attainment. I ask how local and state education policies may nest within national immigration policy regimes to create distinct moments of racialization and racialized harm to Filipinx students. Specifically, I examine shifts in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s centering on the Hart-Celler Immigration Act.

What are the limitations of powerful, newly-linked federal administrative microdata for our understanding of ethnic and racial self-identification and change? I explore these limitations, using a case study of linked data that connects the 2010 Decennial Census microdata to the 2010-2020 American Community Surveys and the complete set of Social Security Administration records (the Numident) to test patterns of ethnoracial identification change across the 2010s. After documenting substantial ethnoracial stability in some categories, we find considerable change for other categories, with meaningful differences by immigration status, socioeconomic status, and geography. I discuss whether ethnoracial category changes are likely the result of changes in how ethnoracial data are collected, other limitations of the data, or the result of patterns in respondents' environmental factors. I suggest directions for future research, and cautions for new researchers working with linked data.

80 in-depth, video interviews were conducted across 3 years for a window into the grief and bereavement process. This project, "Beyond Grief: Snapshots of Life After Loss," also included taking portraits of participants and their mementos that were meaningful in their lost relationship. Through photos, videos, and text, this research combined qualitative and quantitative data to dig deeper into this deeply human experience of grief. This presentation will cover a specific subset of the male-identifying participants to take a closer look at the intersection of race and gender in the grief process. We explore the trends observed amongst this subset of our project, the current climate of societal norms regarding grief, and opportunities to expand the conversation.

In this talk I explore the post-phenomenological responses to, and developments of, Gestaltist insights in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Harold Garfinkel. I begin by providing a summary of Wittgenstein’s engagements, both explicit and implicit, with Gestalt psychology in his Philosophical Investigations and in the two volumes of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. I complement this with some more speculative considerations regarding the influence Gestaltism had on Wittgenstein in the early 1930s, as he moved away from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and began to develop what would later be seen as his later philosophy. I conclude my discussion of Wittgenstein by making a case for conceiving of Wittgensteinian language games as linguistic and praxeological Gestalts. I then move to Garfinkel. I begin by showing the extent to which Garfinkel inherits Gestaltist insights via the extensive work on Gestalt theory by his friend and mentor, the constitutive phenomenologist, Aron Gurwitsch. I show how this Gurwitschean-Gestaltist heritage can serve as a key to understanding to core features of Garfinkel’s work. Moreover, I argue that, like Wittgenstein, Garfinkel provides and immanentist reading of Gestalt phenomena and develops his own version of praxeological Gestalts, as “ethnomethodology’s fundamental resource”. I conclude by bringing these two strands together and offering some proposals about how we might, in light of these observations, now consider the intersections of Wittgenstein’s and Garfinkel’s work and how we might take that forward practically in our research.

By the end of 2020, 26.4 million refugees were forced to leave their homes. An all-time record for refugees across the globe, this number continues to rise as these migrants confront arguably the most violent of circumstances that force them to flee. Grappling with relocation, refugees must simultaneously navigate various factors that may stifle their opportunities to integrate. As millions have drawn public eye to this international crisis, past literature has failed to assess these issues across various populations or from bottom-up perspectives. Although thousands of miles apart, Latin America and Southwest Asia North Africa (SWANA) share historically embedded political and social unrest that has altered their positions of current internal strife. Given the regions’ historical and contemporary conditions, this study will comparatively analyze two disparate war refugee populations of Latin America and SWANA: Salvadorans and Afghans. How does societal racialization impact their ability to integrate into southern California? What commonalities of racialization and its outcomes can be understood through a comparative Critical Refugee framework? Employing flexible coding analyses, 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 Salvadorans and 13 Afghan respondents in southern California. Amongst both refugee populations, there exists a perceived racialized binary of negative and positive racializations. External attributions imposed on Salvadoran and Afghan refugees are highly attributed to the “negative” violent histories of their homelands while also being “positively” attributed to their resilience. With refugees at the center of knowledge production, this study cross-regionally ties diverse lived experiences as cites of juxtaposed societal racializations and foreign militarization.

Asian Americans have been portrayed as the model minority with success across various domains of life (Shih et al., 2019). By contrast, as stated in Asian Critical Theory (Museus & Iftikar, 2013), Asian Americans have experienced a long history of racism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing anti-Asian hate incidents have led to Asian Americans’ maladjustments (e.g., psychological problems; Stop AAPI Hate, 2022). Yet, it has been underexplored regarding what racism-related themes have been reported in news media amid the pandemic. Examining the themes can enhance our understanding of how Asian Americans’ COVID-related experiences are inconsistent with the model minority images. To this goal, we conducted qualitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2018) to identify racism-related themes that contrast with the model minority images by analyzing 240 online news articles published in March 2021. We focused on this period because our preliminary analysis suggested that most articles regarding anti-Asian racism amid the pandemic were published in this month. We identified 13 themes: (1) physical, verbal, and online harassment; (2) anti-Asian attacks, crimes, and domestic terrorism; (3) racial bigotry/prejudice; (4) racial injustice and oppression; (5) discrimination; (6) systematic racism; (7) microaggression; (8) invisibility; (9) vulnerability; (10) perpetual foreigner; (11) economic insecurity; and (12 & 13) psychological and educational problems. Findings from this study will inform social policy actions for promoting Asian Americans’ well-being.

With the upcoming 2024 General Election, political parties are racing to claim victory across all levels of government. Most political parties have leaned into prioritizing the votes of marginalized populations– more specifically, racial minorities. Most of the contemporary literature on the political participation of racial minorities heavily favors BIPOC Democrats, but little has been mentioned of BIPOC Republicans. This small population remains an area of politics that has been neglected given their lack of visibility. Yet, this is the specific group that republican organizations are actively targeting. In my current research project, I plan to use a mixed methods approach to discover the political issues that have been prioritized by Black and Latinx Republicans. I also hope to analyze how the political attitudes of Black and Latinx Republicans have changed over the last 8 years, especially considering the impact that Donald Trump, COVID-19, and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement have had on the modern political landscape. With this project, I hope to better understand the factors that influence Black and Latinx people to fall to the right of the political spectrum. Following my research, I hope to have laid the groundwork for future research on Black and Latinx Republican ideology.

This is qualitative research into the impact of COVID Quarantine on the local independent musician community in Southern California. Using semi structured interviews, YouTube searches and field observations, this study aims to bring into academia the stories of perseverance of the local musicians and the current state of the local music community itself. How the COVID lockdown has impacted the venues they play, the consumers that frequent shows, and chase for collective effervescence at live events in the Southern California local music scene. This study focuses on the importance of the role of the experienced local independent musician within the community itself, and how newly formed bands rely on them to navigate the obstacles and gatekeeping ever present in any local music community. This particular level of music is severely understudied, if at all, yet it makes up the biggest number of musicians and content released in the overall grand scheme of the realm of music in society. This group just had the proverbial rug pulled from underneath them with a complete lockdown. Why does this matter? Because the local independent music community serves as the life blood for music in society. This level of music is the well that popular music culture draws from. That the masses consume. The question is, how did the independent local music community endure the lockdown and how has it been impacted in the post quarantine era?

A period of struggle in Oakland, California – referred to as the Oscar Grant ‘moment’ – started just before officer Johannes Mehserle fatally and extrajudicially shot Oscar Grant, a young Black father, on New Year’s Day, 2009. A variety of traditions and communities of struggle condensed upon this moment in Oakland, forming a “constellation of struggle”. Yet, corporate media and academia criminalized this constellation of struggle, and obscured its accomplishments. Methodologically, this project uses popular cultural production to make an empirical contribution –an archive, however partial, of who formed this constellation. This presentation, in particular, examines the cultural production of Greg Morozumi, the Eastside Arts Alliance, and Dignidad Rebelde to trace the legacy of Asian-American activism, Third World international solidarity, and the "anti-guild of autonomous Xicanx art" in contributing to the Oscar Grant moment in Oakland, CA circa January of 2009.

While more research is needed about the gender, sexuality, race, and class reckonings currently happening in dance music culture, this paper offers some tools for making sense of these reckonings. First, I outline the ongoing importance of authenticity to digital media broadly and dance music specifically. Next, I connect digital media with dance music scholarship, calling for work that interrogates how digital media is impacting dance music and vice versa. Returning to authenticity, I outline Dubrofsky’s (2022) authenticating whiteness—a theoretical framework that shows how authenticity is often used as a strategy of whiteness. In the analysis, I apply this theoretical framework to a few moments in dance music culture, examining how whiteness and masculinity often operate and, relatedly, how industry workers, clubs, and fans alike are resisting and reshaping problematic cultural trends attached to whiteness, authenticity, and masculinity. I end with a summary of my findings, calling for future work that continues to interrogate whiteness and (toxic) masculinity, a project that aims to directly address unrelenting inequities in dance music spaces.

The present study uses data from the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA 2004, N=649) to examine how Mexican Origin immigrants leverage their education to achieve economic mobility and analyze the intergenerational differences across three generational cohorts. The findings from this project demonstrate how the intersection of gender and immigration status influence the mobility of Mexican people in Los Angeles. Compared to men, Women are associated with higher education and occupational prestige outcomes.

Sailing is a sport that has historically been marked by upper social class participation and masculine domination. Since the 19th century, sailor men from privileged social classes have been over-represented in this water sport, occupying the most powerful and legitimate positions. Our study of French and Californian coastal secondary schools has previously revealed the reproduction of this type of gendered hierarchy during light sailing on catamaran and dinghy boats. In this paper, we highlight the ways in which sailing coaches and teachers influence the constitution of school sport gendered relationships and identities. We specifically focus upon the ways in which these coaches and teachers enact pedagogies and professional belief systems that either reinforce or challenge the gender inequities that structure both Californian and French sailing programs. We also differentiate between the international policy structures that intend to support gender inclusion within these respective sailing contexts, with implications for coaching approaches and everyday gendered practice.

The rise of nonstandard employment reflects structural shifts in employment relationships in which explicit and implicit contracts between employers and employees have changed, with risks increasingly transferred from employers to employees and thus employment systems becoming more precarious. In spite of the growing share of labor force in nonstandard work arrangements, our understanding of the consequences of nonstandard work for individuals and their families is still very limited. In particular, we have very little understanding of the impact that nonstandard work arrangements have on individual and family outcomes across cohorts. I aim to fill this gap by using the data from birth cohorts in two National Longitudinal Surveys (NLSY79 and NLSY97) and examine cohort changes associated with nonstandard employment and the transition to first marriage. The analytical sample will consist of the NLSY79 data from 1979 to 1997 (ages 32-40 in 1997) and the NLSY97 data from 1997 to 2019 (ages 34-40 in 2019) so that respondents in both cohorts are of comparable age. I plan to use discrete-time hazard models considering that this method allows me to examine how the outcome of interest (e.g., entry into marriage) varies in relation to their employment arrangement while also taking age (baseline hazard) into account. During the data analyses, I will pay particular attention to cohort changes in subgroup differentials (e.g., gender, urban/rural) in the relationship between nonstandard employment and first marriage so as to evaluate the extent to which the consequences of employment precarity are unequally concentrated among vulnerable populations.

To what extent have women avoided job quality decline by increasing their education? Recent declines in job quality have left millions of workers without benefits that are critical for the wellbeing of individuals and families. During the same time, a growing proportion of men and women – but especially women – have enrolled in college. Kalleberg’s work reveals that, while employer-provided medical insurance and pensions became more stratified by education (and wages), the proportion of college educated employees with these benefits also declined. These findings suggest that a college education does not protect employees from job quality decline. However, we do not know how other measures of job quality such as parental leave or paid time off have changed over time. In this article, I expand upon previous research by examining how seven employer-provided benefits and a standard schedule have changed over time by gender using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. Additionally, I combine these measures into a novel index that captures the multi-dimensionality of job quality to reveal how job quality has changed at the intersection of education and wages. I find that job quality declined across all measures regardless of educational attainment or wages and that declines in parental leave, flexibility, and standard schedules varied significantly by gender. Moreover, for women, job quality became more stratified by wages than education. Due to these across-the-board declines and lingering gender wage inequalities across all education groups, women’s increased educational attainment was unable to stabilize women’s job quality.

Video games, a popular medium for dystopian science fiction, offer a unique lens through which to explore diverse themes. In post-apocalyptic video games, one area of interest prompts us to question whose end-of-the-world scenarios we, as consumers, are exposed to and how these narratives reflect our collective anxieties about the future. When engaging with dystopian science fiction, particularly in the context of mainstream media, issues of race and ethnicity are addressed in a variety of ways. Their inclusion in speculative apocalyptic narratives in recent years has garnered more attention. This study is an exploratory analysis that delves into a critical examination of the assumptions embedded in video game narratives, particularly focusing on whether they cater to a broader spectrum of potential futures or predominantly perpetuate white narrative futures. To achieve this, a content analysis is being employed to dissect the post-apocalyptic world presented in the video game, "The Last of Us." The primary objective of this research is to identify and categorize the prevalent themes within the game's narrative along a continuum ranging from narratives that predominantly reflect white futures to those that incorporate perspectives from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. The definitive results of this analysis are pending, and seeks to contribute insights into the portrayal of race and ethnicity in dystopian science fiction within the context of popular video games.

In the last few years, TikTok has become one of the main sources of news, culture, and information, especially for younger people. Simultaneously, we have seen the rise of “foodie” culture, in which food’s role in tradition, culture, and capital have become more salient within society. This growth is further spurred by the use of social media as a platform to share food, from recipes to restaurants to traditions. However, scholars in these fields have not yet adequately addressed how social media, like TikTok, renegotiates the boundaries that exist between high-status and low-status food while still maintaining an exclusionary ideology of taste. This paper contributes to the growing literature on foodie discourse by providing an analysis of food content creators on TikTok. My research will reflect on how social media influencers are able to navigate complex algorithms to gain social, cultural, and economic capital for themselves. I demonstrate that social media, like TikTok, provides a place for people to increase their cultural capital, demonstrate their culinary capital, and reconstruct the boundaries of the status of foods. Despite much excellent work on the shifting of culinary capital, I seek to explore how social media has the ability to challenge established hierarchies of cultural capital, specifically food, while still reproducing distinct boundaries of who is allowed to obtain high-status. My research will seek to answer these questions: 1)How are TikTok creators using authenticity to construct and frame their videos?; 2)How do people with different levels of status and prestige perform their legitimacy?

Recent research has found that 87% of commercial video games of the past are no longer available on the current market (Lewin 2023). Being able to access a medium’s past is a crucial part of preserving its cultural history and providing information about how the current market and culture of the medium came to be. Yet it's arguable whether video games have ever truly been accessible to all audiences. Video game and social scholars have discussed the myriad ways in which platforms and games of the past weren’t made available to certain audiences due to geographical and cultural barriers. This lack of access has been doubly true for players with disabilities, who up until recent waves of gaming have largely been ignored in commercial games. While no solution can remedy this historic lack of access, this research seeks to evaluate the accessibility potential of video game emulation as a route to make games of the past playable in the modern community. I apply a twofold definition of gaming accessibility to survey options: a) to make games of the past attainable and playable to audiences of all backgrounds in current contexts, and b) to add in options to games of the past to make them playable to audiences with disabilities or impairments. In analyzing current accessibility projects in video game emulation via a framework established by game scholars Brown and Anderson (2021), this research posits that game emulation is an underutilized and overlooked tool for making games of the past accessible.

Fat liberation movements seeking to dismantle systematic discrimination against fat bodies have been active in the U.S for over 50 years. Body positivity specifically has gained immense traction in the last decade. Recently, body positivity has been used more widely to, supposedly, individually challenge general ideologies that value thinness and fitness. Utilizing 200 images from Instagram and 200 videos from TikTok, we examine the ways that social media frames body positivity and is an important vector for sending messages regarding ideal bodies. We find that body positivity discourse on social media is fragmented. While messages of "self-love" abound, those who are afforded self-love are those who still maintain somewhat hegemonic body standards. Additionally, we find that body positivity is also often linked to bodily changes rooted in weight loss and healthism, appropriating the original meaning of #bodypositivity.

Drawing from in-depth interviews with an ethnically diverse sample of Black, Indigenous, and people of color living in Portland, Oregon, this article draws upon the concept of racial gaslighting, which Davis and Ernst (2019) describe as the political, social, economic, and cultural process that pathologizes those who resist or question the racial status quo. Racial gaslighting may create cycles of self-blame among racialized people who question their own perceptions of reality, even in purportedly progressive contexts. While the term gaslighting has historically been used to describe abusive interpersonal relationship dynamics, racial gaslighting is applicable to the emotional and mental health impacts of structural racism on racialized people. This research addresses how the historical, political, and demographic landscape of places may contribute to racial gaslighting. In particular, this study demonstrates how seemingly progressive contexts fuel the conditions for racial gaslighting.

Research on government-sponsored housing subsidies through the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining has uncovered its long-term adverse impact on communities of color. Considerable attention has also focused on the relationship between this redlining and the racialization of Blacks. This research explores the relationship between redlining and Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. This is the first study to examine the racialization of a “foreign-born” group through the HOLC. This study expands on racial formation theory by demonstrating that racialization through federal policies like the HOLC occurs unevenly, largely dependent on local nuances. The HOLC residential security Graded ‘D’ appraisal documents were analyzed to determine Mexican racialization (n=90). Mexican racialization through the HOLC was broken down into four levels which increasingly describe Mexican residents in hostile ways. Results of this study revealed that racialization occurs at more local levels, often left out of larger conversations of dominant racial formation theories. Mexicans were racialized more detrimentally in some regions, states, and cities than in others.

This project considers how adolescent Nepali girls discuss gender-based violence (GBV) as a social fact in contemporary urban, Nepal. The Gender Inequality Index in Nepal was 0.452 in 2019, a rank of 110 out of 162 included nations, which speaks to the ongoing salience of research on GBV in Nepal. Data was gathered from seventy interviews that were conducted with girls between the ages of thirteen to seventeen attending middle/high school in Kathmandu and Pokhara, Nepal between 2018-2023. During the interviews, participants were asked about their awareness of gender-based violence and abuse, such as public sexual harassment and rape. Several themes emerged from the transcripts, which were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. One emergent theme was “victim blaming” scripts, sometimes referred to as rape myths. Taking these scripts as a starting point, the data was cross-referenced with the Illinois Rape Myths Acceptance (IRMA) scale to see how young women’s narratives aligned – or diverged – with IRMA scale items. Initial findings suggest that the participants both subscribe to culturally hegemonic norms of a “good” pious, chaste daughter, and also recognize GBV as part of structural discrimination and systematic oppression of girls and women. Their narratives convey a cognitive dissonance when thinking about how women who are survivors of GBV, should be conceptualized and treated. While they do agree that women have fundamental rights that need to be recognized, internalized narratives of being a “good Nepali girl” are powerful, and rape myths are deployed as a distancing technique and to codify a culturally resonant hierarchy of victimhood.

Varying explanations exist for why undergraduate students may or may not report instances of campus-based sexual assault, though researchers often focus on individual-level experiences, other factors exist and should be explored. Title IX mandates that campuses remain ‘neutral’ and do not ‘encourage’ or ‘discourage’ student reporting, however, it is important to assess the larger role campus messaging may actually play in student reporting. The current project consists of a content analysis of 50 flagship university’s website materials. We gathered the available resources for victims and survivors who may be seeking information about reporting. Keyword searches of ‘report sexual assault’ were run for every campus, and the results of these searches were gathered, coded, and analyzed for major themes. Preliminary results indicate major differences in the availability of information, the type of reporting options and resources provided, the mention of SAFE/Rape Kits, as well as the persuasive or dissuasive language used in the messaging. Implications for Title IX are discussed.

In part spurred by the #metoo movement, discussions of consent and sexual harm have proliferated on college campuses across the US. Students increasingly call upon institutions and communities to provide accountability and action in response to sexual assault and harassment. Although sexual assault impacts a wide variety of campus groups, sorority and fraternity life (SFL) must routinely manage crises related to sexual harm. As organizations largely segregated by gender, sororities and fraternities struggle to address sexual harm in a cohesive and unified fashion. Interviews with 47 SFL students at UC Davis illuminate gendered patterns in the ways that students relate to sexual harm, as well as the strategies they employ to combat it. Whereas women often identify as survivors or potential victims of sexual harm, men are reluctant to identify with sexual harm at all—either as survivors or perpetrators. Rather, men frequently identify as allies, bystanders, and interrupters in the fight against sexual harm. This framing generally prompts sororities to utilize “personal risk management” strategies to avoid harm, while fraternities engage in “institutional risk management” strategies to eject “bad apples.” Such binary framing limits the capacity of these communities to address sexual assault and confront a broader spectrum of harm.

While existing research on sexual harassment in public spaces predominantly focuses on men as perpetrators, there remains a gap in understanding how men perceive and interpret instances of sexual harassment against women. This study employs a qualitative approach, conducting 48 individual interviews and 10 group interviews with men from Kathmandu, Nepal to analyze their perceptions, taking into account social class, occupational status, and age. The research also explores the extent to which men acknowledge their role in such occurrences and their beliefs regarding the impact on women. The findings reveal a prevalent engagement in “verbal teasing” by the majority of participants, particularly targeting women of similar or younger age groups. Interestingly, this form of teasing is commonly perceived as “just words”, rather than harassment. Participants often expressed the belief that women generally anticipate such behavior and do not categorize it as harassment. Additionally, many men viewed their teasing actions as natural and inherent male traits, rather than premeditated intentions. The study notes that such harassment is considered a source of momentary enjoyment, often encouraged by peer influence to assert masculinity. The study further explores the use of various references, objects, and metaphors employed by men to verbally harass unfamiliar women in public spaces. Paradoxically, despite engaging in such behavior, many men attributed the responsibility for the harassment to women. The findings are discussed within the framework of hegemonic masculinity, victim blaming, and gender stereotyping, shedding light on the complex dynamics surrounding men's perceptions of sexual harassment in public spaces.

This research in progress addresses the overlooked issue of unaccompanied students' (defined as those lacking kin networks and at risk or currently experiencing homelessness) access to financial aid in higher education. This research explores the role of financial aid officers in evaluating "unaccompanied" status applications within the FAFSA, examining the metrics, frequency, and guidelines employed in the current pre-FAFSA simplification era. It investigates the influence of personal discretion, concerns regarding financial aid fraud, and challenges posed by the new FAFSA simplification changes set to take affect this year. Through in-depth interviews with directors of financial aid departments, this study seeks to provide essential insights into the obstacles unaccompanied students encounter when accessing financial aid, as well as the challenges faced by financial aid professionals in the administration of aid.

In this project, we examine the relationship between how students pay for college and their academic outcomes, using a unique dataset examining multi-year, longitudinal student financial data at one American 4-year college. Recognizing that few students are able to finance a college education from one source, we use anonymized student financial aid to sort students into combinations of different amounts of grants, loans, and self-pay categories using developmental trajectory analysis. Then, we will multi-categorical logistic regression to examine the different trajectories these categories of students exhibit as they move through the university, such as time to degree, courses they withdraw from, and number of courses they receive substandard grades, which we categorize as D, F, W, or I. This allows us to see if and how young adults who use various financial aid packages experience compounding inequalities whereby financing their education makes them more likely to drop out or withdraw when they experience adverse academic outcomes. No existing research uses institutional-level student loan data and our findings have the potential to influence institutional understanding of the relationship between how students finance their educations and their pathways through higher education.

University students that have previously attended community colleges frequently report feeling stigmatized at their new institution. Though most research has focused on transfer students and their perceptions of stigma, less is known about potential sources of these stigma, such as their fellow students. To examine the bias university students may have towards former community college students enrolled at their school, we conducted a randomized audit study. Students at a large public university were asked to holistically evaluate randomly assigned student profiles with different educational backgrounds. This experimental design addresses common concerns with under-reporting of socially unacceptable forms of bias and exclusion. Though data collection is ongoing, preliminary analysis suggests that community college transfers were evaluated lower than both traditional students and four-year lateral transfers in terms of their academic achievements. Interestingly, there were no differences between holistic rankings of students who had previously attended community college and students who either matriculated directly in a four-year university or transferred from a comparable four-year institution.

This study explores the complex impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals across various employment statuses and demographics. Through a 34-question Likert scale close-ended questions and open-ended questions survey taken by around 100 community college students in Sociology classes. The questions on the survey are surrounding ethnicity, age, gender, relationships, mental health, job stability, and household size. We plan to investigate how the pandemic influenced personal experiences and employment trajectories. Key findings will include a look into mental health issues becoming more prevalent and job loss and job replacements as well as looking into emotional well-being and shifts in social dynamics during the pandemic.

The 2008 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B) follows a nationally representative sample of bachelor's degree recipients over the course of 10 years. This research uses data from the 2018 follow-up to assess the characteristics associated with the perceived financial worthiness of attaining an undergraduate education. Along with the student's undergraduate education experiences and demographics, this research explores the impact of current job and satisfaction with benefits, compensation, and security as predictors of degree worthiness. The type of institution, student loan borrowing and field of study are additional independent variables used to predict whether the bachelor's degree attained was worth the cost.

Identifying one's own ethnicity may seem easy to determine; however, for a multiethnic person, it can be challenging and complex. Bhiku Parekh describes identity and the challenges it poses through the lens of politics. He notes, "Identity invovles choice in the sense that we deliberate and decide whether to define ourselves as and seek to become this or this kind of person" (2008, 11). Moreover, there has been research on the assertion of one's ethnic identity/ies, but have been lacking in the area of Pacific Islanders. As such, Hawai'i is a good model to examine ethnic identity, primarily multiethnic, because of the diverse population that began in the mid-19th century due to intermarriages between kanaka maoli and foreigners. Therefore, by sharing my personal interlude alongside scholarly work, I hope to invite those with similar experiences to be part of the ongoing discussion on multiethnic identity.

Previous research proposes different perspectives for racial/ethnic intermarriage between a member of a U.S. minority group and a white spouse. To explain intermarriage among different groups, the ethnic replenishment perspective focuses on relative group size and the continued replenishment of group members in an area, the marriage market perspective focuses on the accumulation and exchange of structural and cultural resources, and the assimilationist perspective focuses on immigration dynamics and crossing group boundaries. These perspectives all have different mechanisms for predicting intermarriage and research has found that different racial/ethnic groups show associations with different perspectives. However, past studies have either not accounted for the small geographic units that comprise people’s marriage markets in the United States or have not been able to compare these competing perspectives together in a complete model. I propose a study that would investigate the associations between intermarriage to a white spouse for Black, Asian, and Hispanic people in the United States. This would rectify the limitations of past research by using 2010-2020 American Community Survey data from International Public-Use Microdata Sets (IPUMS). This data comes with an area-level identifier suited to represent individual’s marriage markets and create area-level demographic information about their markets. Furthermore, because the data has information on area-level identifiers at different points in time, I can look at the effect of these areas on intermarriage rates overall and over time (i.e., mixed effects). The data also has several measures available to operationalize competing perspective’s mechanisms for intermarriage at the macro- and micro-level.

A robust body of research in the US has attempted to unpack racial patterns that emerge when measuring immigration attitudes. Yet relatively little is known about immigration attitudes among an emerging population in the US – Multiracial individuals. Scholars note that the boom in the US multiracial population can be attributed to changes borne of the racial/ethnic diversity among contemporary immigrant populations, giving many Multiracial individuals a rather proximate relationship with immigrants and immigration. To add to our knowledge in unpacking racial patterns in immigration attitudes in the US, we ask – how do the immigration attitudes of Multiracial persons in the US compare to those of other racial groups? We use data from an original study called the Race – Ascription, Assertion, and Contextual Experiences Study (n= 1,853) that includes viable samples across the five largest racial/panethnic groups in the US – White, Latinx, Black, Asian, and Multiracial. We find a fairly consistent pattern in which Multiracial individuals’ attitudes about immigrants and immigration policies are significantly more friendly than those of White Americans. Surprisingly, we also observe instances in which non-Whites’ attitudes display more animus toward immigrants and immigration policies. Thus, the racial patterns seen in attitudes about immigrants and immigration become more complex when considering the perspectives of Multiracial persons in the US. Our knowledge about the formation of immigration attitudes and race is incomplete until we further understand the perspectives of those who challenge and reshape US conceptions of race and how it patterns perspectives on the social world.

This research paper seeks to examine and analyze the connection between veteran's identity and the receipt of gratitude through the symbolic interactionist framework. I argue that diversity of experiences within the military due to the veteran's self-identified gender, racial and/or ethnic composition, and sexual orientation has led to variation in receptiveness regarding the receipt of gratitude. There are currently few studies analyzing the divergence of perspectives veterans express when receiving, "Thank you for your service." My application of symbolic interactionism as a theoretical framework demonstrates a ritualistic aspect of gratitude expressed by civilians. Further, the theory of self is utilized to analyze whether the veteran's identity contributes to the variation of receipt of gratitude amongst veterans. I theorize that men and women of color have unique military experiences, implicating that their encounter with, "Thank you for your service" will be received differently when compared to their white counterparts. We must recognize that veteran experiences during and after the service differ significantly when doing cross population comparisons. The gap in academic research fails to examine how a veteran’s identity and previous experiences lead to subjectiveness in response to the receipt of gratitude. Utilizing the symbolic interactionist framework, I seek to describe the individual perception of gratitude and how it varies depending on the veteran’s identity and experience within the military.

With the political climate of the United States today, it is important for sociologists to advance the study on LGBTQ+ youth and the risk factors to their mental health. Some of the risk factors of LGBTQ+ youth mental health include social media, family/religious trauma, peer stigmatization, etc and they vary significantly across race and social class boundaries. My objective is to study the risk factors of LGBTQ+ mental health in current literature to create more exhaustive and intersectional research. The methodology of my research is literature reviews and data analysis on previous studies in this field, to gain a foundation to grow and expand from. The findings of this literature review are that most of the previous literature on LGBTQ+ youth mental health is very limited focusing on only one risk factor and lacking the concept of intersectionality. With my intensive research on the issues that plague LGBTQ+ youth mental health, my goal is to create literature that provides a deeper analysis of risk factors and that uses a lens of intersectionality to see how mental health of LGBTQ+ youth coincide with their race and socioeconomic status.

As the title would suggest, the way social media has changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, also influenced new people to join new social groups. My research on this involves qualitative interviews, as well as participants' social media use, and their identity within the LGBTQ+ community before and after 2020. When we discuss topics surrounding gender norms, roles, and identities, the most commonly cited work is Doing Gender by West and Zimmerman. Granted, West and Zimmerman (1978) may have broken through barriers in sex and gender issues during their time, however that article was written in a time prior to the Internet and the influence of social media. Since the inception of Doing Gender and the vast expanse of the World Wide Web, our knowledge regarding gender and sexuality has changed, the second and third waves of feminism have come and gone, and the new technology age has brought with it a tsunami of information that billions of people have access to from their pockets. Not only are thoughts, feelings and acceptability rates of genders and sexualities bound to change, but so are identities. Now that I identify as genderqueer, I do have some connection as to why I am here wanting to satiate my hunger for knowledge about my own community, and the influence social media has on the inception of new social groups.

The vast majority of sociological research on LGBTQ persons who are religious examines how they negotiate religious affiliations that are not accepting of LGBTQ identities. Across religious groups, these studies concur that LGBTQ people usually undergo a process of identity negotiation between these two identities: they either abandon one the identities in favor of the other (reject religion and accept LGBTQ identity or reject LGBTQ identity and accept religious identity) or they come to hold these identities in tension with one another. Those who do remain religious while identifying as LGBTQ practice their faith most frequently in LGBTQ friendly congregations. In the case of American Roman Catholicism, the local parish and/or Dignity chapter have been spaces of inclusion and welcome. Less understood is how religious socialization continues to impact LGBTQ persons whether they remain religious or reject their faith. This interview study of 31 former Catholic men who identify as gay asks to what degree and when religious discourses are salient or remain internalized. Specifically, two findings emerge: firstly, many participants report internalized Catholic shame playing an impact on them either explicitly or implicitly even though they are no longer Catholic. Secondly, the research shows there is a continuum of association with and to the Catholic Church from hatred to accepting one will always to some degree remain a Catholic. While this study focuses on American Catholicism, the project may have applicability to groups outside of Catholicism who internalize disciplinary discourses into their sense of identity.

Purpose: This scoping review was conducted to determine recruitment and engagement strategies to promote the inclusion of LGBTQ+ older adults in Alzheimer’s disease and/or related dementia (ADRD) research. Methods: Six databases were utilized to find the sources for this scoping review: Ageline, Embase, LGBTQ Source Plus, Mavscholar, PubMed, and ResearchGate. From the initial search, we identified 63 sources. Based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, only nine primary, empirical studies adequately described their recruitment and engagement strategies. Results: After reviewing the articles, the identified recruitment strategies consisted of the following, online advertising; social network marketing; direct mailings; newspaper advertisements; community outreach and events; engaging with AIDS service organizations; promotion at local health fairs; outreach via spiritual/religious groups; opportunistic and snowball sampling methods; email; word of mouth; flyers (specifically from aging and/or LGBTQ+ organizations); outreach by healthcare providers; LGBTQ+ organizations; aging organization (Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers and Alzheimer’s Association); and advertisements in the Alzheimer’s Magazines. Conclusion: We highlight the need for more research on recruitment and engagement strategies to ensure inclusion of LGBTQ+ communities in ADRD research. Future research should also focus on diverse participants including racial/ethnic minorities, transgender populations, diverse social and economic backgrounds, rural settings, and diverse religious backgrounds. Consideration of best practices and effectiveness of recruitment strategies in reaching diverse populations in ADRD research are greatly needed.

The current generation of transgender and gender-diverse older adults stands distinct as witnesses to and actors within the dramatic social and political gender-based changes since the 1970s and as the first generation to, albeit with struggles, live their later lives “out” as trans. While sociological research on the identities and experiences of transgender and gender-diverse people has been increasing, this work has focused on younger adults. Similarly, gerontology studies of these older adults have been growing, but these studies often combine transgender, lesbian, and gay older adults into one category, or analyze all transgender adults together. Using interpretive materialism, a life course perspective, and eight unstructured interviews, in this paper in progress, we explore the material and embodied identity work of transgender and gender-diverse older adults (50+). Interviews were collected for TransRural Lives, a digital storytelling project documenting and celebrating the lives of transgender older adults living in or with strong ties to rural areas in the Pacific Northwest. The stories reveal how transgender and gender-diverse older adults’ dynamic identities emerge, and are reproduced and negotiated, throughout their lives, in co-production with others, in interaction, and how these interactions are organized by systems of power and discourse.

Indonesia has attained full enrollment for primary education and near full enrollment for lower and upper middle school by 2016. However, by 2021 tertiary education enrollment remained at 31.19%. With rising tertiary education enrollment on average, and particularly amongst females, within the last decade the question is how they translate into returns to education in a context where more than half of the country’s workers employed in the generally low-paying informal sector. Various studies have documented how university degrees increase one’s returns to education. Such a relationship between income inequality and returns to education has led to speculation among policymakers and scholars that increasing educational attainment, particularly among those in poverty and women, could help equalize economic opportunity or even outcomes. However, selection and social stratification theories have raised doubts about whether education, especially higher education, actually leads to these desired outcomes. We use the 2007 and 2014 Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) household data to estimate different returns to education for individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds and gender using marginal treatment effect models to take into account unobserved heterogeneity. We found that individuals from households of lower socioeconomic background had significantly lower returns to college education when compared to their counterparts from more well-off households. We also found no significant difference in returns to tertiary education when it comes to gender. However, female faces a greater barrier to obtaining a higher education degree compared to men.

The current study builds upon and extends research on the glass cliff by analyzing the antecedents and repercussions of CEO dismissal. Specifically, we examine whether negative firm performance places women CEOs at greater risk of involuntary dismissal relative to men CEOs. We further explore whether gender moderates market response to the dismissal and replacement announcements. Our analysis relies on data of all CEOs from the Russell 3000 who departed their organizations between 2016 and 2022. We find that women CEOs are more vulnerable than men to involuntary dismissal during periods of performance decline and that investors reward firms who replace dismissed women CEOs with white men. Our findings have implications for gender equity in the C-Suite.

How do gig workers perceive and make sense of their role in the broader economy? I define gig workers as “individuals who are classified as self employed, freelancers, or independent contractors” (Zipperer et al. 2022). In this paper, I will be focusing on rideshare and delivery drivers, such as those who are independent contractors for Uber, Lyft, and Doordash among other app-based platforms. The rise of the gig economy has transformed the landscape of labor markets, with millions of workers now participating in non-traditional, short-term work arrangements. The literature suggests there are benefits to the freelancers and independent contractors in the gig economy, such as lower barriers to entry compared to traditional work, more control over when, where, and how a person may work, greater earning potential, and a quick startup process. Drawbacks to such work include algorithmic control such as dependence on ratings, income variability, lack of benefits, and absence of job security. By conducting semi-structured interviews, I am looking to find if the gig workers conceptualize gig work in the same way as the literature. I expect to understand better the negotiations that rideshare and delivery drivers make in order to successfully participate in the economy.

This paper explores how graduate students in a Masters of Public Affairs (MPA) program draw symbolic and moral boundaries against Masters of Business Administration students (MBA). Both types of students, through their education, learn how to combine professional and managerial principles. Yet few studies explore how ‘would be’ managerial professionals learn to position themselves in relationship to other managerial professionals and what they use to do so. Drawing from recent theoretical developments in the study of the professions, boundary theory, and pragmatic sociology, we ask: How do MPA students conceptualize themselves in the system of hybrid professions? What symbolic and moral boundaries do MPA students create against MBA students and programs? To answer these questions we draw from a two year ethnographic project of a MPA program, alongside 168 interviews with students. We find that despite the structural similarities in training MPA students drew strong symbolic boundaries against MBA students. The boundaries related to differing motivations, peer cultures, types of people attracted to the programs, and professionalism. In doing so the MPA students exerted moral capital, knowing they most likely would not be able to compete with MBA students in terms of economic and career outcomes, along with the familiarity of the general public with the MBA degree. By aligning themselves with service to the public, they positioned themselves as morally superior to MBA students. We discuss the implications and consequences of asserting moral capital rather than other forms of capital in boundary drawing between professions.

In May 1996, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced the passage of a law that would prohibit Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits and Medicare and Medicaid coverage for individuals who were disabled from drug addiction and/or alcoholism (1996). Starting on January 1st, 1997, individuals who previously received social security benefits solely on disability from drug addiction and/or alcoholism no longer were eligible to receive the mentioned benefits. However, this did not mean that addiction was no longer a disability according to scientific criteria. This just meant that addiction was no longer an eligible disability for Social Security benefits according to the U.S. Department of Health. There is an incongruence between the two though the categorization of addiction has remained the same. To analyze this incongruence, a content analysis of U.S. census data including disability status reports and acts and disability policies alongside other disciplinary sources is necessary.

In this institutional ethnography, multiple methods are used to explore California’s process of establishing limited conservatorships, which are legal proceedings that limit or terminate civil rights of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). This research uses observations of 93 conservatorship hearings, 16 interviews with people involved in the conservatorship process, and an analysis of multiple documents related to these legal proceedings. These data are used to answer two questions: 1) what is the process of establishing a limited conservatorship in California; and 2) how is this process experienced by those involved? Findings break down a complex process and contribute to an empirical understanding of how the combination of knowledge, policy, and institutional ideology shape the lives and freedoms of people with IDD. For example, of the 93 hearings observed, all 93 petitions for limited conservatorships were granted. This study reflects that the process is not individualized, and that people with IDD continue to be viewed as incompetent and unworthy of the civil rights many American adults take for granted. By mapping out the complex process, this research highlights areas for potential change and provides recommendations to make the process more person-centered. One that prioritizes disability rights over institutional goals.

Changes in climate contribute to higher disaster risk for all. However, some suffer from disasters disproportionately– one of those groups being people with disabilities (PWD). Prior research shows that the acquiring preparedness information, confidence in preparedness abilities, and preparedness behaviors differ for those with and without disabilities. However, little research exists on the relationship between all three variables and their interactions with disability. We conduct multivariate regression analysis on the nationally representative 2021 FEMA National Household Survey. We examine information, preparedness, and confidence as dependent variables, with disability as an independent variable. Descriptively, we find that those with disabilities report higher levels of preparedness but lower levels of confidence. In multivariate models, however, we find that disability has a significant, negative effect on all three outcomes (information, confidence level, and preparedness stage). When controlling for information, however, disability does not have a significant effect on respondents’ reported level of preparedness. We discuss the implications of these nuanced results for institutions in supporting equal levels of preparedness for natural disasters among people with disabilities.

Air quality is one of the top environmental concerns for Utahns today. Yet, little is known about the ways that environmental risks impact people with disabilities (PLwD) because they are often excluded from clinical and social science research. The goal of this study was to gain a more robust understanding of the perceptions of PLwD on health risks associated with air pollution in Utah State. A statewide survey called the Utah People and Environment Poll (UPEP) was conducted from January to June 2023 to collect data. A random sample of 3,750 households across 25 counties in Utah State were selected and 441 individuals in each household completed the poll. Our results showed that 19% of respondents have one or more disability types. Additionally, PLwD were more concerned about being impacted by air pollution with respect to health issues than their non-disabled counterparts. Further, only 14% of PLwD were extremely confident that they can avoid outdoors and limit driving when air quality is poor. We recommend that the Utah Government and policymakers increase public awareness about the higher risks faced by PLwD offer community-based services, and establish emergency plans for their safety during air quality crises.

This paper examines how the everyday and organizational uses of space shape Latine racialization in the Intermountain West. It observes how community and business organizations structure the racialized inclusion-exclusion of Latines in public spaces and workplaces. Mutually, it considers how Latines respond to such racialized uses of space affecting their (dis)involvement in community life and workplace governance. We contextualize in Utah’s Cache Valley as a maturing immigrant destination (MID) homogenously White prior to Latines’ 1990s settlement. As the embodiment of demographic change—hence, ‘Nuevo Intermountain West’—Latine families sustain racialized status as hyper-exploitable agro-industrial workers. Methodologically, this study employs ethnography situated within a broader paradigm of social justice-oriented, community-based participatory research. Accordingly, we theoretically build on the spatialization of critical migration studies. This humanizes the disciplinary connection between critical migration studies and the racialization of space in sociology. I do so by centering Latines’ racialized experiences navigating community and work in such MID. Relatedly, interviewing organizational actors personifies what policies, mechanisms, and sentiments structure racialized space. Latine interviews reveal how racialized exploitation in the workplace corresponds with fear navigating a white-dominated public realm under a deportability regime. These narrative components illustrate racialized space dynamics in demographically shifting communities dependent on Latines employed in food manufacturing.

This research project aims to understand how Latinxs in Nevada experience home, community, and belonging. Although Latinxs represent a significant population in Nevada, they still need to be studied in the social sciences. By looking at a specific Nevada city, I explore Latinx interpretations and feelings of "home" and understand their sense of belonging and community in their city. The main research question is: Do Latinxs feel at "home?" in the city? If they feel at "home," what features do they attribute that feeling to? If they do not feel at home, where is "home?" This qualitative intersectional project focuses on race, gender, and generation/immigration, utilizing in-depth interviews and participant observations. I am exploring how the concept of home relates to Latinx acceptance in the city, Nevada, and US society. Studying "home" draws researchers to understand meaning-making processes that influence what "home" means to individuals and then how/why they attach their meaning of "home" to certain places. The concept of "home" is a taken-for-granted concept, which, when broken or absent, reveals who does and does not belong, especially those at the margins. This research will address the gaps in understanding the Latinx experience in Nevada, considering the state's historical and contemporary significance as a destination for Latinx individuals and families.

Wealth is significant as it leads to social mobility, power, and capital. Scholars have noted wealth is not just income but assets such as property, investment products, and common goods. Mexican Americans have encountered obstacles to acquiring wealth due to racism and discrimination and have less wealth than their white counterparts. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Mexican American adults, this study asks: What are the challenges Mexican-Americans encounter in acquiring wealth? Despite these challenges, how do Mexican Americans build their financial literacy and obtain wealth? How does class status contribute to Mexican Americans’ experience in building Wealth? This research will demonstrate the navigational strategies Mexican Americans utilize to generate wealth. Moreover, it will deepen our understanding of Mexican Americans’ social mobility and striving toward further economic power and freedom.

Space and place-making scholarship within marginalized communities has been increasingly visible. With the increase of anti-immigrant sentiments and dialogue questioning the belonging of children of immigrants, the need for research is ever so crucial. With feelings of "neither here nor there" and "insider and outsider", children of immigrants' identity can uniquely impact the manner in which they navigate space and experience belonging. How does the identity of children of immigrants impact place-making in their social life? How do they experience belonging in the margins of two identities and cultures? My study utilizes a series of interviews with second-generation children of immigrants from across the nation. I shine a light on their experiences of place-making and belonging, demonstrating their complex internal conflicts, the intricacies of place-making in various environments such as work and school, and how they are motivated to create spaces for their community.

Students often ask professors “What can I do?” in response to distressing information about problems such as climate change. The majority (61%) of Americans who are concerned about the environment experience the emotion of helplessness (Leiserowitz et al. 2014). As a remedy to this issue, it is tempting to emphasize the power of students to change their lifestyles in ways that will lessen their ecological impacts. While this kind of optimistic reply may mitigate the feeling of powerlessness, it does not shed light on the political-economic conditions that produce this feeling in the first place: a lack of control over the systemic processes that caused climate change. The problem of powerlessness in the classroom can instead be approached as an opportunity for further fostering students’ sociological imaginations. Encouraging students to examine the social causes of powerlessness opens space for discussing more collective and effective measures and policies for addressing climate change.

This presentation discusses a service-learning assignment that can be used in Environmental Sociology and other undergraduate classes to help students learn about climate change and the environmental movement organizations working to address this environmental problem. Students are placed into small groups, choose an environmental problem that interests them such as climate change, and work together as an environmental movement group to address the problem. Students research the environmental problem, select environmental movement organization tactics to address the problem, and commit to several hours of advocacy related to these tactics. Students prepare a class presentation and paper that reflects upon their experience as an environmental group, which includes their responses to prompts asking them about the challenges their group faced, their successes, and what they learned about environmental movement organizations from their experience. End of the semester evaluations indicate that students gain a much deeper understanding of climate change and environmental movement organizations through this service-learning assignment.

Climate change has already brought significant changes to the environment in the Midwest. However, many people in the region are in denial of climate change, and any attempt to convince them of facts is met with resistance. I teach a course on climate change from a sociological perspective, and it is structured into four modules: what is climate change; sociology of climate change; climate change and society; and the future of our planet. The course includes several activities to help students gain expansive knowledge on the topic. For example, in the first week of the course each student conducts a survey of college students to understand young people’s views on climate change. Additionally, students conduct interviews with five individuals who are 65 years or older to understand the changes in the environment over time. Other activities include an analysis of media reporting of climate change, a final project on a midwestern city looking at the impacts of climate change and solutions to address them, and discussion of the required book. The key strategy of the course is to teach climate change as a structural topic and connect students’ perspective to the culture, socialization, and education in the US. Additionally, it is critical to personalize the topic to student’s background and local environment. This approach enables students to connect local climate issues and personal perceptions to the global climate change movement.

Cardi B's feminism is radical and controversial, just like her meteoric rise from successful stripper to reality TV star, to rap superstar. The married mother of two meets with presidential candidates to discuss social and political issues and never shies away from being her honest and full self across all spaces. As an Afro-Latina from the Bronx, Cardi B represents one of the more marginalized groups in America -- Black women from the trap. By using the standpoint theory of trap feminism, this book compels the reader to see hood Black women through a broadened lens -- to stop judging the actions, words, and life choices of ratchet Black women through the narrowed lens of white-centric sociology and to start acknowledging the immense value of knowledge produced by women in and adjacent to the trap. This is not a biography of Cardi B. The Sociology of Cardi B is a scholarly yet engaging analysis of the complexities inherent in truly inclusive feminism. The authors conduct a passionate, intellectually grounded exploration of Black feminism, motherhood, politics, hip-hop, and more to support and also center the experiences of marginalized Black women on every page of the book. For students, scholars, and everyday readers, this book is a work of liberation, a necessary conversation for every one of us, and a much needed portrayal of the multidimensionality of Black womanhood.

People that are part of vulnerable populations are increasingly impacted by extreme weather effects. Marginalized groups such as the poor, low socioeconomic status, and migrants to the U.S., amongst others experience health problems that get heightened during natural disaster exposure. Areas such as mental, emotional, and bodily stress (Benevolenza, DeRinge. 2018). With climate change on the rise, natural disasters are becoming a common occurrence, with the effects being named a crucial determinant of public health (Sarah E. DeYoung, et al. 2019). Some studies display a positive relationship between individual flood risk perceptions and mitigation behavior (Bubeck P.,W. J. W. Botzen, J. C. J. H. Aerts. 2012.), implying not enough preparation is being taught. Current assessments on exposure and vulnerability have mostly focused on people with a narrow definition of assets at risk [and] often the definition of future exposure is determined by projections of population and GDP(Boselli, De Cian. 2013), meaning we already have templates to estimate future damage. Focusing specifically on the Coastal Zones of the United States this paper addresses the urgency for studying well-being and preparedness (Sarah E. DeYoung, et al. 2019) between Marginalized groups for Natural Disasters, and the effects, lack thereof. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the steps needed to be made for the citizens of low socioeconomic status along the country's coastal cities. RQ1: How are Natural Disasters affecting the United States Coast? RQ2:How Can Marginalized Communities Respond, as Citizens, in the Most Effective Way to Protect Assets?

Abstract: Despite their known negative health impacts, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of chemicals used, among many uses, in the manufacturing of firefighting personal protective equipment (PPE) for their water and oil resistant properties (Peaslee et al. 2020). This thesis aims at contributing to the understanding of why the firefighting industry, which focuses heavily on the protection of firefighters, may fail to protect them from this risk. Using a combination of interviews and content analysis, I will attempt to answer the question, how do the chemical and PPE manufacturing industries market the use of PFAS in PPE and does this marketing influence the thinking and actions of firefighting PPE decision makers? This research will combine theoretical frameworks drawn from agnotology, environmental health, and industrial sociology, to add a unique perspective to the existing body of research that examines firefighting PPE as a possible exposure pathway for PFAS. I will seek to uncover the role of constructed ignorance within the PPE production process that will lead to a better understanding of why firefighters may experience extreme health risks from the gear designed to save their lives. Introduction: Despite their known negative health impacts, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of chemicals used, among many uses, in the manufacturing of firefighting personal protective equipment (PPE) for their water and oil resistant properties (Peaslee et al. 2020). This thesis aims at contributing to the understanding of why the firefighting industry, who focuses heavily on the protection of firefighters, may fail to protect them from this risk. This understanding adds to the fields of occupational sociology and environmental health by looking at under-studied PFAS exposure pathways and health risks associated with work in this field. It also adds to the existing industrial sociology and agnotology that looks at how industry has influences over decision makers, often creating ignorance surrounding health risks. Using a combination of interviews and content analysis, I will attempt to answer the question, how do the chemical and PPE manufacturing industries market the use of PFAS in PPE and does this marketing influence the thinking and actions of firefighting PPE decision makers? Theory & Lit Review: I will apply agnotology to examine the construction of ignorance that may influence knowledge associated with PFAS in PPE. While agnotology literature discusses multiple forms of ignorance, I will focus on ignorance as “a strategic ploy, or active construct” (8) that treats ignorance “as something that is made, maintained, and manipulated by means of certain arts and sciences” (Proctor 2008). This aligns with what Richter, Cordner, and Brown (2018) describe as unseen science, or “research that is conducted but never shared outside of institutional boundaries” (705). Within the chemical manufacturing industry, research that shows health risks associated with a certain chemical is rarely made public. One common way that this happens is through federal regulations that protect confidential business information (CBI) that can be used to limit public knowledge on certain risks (Richter, Cordner, and Brown 2018). This is a clear example of industrial production of ignorance. It is through this framework that views ignorance as something that is constructed that I will attempt to understand the dynamics of ignorance within the chemical manufacturing, PPE manufacturing, and firefighting industries. There is an extensive body of research that has focused on industrial influences on the regulation of chemicals (Cousins et al. 2016; Henry et al. 2021). Most of these influences come in the form of weakening regulation to align with the economic interests of the chemical industry. Henry et al. (2021) points out that in addition to hiding scientific knowledge that would be counterproductive to the sale of chemicals, industry asserts a lack of regulation of chemicals in regulatory spaces. Henry et al. (2021) notes that, “‘Safe until proven guilty’ often appears to be the principle governing chemical compound markets” (913), a principle that opposes what others in the field label as the ‘precautionary principle’ (Cousins et al. 2016). This precautionary approach has been advised in relation to the contamination of PFAS in groundwater and notes that a lack of scientific knowledge should be used as motivation for increased regulation, precaution, and scientific studies rather than a reason to continue potentially harmful actions (Cousins et al. 2016). I will examine the role of ignorance as either a catalyst for precaution or a tool for expediting economic agendas within the PPE production and selling processes. Lastly, there has been research on firefighter health (Daniels et al. 2015; Peasley et al. 2020) and the idea of health risks being positioned at the intersection of occupational and environmental health (Mayer 2009). While research commonly finds disproportionately high rates of cancer among firefighters compared to the general public, Daniels et al. (2015) focuses on exposure to fires as a possible cause of negative health outcomes and Peasley et al. (2020) focuses on chemicals found in firefighter PPE as being possibly hazardous to firefighter health. Due to the multiple environmental and occupational related exposure pathways, it is clear that the health risks associated with the structural firefighting occupation can be viewed at the intersection of environmental and occupational health. Blue-green alliances refer to activism often related to health issues that combine occupational health and environmental health movements (Mayer 2009). Mayer (2009) writes that “externalities such as environmental pollution and occupational health hazards disproportionately affect those at the lower end of the socioeconomic structure, the working class, which would theoretically create alliances between environmentalists and organizations like unions that tend to represent working class individuals” (4). Although Mayer’s (2009) is not speaking specifically about firefighting, structural firefighters would certainly fit into the working class population that is being described here. Mayer (2009) also writes that “those economic and political actors with interests in the production and sale of hazardous substances who are threatened by collaboration between the two movements work diligently to prevent relationships between the labor and environmentalist movements from developing” (4). In my analysis of industrial framing of health risks I will pay attention to the ways that industry may attempt to place occupational health and environmental health interests against each other to limit collaboration between the two groups. Methods: In order to answer my research question, I will use a combination of interviews and content analysis. The interviews draw from existing, transcribed interviews conducted by the PFAS Project Lab with a variety of important stakeholders including scientists, people associated with the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), people associated with the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA), an owner of a PPE company, and others that have experience within the PPE or firefighting industries. I will also conduct a few interviews of my own to gain insight on perspectives not represented in the existing data. I will use non-random sampling methods to conduct interviews with representatives from PFAS manufacturers, PPE and textile manufacturers, and individuals who make decisions about the use of certain PPE for their local fire departments. In addition to these interviews, I will conduct content analysis of websites, advertisements, catalogs, memos, and official statements released by PFAS chemical manufacturers and PPE manufacturers to look at discussions of PFAS. The sources of this data will be collected using thorough internet searches with the aim of being exhaustive of all prominent North American based PPE manufacturers and the textile and chemical companies that they partner with. The combination of these methods will provide a thorough analysis of the production and reception of information provided by the PFAS and PPE manufacturing industries related to PFAS in PPE. References: Cousins, Ian T., Robin Vestergren, Zhanyun Wang, Martin Scheringer, and Michael S. McLachlan. 2016. “The Precautionary Principle and Chemicals Management: The Example of Perfluoroalkyl Acids in Groundwater.” Environment International 94:331–40. Daniels, Robert, Stephen Bertke, Matthew Dahm, James Yiin, Travis Kubale, Thomas Hales, Dalsu Baris, Shelia Zahm, James Beaumont, Kathleen Waters, and Lynne Pinkerton. 2015. “Exposure–response relationships for select cancer and non-cancer health outcomes in a cohort of US firefighters from San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia (1950–2009).” Occupational and Environmental Medicine 72(10):699-706. Henry, Emmanuel, Valentin Thomas, Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-Olivier Déplaude, and Nathalie Jas. 2021. “Introduction: Beyond the Production of Ignorance: The Pervasiveness of Industry Influence through the Tools of Chemical Regulation.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 46(5):911–24. Mayer, Brian. 2009. Blue-green coalitions fighting for safe workplace and healthy communities. Ithaca: ILR Press. Peaslee, Graham, John Wilkinson, Sean McGuinness, Meghanne Tighe, Nicholas Caterisano, Seryeong Lee, Alec Gonzales, Matthew Roddy, Simon Mills, and Krystle Mitchell. 2020. “Another Pathway for Firefighter Exposure to Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances: Firefighter Textiles.” Environmental Science & Technology Letters 7(8):594-599. Proctor, Robert N. 2008. “Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study).” Pp. 1-33 in Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, edited by R. N. Proctor and L. Schiebinger. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Richter, Lauren, Alissa Cordner, Phil Brown. 2018. “Non-stick science: Sixty years of research and (in)action on fluorinated compounds.” Social studies of science 48(5):691-714.

Research Question: How does environmentally aware consumption (specifically regarding toy purchases) become part of intensive mothering practices? This paper asks how environmental concerns, specifically environmental hazards and environmental degradation, are taken into account in mother’s consumption, specifically toy purchases. From this question, I look at the subsequent meaning-making behind these consumer choices and ask how mothers incorporate intensive mothering ideology into their consumption choices. My research connects research between intensive mothering ideology (Hays 1996) and environmental consumption and specifically focusing on children’s toys. This is important because little substantial research has been conducted on parental toy consumption choices and the intersections between environmentally aware consumption and intensive mothering ideology. “Environmentally aware” consumption includes the perception of environmental hazards in the content of the toys and chemical composition, which has been researched from an environmental health perspective, and the choice of materials of consumption, plastic or wood, and amount of consumption. Looking at parents' consumption choices is sociologically important because children are particularly susceptible to environmental contaminants, however, they do not have the same agency or knowledge to protect themselves and instead rely on parents' choices in the absence of sufficient regulation of consumer products. It is also important to look at mother’s perceptions of their role in the context of environmental degradation to understand where society locates and places the burden of environmental individualistic practices to protect the planet and structural practices. It is important to look at women’s role and the gender disparity of labor. Theory: Mothering in the United States is guided by a moral framework that tells mothers how to be a “good” mother and care for children. Hays coined the term intensive mothering ideology and defines it as, “... a gendered model that advises mothers to expend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money in raising their children” (1996:x). Hays finds the extensive dedication and standards for mothers to be peculiar considering that women now work more outside of the home (1996). The question becomes, why is it part of our culture that women need to devote themselves to bringing up their children? Another interesting contradiction that Hays notes is that the standard for mothers to unselfishly devote themselves to their children seems to work against societies' general more self-interested culture including in business a more individualistic capitalist world. Essentially, intensive mothering is full of contradictions that naturalize women spending additional time and resources on their children. Central to the idea of intensive mothering is the idea that children are innocent and priceless, and that a mother’s attention should be focused on children’s needs guided by the expert (Hays 1996). Hays writes: In practical terms, this means that the conscientious mother not only should spend a great deal of time educating herself, as to the latest knowledge on childhood development but also should invest even more time (and money) on a daily basis attempting to appropriately apply that knowledge to her child (1996:60). As a possible component of intensive mothering, environmental consumption would require additional time spent by mothers to learn about safe and sustainable products. This means that in addition to mothers already needing to be conscientious about how they raise their kids, they also would need to be conscientious to surround their children with sustainable and safe products. This increases already intensive gendered labor. When thinking about consumption patterns concerning specifically toys, Pugh (2009) argues that the toy purchases made by parents are not simple, but rather complicated by many factors including parental history, cultural pressure to be a good parent, and class (Pugh 2009). Pugh identifies class as having an important role in the toys that parents buy their children (2009). Pugh points to a phenomenon that she names symbolic deprivation class in which upper class parents symbolically deprive their children of toys (2009). Applying the concepts of environmental consumption to children’s toys and the precautionary principle, researchers find generally that children’s toys contain chemicals including that “plastic toy materials may pose a non-negligible health risk to children” (Nicolo et al. 2021 ) even finding toxic metals in plastic play foods (Kaleem et al. 2022). Methods: In January 2023, I will be collecting qualitative data using semi-structured approximately 30 minute interviews to better understand parent’s toy purchases. Interviews will allow me to understand their perceptions and conceptions of the environment, environmental consumption and sustainability, environmental hazards, and what they choose to buy for their children. Along with semi-structured questions, I will obtain approximate household income, occupation, race, and education on a survey form. My sample will be made up of mothers of children between the ages of 5-9. I chose to interview parents between the ages of 5-9 similar to Pugh’s book Longing and Belonging because of the potential for children to influence parental choices. To acquire participants, I plan on talking to mothers of kids at the YMCA after school programs. I will be transcribing and coding my data using NVivo. References AbiGhannam, Niveen, and Lucy Atkinson. 2016. “Good Green Mothers Consuming Their Way through Pregnancy: Roles of Environmental Identities and Information Seeking in Coping with the Transition.” Consumption Markets & Culture 19(5):451–74. doi: 10.1080/10253866.2015.1121142. Ahmid, Kaleem, Aaron Specht, Larissa Morikawa, Diana Ceballos, and Sara Wylie. 2022. “Lead and Other Toxic Metals in Plastic Play Foods: Results from Testing Citizen Science, Lead Detection Tools in Childcare Settings.” Journal of Environmental Management 321:115904. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.115904. Atkinson, Lucy. 2014. “Green Moms: The Social Construction of a Green Mothering Identity via Environmental Advertising Appeals.” Consumption Markets & Culture 17(6):553–72. doi: 10.1080/10253866.2013.879817. Aurisano, Nicolò, Lei Huang, Llorenç Milà i Canals, Olivier Jolliet, and Peter Fantke. 2021. “Chemicals of Concern in Plastic Toys.” Environment International 146:106194. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2020.106194. Carey, Lindsey, Deirdre Shaw, and Edward Shiu. 2008. “The Impact of Ethical Concerns on Family Consumer Decision-Making.” International Journal of Consumer Studies 32(5):553–60. doi: 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2008.00687.x. Jen Webb, Tony Schirato, and Geoff Danaher. 2002. Understanding Bourdieu. London: SAGE. Jeremy F. Lane. 2000. Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press. Kennedy, Emily Huddart, and Carly Hamdon. 2023. “Do People Who Drive Trucks Care About the Environment?” Contexts 22(3):18–23. doi: 10.1177/15365042231192496. Laidley, Thomas. 2013. “Climate, Class and Culture: Political Issues as Cultural Signifiers in the US.” The Sociological Review 61(1):153–71. doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.12008. Mackendrick, Norah. 2014. “More Work For Mother: Chemical Body Burdens as a Maternal Responsibility.” Gender and Society 28(5):705–28. Mackendrick, Norah. 2018. Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics. Oakland, California: University of California Press. Pugh, Allison. 2009. Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. Berkeley, United States: University of California Press. Randles, Jennifer. 2021. “‘Willing to Do Anything for My Kids’: Inventive Mothering, Diapers, and the Inequalities of Care Work.” American Sociological Review 86(1):35–59. doi: 10.1177/0003122420977480. Sharon Hays. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Yale University Press.

Research Question: Are Evangelicals less likely than non-Evangelicals to think the effects of climate change will be bad for the United States or the world as a whole? Contributions: People of every other American religious affiliation are more concerned about climate change than Evangelicals (Jones, Cox, and Navarro-Rivera 2014:15). Several studies have found that, compared to other religious groups, Evangelicals are less likely to see climate change as a serious problem (Tyson et al. 2023; Alper 2022; Sullivan 2022; Jones et al. 2020; 2019; Veldman et al. 2020). Evangelicals are also uniquely skeptical as to whether climate change is happening to begin with (Jones et al. 2019; Mills, Rabe, and Borick 2015; Jones, Cox, and Navarro-Rivera 2014), more so than both the religiously unaffiliated and every other religious group in the U.S. (Veldman et al. 2020; Ecklund et al. 2017; Smith and Leiserowitz 2013). This may contribute to Evangelicals’ low concern about climate change; after all, why worry about something that may not be real? Additionally, Evangelicals may think the consequences of climate change will not be bad because they will not cause people harm. There is conflicting evidence for this idea (Leiserowitz et al. 2015; Jones, Cox, and Navarro-Rivera 2014). On one hand, Evangelicals are the American Christians least likely to agree that climate change will cause people harm (Leiserowitz et al. 2015:17). On the other hand, some Evangelicals contest climate change skepticism and want to mitigate the effects of climate change (Lowe et al. 2022; Wilkinson 2010). Over half of American Evangelicals (53 percent) think climate change will cause at least moderate harm to the natural environment and to future generations. 47 percent think climate change will harm the world’s poor (Leiserowitz et al. 2015:17). Theory and Methods: I hypothesize Evangelicals will be less likely than non-Evangelicals to describe the effects of climate change as bad for the U.S. and for the world. I will investigate this hypothesis using data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS targets people living in noninstitutional housing in the U.S. who can participate in an interview in either English or Spanish and are 18 years old and older. It generates a representative sample of United States housing units using addresses obtained from the United States Postal Service and the NORC 2010 NORC National Sampling Frame. The 2021 dataset was collected between December 1, 2020 and May 3, 2021; it includes data from interviews with 4,032 respondents (NORC at the University of Chicago 2022; Davern et al. 2021). Two measures will identify respondents as Evangelical: “Would you describe yourself as an evangelical Christian, or not?” and “Would you say you have been born again or have had a born-again experience—that is, a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Christ?” Two measures will assess respondents’ views of the effects of climate change: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how bad or good do you think the impacts of climate change will be for America?” and “On a scale from 0 to 10, how bad or good do you think the impacts of climate change will be for the world as a whole?” I will use regression analysis to explore my hypotheses. This will allow me to identify the correlates of Evangelical identity with views on climate change while controlling for other factors. Faculty Mentor: Joshua Tom Associate Professor of Sociology Seattle Pacific University jtom@spu.edu References: Alper, Becka A. 2022. “How Religion Intersects with Americans’ Views on the Environment.” Pew Research Center. (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion-intersects-with-americans-views-on-the-environment/). Davern, Michael; Bautista, Rene; Freese, Jeremy; Morgan, Stephen L.; and Tom W. Smith. General Social Survey 1972-2021. [Machine-readable data file]. Principal Investigator, Michael Davern; Co-Principal Investigators, Rene Bautista, Jeremy Freese, Stephen L. Morgan, and Tom W. Smith. NORC ed. Chicago, 2021. 1 datafile (Release 3b) and 1 codebook (2021 Release 3b). Ecklund, Elaine Howard, Christopher P. Scheitle, Jared Peifer, and Daniel Bolger. 2017. “Examining Links Between Religion, Evolution Views and Climate Change Skepticism.” Environment and Behavior, 49(9), 985–1006. doi: 10.1177/0013916516674246. Jones, Robert P., Daniel Cox, and Juhem Navarro-Rivera. 2014. Believers, Sympathizers, and Skeptics: Why Americans are Conflicted About Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science. Washington, D.C.: Public Religion Research Institute. Retrieved November 20, 2023 (https://www.prri.org/research/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflicted-climate-change-environmental-policy-science/). Jones, Robert P., Natalie Jackson, Diana Orces, Ian Huff, Oyindamola Bola, and Daniel Greenberg. 2019. Fractured Nation: Widening Partisan Polarization and Key Issues in 2020 Presidential Elections. Public Religion Research Institute. (https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/PRRI_Oct_AVS-web.pdf). Jones, Robert P., Natalie Jackson, Diana Orcés, and Ian Huff. 2020. Dueling Realities: Amid Multiple Crises, Trump and Biden Supporters See Different Priorities and Futures for the Nation. Public Religion Research Institute. (https://www.prri.org/research/amid-multiple-crises-trump-and-biden-supporters-see-different-realities-and-futures-for-the-nation/). Leiserowitz, Anthony, Edward Maibach, Connie Roser-Renouf, Geoff Feinberg, and Seth Rosenthal. 2015. Climate Change in the American Christian Mind: March, 2015. New Haven: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Retrieved November 20, 2023 (https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-in-the-american-christian-mind/). Lowe, Benjamin S., Susan K. Jacobson, Glenn D. Israel, John E. Kotcher, Seth A. Rosenthal, Edward W. Maibach, and Anthony Leiserowitz. 2022. “The Generational Divide Over Climate Change Among American Evangelicals.” Environmental Research Letters, 17. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac9a60. Mills, S.B., B.G. Rabe, and C. Borick. 2015. Acceptance of Global Warming Rising for Americans of All Religious Beliefs. Ann Arbor and Allentown: University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy and Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. NORC at the University of Chicago. 2022. “GSS General Social Survey FAQ | NORC.” Retrieved October 25, 2023 (https://gss.norc.org/faq). Smith, N. and A. Leiserowitz. 2013. “American Evangelicals and Global Warming.” Global Environmental Change, 23(5), 1009–1017. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.04.001. Sullivan, Emily. 2022. “Most Americans Say Climate Change Is a Critical Threat.” Retrieved October 23, 2023 (https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/most-americans-say-climate-change-critical-threat). Tyson, Alec, Cary Funk, and Brian Kennedy. 2023. “What the Data Says about Americans’ Views of Climate Change.” Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 23, 2023 (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/). Veldman, Robin G., Dara M. Wald, Sarah B. Mills, and David A. M. Peterson. 2020. “Who Are American Evangelical Protestants and Why Do They Matter for US Climate Policy?” WIREs Climate Change 12(2):e693. doi: 10.1002/wcc.693. Wilkinson, K.K. 2010. “Climate’s Salvation? Why and How American Evangelicals are Engaging with Climate Change.” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 52, 47-57. doi: 10.1080/00139151003626822.

In this poster extensive literature review on, a few articles, sources, and a documentary were reviewed to examine the Flint Water Crisis that began in 2014, and the environmental racism displayed by the governing body of Flint, Michigan, along with the governing body that is the state of Michigan. In an attempt to reduce the perception of the severity of the crisis, the government created fake numbers to mask the true consequences of the crisis. The crisis will be examined through 3 sociological lenses; Functionalism, Social Interaction, and Conflict Theory. In the presentation, based on definitions/common ideals, the way a certain theorist, as mentioned above and how they might perceive the issue will be explained. 1. Perry, M.J., Arrington, S., Freisthler, M.S. et al. Pervasive structural racism in environmental epidemiology. Environ Health 20, 119 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-021-00801-3 2. Wikimedia Foundation. (2023b, October 13). Legionella. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionella  3. Denchak, M. (2018, November 8). Flint water crisis: Everything you need to know. Be a Force for the Future. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-you-need-know 4. (2022, September 30) Flint enters final phase of Lead Service Line Replacement. SOM - State of Michigan. (n.d.). https://www.michigan.gov/egle/newsroom/press-releases/2022/09/30/flint-enters-final-phase-of-lead-service-line-replacement  5. Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, November 27). Crime in Flint, Michigan. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Flint,_Michigan  6. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/flintcitymichigan 7. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/flints-deadly-water/

Twenty years ago, the thought of a world shaped by digital technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning would sound dystopian. In the present day, however, we exist in a society where machines determine almost every decision we make including what we buy, the news we see, what ads we are presented with, and how we get to work in the morning. With this being said, it is easy to see how technology has become inserted into our everyday lives. This project investigates how human beings have also been inserted into technology, or more specifically, how societally held attitudes, beliefs, and biases are digitally communicated through output-generating technologies. This project drew on research from several fields including sociology, critical technology studies, communication studies, and critical race theory. The foundation of this project included research and application of concepts such as bias, stereotyping, algorithm studies, and implicit vs. explicit racism. The introduction of the project establishes an array of technical and methodological issues embedded within AI systems. Although AI is thought to be devoid of human interference, and thus unbiased, the data used to train these systems is sourced from human interactions with technology. Because data inputs are transformed into datasets used to train machines, these biases are turned into a feedback loop that will continuously reinforce them within the AI system. It is impossible to separate the code from those biases, especially when considering the tech industry's rich history of sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression. Stereotyping was also covered substantially in the introduction and literature review of this project, specifically, feature-based stereotyping. This form of stereotyping occurs when an individual is judged based on their physical characteristics including skin color, hair texture, or facial structure. Given that the data analyzed in this project presented physical characteristics rather than racial categories, this approach was appropriate for the scope of this project. Further, previous research including that by Maddox (2004) and Blair et al. (2004), has established that individuals with more typical phenotypic appearances are more likely to be negatively stereotyped. Although explicitly racist data can be sorted out of datasets, for example, statements about one racial group being bad or ugly, implicitly racist data is not as easily sorted. With this being said, a major aim of this study was to see the ways in which certain implicit stereotypes could be revealed by the AI outputs. Thus, the terms criminal, violent, and illegal were selected as all of these terms are associated with certain racial groups. The research questions for this study were as follows: How do digital algorithms reflect and perpetuate established implicit racial stereotypes about different groups of Americans? If it is known that racial stereotypes are baked into the digital algorithms that organize information, will AI reflect these stereotypes? Drawing on previous research, I hypothesized that prompts containing a positive valence word would result in images with White skin, caucasian facial features, and American cultural indicators while prompts containing a negative valence word would result in images with non-White skin, facial features, and non-American cultural indicators. This project implemented the use of OpenAI’s text-to-image generation software to determine if and how societally held implicit racial biases are reflected through and perpetuated by Artificial Intelligence systems. Six prompts were constructed to use as inputs for the AI system. Three prompts contained positive valence words (good, qualified, hardworking), and three prompts contained negative valence words (criminal, illegal, violent). Each input prompt results in four output generations. Five tests were run for each prompt over a period of five days resulting in a total sample set of 120 images. Once the images were generated, they were arranged in a random order, printed out, and then distributed to volunteer coders. Coding occurred in three phases, the first for perceived skin color (white or non-white), the second for perceived facial features (white or non-white), and the third for any indications of American culture or any other ethnic culture. Although data was coded in three phases, only the first two phases were used for this project, perceived skin color and perceived facial features. After each image was coded, values were recorded in SPSS. The first test run in SPSS was an inter-reliability test between the four volunteer coders in the first two phases of the experiment. Both phases revealed high inter-rater reliability. Phase one (skin color) revealed a Cronbach’s Alpha of .936 and phase two (perceived facial feature) revealed a Cronbach’s Alpha of .894. The second test run in SPSS was an overall comparison of the mean amount of non-white results associated with a positive vs negative valence prompt. Overall, it was found that positive prompts resulted in only 30.4% nonwhite results while negative prompts resulted in 51.7% non-white results. These tests first indicate that the positive valence prompts resulted in a majority of white outputs while negative valence prompts resulted in a majority of non-white outputs. The third and final test run in SPSS broke down each prompt by non-white result. A higher mean score indicates a larger overall non-white result while a lower mean score indicates a larger overall white result. A higher mean score indicates a larger overall non-white result while a lower mean score indicates a larger overall white result. All positive prompts featured a low mean score and all negative prompts except one (violent) revealed a high mean score. Previous research has been done to show which small data sets have led to whitewashing in generative art results (Srinivasan and Uchino, 2022; Ongweso, 2019). In addition, research has been conducted to see how algorithms analyze facial features to determine social circumstances, moral quality, and professional potential (Montiero, 2023). However, no published research to date has shown how artificial general intelligence may produce results that are stereotypical because of datasets that are not cleaned for implicitly biased inputs. 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D., Moseley, K., Davis, M., Ransome, Y., & Williams, D. (2018). Stereotyping across intersections of race and age: Racial stereotyping among white adults working with children. PloS One; PLoS One, 13(9), e0201696. 10.1371/journal.pone.0201696 Racial bias in AI isn’t getting better and neither are researchers’ excuses. VICE. (2019, July 29). https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xzwgx/racial-bias-in-ai-isnt-getting-better-and-neither-are-researchers-excuses Schaul, K., Chen, S. Y., & Tiku, N. (2023, Apr 19,). Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart. The Washington Post Shevlin, H., Vold, K., Crosby, M., & Halina, M. (2019). The limits of machine intelligence: Despite progress in machine intelligence, artificial general intelligence is still a major challenge. EMBO Reports; EMBO Rep, 20(10), e49177. 10.15252/embr.201949177 Srinivasan, R., & Uchino, K. (Oct 17, 2021). Quantifying confounding bias in AI generated art: A case study. 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Justine Niyogushimwa IMSRL 10-29-23 Final Proposal Draft Introduction: The college wants diverse students but needs a curriculum to support the said diverse students. Western universities have been predominated by white affluent male instructors and white affluent male students with a relatively anti-black and racist ideological curriculum. However, over the recent decades, but especially starting from the 1960s and 1970s, college and university campuses in the United States began to open their doors to a more diverse body of students—namely, blacks and other non-white students, as well as women and non-binary people of all kinds (Newfield 2008). Yet, these university disciplines and curriculums have remained relatively unaltered, even though some of these ideologies oppose the humanity of the increasingly diverse university students relying on Western epistemology. At the same time, there has been a sensational campaign on US colleges and universities to increase efforts in diversifying campuses nationwide (Berrey 2011). Puzzle: Looking at Clawson 2008, we can see how race and class are so tied together that part of the racial divide is to keep minoritized students in the cycle of low-quality education resulting from commercialized higher education and the societal impacts of poorly educated population demographics. I wish to focus on the relationship between commercialized education and the epistemology of ignorance from a race perspective since race and class often go hand in hand. Theoretical Question: How does the epistemology of ignorance EOI? (Xth) affect the class project of commercialized education? (Yth) Formula: Neoliberal higher education argues that commercialized HE is good, but upon closer inspection, there’s evidence to suggest otherwise. “This book is for parents and students, teachers, administrators, and politicians who wrongly assume that it is best to ignore the effects of the cultural wars and get on with the job of market adaptation. The book says to them that society's well-being-with the exception of a small layer at the very top--lies in the opposite direction, with supporting the cultural foundations of general development as much as supporting its technological and economic foundations. Our ability to move the world forward depends on our cultural capacity. The way forward, I show here, starts with resubmitting the economy to the majoritarian cultural visions that this economy must one day serve again. This restoration will be far more likely if the public university can recover its base and reinvent its mission.” (pg. 15) In his book “Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class, “ Christopher Newfield briefly introduces the first half of the public university institution and how it came to be. His thesis is that neoliberalism has removed the cultural foundations of post-secondary education and constructed a financial experience instead. “The term "middle class" in this book's subtitle is shorthand for "college- educated": as I explain in the chapters to come, it applies regardless of what social class the student comes from, or returns to. The middle class whose rollback is my subject is composed of Chicano hunger strikers, the children of blue-collar and service workers, of low-income shopkeepers---the full range of socioeconomic positions and family incomes who have had con- tact with higher education because of the public university system that was built throughout the twentieth century.” (pg.2,3) Yth: Class project of Commercialized Education Formula: Institutions specializing in overcharging people continue to lure in massive amounts of non-white students from lower socioeconomic status semester after semester despite offering an underwhelmingly low-quality higher education experience (Newfield). Furthermore, Tomlinson suggests Students are increasingly viewing obtaining a higher education as a transactional good. This has to do with the fact that universities are marketing degrees as a product and students as customers. (Tomlinson 2017) “Consumerist values appear to be a by-product of the increasingly transactional relation- ship that students have entered with their institutions, which has also heightened expec- tations about how beneficial their higher education experiences might be. We would also suggest that the degree to which consumerist approaches are mobilised is determined by the specific contexts and circumstances that students experience at different points in times.” (pg. 465). Students who want to market themselves to the labor market seek limited learning to bolster their status as 4.0 GPA students who went to an accredited 4-year university, at least they are not at a community college with all of its connotations. “It has become common to view the value of higher education in market-driven environments in relation to a process of commodification, or indeed reification, whereby what higher education produces is reducible to largely material and measureable market commodities. As such, higher education’s value is derived from how much it can be traded or exchanged within what are essentially transactional relationships between individuals and institutions (i.e. between graduates, higher education and then employer organisations).” (Tomlinson 2017, pg. 713) [what happened to seeking higher education for the sake of learning and enriching one’s own knowledge?] Edu-tainment[Limited Vs. Quality Education] Most public higher-education students work part-time or full-time outside their educational institutions to support themselves or their families. On top of the oft-packed school and work schedules, they have to figure out how to schedule time to socialize with their friends and families. Many are trying to get a not-so-demanding vocational education to change their living circumstances, such as decent jobs that will aid them in paying off the lofty amounts of debt they will naturally incur to pay for this education. Given the half-privatized model public education has adopted for the past several decades and the low educational quality that has accompanied it ever since, students are no longer getting the high-quality education students in the 1980s or before, as cited in Newfield’s book, “The Great Mistake” used to get. Newfield argues that any student in these conditions is part of a disastrous recipe that results in limited learning (Newfield 2016). To make things worse, higher education institutions often prioritize spending on the upkeep of entertainment, such as football teams, advertisements of Greek life, and the busy weekly campus activities. Many students feel the pressure to get involved in the campus social life to the extent that they can, and those who aren’t able to participate because they simply have too many responsibilities on top of their course load feel like they are missing out on the quintessential college experience. Ultimately, it is a sort of lose-lose situation whether one chooses to indulge in the entertainment aspect of their education or prioritize academics. Even in the classrooms, instructors are increasingly incorporating entertainment into their syllabuses, whether it is making the content of their classes palatable to mainstream popular culture, providing less demanding work, or not engaging deeply with students’ needs, such as providing extensive and effective feedback that can lead to the opposite of limited learning, which is full-service learning. Newfield is, in a way, reminiscing on the full service that earlier students used to get from higher education institutions largely since tuition was affordable, there was less disparity between students who came from a lower-class status and those who came from more affluent backgrounds.And the curriculum was geared towards a service type of learning for the public (Newfield 2016). Credentialism [devaluing working class] “Although graduation rates have climbed in recent decades, only about one in three American adults has graduated from a four-year college. When meritocratic elites tie success and failure so closely to one’s ability to earn a college degree, they implicitly blame those without one for the harsh conditions they encounter in the global economy. They also absolve themselves of responsibility for promoting economic policies that heighten the wage premium a college degree commands. Second, by telling workers that their inadequate education is to blame for their troubles, meritocrats moralize success and failure and unwittingly promote credentialism—an insidious prejudice against those who have not been to college. The credentialist prejudice is a symptom of meritocratic hubris. As meritocratic assumptions tightened their hold in recent decades, elites fell into the habit of looking down on those who do not rise. The constant call for working people to improve their condition by getting a college degree, however well intentioned, eventually valorizes credentialism and undermines social recognition and esteem for those who lack the credentials the system rewards.” College is seen as a vehicle for escaping poverty and our inherently unequal society. This means that people with college degrees deserve more social opportunities and that the working-class majority with no higher education does not deserve those same opportunities. Many people are told that if they want to change the course of their lives, especially for those coming from generational poverty and harsh economic conditions, pursuing college and getting a degree is the way out. Furthermore, society tends to valorize college-educated individuals who come from communities that are socially looked down on as the spokesperson and leaders who can act as the middleman between the white man at the top of the social hierarchy and the poor, non-college-educated people of color in those communities. These college-educated mediators are also known as the managerial professional class. On the other hand, people without a college degree are often made to feel as though they are intellectually inferior or do not deserve to climb up the social ladder, so long as they do not hold any credentials which act more or less as passports. We can also see this reflected in higher education between elite schools like Harvard vs. public institutions such as Boise State University and their respective outcomes. In the same way, there has come a deep disparity of opportunities between people who hold degrees and those who do not, so too, there exists a huge disproportion between people who attend elite institutions and those who attend regular public institutions, such as the example of Harvard vs. BSU given previously. The student who attends Harvard has excessively abundant resources and support in virtually every aspect of their education compared to someone attending BSU. That greatly alters their learning outcomes both while studying and post-graduation. Class warfare [Upward Mobility vs. Downward Mobility] The inevitable sad reality is that going to college doesn’t move you up the social hierarchy. On the contrary, it can often have the opposite effect. In recent decades, students who are graduating from college are emerging with exponential rates of debt and are not always getting the job that they want or that they” studied” for. Whether they have to find any job on the market to make ends meet for their now adult lives or they start from modest positions on a corporate ladder, students are coming to grips with the reality that just because one has a college degree doesn’t automatically mean that they have financial security and that they can jump from one end of the social, economic status spectrum to another. The opposite is much more likely to happen where college graduates must accept that they must practice more financial restraint and moderate means of living to survive. And that unless they have well-to-do parents who can support them until they land a better-paying job, they might find themselves on a downward mobility path. So many people have become disillusioned with the false marketized magic of a college education because they have either experienced the sad reality that the dream doesn’t hold up to its promises or witnessed others fall victim to this myth. This is why the advice from people who tell young people not to waste their time and resources attending college has been ripe for the recent past decades. Perhaps one of the popular examples of people who succeeded despite the lack of a college education is Bill Gates. His story is an example many people point to as a reason to drop out of college or not attend in the first place. Although, he had a lot of things working for him as a white man in America who came from a well-to-do family in a different historical time which might have contributed to his success. Nonetheless, they are really good reasons why and how someone might better be equipped to be successful in today’s society without college being one. Xth: Epistemology of ignorance: Charles W. Mills defines the epistemology of ignorance as “a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they have made” (Mills 1997; p.18). Returning to the meaning of epistemology as a prominent theoretical perspective, viewed as a way of looking at the world and making sense of it (Crotty, 1998, p. 8). The epistemology of ignorance entails a purposeful distortion of knowledge formation. That is, knowledge that is entirely rooted in not knowing; worse, it is an intentional ignorance that props itself up as legitimate knowledge. In her book “How to Be Less Stupid About Race,” Dr. Crystal Marie Fleming argues that the epistemology of ignorance is not only targeted toward white people but also all of us to maintain white supremacy and the Western imperial hegemonic agenda (Fleming 2018, pg.34). In their article “Historically White Universities and Plantation Politics: Anti-Blackness and Higher Education in the Black Lives Matter Era,” Dancy et al. advance the argument that universities are the modern plantations that operate in a colonial order where Black people are excluded in the process of knowledge formation and are treated as property instead (pg.183). The theory of anti-Blackness and the foundations of the epistemology of ignorance are inextricably mirrored in each other, with the former denying the humanity of people who are racialized as Black and the latter denying the innate ability of Black people to be co-makers of knowledge. [Mis]Education of race “This globally color-coded distribution of wealth and poverty has been produced by the legacy of global white supremacy. But the connection between the development of the European and Euro-implanted nation-state's industry, culture, and civilization, and the material and cultural contributions of Afro-Asia and the Americas is denied, so that Europeans and their descendants seem peculiarly rational and industrious, differentially endowed with qualities that have enabled them to dominate the world. But the history is real. The struggle to close the gap between the modern ideal of the liberal democratic policy and the modern reality of the white-supremacist polity has been the unacknowledged political history of the past few hundred years, the "battle of the color line," in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois”. (Mills 97) The legacy of global white supremacy has produced this globally “color-coded” distribution of wealth and poverty. The gift of colonialism makes Europeans and their descendants seem more intelligent and deserving of the global power they have amassed over non-white nations and indigenous populations. Further, they feel justified for all the atrocities they have committed and are still committing against non-white people globally. History is taught through the white Euro-centric view and, therefore, gives a partial account of the accurate context needed to understand how race came to be and what has shaped the conversations surrounding race and social inequalities. Many scholars have thought for centuries that race is a biological matter that feeds into racist ideologies and policies. (Mills 2007, pg.20). While recent scholarship tends to refute the biological aspect of race and focuses on the social part of it instead, known as “social constructivism,” such as the anti-racist scholars, many people who are deeply committed to the epistemology of white ignorance are not happy with the insistence that the truthful account of history should be relied on in higher education. Even mentioning that race still exists and matters as a discussion topic seems radical to some. Referencing his famous book “The Racial Contract,” Mills argues that race was central to the “justificatory ideology” of the development of global white supremacy. They felt it a birthright to subjugate non-whites because of presumed white superiority. Mills says, “The phrase originally used for nonwhites, a phrase that is today an embarrassment for whites-was "subject races," making their inequality clear.” (Mills 2007) While Mill’s argument here might seem as a largely cultural cultural process rather than a commercial one, this is still very relevant as cultural processes are usually paramount in informing racial projects and policies. Cognitive dissonance as a mechanism of white privilege: Paraphrasing Bonilla-Silva 2014, Jennifer C Mueller argues in her article that the core tenant of the color-blind ideology is the reversal of overt racist practices to covert ones. (Mueller 2017) “As a result, analyses of everyday actors tend to emphasize “the structure of colorblindness” (Doane 2014:17), examining the habitual and ostensibly unintentional routines of ordinary whites who reproduce racial inequality through “business as usual,” with the patterned support of color-blind discourse. I argue from this position: more vexing than structurally induced habit, whites’ persistent colorblindness is sustained by a vested commitment to defending the ideological buffer of ignorance.” (Producing Colorblindness: Everyday Mechanisms of White Ignorance Jennifer C. Mueller) One aspect of white ignorance is the overlook of how racism infiltrates our moral beliefs. For instance, sociological experiments have long proven that little kids, regardless of race, are socialized to associate darker skin with evil, whereas they attribute moral righteousness to lighter skin. This is the kind of ethical “moral not-knowings” Mills advocates for conversations to center. (TRC, pg.22) One way of looking at it is that white people often use cognitive dissonance as a mechanism of shielding themselves from the white guilt that might come with being educated on the impact and legacies of racism, significantly if they have benefitted from explicitly racist policies that gave their families a leg up at the expense of undermining communities of color. White students “often develop[ed] creative racial logics that foreclose [d] or otherwise distort[ed] racially conscious learning.” (Mueller 2017) Even when white “progressive” students choose to engage with diverse curricula such as a ‘Race and racism’ class, their instinct is to center their whiteness through various ways besides what Mueller identifies as offensiveness or defensiveness but from my own experience, the expression of being shocked and or saddened by the reality of racial inequalities. However, with the belief that their higher education institutions are dedicated to championing diversity and inclusion, white students often see these commercialization tactics as enough. In other words, choosing to enroll at a school that claims to value diversity is as far as some student’s form of activism for social justice goes. This is an obscure cause of and the result of the EOI. Whiteness as normative = Invisibility and Denial “The structure of white supremacy today requires not seeing race, however—or at least not seeing it in the same way.” ( Mueller 2017) Mueller asserts that though unequal treatment continues to produce inequalities through institutions and individuals' work, students and other people alike have turned to what could be termed post-racial explanations for the contemporary racial climate. We live in a society where individuals are oblivious to the mechanisms of white supremacy and how race shapes and influences everything. Many white people rarely question the idea that whiteness is the standard and that there are other perspectives worth considering, even centering that have nothing to do with white European traditions or moral beliefs. Mills proposes Dubois’s double consciousness concept as an alternative to the white standpoint (TRC), pg. 109). I offer a thought experiment where we imagine what it would be like for Blackness to be centered in higher education. This might be an excellent way to counter the cognitive dissonance of the moral culpability of white ignorance by having students be in contact with a black-centered curriculum from the jump. In a way, Neoliberal higher education fails the very same students it claims to empower by shielding them from certain academic content in the defense that they are not ready or capable of engaging in specific material. But isn’t higher education meant to be challenging, and if college is intended to be a set of easy-to-pass classes, what is the point of enrolling in the first place? “Class is very much an issue in higher education, and is re-shaping the system. That is true not only at the most obvious level, in the massive cost increases and the various forms of squeeze on financial aid, but also at the top, where those with power are grabbing an increasing share of both the power and the rewards. The system is being structured to serve the needs of the affluent; that has meant building in mechanisms and institutions that will not be easily replaced. Yet the American university has always been a site of struggle, and it has developed in response to popular pressures and political fears (Williams, 2006), from its elite roots, to its land grant history, to the version of higher education under the welfare state, to its increasingly privatized form today. Students and faculty are very conscious of the impact of the current transformations on their own lives but do not usually have an alternative conceptualization, a vision of an alternative way of operating, a belief that another University (or world) is possible, and a sense that they have a right—indeed, an obligation—to fight for that alternative. It seems unlikely that a major movement will arise until and unless either there is a crisis, or some force tries to actively organize the potential which already exists.” (CLAWSON AND LEIBLUM 26) This article is about class, but ostensibly, it is about race. [Counter] Black-centered diverse curriculum: White centered vs. Black centered “Critical multiculturalism," representations of race, class, and gender are understood as the result of more larger social struggles over signs and meanings and in this way emphasizes not simply textual play or metaphorical displacement as a form of resistance (as in the case of left-liberal multiculturalism), but stresses the central task of transforming the social, cultural, and institutional relations in which meanings are generated.” (pg.53) McLaren maintains that “critical multiculturalism” should be about making society a more just and fair place where everyone can have meaningful life experiences as opposed to the other concepts of liberalism, which are mainly symbolic and performative. “If we want to recruit students to a transformative praxis, students must not only be encouraged to choose a language of analysis that is undergirded by a project of liberation but must effectively invest in it.” pg.69 McLaren says that schools need to invest in the kind of education that makes students care about learning from an intrinsic place of motivation and not fror external motivation. “we’re talking specifically about race, gender, class, generational status in college. And, more so, diversity as it is used to precisely identify and contain those who are different from the norm, who are not normal, those being the rest of everybody who’s not, “diverse.” And so we talk about diverse people to specifically identify them as different from the norm that’s there on our campuses. So diversity, this language of diversity, preserves the norm and the normality of whiteness, and subjects those who are designated as diverse, the diverse students, those diverse faculty, our diverse staff, and so on, to recruitment, retention, and integration. In our diverse communities of campus, we use that language to identify those who are to be recruited, those who are to be retained, those who are to be integrated, or I might also use the language of assimilation as well.” (Unapologetic Educational Research: Addressing Anti-Blackness, Racism, and White Supremacy) Inverse of Cognitive Dissonance [Counter] (Unapologetic Educational Research: Addressing Anti-Blackness, Racism, and White Supremacy) “In essence, a hierarchical structure exists in the United States (and other parts of the world) that intentionally withholds privileges, resources, respect, humanity, and status from people who HOLD marginalized identities. It is difficult to see that a caste system exists because it is disguised and embedded within dominant ideologies like religion and neoliberal capitalism. Critical theories, by centering or examining system issues through the lens of the oppressed, help us see clearly what is often masked when dominant ideologies are centered in research and practice. When examining systemic oppression through the lens of critical race theory one can clearly see the permanence of racism and whiteness as property.” [I think this is important to my empirical stuff as it can be used as a source of questions for the interview by asking how students see racism being manufactured in the university and the opportunities for an alternative narrative.] “Positionality considers a variety of epistemologies—that is, ways of understanding the world. It calls into question the dominant notions of objectivity in the academy, thus providing a foundation for developing resistance to post-positivist constructions of knowledge. Positionality can provide opportunities for the researcher to critically interrogate beliefs, assumptions, motivations, and decisions at multiple stages of the research process. Positionality can assist the scholar in reflecting upon the research topic too.” [ I also see this as an important source of interview questions to how students feel their personal narratives are either reflected or ignored in their higher education experiences.] Empirical Question: How does a color-blind and anti-Black Curriculum affect class inequality through limited learning? X-Emp: Color-Blind and Anti-Black Curriculum Many students on campus don’t think of themselves as racist in the ways they interact with Black students or the lack thereof. Nor do the faculty members of the school think that they are upholding a racist hierarchy of higher education when it comes to the curriculums they teach or don’t teach. However, at the core of all the university dynamics is a fully supported ideology of color-blind that most people willingly or unwillingly participate in. Most white students think that all Black students on campus must be there because of an athletic scholarship or an affirmative action scholarship. The segregation between white students and non-white students is apparent to anyone willing to look, and some of the reasons behind this self-segregation among students are due to the manifestations of the color-blind ideology. With BSU, in particular, being a predominantly white institution, Black students often feel they need to band together, whether in the Black Student Union Association club or other organizations, for solidarity purposes. This is something that can come off as reverse racist and self-segregating to white students as they do not understand the reasons why a Black student may want to find community among people with whom they share similarities in culture, background, and social experiences. For white students who think that their school has done more than enough to provide a diverse, safe, and inclusive place for minority students, clubs such as the BSA seem like a negative thing and serve as a divisive thing instead of a positive thing. Y-Emp: Limited Quality Vs. Quality Education Colleges and universities go above and beyond with their advertising campaigns to show that they are inclusive institutions that cater to a diverse population. Their curriculums suggest a kind of double-face racism and classism because, on one side, they are pushing a biased and racist curriculum that is anti-Black but sold as color-blind while not caring about the quality of education of their students and only wanting their money. This leaves students of color and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds vulnerable for various reasons. Ultimately, the hope of upward mobility is hardly ever realized, and all these students have to show for their degrees is a load of massive debt they incurred throughout their higher education career. Interview Instrument Questions I. Race How do you feel about being required to learn about slavery/ race? How do you feel about race as a social construct? How much understanding of race did you have before HE? How much has your understanding of race changed since attending HE? What have been your interactions with Black students? (as athletes or peers?) II. Vocationalization How does the curriculum at BSU address cultural diversity? how will your degree inform what position you hold after College? How do you feel about socioeconomic and class status affecting the availability of employment? References Fleming, Crystal Marie, and Charles W Mills. “Chapter 1, Pg 34.” How to Be Less Stupid about Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2019. Tuana, Nancy, and Shannon Sullivan. Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (SUNY Series, Philosophy and Race). State University of New York Press, 2007. Nguyen, Nhai Thi, and Yeow-Tong Chia. “Decolonizing Research Imagination: A Journey of Reshaping Research Epistemology and Ontology.” Asia Pacific Education Review, Springer Netherlands, 6 Mar. 2023, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9986655/. “The Racial Contract: Introduction Summary & Analysis.” LitCharts, www.litcharts.com/lit/the-racial-contract/introduction. Accessed 26 Sept. 2023. Newfield, Christopher. Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class. Harvard University Press, 2008. Mueller, Jennifer C. “Producing Colorblindness: Everyday Mechanisms of White Ignorance.” Social Problems, vol. 64, no. 2, 2017, pp. 332–332, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spx012. Dancy, T. Elon, et al. “Historically White Universities and plantation politics: Anti-blackness and higher education in the Black Lives Matter Era.” Urban Education, vol. 53, no. 2, 2018, pp. 176–195, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918754328. McLaren, Peter. “Chapter III: White Terror and Oppositional Agency: Towards a Critical Multiculturalism.” Counterpoints, vol. 4, 1995, pp. 87–124. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42974974. Accessed 26 Sept. 2023. Hytten, K., & Stemhagen, K. (2023). Abolishing, Renarrativizing, and Revaluing: Dismantling Antiblack Racism in Education. Educational Researcher, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221143092 Pasque, P. A., Patton, L. D., Gayles, J. G., Gooden, M. A., Henfield, M. S., Milner, H. R., Peters, A., & Stewart, D.-L. (2022). Unapologetic Educational Research: Addressing Anti-Blackness, Racism, and White Supremacy. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 22(1), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086211060451 Tomlinson, Michael. “Student perceptions of themselves as ‘consumers’ of higher education.” British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 38, no. 4, 2016, pp. 450–467, https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1113856. Tomlinson, Michael. “Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market.” Higher Education, vol. 75, no. 4, 2017, pp. 711–727, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0165-6.

My proposed research topic is Critical Race Theory, and specifically why there is such a pushback from conservatives on CRT. I will explore the reaction of conservatives to CRT as an elite engineered moral panic. Rohloff and Wright (2010) explain that a moral panic is an overreaction to a perceived problem, and an elite-engineered moral panic is a very deliberate propaganda campaign engineered and implemented in order to prevent finding a solution to a real structural problem because any solution would work against the elite interests (Rohloff and Wright 2010). I believe this topic requires a lot more sociological investigation. An Obama presidency followed by a Trump presidency left us a country divided, there is an opportunity to make things better, but if we don’t change the conservative narrative on CRT (outside of academia), it’s an opportunity missed. I propose to study why there is such a pushback from conservatives on CRT, how conservatives interpret CRT, and what they know about it, and I intend to explore the conservative reaction to CRT as an elite engineered moral panic. The following is an initial list of references relevant to my research topic. Accomando, Christina Hsu and Kristin J. Anderson. 2022. “Our Silence Will Not Protect US . . . and Neither Will J. Edgar Hoover: Reclaiming Critical Race Theory under the New Mccarthyism.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 1(44). Kaufmann, Eric. 2022. “The New Culture Wars: Why Critical Race Theory Matters More than Cancel Culture.” Social Science Quarterly 103(4):773–88. Meckler, Laura and Josh Dawsey. 2021. “Republicans, Spurred by an Unlikely Figure, See Political Promise In ...” The Washington Post. Retrieved October 2, 2023 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/19/critical-race-theory-rufo-republicans/). Rohloff, Amanda and Sarah Wright. 2010. “Moral Panic and Social Theory.” Current Sociology 58(3):403–19.

Contributions Relevant research has found that White and Black groups have different patterns of support towards affirmative action (Jacobson 1983, Jacobson 1985, Kuklinski et al. 1997, Steeh and Krysan 1997). White people consistently oppose affirmative action, even when confronted with racism in survey instruments (Jacobson 1985, Kluegel and Smith 1983). While race and affirmative action attitudes have a correlation proven by relevant research, the impact of racism is not as clearly defined. While some research has found racism to correlate with opposition to affirmative action (Jacobson 1985), many define concepts as “self-interest”, testing broad forms of bias rather than racism (Kluegel and Smith 1983, Scarborough and Holbrook 2020). This project tests the correlation between race, racism, and support of affirmative action in comparison to the relevant research. Theory and Methods: I hypothesize that race affects attitudes towards affirmative action. White people believe affirmative action to be disadvantageous on pretenses such as “reverse racism” (Jacobson 1983). While some research shows a preference for education and training-based affirmative action (Steinbugler, Press and Dias 2006, Taylor 1995), White people consistently oppose affirmative action under the assumption that it disadvantages them (Kuklinski et al. 1997, Scarborough and Holbrook 2020). Black people, on the contrary, support affirmative action overwhelmingly (Jacobson 1983, Smith 1998, Steeh and Krysan 1996). I hypothesize that different racial groups have differing levels of racism, that predict their levels of support towards the policies. Data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS) will be used to test the relationship between race and attitudes toward affirmative action. The GSS is a survey conducted annually by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The GSS measures the attitudes of Americans. Respondents were interviewed in cohorts, where portions of the survey were administered to retain respondents. This GSS is used to track the characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes of respondents. The GSS includes experimental survey questions that use exposure to racial discrimination and wordings of affirmative action, allowing me to measure the effect of wording often explored in previous research. The survey also asks demographic and political questions that allow me to control for that. I will be using regression analyses to test the relationship between race, racism, and affirmative action. Regression can test these relationships while controlling for sociodemographic characteristics including education, age, and gender. References Inkelas, Karen K. 2003. “Diversity’s Missing Minority: Asian Pacific American Undergraduates’ Attitudes toward Affirmative Action.” The Journal of Higher Education 74(6): 601–639. Jacobson, Cardell K. 1983. “Black Support for Affirmative Action Programs.” Phylon 44(4): 299-311. Jacobson, Cardell K. 1985. “Resistance to Affirmative Action: Self-Interest or Racism?” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 29(2): 306–329. Kluegel, James R. and Eliot R. Smith. 1983. “Affirmative Action Attitudes: Effects of Self-Interest, Racial Affect, and Stratification Beliefs on Whites’ Views.” Social Forces 61(3): 797–824. Kuklinski, James H., Paul M. Sniderman, Kathleen Knight, Thomas Piazza, Philip E. Tetlock, Gordon R. Lawrence, and Barbara Mellers. 1997. “Racial Prejudice and Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action.” American Journal of Political Science 41(2): 402-419. Scarborough, William. J., and Allyson L. Holbrook. 2020. “The Complexity of Policy Preferences: Examining Self-interest, Group-Interest, and Race Consciousness Across Race and Political Ideology.” Social Justice Research 33(1): 110-135. Smith, William A. 1998. “Gender and Racial/Ethnic Differences in the Affirmative Action Attitudes of U.S. College Students.” The Journal of Negro Education 67(2): 127–141. Steeh, Charlotte and Maria Krysan. 1996. “The Polls - Trends: Affirmative Action and the Public, 1970-1995.” Public Opinion Quarterly 60(1): 128-158. Steinbugler, Amy C., Julie E. Press, and Janice J. Dias. 2006. “Gender, Race, and Affirmative Action: Operationalizing Intersectionality in Survey Research.” Gender and Society 20(6): 805-825. Taylor, Marylee C. 1995. “White Backlash to Workplace Affirmative Action: Peril or Myth?” Social Forces 73(4): 1385-1414.

Title: 21st Century Black Student Protests at the University of California, Berkeley Type: Undergraduate Roundtable Key Words: Student activism, solidarity, politics of naming and unnaming. Authors: Jasmine Griffiths, Erzsabet Gonzalez, Amari Turner The University of California, Berkeley’s (UC Berkeley or Cal) magnetism as a space for displays of student activism and political literacy has unquestionably become a tradition that both echoes the continuous fight for liberation and social justice, and represents the relevance of intersectional and intergenerational activism. By virtue of this truth, Black Lives at Cal (BLAC) — a multi-year research initiative under the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program at UC Berkeley — aspires to intensely investigate twenty-first century Black student protests that reflect frequently admired historical student movements, but are minimally represented in news coverage and academic literature. Through interviews and archival research, BLAC hopes to answer the following questions: What have been the protests, events fueled by student activism, and demands of Black students in the 21st century? With whom did Black student activists articulate solidarity, and how was this put into practice? As a result of this referenced activism, what is the prevalence and significance of naming, unnaming, and renaming campus facilities in response to Black student demands? The discourse surrounding the richness of Black student activism at the University of California, Berkeley is often grounded in the history of the creation of the Department of African American Studies. The development of this academic program was a response to the work of the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a multicultural student-led coalition that housed a partnership between UC Berkeley and San Francisco State College (Now San Francisco State University) in 1969 (Third World Liberation Front 50th Anniversary Oral History Project). In an act of solidarity, the TWLF led a ten-week strike in opposition to administrative practices and curriculum that routinely overlooked students of color. This resulted in the formation of the nation’s first Department of Ethnic Studies that same year, and the development of the Afro-American Studies Program (Now The Department of African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies) in 1970 (Wang). This display of successful student activism and solidarity has since begun a pattern of multicultural partnership and inspired the development of numerous programs, initiatives, and partnerships intent on pushing forward diversity and inclusivity. Over the following decades, UC Berkeley witnessed the establishment of the Black Recruitment and Retention Center (BRRC) in 1983, the formation of a group that has been invaluable to student-led protests called the Triad (Including the Black Student Union, the Office of African American Student Development, and BRRC) (Hoz, the Daily Californian), and the subsequent creation of the bridges Multicultural Resource Center in 1996 that formerly included 5 recruitment and retention centers in response to Proposition 209 and the struggle for representation in higher education. While these instances of action and activism have left a meaningful mark on succeeding cohorts of Black students that have stepped foot on UC Berkeley’s campus, these are only a few examples of successful and significant movements that included the Black community. However, with very minor exceptions, very little academic research and general coverage of Black student protests at UC Berkeley after the TWLF is known and recognized. In many cases, there is a significant gap in known history that is bracketed by the establishment of the Afro-American Studies Program in 1969, and Berkeley’s Black Student Union’s Ten Demands made in 2015 to then Chancellor, Nicholas Dirks in response to the unwelcoming and harmful environment that the university created for their small population (3%) of Black students (Snapshot of UC Berkeley Undergraduates). Notably, one of these demands included a call to “Rename Barrows Hall to Assata Shakur Hall.” (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice, UC Berkeley) Nevertheless, this striking interlude of knowledge of Black protests in more recent years is important to acknowledge because it falsely communicates a pause in the noteworthy activism of Black students at UC Berkeley. In a similar vein, developing an understanding of the protests that have occurred — including their demands, methods of practicing solidarity, and renaming requests — would uncover their process of evolution; what contributes to how a fight for justice would later become a fight for recognition? Participating in the Pacific Sociological Alliance would allow Black Lives at Cal to rectify this significant gap in general knowledge that fails to validate the constant efforts of Black students to combat the “systemic condemnation of Black life.” (Givens). Shedding light on their sacrifices becomes increasingly appropriate in consideration of recent nation-wide displays of anti-blackness such as the murder of George Floyd, and UC Berkeley surveys that consistently report Black respondents as feeling a low sense of belonging (Public Affairs, UC Berkeley). The data collection process for this project will consist of both archival research and interviews. Our research team will employ UC Berkeley’s Library Facilities such as the Ethnic Studies Library and the Bancroft Library’s University Archives to digitize entries on twenty-first century Black student protests at UC Berkeley. Additionally, UC Berkeley’s Erskine A. Peters Reading Room, offers a plethora of digitized archival materials from the African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies Department — the memorabilia available in this space will provide invaluable information about the intricate details of Black student protests and the nuances of their demands. Additionally, our team will conduct Library searches for literature using the following key terms: Student activism, solidarity, politics of naming and unnaming, name removed, and name replaced. Interviews will be offered virtually through the video-conferencing platform, Zoom, or in person in the Erskine A. Peters Reading Room. Interview participants will be recruited through research and social media and consist of alumni and staff who can offer insight into twenty-first century protests at UC Berkeley. Each participant will be asked ten to fifteen questions about their knowledge and experiences that will allow them to help our team fill the gaps in the University’s knowledge of Black student protests. Black Lives at Cal will review this content by analyzing interview transcripts and extracting quotes and themes that will advance the process of answering our research questions. Works Cited Wang, Ling-chi. “Chronology of Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley.” Newsletter of the Department of Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley, Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 1997. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023. https://globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/sites/globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/Chronology_Berkeley.pdf “Third World Liberation Front 50th Anniversary Oral History Project. UC Berkeley, American Cultures Center. https://americancultures.berkeley.edu/hsesi/twlf-oral-history-project 1 Dec. 2023. “Fall 2015 Snapshot of UC Berkeley Undergraduates.” UC Berkeley. December 2015. https://opa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/fall_2015_snapshot_december_2015.pdf. 1 Dec. 2023. Hoz, Mattias. “UC Berkeley’s student-led Black Lives Matter movement calls for ‘systemic change’ on campus”. The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley. June 2020. https://www.dailycal.org/2020/06/25/uc-berkeleys-student-led-black-lives-matter-movement-calls-for-systemic-change-on-campus. 1 Dec. 2023. “Ten Initial Demands from the Black Student Union.” Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice, UC Berkeley. https://diversity.berkeley.edu/bsu-ten-demands. 1 Dec. 2023. Givens, Jarvis R.. “The Invisible Tax: Exploring Black Student Engagement at Historically White Institutions.” Jan. 2016. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1169798.pdf. 1 Dec. 2023. “Erskine A. Peters Reading Room.” African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley. https://africam.berkeley.edu/erskine-a-peters-reading-room/. 1 Dec. 2023. “Berkeley Survey: Campus climate overall is positive, but marginalized still feel excluded.” Public Affairs, Berkeley News, UC Berkeley. https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/02/25/berkeley-survey-campus-climate-overall-is-positive-but-marginalized-still-feel-excluded 1 Dec. 2023. “The Black Recruitment and Retention Center.” UC Berkeley. http://brrc.berkeley.edu/ 1 Dec. 2023. “Multicultural Resource Center.” UC Berkeley. https://sites.google.com/view/bridgesmrc/home. 1 Dec. 2023. Turner, David C. “Mobilizing Blackness: Analyzing 21st-Century Black Student Collective Agency in the University.” UC Berkeley. 2020. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cq4474h

The purpose of this study is to explore and evaluate correlations between familial pressures (ex. academic, athletic) and rates of addiction along with evaluating perceived relationships between the individual and their family. Preliminary research suggests that high familial pressure and low familial support correlate to higher rates of addiction. Additionally, this study seeks to find a correlation between the family system and addiction as source for civil disobedience outside of genetic predisposition and psychological affects. Most research regarding addiction and the family is in fields such as psychology and biology. Though the family system is a key topic in sociology, there is little research that directly connects family to acts of civil disobedience and how, if at all, this has changed over time. There is much research on the use and addiction rates in young adults of prescription and illicit drugs. Research suggests that the use of Adderall without a prescription is to cope with studying in college and to cram (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2016). In this research, I would like to bridge this gap by studying how the family system can contribute to addiction and recidivism. Human search is necessary to create a diverse and holistic analysis of this hypothesized connection. All data collection will be through participant observation. At no point will I communicate with any participant in the meeting or the director of the meeting. I will not know the identity of any participant in the meeting and all observations will be written by hand on paper and pen. Thus, no recordings, images, or other data collection techniques that may jeopardize the participants identities will be available. Data collected from the participants will include observations regarding perceived pressures in early childhood through young adulthood from the family, perceived relationship status between the individual and the family, and experience of addiction. There will be no pre-screen or long-term follow up on any individual. Thorough analysis of the data may reveal correlations between familial pressures and rates of addiction along with familial support becoming a boundary to recovery. The only tool for data collection that will be used is a pen and paper during participants observation to ensure as much anonymity and privacy as possible. To ensure diversity between participants, the participant observation will take place at more than one Narcotics Anonymous meeting in different locations. Following the completion of the study, the data collected will be analyzed using the degree of familial pressure in early life, beginning and duration of addiction, and perceived familial relationships during period of addiction. During analysis, correlations will be made between each variable. “Adderall Misuse Rising among Young Adults.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 16 Feb. 2016, publichealth.jhu.edu/2016/adderall-misuse-rising-among-young-adults Speaks about the misuse of Adderall and some of the causes that recent research has shown. According to this source, Adderall misuse is highest among young adults. Research suggests that the use of Adderall without a prescription is to cope with studying in college and to cram. I plan to link familial pressures such as academic pressures to substance abuse and wanted to look at how Adderall is being used and misused. Kovács, Krisztina, et al. “Parental stressors in sports influenced by attributes of parents and their children.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 13, 2022, p. 8015, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19138015 This article connects pressure and behavior of parents to the child’s level of athletic involvement including age and sports related injury. The research suggests that parental pressures correlate to negative emotional outcomes surrounding the sport. I am hoping to use some of this information to link parental pressures and behaviors to drug abuse in teens and young adults. Nickerson, Charlotte. “Merton’s Strain Theory of Deviance and Anomie in Sociology.” Simply Psychology, 10 May 2023, www.simplypsychology.org/mertons-strain-theory-deviance.html Creates an explanation for the discrepancy between societal goals and the means that individuals have in achieving them. Most of his theory focused on wealth attainment in America and how it led to crime. However, this article did suggest that goals for adolescents are often non-monetary and can be grades, awards, etc. Oetting, Eugene R., and Joseph F. Donnermeyer. “Primary socialization theory: The etiology of drug use and deviance. I.” Substance Use & Misuse, vol. 33, no. 4, 1998, pp. 995–1026, https://doi.org/10.3109/10826089809056252 States that weak family/child and/or school/child bonds increase the chances that the youth will bond with a deviant peer cluster. States that current sociological theories fall short of showing how social systems interact. I found this when looking into Merton’s Strain Theory and found that the critiques aligned with my theory on the link between family and drug abuse. Wang, Mei-Chuan, et al. “Suicide Protective Factors in Outpatient Substance Abuse Patients: Religious Faith and Family Support.” The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, vol. 26, no. 4, 1 Dec. 2016, pp. 370–381. Atla Religion Database with AtlaSerials, EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2016.1174568 This article correlates suicidal behavior and substance abuse with users 5 to 7 times for likely to attempt suicide. Those with familial support are less likely to attempt suicide and abuse drugs and alcohol. This research’s helps solidify the family’s role in the socialization and ultimately the outcome of the individual. Wulffson, Robin L. Salem Press Encyclopedia of Health, 1 Dec. 2022. Research Starters, EBSCOhost Talks about the technicalities of substance abuse of illicit and legal drugs by defining its terms and states that Marijuana is the number one most commonly used drug and then prescription drugs. This article was relatively straight forward but, mentioned some of the social implication of substance abuse such as emotional and financial burdens. Though this research is sociological, I needed a base definition of what substance abuse is.

My project investigates the relationship between sexual violence and prison abolition by exploring themes of punishment, criminality, and justice. Since the eruption of #MeToo in 2017, the desire to punish perpetrators of sexual violence has become one of the central goals of feminist-based legislation, social reform, and mobilizing efforts. At the same time, however, as more attention is paid to the failures of the modern-day prison system in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement, the call for prison abolition has begun to gain more momentum and national attention. The question at the core of my project investigates the relationship between #MeToo and the prison abolition movement: how can these two movements exist simultaneously without inherently contradicting each other? Over the course of my research, I investigated the history of sexual violence in the United States, focusing first on the creation of sex offender registries, and their manifestation in society today. Second, I examined the ideological and philosophical relationship between punishment and justice in present-day American society by asking what justice could look like in the aftermath of sexual violence in a society without prisons. Finally, I imagined what justice for sexual violence would look like in a society without prisons. The past several years have been some of the most divisive and polarizing in modern American history, and the call for prison abolition serves as one of the most apparent examples of this in society today. As more light is shed on the failure of the prison system to effectively address crime and other social ills, the demand for prison abolition rings louder and stronger than ever before. However, as the push towards abolition gains speed, a resounding critique has emerged in opposition: But what about the rapists and murderers? Are we just going to let them roam the streets freely? Although this concern is often raised by those who tend to overlook the nuances and goals of prison abolition, this argument strikes a particular nerve in me, as I am sure it does for countless women across the country. I, like millions of Americans, have had my own life affected by sexual violence, whether that be through my own personal experiences, those of my family and friends, or even through highly publicized national cases that I grew up surrounded by. I vividly remember my own rage and sadness, even as a middle schooler, at Brock Turner’s seemingly insignificant six month sentence for a crime committed a mere thirty minutes from my home. Two years later, I rejoiced in the fact that Larry Nassar was given 40 to 175 years in prison, and even saw his lengthy prison sentence as a victory for women across the country. Today, five years after Nassar’s sentencing, as a newly declared prison abolitionist, I continue to struggle with my desire to hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable for their actions, while simultaneously trying to imagine a society that does not rely on prisons as a catch-all solution for societal ills. I must also grapple with the fact that current policies that hold perpetrators accountable for their actions, like national sex offender registries, are rooted in racist and homophobic values. Racist tropes about the sexual deviance of non-white Americans continue to circulate the media and fuel hatred and xenophobia across the country. Furthermore, the desire to regulate the sexual behaviors of LGBTQ+ people resulted in a disproportionate amount of gay men being placed on sex offender registries. Given this background, I shaped my research project around several central questions. First, I explored the history of sex offender registries in the United States: who and what were sex offender registries primarily designed to protect? What types of people have been most criminalized by this legislation? What is the larger social impact of these laws? Next, I dove deeply into the relationship between punishment and justice, specifically in the context of sexual violence: what does justice look like in the aftermath of a sexual violence? Is criminalization always necessary to achieve justice? How has the pursuit of justice contributed to mass incarceration? Finally, I imagined what accountability would look like in a society without prisons: is it possible to hold sex offenders accountable for their actions without the presence of today’s prison industrial complex? How would dismantling the prison system change the way we think about justice? By diving deeply into all of these concepts and questions, I created a project that addresses a legitimate concern of prison abolition, while simultaneously interrogating ingrained societal beliefs about punishment, justice, and criminality. Although many people have been impacted differently by sexual violence, amplifying the voices of those victimized remains my priority in this project. Justice may look different for everyone affected by sexual violence, and my hope is to imagine what this could look like in a world without prisons. This research was primarily conducted through a series of literature reviews, each of which allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of my topic, and approach my research from new angles. Although there is a great deal of research surrounding sexual violence, sex offender registries, and prison abolition, my research adopts a more nuanced approach to these topics by looking at their relationship to one another and adopting an intersectional lens that analyzes both sexual violence and prison abolition in their larger social contexts. References: Bedarf, Abril R. “Examining sex offender community notification laws.” Shame Punishment, 2019, pp. 355–409, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315243290-10. “California Megan’s Law Website State of California Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General.” California Megans Law, www.meganslaw.ca.gov/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023. Campbell, Michael C., and Heather Schoenfeld. “The Transformation of America’s Penal Order: A historicized political sociology of punishment.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 118, no. 5, 2013, pp. 1375–1423, https://doi.org/10.1086/669506. Cole, S.A. “From the sexual psychopath statute to 'megan’s law": Psychiatric knowledge in the diagnosis, treatment, and adjudication of sex criminals in New Jersey, 1949-1999.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol. 55, no. 3, 2000, pp. 292–314, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/55.3.292. Corrigan, Rose. “Making meaning of megan’s law.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 31, no. 2, 2006, pp. 267–312, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2006.00012.x. McAlinden, A.M. “Deconstructing victim and offender identites in Discourses on Child Sexual abuse: Hierarchies, blame and the good/evil dialectic.” British Journal of Criminology, vol. 54, no. 2, 2014, pp. 180–198, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azt070. Meiners, Erica. “Never Innocent: Feminist Trouble with Sex Offender Registries And ...” JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40338782. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023. Nichol, Jess, and Annie Nichol. “Op-Ed: Polly Klaas Was Our Sister. We Don’t Want Unjust Laws to Be Her Legacy.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 23 Oct. 2020, www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-10-18/polly-klass-legacy-unjust-laws. Perez-Putnam, Miriam. “Surviving Rape as a Prison Abolitionist.” TransformHarm.Org, 28 Feb. 2020, transformharm.org/ab_resource/surviving-rape-as-a-prison-abolitionist/. Renfro, Paul M. “‘hunting these predators’: The gender politics of child protection in the post-9/11 ERA.” Feminist Studies, vol. 44, no. 3, 2018, p. 567, https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.44.3.0567. Rose, Vicki McNickle. “Rape as a social problem: A byproduct of the feminist movement.” Social Problems, vol. 25, no. 1, 1977, pp. 75–89, https://doi.org/10.2307/800469. Simon, Jonathan. “Fear and loathing in late modernity: Reflections on the cultural sources of mass imprisonment in the United States.” Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences, 2001, pp. 15–27, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446221228.n3.

November 09, 2023 Kristina Grisso Professor Duke Austin Literature Review My research proposal aims to investigate the social factors that contribute to opioid use among young adults. Previous studies have identified several factors that contribute to opioid use in this population, including race, social class, and poly-victimization. By exploring these factors in depth, I hope to gain a better understanding of how they influence opioid use among young adults. My research will provide valuable insights into this critical public health issue. Poly victimization The concept of poly victimization refers to experiencing multiple types of victimization at a higher rate than the general population within a specific time. Previous epidemiological studies have found that individuals aged 18-25 tend to report higher rates of substance use, including opioids and prescription drugs such as pain medication, compared to both younger and older age groups (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2019). Davis et al. (2019) states an important factor contributing to young people's substance abuse, particularly opioid use, is their exposure to victimization, such as sexual, physical, or emotional abuse (Davis et al., 2019). Davis et al. (2019), Ford et al. (2013), Turner et al., ( (2010) report research suggests that experiencing these forms of victimization is often linked to adverse outcomes in the long term, including increased use of alcohol, marijuana, and opioids compared to those who have not experienced such events (Davis et al., 2019; Ford et al., 2013; Turner et al., 2010). Prior research has shown that experiencing multiple types of victimization, also known as poly-victimization, can be a stronger predictor of long-term substance use than experiencing a single type of victimization alone. This has been highlighted in studies conducted by Davis et al. (2019) and their subsequent works in 2020. Additionally, recent research has expanded our understanding of poly-victimization and its correlation with substance use by considering trauma-related characteristics. These include the chronicity and frequency of exposure to victimization over time, the proximity to the perpetrator, the presence of life-threatening situations, and adverse social reactions to disclosing victimization. According to the poly-victimization theory, individuals who experience multiple or chronic types of victimization are more likely to suffer from behavioral and psychological problems in the long run as compared to those who experience only a single type of victimization. (Davis et al., 2018; Davis, Janssen, et al., 2020; Finkelhor et al., 2007). In the case of opioid misuse, studies have shown that there is a dose-response relationship between victimization and opioid outcomes. In a cross-sectional study, for instance, youth who reported experiencing a single event had 1.9 times higher odds of past-month opioid misuse. On the other hand, those who reported two, three, or four events had an increasingly higher risk of opioid use (Swedo et al., 2020). These findings have been replicated in other studies, with individuals who experienced two or more events early in life showing an increased risk of past-year nonmedical prescription drug use (Merrick et al., 2020), opioid relapse (Derefinko et al., 2019), earlier opioid initiation, and opioid overdose (Stein et al., 2017). However, these studies only focus on the effects of victimization on opioid use and do not examine the impact of violence exposure beyond the type of victimization (Davis et al., 2022) Race Parlier-Ahmad et al. (2022) have reported that Black people with substance use disorder have worse outcomes than their White counterparts, mainly due to structural racism. The opioid epidemic has amplified these racial disparities. However, little is known about the strengths that buffer against the systemic issues that disproportionately impact Black adults with opioid use disorder, particularly those receiving buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. The study aims to assess psychosocial and clinical predictors of opioid use disorder outcomes and explore gender differences in opioid use disorder outcomes among a sample of Black adults receiving buprenorphine. The research comprises a secondary data analysis of a cross-sectional survey and medical record review with a convenience sample recruited from an addiction medicine clinic. The analyses included Black participants who provided at least one urine drug test during the study period (Parlier-Ahmad et al., 2022). According to two studies conducted by Lewis et al. (2018) and Lundgren et al. (2001), younger, mainly white patients were more likely to have been exposed to prescription opioids before non-pharmaceutical opioids. Previous research suggests that black patients tend to be older when seeking treatment for substance use disorders, so it was not surprising to observe this difference (Lewis et al., 2018; Lundgren et al., 2001). A recent study by Deutsch-Link et al. (2021) revealed that logistic regression analyses showed white patients were significantly more likely to have used prescription opioids compared to black patients. Although the age of first non-pharmaceutical opioid use did not significantly differ between black and white patients, age-adjusted linear regression results showed that white patients first used prescription opioids at significantly younger ages (Deutsch-Link et al., 2021). Criminal justice system Woodlock et al. (2015) stated that young adults between the ages of 18-24 are at a greater risk of transitioning from experimental to regular opioid use and are more likely to inject heroin than adults over 25 who use opioids. This age group is also overrepresented in the criminal legal system, accounting for only 9.5% of the US population but comprising 23% of all arrests (SAMHSA, 2018). Additionally, young adulthood is crucial for achieving critical developmental milestones such as completing education, gaining employment, and establishing stable housing. Green et al. (2018) further explained that the combination of criminal legal system involvement and substance use can disrupt the developmental trajectories of young adults, leading to a failure to achieve these milestones. It causes deeper involvement in the criminal justice system and escalates substance use. Despite the unique developmental needs and reasons for substance use among young adults in this specific developmental stage, there is a lack of evidence-based opioid prevention and treatment programs tailored to young adults involved in the criminal legal system. It renders this population overlooked (Perker & Chester, 2021). According to Sichel et al. (2022), studies focusing on young adults in the criminal legal system and examining differences between them and their older peers are crucial for adjusting existing treatment programs and developing new prevention approaches (Sichel et al., 2022). developmental needs and reasons for substance use related to this specific developmental stage (Arnett, 2016). According to Reboussin et al. (2020), recent studies have identified that trajectories of marijuana use begun in adolescence that persist into young adulthood confer the most significant risk of opioid misuse (Reboussin et al., 2020). Compton et al. (2019) and Volkow et al. (2019) state that For these young adults, critically timed preventive interventions to address and prevent rapid escalation of opioid and other drug use are needed. However, evidence-based prevention interventions focused on disrupting opioid use trajectories for young adults are lacking, particularly for those who are involved in the criminal legal system (Compton et al., 2019; Volkow et al., 2019). Existing studies suggest that certain concepts can strongly influence young adults toward opioid use. My study aims to provide additional insights into the external factors that drive young adults to use opioids. Building on previous literature, I plan to focus on three key factors: poly-victimization, race, and the criminal justice system's impact on young adults. Work cited: Davis, Jordan P., Joan S. Tucker, Michael Dunbar, Rachana Seelam, and Elizabeth J. D’Amico. 2022. “Poly-Victimization and Opioid Use during Late Adolescence and Young Adulthood: Health Behavior Disparities and Protective Factors.” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors Derefinko, K. J., Salgado García, F. I., Talley, K. M., Bursac, Z., Johnson, K. C., Murphy, J. G., McDevitt-Murphy, M. E., Andrasik, F., & Sumrok, D. D. (2019). “Adverse childhood experiences predict opioid relapse during treatment among rural adults. Addictive Behaviors” Deutsch-Link, Sasha, Annabelle M. Belcher, Ebonie Massey, Thomas O. Cole, Michael A. Wagner, Amy S. Billing, Aaron D. Greenblatt, Eric Weintraub, and Eric D. Wish. 2023. “Race-Based Differences in Drug Use Prior to Onset of Opioid Use Disorder.” E.A. Woodcock, L.H. Lundahl, J.J.K. Stoltman, M.K. Greenwald. 2015. “Progression to regular heroin use: Examination of patterns, predictors, and consequences.” Finkelhor, D., Ormrod, R. K., & Turner, H. A. (2007). “Poly-Victimization: A neglected component in child victimization. Child abuse & neglect” Ford, J. D., Grasso, D. J., Hawke, J., & Chapman, J. F. (2013). “Polyvictimization among juvenile justice-involved youths.” Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal” K.M. Green, E.E. Doherty, M.S. Sifat, M.E. Ensminger. 2015 “Explaining continuity in substance use: The role of criminal justice system involvement over the life course of an urban African American prospective cohort.” Lundgren, L. M., Amodeo, M., Ferguson, F., & Davis, K. (2001). “Racial and ethnic differences in drug treatment entry of injection drug users in Massachusetts.” Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment Merrick, M. T., Ford, D. C., Haegerich, T. M., & Simon, T. (2020). “Adverse childhood experiences increase risk for prescription opioid misuse.” The Journal of Primary Prevention Parlier-Ahmad, Anna Beth, Mickeal Pugh, and Caitlin E. Martin. 2022. “Treatment Outcomes Among Black Adults Receiving Medication for Opioid Use Disorder.” Journal of Racial Sichel, Corianna E., Daniel Winetsky, Stephanie Campos, Megan A. O’Grady, Susan Tross, Jane Kim, Alwyn Cohall, Renee Cohall, and Katherine S. Elkington. 2022. “Patterns and Contexts of Polysubstance Use among Young and Older Adults Who Are Involved in the Criminal Legal System and Use Opioids: A Mixed Methods Study.” Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment S.S. Perker, L.E.H. Chester. 2021 “The justice system and young adults with substance use disorders.” Turner, H. A., Finkelhor, D., & Ormrod, R. (2010). “Poly-victimization in a national sample of children and youth.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine Volkow ND, Jones EB, Einstein EB, Wargo EM. “Prevention and Treatment of Opioid Misuse and Addiction: A Review”. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019 W.M. Compton, R.J. Valentino, R.L. DuPont. 2020 “Polysubstance use in the U.S. opioid crisis.” Qualitative Research Design For my research, I will use in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative data. Although several methods exist to collect qualitative data, in-depth interviews would yield the highest quality data. Semi-structured interviews allow the interviewee to respond in a more natural way, which is not possible in controlled interviews. Open-ended inquiries are permissible, which gives the researcher more flexibility in their role. However, intensive interviewing has limitations, and I anticipate specific issues will arise. The conclusions drawn from a small sample size may only be representative of some of the population. Additionally, intensive interviewing is a time-consuming process, which limits the amount of information that can be gathered. The small sample size also makes drawing inferences challenging. It is essential to maintain the privacy of the interviewees, and therefore, they will sign consent forms, and their identities will not be revealed in the research article. I will base my inquiries on three distinct concepts. Quantitative Research Design I used a correlational survey design to collect quantitative data for my research. This method allowed me to identify the relationship between the study variables. The survey consisted of 20 questions, including statements in the Likert format. This type of survey was the most appropriate for my research as it provided a comprehensive view of the participants' lives without requiring detailed exploration. Moreover, it allowed me to compare participants with different experiences of drug use. The objective of my study was to investigate the correlation between social factors and young adults' opioid use. These factors included polyvictimization, race, and involvement in the criminal justice system. However, I anticipate some limitations while conducting these surveys. One limitation is the need for more generalizability, as I operated on a minimum of 20 surveys. To make a generalized assumption, I would need more data. Another limitation is the need for more representation, as I could only reach a narrow range of participants with entirely different backgrounds. Furthermore, I expect to encounter a limitation in the form of predetermined answers, which may need to provide more in-depth solutions. To overcome this, I will use mixed methods to receive comprehensive answers.

This study has been conducted in two main parts. The first section is intended to analyze perception of crime using a pre-existing dataset that spans across multiple years. A comparative graph of real crime trends (from National Crime Victimization Survey) was used for initial discussion to reiterate the discrepancies of real crime versus perceived crime rate. Use various graphs representing variance of perception exemplified the peaks and plunges that occur from a year to year basis. Upon determining these shifts, an extensive frequency-count analysis of national news media coverage throughout designated years; these samples consist of years with significant, perceivable increases and decreases in comparison to the previous year. Qualitative and quantitative ways of analysis will be used to assess the link between crime keywords within media and perception of crime. The intent of the study is to identify if years with increased perception will reflect years in which national media demonstrated more topics of crime. Procedures Perception of Crime The first section requires a working dataset tracking perception of crime within the United States. Evaluation of perception of crime relied on a dataset from Gallup News’ Social Series: Crime (henceforth, Gallup). The dataset consists of a cross sectional survey, in which individuals surveyed at a given point are not represented continually every year. The sampling strategy of Gallup is a random sample of 18+ adults currently living within the United States or District of Columbia; the samples being weighted in order to better represent various demographics within the population. The survey was given via telephone calls, including both cell and landline users within accordance within the source sample: Dynata. The survey was only available in English and Spanish. There is not a consistent number of participants every year, however it is consistently 1,000+ participants; the sample of 2020 consisting of 1,035 participants. There is the concern of some invalidity stemming from the discrepancies of potential participants answering the phone call, as well as the possibility of participant understanding or misinterpretation within the virtual conversation. This survey asks a variety of questions within the category of crime, however this study particularly looks at the dataset stemming from question 9, which regards the participant’s perception of crime on a national level. The participant is asked to identify which answer they resonate with most out of four options. Those choices being that they believe crime has increased since the previous year; crime has decreased since the previous year; crime has maintained a steady level since the previous year; and no opinion. All figures are represented as percentages. As for the tracking of the perception of crime, the participants who responded with more crime compared to last year will be the focal point. This group is essential to understanding the substantial peaks of when the general population believed there was more crime; however, the remaining groups will be included within the diagrams for reference. After referring to the diagrams, five peaks and five ravines within perception of crime were selected, for a total of ten sample years for the following news media content analysis. The high years consisted of 1992, 2002, 2005, 2009, and 2020. The low years selected were 1997, 2001, 2004, 2014, and 2018. News Content Analysis With the selection of the sample years accomplished, the national news content analysis begins. To achieve an adequate sample of media coverage, each year’s media was represented in thirteen news sources from national networks and large cities. News networks that have been in business for the entirety of the perception timeline will be selected, in order to maintain similarity and consistency; meaning they each have been established by 1991 or earlier. The news sources will consist of one general, non-state specific resource (USA Today), one New York-based newspaper that is well distributed (Wall Street Journal), and eleven news resources from various states scattered across the United States. The included eleven, state-based news sources being: New York Times, Denver Post, The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun Times, The Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, The Salt Lake Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and The Kansas City Star. These news sources are based and representative of New York, Colorado, Oregon, California, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Florida, Utah, Minnesota, and Kansas. Because of limitations of university access, not all news sources were evaluated within the same database. The New York Times and USA Today were accessed via NexusUni, whilst counts from Wall Street Journal were obtained through ProQuest. The rest, being that of the majority, of the news sources were reviewed in NewsBank Inc. Each of the thirteen resources were then subjected to frequency counts for all ten selected years (five high and five low) across fourteen crime-based keywords. Decisions to limit each term search to headline only helped ensure that the populated articles had strong association with the given term and its intended representation. The keywords consisted of four societal mass crimes: ‘mass shooting’, ‘school shooting’, ‘sex trafficking’, and ‘terrorism’. Four violent crimes were represented by the keywords ‘murder’, ‘stabbing’, ‘kidnapping’, and ‘rape/rapist’. Two property crimes were highlighted in the keywords: ‘theft’ and ‘burglary’. Lastly, three miscellaneous words deemed appropriate were added to the assessment: ‘crime’, ‘gang violence’, ‘sexual assault’, and ‘serial killer’. Seven of the fourteen terms were deemed necessary to include variations of suffix to ensure they were well accounted for. Those are outlined in the following table: Terroris*: Terrorist, Terrorism, Terroristic Murder*: Murder, Murderer Sex Traffick*: Sex Trafficked, Sex Trafficking, Sex Trafficker Kidnapp*: Kidnapped, Kidnapping Rape*/Rapist: Rape, Raped, Rapist Stabb*: Stabbed, Stabbing School Shoot*: School Shooter, School Shooting Analysis Upon the collection of frequencies qualitative and quantitative measures will be applied in analysis of connections. First, SPSS will be used to run a linear regression model to evaluate the effect of mass, violent and property crimes. Once this and various other representations of models have been configured, results will discuss statistical significance. After the quantitative analysis of the frequency numbers, qualitative measures will ensue to discuss perceived trends and possible correlations. Contribution Previous analytics show that there is a disconnect between actual crime and what the population perceives crime to be. Whilst there are studies demonstrating the effects of media on perception of crime, there is a lack of evaluation of variations of crime in news media in comparison to perception of crime. The intent of this study is to analyze the specifics between news media content and perception of crime, honing in on a more reactionary relationship than previous studies have done. The results could add to academics’ consideration of media content and personal beliefs and attitudes. Source References within literature review: (not all are professionally formatted as of yet***, will be edited within final product) Shi, L., Roche, S. P., & McKenna, R. M. (2019). Media consumption and crime trend perceptions: a longitudinal analysis. Deviant Behavior, 40(12), 1480–1492. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2018.1519129 Manning, M., Fleming, C. M., Pham, H.-T., & Wong, G. T. W. (2022). What Matters More, Perceived or Real Crime? Social Indicators Research, 163(3), 1221–1248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-022-02924-7 Prewitt, K., Alterman, E., Arato, A., Pyszczynski, T., Robin, C., & Stern, J. (2004). The Politics of Fear after 9/11. Social Research, 71(4), 1129–1146. Plamper, J., & Lazier, B. (Eds.). (2012). Fear: Across the Disciplines. “The Language of Fear: Security and Modern Politics” University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7zw809 Chadee (Ed.). (2017). Psychology of fear, crime, and the media : international perspectives (First issued in paperback 2017.). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Allum. (2010). Defining and defying organized crime : discourse, perceptions and reality. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203860342 Gramlich, J. (2020, November 20). What the data says (and doesn’t say) about crime in the United States. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/ Vinæs Larsen, & Leth Olsen, A. (2020). Reducing Bias in Citizens’ Perception of Crime Rates: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Burglary Prevalence. The Journal of Politics, 82(2), 747–752. https://doi.org/10.1086/706595 Grohe, DeValve, M., & Quinn, E. (2012). Is perception reality? The comparison of citizens’ levels of fear of crime versus perception of crime problems in communities. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 14(3), 196–211. https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2012.3 McCarthy, Justin. 2015. “More Americans Say Crime Is Rising in U.S.” Retrieved May 4, 2017 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/186308/americans-say-crime-rising.aspx). Dyson. (2011). The mean world syndrome diminishes human security.(Guest Editorial). Journal of Human Security, 7(1), 1–. https://doi.org/10.3316/JHS0701001 Hobfoll. (2018). Tribalism : the evolutionary origins of fear politics “We Believe What Protects Us and Our Tribe”. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78405-2 Sasaki, Kuroda, R., Tsuno, K., & Kawakami, N. (2020). Exposure to media and fear and worry about COVID‐19. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 74(9), 501–502. https://doi.org/10.1111/pcn.13095 Alterman, E. (2004). Fear: What Is It Good For? Social Research, 71(4), 997–1014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971988 Swift, Art. 2016. “Americans’ perceptions of U.S. Crime problem are steady.” Retrieved May 4, 2017 National Crime Victimization Survey 2022 Altheide, D. L. (1997). “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear.” The Sociological Quarterly, 38(4), 647–668. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121084 Eschholz, S., Chiricos, T., & Gertz, M. (2003). Television and Fear of Crime: Program Types, Audience Traits, and the Mediating Effect of Perceived Neighborhood Racial Composition. Social Problems, 50(3), 395–415. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2003.50.3.395 Callanan, V. J. (2012). Media Consumption, Perceptions of Crime Risk and Fear of Crime: Examining Race/Ethnic Differences. Sociological Perspectives, 55(1), 93–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2012.55.1.93 Altheide, D. L., & R. Sam Michalowski. (1999). Fear in the News: A Discourse of Control. The Sociological Quarterly, 40(3), 475–503. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121338 Chiricos, T., Eschholz, S., & Gertz, M. (1997). Crime, News and Fear of Crime: Toward an Identification of Audience Effects. Social Problems, 44(3), 342–357. https://doi.org/10.2307/3097181 Cohen, J. E. (2004). If the News Is so Bad, Why Are Presidential Polls so High? Presidents, the News Media, and the Mass Public in an Era of New Media. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34(3), 493–515. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27552610 Gadarian, S. K. (2010). The Politics of Threat: How Terrorism News Shapes Foreign Policy Attitudes. The Journal of Politics, 72(2), 469–483. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381609990910 Dixon, T. L. (2011). Teaching You to Love Fear: Television News and Racial Stereotypes in a Punishing Democracy. In S. J. Hartnett (Ed.), Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives (pp. 106–123). University of Illinois Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt3fh4zd.11 Graziano, P. R., & Percoco, M. (2017). Agenda setting and the political economy of fear: How crime news influences voters’ beliefs. International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale de Science Politique, 38(5), 520–533. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26940310 Carson, T. (2017). Fear Factor: Inside the paranoia-entertainment complex. The Baffler, 37, 6–11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26358579 Doucet, L. (2018). Syria & the CNN Effect: What Role Does the Media Play in Policy-Making? Daedalus, 147(1), 141–157. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48563413 Yavuz, N., & Welch, E. W. (2010). Addressing Fear of Crime in Public Space: Gender Differences in Reaction to Safety Measures in Train Transit. Urban Studies, 47(12), 2491–2515. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43079937 Davis, W. A. (1987). The Varieties of Fear. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 51(3), 287–310. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4319892 Gabriel, U., & Greve, W. (2003). THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FEAR OF CRIME: Conceptual and Methodological Perspectives. The British Journal of Criminology, 43(3), 600–614. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23639044 Megan Brenan “Record-High 56% in U.S. Perceive Local Crime Has Increased” (2022) Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, edited by Jennings Bryant and Mary Beth Oliver.

The growth of the prison industrial complex in the United States is a result of several factors that promote increased policing, surveillance, and penal punishment. Similarly, neoliberal policy promotes a privatized economy that benefits from mass incarceration. This paper analyzes the relationship between neoliberal ideology and the prison industrial complex through an extended literature review. As neoliberalism began to take off in the 80s and 90s the prison population also rose and fostered the ideas of individualism and a decrease of government welfare, putting the responsibility on the individual who is subject to penal control. Neoliberal policy stimulated the development of punitive punishment which expanded the prison system and resulted in the prison industrial complex. The PIC is characterized by the symbiotic relationship between government entities and the criminal justice system. The prison industrial complex has a unique and complex relationship to neoliberal policy and ideology. The PIC is a product of government and private industries creating facilities that produce mass incarceration, private prisons, prison labor, etc. My research throughout this paper synthesizes literature that shows how the carceral system adopted neoliberal policies such as deregulation, privatization, and ultimately criminalizes people.​​ These concepts are familiar to scholars but important to research as we continue to understand the reason why we experience high incarceration rates, socioeconomic inequality, and racialize criminality in the US. Bibliography Baca, George. 2021. “Neoliberalism’s Prologue: Keynesianism, Myths of Class Compromises and the Restoration of Class Power.” Anthropological Theory 21(4):520–40. Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2012. “Carceral politics as gender justice? The ‘traffic in women’ and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights” Theory and Society 41(3): 233-259. Bjørnskov, Christian. 2014. “Does Economic Freedom Really Kill? On the Association between ‘Neoliberal’ Policies and Homicide Rates.” European Journal of Political Economy 37:207–19. Brathwaite, Jessica. 2016. “Neoliberal Education Reform and the Perpetuation of Inequality.” Critical Sociology 43(3):429–48. Brewer, R. M., & Heitzeg, N. A. (2008). “The Racialization of Crime and Punishment: Criminal Justice, Color-Blind Racism, and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex.” American Behavioral Scientist, 51(5), 625-644. Brickner, Michael and Shakrya Diaz. (2011). “Prison for Profit: Incarceration for Sale.” Human Rights 38(3): 13-16 Campeau, Holly., Ron Levi. 2019. “Neoliberal Legality as Dual Process: Embeddedness, Courts and Crime Prevention in the United States.” The British Journal of Criminology,59(2): 334-353. 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More Than Prefigurative Politics? Redefining institutional frames to reduce precarity under neoliberal capitalism. Organization Studies, 44(6), 939-960. De Giorgi, Alessandro. “Back to Nothing: Prisoner Reentry and Neoliberal Neglect.” Social Justice 44, no. 1 (147) (2017): 83–120. Dominic, Corva. 2014. “Neoliberal globalization and the war on drugs: Transnationalizing illiberal governance in the Americas.” Political Geography 27(2): 176-193. Esposito, L., and L. Finley. 1970. “Beyond Gun Control: Examining Neoliberalism, Pro-gun Politics and Gun Violence in the United States.” Estes, C. L. (2014). The Future of Aging Services in a Neoliberal Political Economy. Generations, 38(2), 94–100. Galinato, Gregmar and Ryne Rohla. 2020. “Do Privately-Owned Prisons Increase Incarceration Rates?” Labour Economics 67. Genter, Hooks, G., & Mosher, C. (2013). Prisons, jobs and privatization: The impact of prisons on employment growth in rural US counties, 1997–2004. 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The current study aims to investigate the direct causes that result in late diagnosis of mental health disorders. The direct research question is “What are the causes of people being diagnosed later than possible with (a) mental disorder(s)?” The independent variables studied are age, gender, and socioeconomic status; the mental disorders focused on are anxiety, depression, and attention/deficit hyperactivity disorder. Labeling theory and gender role theory are both used to frame the project. Independent variables are being intersectionality studied to find all possible causal relationships between them and the mental disorders. Sample is collected via snowball sampling during ninety minute, virtual interviews of open-ended questions. Health professionals were interviewed, to lessen risk and sensitivity that would be found interviewing patients themselves. The aim of findings is to add to the conversation is directed at preventative measures, but also how to better treat those who are diagnosed outside of the typical window of their disorder.

As of 2022, 3,296 individuals were unhoused in Long Beach, California. Among this population, 69 percent (2,287) were unsheltered, meaning they do not reside in a homeless shelter or vehicle. This is a 22 percent increase from the previous count in 2021, which is one of the largest spikes in recent history (LongBeach.Gov 2022). Many unsheltered folks resort to the creation of “informal settlements'' around Long Beach in order to form networks of support. In response, the city has conducted police sweeps to manage its houseless population, thereby criminalizing the crisis of houselessness. This study focuses on the criminalization of houselessness in Long Beach, California by examining the purported reasons for police sweeps, their social impacts, and the way these sweeps affect those experiencing houselessness. This study asks: are sweeps an effective way to manage homelessness? If so, to what extent, for whom, and for what reason? How do unhoused individuals experience police sweeps and what are their lasting results on these communities? 87 percent of unhoused families in Long Beach are sheltered, while a majority of individuals are not. This speaks to the benefit of informal settlements, as congregating into an “encampment” may provide resources, community, social contact, and freedom. Police sweeps strip away these things and force those who are unhoused into further seclusion. In 2022, mass sweeps were conducted in downtown Long beach, where much of the houseless population resides. These sweeps were conducted not due to “public safety” or “fire hazards” as often claimed by the local government. Instead, the mass sweeps in late 2022 were due to Christmas celebrations and the lighting of a giant Christmas tree in the downtown area. The intended contribution of my research is to influence policy practices. I hope to challenge the notions that shelters and police sweeps are the most effective way to transition unhoused individuals into permanent housing. Additionally, I hope to shift the public understanding these informal settlements, from a cluster of unhoused folk to a legitimate community. References: Department of Public Health. City of Long Beach. Retrieved March 12, 2023 (https://www.longbeach.gov/). Dozier, Deshonay. 2019. “Contested Development: Homeless Property, Police Reform, and Resistance in Skid Row, LA.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43(1):179–94. Gordon, Constance and Kyle Byron. 2021. “Sweeping the City: Infrastructure, Informality, and the Politics of Maintenance.” Cultural Studies 35(4-5):854–75. Herring, Chris. 2014. “The New Logics of Homeless Seclusion:Homeless Encampments in America's West Coast Cities.” City & Community 13(4):285–309. Willse, Craig. 2015. “Surplus Life, or Race and Death in Neoliberal Times.” in The value of homelessness: Managing surplus life in the United States. University of Minnesota Press.

Traditional Ghanaian media forms such as folklore and proverbs have often depicted people with mental illnesses as demon-possessed, dirty, incapable, and a liability to society (Aina, 2004; Ampadu, 2012). Within the past decade, however, it seems as though contemporary African authors have chosen to portray those with mental illnesses in a more positive manner compared to their predecessors (Gyasi, 2020; Selasi, 2013). Is there a generational shift in Ghanaian media depictions of mental illness? Through this project, I will explore, analyze, and ultimately contrast the ways different generations of storytellers approach the subject of mental illnesses through a paper and an accompanying multimedia documentary. For years, traditional Ghanaian proverbs and folklore like Kwaku Anansi tales have depicted characters with mental illnesses very negatively. The effect of these harmful stereotypes is clear in public opinion: 61% of Ghanaians are of the view that mental illnesses are the consequence of a lack of self-discipline and will-power, while 79.7% believe that it is easy to tell people with mental illnesses apart from normal people (Barke, 2011). There have been a few studies conducted on the stigmatization and stereotyping of mental illnesses in Ghana, including an insightful study from 2016 which discusses the role of Ghanaian newspapers in contributing to this phenomenon (Mfoafo-McCarthy, Sottie & Gyan, 2016). However, there has been relatively little research examining the contemporary shift in tone towards those with mental illness in popular Ghanaian books from the past ten years as compared to traditional forms of media. By examining the role folklore and proverbs have played in the propagation of these harmful stereotypes, while simultaneously highlighting the more positive depictions from the modern day, my project could help combat the stigma people with mental illnesses face in Ghana. I plan on collecting my data from multiple avenues. I plan on doing a significant amount of my research in Balme Library, the biggest library in West Africa. There are transcribed copies of oral literature in the various Ghanaian languages here. I will identify about 5 to 7 of the most popular tales from the biggest ethnic groups in Ghana- Akan, Ewe, and Ga. Then, I will use content analysis to identify versions of words like “mad”, ”insane”, or “crazy”. I will then translate them, and the context in which they were used, to English. For the second part of my research project, I will reread the contemporary African books Transcendent Kingdom, Small Worlds and Ghana Must Go as I think they best represent the purpose of this research. As I reread, I will pay close attention to the contexts in which these words like “mad,’ “crazy,” and their variations are used. After preparing and gathering the datasets with the words and contexts obtained from these two procedures, I will then analyze the data, searching for common themes, and report my findings. The results will examine and contrast the various ways in which these literature forms have portrayed mental illnesses. As a past research assistant, I learned to identify research methods, understand research contexts, and assess audience expectations. I am also cross-registered for Media Construction, Analyzing Media Texts and Journalism in The Digital World classes where I focused on West African-centered projects. These experiences have not only strengthened my resolve to understand and find solutions for the social issues in the region, but also given me an understanding of how challenging it can be to find reliable sources, and how unpredictable the research-making process can be with very limited precedents. Growing up West African, I consider myself quite knowledgeable of the language, cultures, and history of this region. I believe this work has important implications for understanding contemporaneous government interventions in the medical healthcare field in Ghana and contributes to ongoing societal conversations on mental health issues. References. Adakabre, F. & Nate, M. (2019) Selected Akan Proverbs And Their Meaning (Volume One) Yenkassa. Print. Adichie, C. (2006). Half of a Yellow Sun Fourth Estate. Print. Aina, O. F. (2004). “Mental illness and cultural issues in West African films: Implications for orthodox psychiatric prac-tice.” Medical Humanities. Ampadu, V. E. (2012). The depiction of mental illness in Nigerian and Ghanaian movies: negative or positive impact on mental health awareness in Ghana? (Dissertation), University of Leeds, UK Barke, A., Nyarko, S., & Klecha, D. (2011). “The stigma of mental illness in Southern Ghana: Attitudes of the urban population and patients' views.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Eaton, J. & Ohene S. (2015). Providing Sustainable Mental Health Care in Ghana: A Demonstration Project Providing Sustainable Mental and Neurological Health Care in Ghana and Kenya: Workshop Summary. Emezi, A. (2018). Freshwater Grove Press.. GhanaWeb (2019). “Mental Health Society of Ghana campaign to change perception about Mental health.” GhanaWeb. Giacomazzo, B. (2021). “Meet Anansi, The West African God Who Inspired Spider-Man All That’s Interesting. Something Interesting To Read Every Day. Gyasi, Y. (2020). Transcendent Kingdom. Alfred A. Knopf.. Holsti, O. R. (1968). Content Analysis. Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol 2.. Kemp, S. (2021). Digital 2021: Ghana Data Reportal. Mfoafo-M’Carthy, M., Sottie, C., Gyan, C. (2016). “Mental illness and stigma: a 10-year review of portrayal through print media in Ghana (2003–2012).” International Journal of Culture and Mental Health. Print. McDermott, G. (1987). Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti. Print Nelson, C (2023). Small Worlds. Grove Press. Selasi,T. (2013). Ghana Must Go. Penguin Press. Teplin, L. A, McClelland, G. M., Abram, K. M., Weiner, D. A. (2005). “Crime victimization in adults with severe mental illness: Comparison with the national crime victimization survey.” Archives of General Psychiatry. Print. The World Bank (2020). “Population ages 0-14(% of total population)” The World Bank Group.

My exploration dives into the cultural norm of eco-conscious grocery shopping, especially on grocery stores like Whole Foods and Erewhon. Through the sociological lense of functionalism, these stores foster communal goals of healthy eating and sustainability, aligning with societal stability. However, viewed through conflict theory, their association with higher socioeconomic status creates a class divide, excluding lower-income individuals and pushing inequality. Symbolic interactionism reveals that shopping choices contribute to personal identity, symbolizing a commitment to a greener planet and individual health. The culture of health and eco-conscious consumption encapsulates multifaceted factors, promoting a shared devotion to the environment. While these stores are often seen as symbols of affluence, the analysis suggests that they represent more than mere expense—they embody a collective dedication to a better environment. Addressing cost disparities could eliminate class divides, fostering equal opportunity for all to shop based on shared values.

Studies show individuals experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity also experience trauma and mental illnesses. Despite this, many resources provided through state welfare services seldom allocate sufficient funds and personnel to help deal with past traumas such as PTSD. This study investigates the relationship between housing insecurity and homelessness and trauma for adult women who have tried to access assistance through Southern California. To do this, I conducted one-on-one audio-recorded interviews for approximately one hour and afterward the completion of one questionnaire called the PTSD Checklist DSM5 (PCL-5) – Adult (18+). Based on the in-depth questions and questionnaires, adult women who have experienced homelessness and housing insecurity in Southern California are susceptible to retraumatization by welfare services, irrespective of whether they received assistance or not. The results from this study can be used to implement trauma-informed care services into welfare services and improve the resources for housing insecure women.

The ever-growing threat of climate change presents increasing hazards to Spain’s water supply due to its historic susceptibility to drought hardships. This difficulty is amplified with the regional division of 17 autonomous communities, zones of Spain with their own economic situations and water conservation policies. This study is being conducted to better understand the way that regions at a historic economic disadvantage suffer at the hands of climate change and how policy implementation and water conservation advancements are vital in combating the rising change in global climate temperature. I argue that Andalucía, in Southern Spain, bears the brunt of clime change consequences due to historic economic disparities that favor and benefit the North, Southern structural deficiencies and difficulty addressing drought related disaster. Through a literature review of peer reviewed journal articles attained through the CSULB Library database and an examination of relevant government documents and secondary sources, I examine the history, climate patterns and water policy of Spain to show how Andalucía is unequipped to handle the impacts of climate change. Historical inequality within the autonomous communities of Spain has obstructed the preparedness for drought related disasters in certain communities, like Andalucía. The social and economic divide between the North and South of Spain stemming from the Middle Ages has created economic marginalization amid the autonomous communities. These disparities leave the South at an economic disadvantage while combatting drought related disaster. Consequences of climate change in Spain such as rising temperatures and records of drought and rainfall show that the South is at a higher risk of lasting droughts with little rainfall. Furthermore, an examination of existing water policy in the South reveals archaic policies with a need for legislation reform. Overall, the North is economically secure, less prone to drought with higher levels of rainfall and structurally sound while the South faces more severe impacts and has fewer resources for mitigation. The South is the agricultural epicenter of Spain so the lack of water in this region has serious implications not only for the autonomous community of Andalucía but for the entire economy of Spain. Research produced locally in Spain will be prioritized. It is important to continuously collect sources throughout this project because new information related to drought and climate change is constantly being published. This study aims to utilize the most recent climate related information possible as the situation fluctuates frequently. There are no current ethical issues for this project seeing as it is a literature review. The data analyzed will be examined through a combination of statistical and content analysis. A narrative approach is necessary when analyzing and making conclusions based on history and data. The conditional frontier hypothesis, as explained by Oto-Peralías & Romero-Ávila is the framework for the analysis of the Reconquista. This hypothesis explains how the “dynamics of being a militarily insecure frontier region created the conditions on the Castilian side for a high concentration of economic and political power.” They discover that the Castilian (Spanish) side of the frontier has a “higher percentage of landless workers, a greater accumulation of wealth, and more jurisdictional rights among the privileged orders, as measured in the 18th century.” The impacts of the Castilian and Nasrid (Muslim) frontier continue to be seen today in Spain. The understanding of the economic inequality spanning from the Middle Ages between the once Muslim domain of the south and the Catholic north illustrate how certain historical political constructions continue to impact the economic structure of a modern-day nation-state. Climate Change, but specifically drought related disaster, will be the main environmental consideration of this study. An EU study done by the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion points to southern regions of Spain as being the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The impact on water resources from climate change is heightened in regions already effected by frequent drought, high temperatures and low water supply. Due to constant variation in the water cycle and weather patterns, hydrological simulation models are utilized during the assessment of climate change impacts (Estrela, T., Pérez-Martin, M. A., & Vargas, E. (2012). By examining the climate in these southern regions, the higher temperatures and growing water scarcity will highlight the severity of the current situation in Andalucía. While this study is meant to analyze the reasons that Andalucía suffers from these issues, more investigation is needed to evaluate how to properly integrate changes and solutions to help assist Southern Spain with the social and economic impacts of drought. Bibliography Estrela, T., Pérez-Martin, M. A., & Vargas, E. (2012). Impacts of climate change on water resources in Spain. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 57(6), 1154–1167. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2012.702213 Vargas Molina, J. (2020). Análisis sobre el cumplimiento de los Planes de emergencia por sequía para abastecimientos urbanos en Andalucía: Compliance assessment of urban supply systems drought plans in Andalusia. Cuadernos Geograficos, 59(2), 241–262. https://doi.org/10.30827/cuadgeo.v59i2.10765 Velázquez, E. (2006). An input–output model of water consumption: Analysing intersectoral water relationships in Andalusia. Ecological Economics, 56(2), 226–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.09.026 Oto-Peralías, D., & Romero-Ávila, D. (2017). Historical Frontiers and the Rise of Inequality: The Case of the Frontier of Granada. Journal of the European Economic Association, 15(1), 54–98. Oto-Peralías, D., & Romero-Ávila, D. (2016). The economic consequences of the Spanish Reconquest: The long-term effects of Medieval conquest and colonization. Journal of Economic Growth, 21(4), 409–464. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-016-9132-9 Jenkins, K. (2013). Indirect economic losses of drought under future projections of climate change: A case study for spain. Natural Hazards, 69(3), 1967-1986. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0788-6 Cazcarro, I., Hoekstra, A. Y., & Sánchez Chóliz, J. (2014). The water footprint of tourism in Spain. Tourism Management, 40, 90–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2013.05.010 Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de la Presidencia, Administración Pública e interior (2020). Imagen de Andalucía Cómo nos vemos y cómo nos ven. Fundación Pública Andaluza Centro de Estudios Andaluces. Territorial patterns and relations in Spain. (2022, June 2). European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion. https://www.espon.eu/spain-fiche Castelao, J. (2003). Sinopsis artículo 137—Constitución Española [Government]. https://app.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/sinopsis/sinopsis.jsp?art=137&tipo=2

Pop culture icons have been a staple in American culture for decades and have extended well beyond U.S. borders, one of the most popular being Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty is a fictional character of a bobtail cat created by Yuko Shimizu, and was brought onto the market by Sanrio, a Japanese stationery company. While sociological research has examined pop culture over time, including Hello Kitty, I aim to utilize data collected from official Sanrio websites, social media, and fan blogs to examine the historical trajectory of Hello Kitty. I ask: How has the advertising of Hello Kitty changed over time to contribute to its continued popularity? Hello Kitty was first introduced in 1974 in Japan, and originally was targeted toward adolescent and teenage girls. Over time, Hello Kitty gained popularity through the public eye via mainstream and social media, and has a variety of merchandise, including plush toys, bedding, wallpaper, makeup, and clothing. I am conducting a content analysis of Sanrio official websites and social media sites as well as archived fan blogs to understand the historical changes behind this beloved cat. I aim to analyze the ways Sanrio has shifted its advertising over time to make her so universally known among not only young girls, but adults of all genders. This will contribute to the sociology of pop culture and advertising by examining gendered socialization over time and place.

Danger from wildfire is becoming more prevalent in Oregon as the occurrence of wildfire and hazardous smoke in the west increases (Wibbenmeyer and Robertson, 2022). Wildfires emit carbon monoxide, ozone precursors and other toxic substances that negatively impact human health leading to increased hospitalizations and breathing problems (Stowell et al, 2021). While wildfire smoke in Oregon affects almost everyone in the state. Rural communities however are at significantly higher risk for wild fire damage than are urban areas like Portland. To determine whether people living in rural or urban parts of Oregon were affected differently during the 2020 wild fires, my poster will use data collected in 2020 from a non-random sample of n=530 Oregonians. The survey allows me to examine the differential effects of the smoke and fire on communities in urban and rural parts of Oregon. I will also be examining other variables such as age, socio economic class, race, gender, sexual identity, and location as factors which may have influenced how detrimental the 2020 fires were on households and individuals in Oregon. Additionally, interviews will be conducted in 2023 (n=50) to determine the extent of damage wildfire smoke has caused Oregon residents from different residential areas to be prepared, or have plans in case a future wildfire strikes in the same area. Rural communities are expected to report more negative effects of wildfire smoke because individuals from these locations are more likely to live in areas where there is a lot of natural brush and kindling on the surface to start uncontrolled fires (Westerling, 2016) By having a better understanding of the attitudes, perspectives and responses to wild fires by individuals (18-30 years old), my research may be able to make policy recommendations to better prepare Oregonians for the next major forest fire. References: Wibbenmeyer, M., & Robertson, M. (2022). The distributional incidence of wildfire hazard in the Western United States. Environmental Research Letters, 17(6), 064031. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac60d7 Stowell, J. D., Yang, C.-E., Fu, J. S., Scovronick, N. C., Strickland, M. J., & Liu, Y. (2021). Asthma exacerbation due to climate change-induced wildfire smoke in the western us. Environmental Research Letters, 17(1), 014023. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4138 Westerling, A. L. (2016). Increasing western US forest wildfire activity: Sensitivity to changes in the timing of Spring. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1696), 20150178. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0178

It is essential to consider the impact of natural disasters on different ethnic communities in Oregon and the level of preparedness that varies by socioeconomic class. African Americans in the United States tend to be disproportionately impacted and at a higher risk of exposure to disasters (Davidson, Price, McCauley, et al, 2013). After a disaster, various studies also report higher hardships during and after a disaster for African American households (Davidson, Price, McCauley, et al, 2013) This trend was evident after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Andrew, where Black Americans reported mental health issues, property loss, and loss of basic resources (S. Laditka, Murray, J. Laditka, 2010; Perilla et al., 2002). Despite this, Black Americans feel community preparation and coordination for disasters are still lacking for their community (Collins, 2017). The research on my poster will report on how African Americans in Oregon are thinking about or preparing for a future tsunami or earthquake. I will pay particular attention to young people (18-30 years old) living in the Pacific Northwest. This research will delve into the intersection of climate justice and natural disasters. As the Pacific Northwest continues to experience a frequency of natural hazards magnified by climate change, it becomes crucial to understand how these events, or threats of new events, are prepared for or thought about by African Americans. References: Collins, R. (2017). Disaster Preparedness Perception in a Predominantly African-American Community of a United States East Coast City. Davidson, T.M., Price, M., McCauley, J.L. et al. Disaster Impact Across Cultural Groups: Comparison of Whites, African Americans, and Latinos. Am J Community Psychol 52, 97–105 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9579-1 Perilla, J. L., Norris, F. H., & Lavizzo, E. A. (2002). Ethnicity, Culture, and Disaster Response: Identifying and Explaining Ethnic Differences in PTSD Six Months After Hurricane Andrew. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 21(1), 20–45. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.21.1.20.22404 Sarah B. Laditka , Louise M. Murray & James N. Laditka (2010) In the Eye of the Storm: Resilience and Vulnerability Among African American Women in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina, Health Care for Women International, 31:11, 1013-1027, DOI: 10.1080/07399332.2010.508294

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), commonly referred to as Superfund, provides the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the authority and funding to clean up some of the nation’s most contaminated sites. While Superfund has cleaned up 453 sites to date, according to EPA Superfund data, 1,336 sites without remediation remain, many for decades. A growing body of research has demonstrated that exposure to contamination from Superfund sites poses risks to residents’ health and earning potential, places an undue burden on vulnerable communities, and strains local budgets Therefore, I am investigating to what extent the Superfund program has fulfilled its two main objectives of protecting human health and the environment in Southern California. Given that most program evaluations of Superfund neglect to identify members of local government as primary stakeholders, how have these unremediated sites impacted local governments’ efforts to meet state mandates, address voters’ demands, and address equity concerns? To address these questions, I am utilizing an intersectionality-environmental justice framework while performing a program evaluation of the Superfund. The evaluation relies on qualitative interviews of local representatives and administrators from three Southern California cities containing a Superfund site. The findings in this study contribute to a greater understanding of the challenges of Superfund’s policy framework and the interdisciplinary impacts of that policy at the local government level, as well as a research model to encourage further community-based research on contamination which is of particular importance in light of climate change and extreme weather events.

California farmworkers are facing multiple catastrophic events induced by climate change in the past three years more than ever before. Wildfires are growing hotter and burning longer, and the chance of fire increases every year. Wildfires dangerously generate hidden challenges among workers, and like the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects are often underreported and misclassified. Working during proximal wildfires purports to save agriculture production, such as wine grapes and dairy cattle, and provide national food security. It is during this time, however, that workers are at high risk for exposure to wildfire smoke, which can cause both short- and long-term health problems, including cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, hospitalization, and premature death. Hidden impacts might also include loss of employment and housing, wage theft, and violations to evacuation orders. Previous survey findings suggest that nearly three-quarters of farmworkers are without employer-provided health insurance (T. Hernandez and Gabbard 2018), which makes seeking medical attention before and after a fire costly. The combined conditions highlight that understanding how wildfires affect farmworkers is ever more crucial. This paper summarizes the findings from a community-led survey aimed at measuring and assessing Northern California farmworkers’ perceptions on how wildfires impact them and their work.

People with disabilities are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change-related disasters, yet there is scant research on how they plan for emergencies and evacuation. Given the increasing threat of such hazards, we sought to better understand how disabled individuals prepared for these risks. We carried out 40 semi-structured interviews with respondents with and without mobility disabilities, then inductively coded the transcripts for themes using grounded theory. This analysis demonstrated three key findings: vulnerabilities are the result of social, environmental, and physical factors; disabled people use their extensive planning experience to prepare for emergencies; and the majority of responsibility for disaster preparedness is placed on individuals rather than institutions. We argue that these results are the consequence of a lack of structural reinforcements, social structures or institutions enacted to help shape outcomes in a set direction. Adding disability-inclusive structural reinforcements in policies and practices would reduce vulnerability of, enhance adaptive capacity of, and limit the individual burdens on disabled people in the face of climate-related emergency and evacuation.

Previous work has shown that the successful integration of face-to-face (FTF) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is linked to higher levels of relationship satisfaction and closeness. While scholars have presented multiple mechanisms behind this association, one feature of digital technology that has not been explored in this context is its ability to accelerate time. The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime case study for this, as couples were forced to integrate CMC and FTF quality time in new ways, in a social context of intense uncertainty. Within this context, I use interviews with partners in committed relationships (N=42, 18 couples and 6 individual partners) to ask: As couples integrate FTF and digital communication in new ways, does this impact how they perceive time together? If so, how does this time distortion impact how they create meaning and further develop their bond? In response to the pandemic’s disruptions, couples integrated CMC with FTF quality time, whether they were locked down together or forced apart. Couples spent hours on end together, integrating FTF and CMC, describing a feeling of time “flying by”. In these hours of engrossment and escapism, couples learned more about each other, learned how to communicate better, and (re)constructed time together as a central priority, all of which (re)solidified their romantic bond. From this, I argue that altering perceptions of time is another link between FTF/CMC integration and relationship closeness.

In this conference presentation, we present the results of an ongoing community collaboration to translate sociological research into a public-facing science zine. The zine draws on a larger project examining public engagement with artificial intelligence (AI) and automation within the greater region of Los Angeles. We use the zine format to illustrate how engagement with AI technologies is highly stratified and maps onto existing spatial inequities intersecting with race and class. We compare two situated cases grounded in ethnographic fieldwork: public discussions of AI/ML ethics among the tech workforce in Silicon Beach, and organized community resistance to automation in the working-class, racialized LA Harbor Area. We show how established programs of scientific ethics and public engagement may fail to account for the situated nature of AI in relation to power and inequality, and in so doing limit institutional possibilities of advancing social justice. The zine presentation will include dissemination of hard copies for conference participants along with QR codes for digital download and online circulation. We will also provide reflexive documentation of the community-academic collaboration itself (collaboration between Sophie Wang and Taylor M. Cruz).

This research focuses on the exploration of online Queer communities and the nuanced processes of identity construction that transpired in the pre-social media era, specifically during the 1980s and 1990s in bulletin board systems and chat rooms. The emergence of digital spaces during this period provided a unique platform for Queer individuals to connect, share experiences, and shape their identities. The primary objective of this research is to shed light on the socio-cultural dynamics of online Queer communities prior to the rise of mainstream social media platforms. Through an examination of Queer digital spaces of the 80s and 90s, the aim is to unravel the nuanced ways in which individuals navigated these virtual domains, engaged in identity building, and cultivated a collective sense of community.

U.S. military veterans transitioning back into the civilian sector often experience a variety of challenges and need to readjust into non-military environments. In order to examine the psychological challenges involved in the transition and readjustments processes among U. S. active military veterans a qualitative study was conducted. For 6 months, data was collected by veterans in California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, and New York. Following an IRB approval, semi-structured open-ended self-developed interviews were developed and conducted with sixteen military veterans who have served in 4 branches of the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Data and information collected included social and military demographics, as well as experience with the veterans' identity before, during, and after serving in the military. The aims of this study were: 1) To identify self-concept and development with military identity 2) To look into the relationship between identity disruption and criteria for adjustment disorder (following the DSM-5-TR definitions), and 3) Single out psychosocial factors that helped or could have helped with identity readjustment into the civilian sector. Themes related to veterans' identity and experience with their adjustment patterns to civilian life were examined in the way they interrelate with mental health and supportive service availability. This study contributes to the existing research on psychological challenges for readjusting U.S. military veterans and paves the way to future considerations when developing interventions to support them.

Abstract Background: Research has shown that anxiety influences the athletic performance of student-athletes. Approximately 30% of women and 25% of men who are student-athletes have reported experiencing anxiety with only 10% of college level athletes with known mental illnesses seeking care from mental health care professionals. While research findings on this relationship have been consistent, there is a gap in the literature where coping techniques and pressure have not been investigated. Objective: The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between anxiety and athletic performance (self-regulation, performance, and external coping) among student-athletes. Method: The sample consisted of 75 undergraduate students (M age = 21, SD = 2.50). About 66% of the sample were female and 67% were Caucasian. They completed three study measures: demographics questionnaire, Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 Scale (GAD-7) (Spitzer et al., 2006), and Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (Rice et al., 2020). The study measures were completed through the online survey program, REDCap. Results: The study results show that anxiety levels are positively related to athletic strain and self-regulation. In addition, athletic strain was also found to be positively correlated with self-regulation. Conclusion: Presented findings provide preliminary support that anxiety is related to poor athletic performance among student-athletes. Future studies should aim towards obtaining a larger sample size in hopes of finding more significant associations than the current study. Keywords: anxiety, student-athlete, sport performance, athletic strain

In my study of volunteers who help detained immigrants, I ask why people help unknown others who are not members of the community and cannot reciprocate (Igra 2023). Values researchers argue that values may represent "the core of personal identity" (Hitlin 2003), are motivating for action (Miles 2015), and that the value of *universalism* would account for such actions. But a large percentage of the population *expresses* universal values, while *action* on behalf of outsiders who cannot reciprocate is rare. How motivating can universalism really be? Using data from my study of volunteers who help detained immigrants, I argue that ideals like universalism should be viewed as *orientations*, but not *motivations* to take specific action. Motivation to act is shaped by interests and social experiences that are as much the "core of personal identity" as values. American volunteers who help detained immigrants are not simply *universalists*, but people who have experience living abroad. In addition, the forms of help they choose to provide are shaped by deeply held self-perceptions as being "the kind of person" who has specific skills and interests. While ideals did not directly shape action to help outsiders, they are not without power, as many subjects describe choosing membership in religious organizations based on the social justice orientations, and learning about opportunity to help in that context. When it comes to motivation, an expansive "moral circle" still results in asymmetrical action, and it is critical to understand the forces that cause people to act.

Objectives This study analyzes processes of identity construction among older pet owning adults through an interactionist framework. As the global life expectancy continues to increase, it is important to understand the experiences of aging adults. With people living longer comes the opportunity for them to live autonomous and purposeful lives. There is also the opportunity to study this growing group’s health practices and how they construct identities as they age. Some difficulties that older adults face often include the loss of significant others, such as partners, spouses, friends, or family, which leads to feeling lonely (Liu, Gou, & Zuo, 2016). Pet ownership may be a solution to combat some of the difficulties experienced with aging. Some research has shown that the interaction between humans and animals can have positive and therapeutic benefits for older adults (Epping, 2011; International Federation on Aging, 2014). The interaction between people and animals contributes to human selfhood and identity construction (Irvine 2008). While previous interactionist work on the relationships between humans and animals examines gender displays (Ramirez 2006; Irvine et al., 2017) and emotions (Arluke, 2002; Irvine & Ellis, 2010; Irvine, 2013), less is known about the processes older pet owning adults engage in while constructing identities. Methods I am conducting semi-structured, in-depth interviews with pet owning older adults in Florida about how they construct identities as pet owners and how this identity is negotiated in other social interactions. Through narratives, they are discussing how being older pet owners affects their social relationships, marriage, and their overall health. Anticipated Findings I am following an inductive approach and will highlight the primary themes that emerge from interviews with aging pet owners. However, some potential anticipated findings include insights into how older adults “do gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) with pets, showing the power of gender stereotypes in shaping expectations in interactions with human, and non-human animals (Ramirez, 2011). Another anticipated finding includes insights into how older adults view their relationships with their pets. For instance, some pet owners may view their pet as more of a family member and characterize their family as a more-than-human family (Irvine, 2016). Narratives with older adult pet owners may also give insight into not only gender ideologies, but also display their perspectives on power and inequality, more generally (Irvine 2008).

Quantitative analyses of crime typically rely on count models, and often draw on panel data to explain changes in crime over time. Count models applied to panel data require fixed-effects models, which control for unobserved variables that are time-invariant within each panel. These models, however, fail to operate as true fixed effects models. Although scholars have proposed several remedies, it remains unclear 1) which remedies are appropriate, and 2) how to reliably implement these remedies in standard research practice. In this paper, we, first, appraise common remedies, and demonstrate the appropriateness of Allison and Waterman (2002)’s remedy – employing an unconditional maximum likelihood negative binomial regression with dummy variables for each fixed effect, adjusting standard errors to account for overdispersion in count data. Second, we develop software, for both R and STATA, to implement the Allison and Waterman (AW) method.

In many quantitative criminological studies, especially research that theorizes and analyzes social order and/or social control, graffiti is often used as an indicator for disorder. This idea has roots in the broken windows thesis, which many scholars argue is racist and benefits those in power (see Thompson 2015). Calling graffiti “disorder” implies that graffiti is inherently “bad.” The idea that graffiti is a form of disorder is consistent with the views of law enforcement, politicians, and others in positions of power. Alternatively, a critical perspective relating graffiti to cultural reclamations of space is very much a “people’s perspective (Christensen and Thor 2017). Much of the qualitative work on graffiti comes from a critical or conflict perspective, seeing graffiti as a form of resistance against capitalism, expression of self, communication between marginalized communities, and/or a reclaiming of space. Quantitative and qualitative research on graffiti tend to use completely different language and theoretical perspectives. This research aims to understand how graffiti is discussed differently within quantitative and qualitative research as well as enter into a dialogue that seeks to bridge the gap between quantitative research on graffiti and theory built from qualitative research. References: Christensen, Miyase, and Tindra Thor. 2017. “The Reciprocal City: Performing Solidarity—Mediating Space through Street Art and Graffiti.” International Communication Gazette 79(6–7):584–612. doi: 10.1177/1748048517727183. Thompson, J. Phillip. 2015. “Broken Policing: The Origins of the ‘Broken Windows’ Policy.” New Labor Forum 24(2):42–47. doi: 10.1177/1095796015579993.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, is known for its scientific benefits to the country and its high level of education due to Los Alamos National Lab. Because there are only 17 national laboratories in the United States, little research exists on the lives of adolescents in these communities. Namely, students may feel pressured to achieve a similar level of education as their parents and may find unhealthy alternatives to subsist with standards and expectations. I hypothesize that behaviors are more likely to co-occur over time if the behaviors contain indicators of poor mental health. Using the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBSS) data, I will examine two questions: (1) What types of adolescent risk-taking behavior tend to co-occur over time among adolescents in Los Alamos County? (2) If types of adolescent risk-taking do co-occur over time, do similarities in these behaviors explain why they co-occur? The YRBSS reveals that some behaviors may co-occur with other behaviors, such as poor mental health and alcohol consumption. The survey reveals a few different instances of mental health issues within risky behaviors. These findings shed light on students impacted by this environment in a community where science is valued rather than adolescents.

Widely publicized cases of police brutality have sparked social movements calling for substantial reform and scholarly research on police legitimacy. Whereas previous procedural justice literature focuses on "why people obey the law," we propose that examining the mechanisms through which the public and the police manage breaches of trust allows us to foreground how stakeholders have conflicting views of procedurally just police conduct. In this way, instead of treating procedural justice as a set of abstract, universal values (i.e., neutrality, opportunities for participation, trustworthiness), we turn to how the police and citizens socially construct these values in and through social interaction. This article draws from 46 audio recordings of internal investigation interviews conducted by Office of Police Accountability (OPA) investigators with (1) public members and (2) officers implicated in the complaints. By using Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA), we discuss the interactional practices that law enforcement agents and members of the public draw from to produce accounts of incidents involving the police, highlighting distinct elements of the scene that accuse or exculpate officers of misconduct. Furthermore, while interviewing police officers, OPA investigators use question design that constrains interviewees' range of possible responses and, in so doing, tacitly invoke a subcultural understanding of adequate police, which potentially exculpates the named employee. By turning to the practices by which different stakeholders manage complaints about the police, we may conceptualize procedural justice as a situated accomplishment.

As an occupation, the professoriate is characterized by occupational closure and social reproduction (Morgan et al, 2022). Despite the important social role university professors play, they have never been representative of the general population or the population they serve, and little is known about how professors’ socioeconomic backgrounds affects the knowledge economy and what gets taught in classrooms. One hypothesis is that the lack of diversity among professors further marginalizes students from working-class backgrounds whose class culture is not aligned with that of their professors. Working-class students often struggle with a “cultural transition” when they participate in higher education, and professors with working-class backgrounds may be positioned to play a uniquely supportive role for these students. By embracing their class identity, working-class academics can help transform the culture of higher education and create classroom and campus environments that reflect working-class values, beliefs, perspectives, and experiences, which could also boost retention among working-class students. Given the lack of class diversity among the professoriate, working-class academics who penetrate the "ivory tower” play an important role in engaging social class in classrooms and across campuses. A challenge is that professors from working-class backgrounds report feeling like “strangers in paradise," and many try to shed their class backgrounds, which can perpetuate the occupational closure and social reproduction we witness in higher education. This paper encourages working-class academics to join the increasing number of academic faculty who are embracing their working-class backgrounds and incorporating their working-class culture and experiences into their academic work.

This work in progress describes an innovative program that addresses the struggle to retain underrepresented graduate students through an interdisciplinary, holistic approach centered around peer mentoring communities. We posit that a year-long program connecting first-year graduate students with successful doctoral candidates in conjunction with holistic programming will increase underrepresented graduate students’ sense of belonging, social networks, and diversity of mentoring as well as increasing overall retention and progress towards graduation. This project seeks to increase the persistence, success, and satisfaction for underrepresented doctoral students using an interdisciplinary approach. Mentoring is at the core of the program as research has emphasized the importance of mentoring for the experiences and persistence of minoritized graduate students (Alverez et al., 2009; Thomas et al., 2007). Wai-Ling Packard (2015) asserts that capacity, interest, and belongingness influence students’ persistence. We address these factors through Garcia, Núñez, and Sansone’s (2019) multidimensional framework utilizing three of the four major conceptions of servingness: outcomes, experiences, and internal organizational dimensions. Outcomes are identified as both academic variables – graduation, retention, persistence and non-academic variables – racial identity development, academic self-concept, campus engagement and belonging. The experiences used to address the outcomes include student-student interactions (peer mentoring communities, classroom discussions, cafecitos) as well as interactions with faculty, staff, mentors, alumni, administrators, the campus, and the community. These experiences are shaped by internal organizational dimensions such as culturally relevant curriculum, practices, and pedagogy, a student-centered holistic support approach, and a strong focus on HSI servingness from university leaders.

This project draws from matched transcript data as part of the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) in partnership with several school districts in California serving nearly a million students. Leveraging the first large-scale implementation in the country to assess social and emotional learning (SEL) outcomes, I examine the impact of 8th grade math course failure on student measures of self-management, self-efficacy, and social awareness as well as level of math course enrollment in ninth grade. In doing so, my study provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine SEL development and behavior after math course failure, one of the most failed subjects across coursework in California middle schools and high schools.

This paper centers how racial and ethnic identities are contextualized in the United States between adults and youth, who foster community-building amongst themselves. By analyzing a grassroots collective, known as The Family, located in a rural part of California, Brown adults mentor, teach, and transform understandings of the self, creating a sense of community with young people of color, through an Indigenous pedagogy. The project uses ethnographic participant observation and semi-structured interviews with participants from the collective to investigate how the group’s practices and teachings shape their identity as a collective. The findings reveal that by incorporating an Indigenous pedagogy, it informs the group’s engagement with providing a space that reflects on identity and self; contextualizes feelings of belongingness within their city; encompasses cultural practices that are shared by the adult mentors and young people; provides healing circles and ceremonial events; and re/envisions spaces for themselves and future generations in their city. Based on the findings, I offer the term intergenerational community collective (ICC) pedagogy – part of this already directly referenced by the group themselves – as the circular practice that disrupts the notion towards marginalization and inequalities that are based on social identities, by strengthening intergenerational ties that derive from the group’s shared knowledge and teachings through 1) political education, 2) culture, and 3) community-healing. By incorporating civic engagement, practicing customs and traditions, and caring for their well-being, The Family exemplifies how impactful a community space can be for both adults and youth of color in rural contexts.

This research in progress presentation will follow a unique approach, but one that is still very important with respect to student- and community-centered research in the university setting. This presentation will discuss the model of the Community Health and Social Innovation (CHASI) Hub, a research centre based at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, Canada. This presentation will discuss how CHASI was co-created with the surrounding community, how CHASI works with its community partners, as well as how CHASI is including students during every stage of the research process. The presentation will use the example of a recent report CHASI completed on the social impacts of the 2021 Abbotsford flooding event to illustrate the process that CHASI follows to undertake its community research. This presentation will be conducted by faculty and staff at CHASI. The objective of this presentation is provide some guidance for other institutions who want to strengthen their community-oriented research work.

This study was originally begun in 2019. It is designed to assess the effects of an animal assisted therapy program for disadvantaged elementary school youth using a simple before and after research design. Various issues arose, along with COVID, which delayed implementation. This paper will summarize the progress in the study.

In response to the high-profile deaths of racially minoritized individuals, police departments responded by developing committees to improve police and community relations. This presentation details the planning, experiences and unanticipated challenges of interviewing community and police members of one such committee. In addition, this presentation aims to discuss the experiences of conducting interviews as a first-generation, nontraditional graduate student. The discussion will cover the experience of being a first-time interviewer and the process of getting interviews, conducting interviews, and expectations of interviews. Discussion will also include reflection on positionality throughout the process of conducting interviews.

With the nationwide protests about “Black Lives Matter”, subjects of racial/ethnic relations in the United States once again are brought to the forefront. One major reason is that we as a nation have never thoroughly and seriously deal with racial problems once and for all. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech that his children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character is still a dream. This paper will examine another minority group – Asian Americans, and their experience in this racist American social structural and cultural environment. Asian Americans have been labeled as “model minority” because of some of the subgroups’ high educational and economic achievements in the past few decades. But, they still suffer racial discrimination and prejudice in different forms than that of African Americans. Especially after the COVID-19 spread to the United States, violence and physical assaults against Asian, especially East Asian Americans are sky rocketed. The author conducted a survey and some interviews among Asian Americans, most of whom are Chinese American, to get a better grasp of the types and forms of prejudice and discrimination experienced by them and their children. The main purpose is to find out what is the fundamental underline reason that minority groups are still facing so much prejudice and discrimination in the United States.

The position of Asians in the United States has been contested in race and ethnicity scholarship. While some view Asian Americans as “honorary whites”, others show that the stickiness of the “forever foreign” label marks Asians as “other” and are viewed as un-American. By growing up in White families in predominantly White neighborhoods, Asian adoptees provide an interesting site for this debate. This paper explores how Asian adoptees are categorized, Honorary White or Forever Foreign? I interrogate this debate through 51 in-depth interviews with Asian adoptees, finding that while some adoptees are de-racialized in their families, they are racialized as foreign and Asian in public. The phenotypic appearance of Asian adoptees and lack of knowledge about Asian ethnic cultures teach many adoptees to be “other.” This analysis provides empirical evidence of processes of racialization for Asian that suggest they do not neatly fit into the Black/White or Tri-racial hierarchy thesis.

Asian and Asian American women have been hyperfeminized and hypersexualized in the U.S society and popular culture as the “lotus blossom”, “China doll”, and the “dragon lady.” These derogatory portrayals of women of Asian descent have contributed to racialized gender violence toward Asian and Asian American women in the U.S. Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that tracks harassment and violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, reported approximately 11,467 hate incidents toward Asian Americans between March 2020 and March 2022 (Stop AAPI Hate, 2022). Women and those who identified as non-binary reported most incidents (63%) of anti-Asian harassment. Most of these reporting, except for a handful of them authored by Asian American women, have ignored the intersection of race and gender and how this racialized gender violence is extremely harmful for Asian American women. This study draws on qualitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2018) of 240 newspaper articles published in March 2021 from 9 major national newspapers (N=84) and other news outlets (N=156). We focus on March 2021 because 1) this is the month when the Atlanta shootings occurred and 2) our preliminary analysis suggested that this month generated the most published news regarding anti-Asian racism since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified five themes: 1) describing Asian women as “exotic”, 2) fetishization of Asian women, 3) hypersexualization of Asian women, 4) gendered racism (or misogynistic racism) toward Asian American women, and 5) sexual violence.

This presentation will provide a critical overview of my Applied Latina/o Sociological Community Based research projects in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, which focus on the sociological and health effects within the Latina/o population formation. It will showcases my applied community based research project, that included undergraduate and graduate students at Northern Arizona University.

How does the perception of medical inequality inform the political identity of U.S. Hispanic-Latinos? As the fastest growing demographic in the United States, it is increasingly important to understand the factors influencing the political ideology of Hispanic-Latinos within the U.S. political landscape. Using multinomial logistic regression models on data from the 2022 American Trends Panel (100th wave) conducted by the Pew Research Center, this study examines the issue through the prism of assimilation theory. Expanding the literature on structural racism and political ideology of immigrants, this study finds that U.S. Hispanic-Latinos’ understanding of medical inequality as a structural issue is positively associated with a liberal-leaning political identity. However, an emphasis on individual experiences regarding medical inequality does not necessarily correlate with a more conservative political identity. Furthermore, preliminary results indicate interaction effects between the perception of structural medical inequality and the length of residence in the US on political ideology. These findings suggest that longer residency is associated with patterns of political polarization that reflect broader trends in US politics. This intersection of healthcare perception and political identity provides new insights into the complex socio-political fabric of the United States and the political ideology formation of U.S. Hispanic-Latinos.

Regression models from a recent evaluation of our campus food pantry showed that Latino/as are more likely to report mental health benefits from utilizing the pantry compared to other racial groups, even after controlling for financial conditions (Weigt 2021). Using in-depth interviews (n=19), focus groups (n=15), and journal elicitation (n=10), we sought to better understand the relationship between food assistance and Latino students’ mental health, including identifying the underlying mechanisms of this relationship and the ways they are fostered through seeking food at the pantry. Building on previous research documenting that a sense of belonging on campus and nurturance of cultural norms support Latino/a students’ mental health generally, we found that food-seeking at the pantry fosters mental well-being through its promotion of community cultural wealth, including aspirational, familial, navigational, social, and resistance capital (Yosso 2005). The findings have far-reaching implications; understanding how to better support mental health through student services not only nurtures student well-being generally, but can ultimately boost academic success, retention, and graduation rates for Latinx students. Our findings can be used to explore how campus food pantries and other campus resources can culturally affirm and, thus, better support all students of color.

Scholars have investigated how youth often play a pivotal role in providing language access for their immigrant household, a function commonly referred to as language brokering. Youth help their families with limited English by translating conversations, information and even documents in a variety of settings including schools, grocery stores, offices and in the home. Scholars have also documented historically low rates of enrollment in public benefit programs among eligible immigrant and Latinx populations, but few have explicitly examined how these individuals make decisions and navigate the welfare system. This study seeks to understand which characteristics facilitate reception of public benefits among youth and young adults in a predominately Latinx city. To conduct this inquiry, I rely on logistic regression analysis using survey data collected from the 2023 Oxnard Thriving Youth Survey by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Preliminary results suggest that youth who engage in language brokering serves as significant indicator for facilitating access to welfare benefits such as public health insurance.

Understudied AFAB Health: Filling the Gaps in Endometriosis Research Endometriosis is a painful, chronic gynecological disease marked by dysmenorrhea, pain with intercourse, fatigue, infertility, painful bowel movements and urination, and psychological issues (Anon n.d.). Additionally, there are significant adverse social repercussions of the disease including relational issues, school, and work interruptions--quantified by one study as a loss of more than $20,000 per year per woman with the disorder (Armour et al. 2019). It affects ten percent of people assigned female at birth (AFAB) yet has been largely ignored by both biological and social scientists. Previous sociological research on individuals’ experiences with endometriosis has focused predominantly on young, cisgender, heterosexual white women and sometimes included experiences of their (white) male partners. Much of the more current sociological research is from Australia. This research aims to fill the considerable gaps in sociological literature. My research will include people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals including nonbinary and trans people, and those who are past fertility. My research will include in-depth, semi-structured interviews of people with laparoscopically diagnosed endometriosis as well as clinicians who treat the disease. I supplement this with ethnographic data from clinical appointments. I expect to interview 20-30 people with endometriosis and 7-15 clinicians. Due to the sensitive nature of my research, I will utilize the snowball sampling method. My main research question is: how do the experiences and narratives of those with endometriosis compare to those who treat it? With more specific sub-questions of: how satisfied are these patients with their medical treatment? How has having endo changed their self-perceptions? How do they feel about the treatments that clinicians most highly prescribe and recommend? How does having endo affect their daily lives and relationships? Does intersectionality of participants play a role in their health and treatment outcomes? Some of the important questions I plan to ask the clinicians are: How long have you been practicing in the medical field? What made you want to treat patients with endo? What treatments do you recommend for those with endo? How successful do you feel treatment is? Do you feel there are barriers to treating some patients? If so, what are they? How do you deal with noncompliance of your recommendations? What do you wish all your patients knew about endo? As my proposed research will be inductive, I plan on using grounded theory in my analysis. Though there are some themes I expect to encounter which make this research so very important. These are themes such as gendered expectations for AFAB people who are in opposite-sex relationships. As endo can make sex painful and unpleasant, I believe I’ll hear about this being an issue for these participants along with domestic labor disputes or renegotiations within their relationships. Biographical disruption, a concept created by Michael Bury in 1982, to describe how biography and self-concept must be redefined in the face of chronic illness (Bury 1982). Medical gaslighting which is an experience of patients who have felt that their symptoms were arbitrarily dismissed as insignificant or labeled as primarily psychological by doctors. Chronic illness as a discrediting factor which I touch on in my paper is where menstrual issues and chronic illness come with stigma and therefore are less likely to be divulged. Quality of life which is the standard of health, comfort, and happiness experienced by an individual or group. I also think healthwork may come into play in my data which is all the emotional and physical labor done to manage one’s health and illness. The prevalence of this illness paired with the lack of social scientists interested in or studying it is more than an unfortunate combination. Estimates that 1 in 10 AFAB people suffer from this incurable, often debilitating disease are disheartening. However, my proposed study will help shed more light on this crucial topic relevant to medical sociology, health, reproductive politics, gender, and intersectionality. It will do this by filling in some of the considerable gaps in current research by including those who don’t identify as women, those who aren’t white, people with differing sexual identities, a broader age range than most research, and comparing/contrasting the narratives of clinicians to those who have the illness. I hope that my presentation will help garner interest in and discussion on this important, understudied issue. References Anon. n.d. “Endometriosis.” Retrieved November 28, 2023 (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/endometriosis#:~:text=Overview,period%20and%20last%20until%20menopause.). Armour, Mike, Kenny Lawson, Aidan Wood, Caroline A. Smith, and Jason Abbott. 2019. “The Cost of Illness and Economic Burden of Endometriosis and Chronic Pelvic Pain in Australia: A National Online Survey.” PLoS ONE 14(10). Bury, Michael. 1982. “Chronic Illness as Biographical Disruption.” doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep11339939. Culley, Lorraine, Caroline Law, Nicky Hudson, Elaine Denny, Helene Mitchell, Miriam Baumgarten, and Nick Raine-Fenning. 2013. “The Social and Psychological Impact of Endometriosis on Women’s Lives: A Critical Narrative Review.” Advanced Access Publication on July 19(6):625–39. doi: 10.1093/humupd/dmt027. Denny, Elaine. 2009. “‘I Never Know From One Day to Another How I Will Feel’: Pain and Uncertainty in Women With Endometriosis.” doi: 10.1177/1049732309338725. Facchin, Federica, Laura Buggio, and Emanuela Saita. 2020. “Partners’ Perspective in Endometriosis Research and Treatment: A Systematic Review of Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence.” doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2020.110213. Hudson, Nicky, Lorraine Culley, Caroline Law, Helene Mitchell, Elaine Denny, and Nick Raine-Fenning. 2016. “‘We Needed to Change the Mission Statement of the Marriage’: Biographical Disruptions, Appraisals and Revisions among Couples Living with Endometriosis.” Sociology of Health and Illness 38(5):721–35. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12392. Hudson, Nicky, Caroline Law, Lorraine Culley, Helene Mitchell, Elaine Denny, Wendy Norton, and Nick Raine-Fenning. 2020. “Men, Chronic Illness and Healthwork: Accounts from Male Partners of Women with Endometriosis.” Sociology of Health and Illness 42(7):1532–47. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13144. Lukas, Ilona, Alexandra Kohl-Schwartz, Kirsten Geraedts, Martina Rauchfuss, Monika M. Wölfler, Felix Häberlin, Stephanie Von Orelli, Markus Eberhard, Bruno Imthurn, Patrick Imesch, and Brigitte Leeners. 2018a. “Satisfaction with Medical Support in Women with Endometriosis.” PLoS ONE 13(11). doi: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0208023. Lukas, Ilona, Alexandra Kohl-Schwartz, Kirsten Geraedts, Martina Rauchfuss, Monika M. Wölfler, Felix Häberlin, Stephanie Von Orelli, Markus Eberhard, Bruno Imthurn, Patrick Imesch, and Brigitte Leeners. 2018b. “Satisfaction with Medical Support in Women with Endometriosis.” PLoS ONE 13(11). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208023. Seear, Kate. 2009a. “‘Nobody Really Knows What It Is or How to Treat It’: Why Women with Endometriosis Do Not Comply with Healthcare Advice.” Health, Risk and Society 11(4):367–85. doi: 10.1080/13698570903013649. Seear, Kate. 2009b. “The Etiquette of Endometriosis: Stigmatisation, Menstrual Concealment and the Diagnostic Delay q.” doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.07.023. Whelan, Emma. 2007. “‘No One Agrees except for Those of Us Who Have It’: Endometriosis Patients as an Epistemological Community.” Sociology of Health and Illness 29(7):957–82. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01024.x.

Mental health is an important topic in society. The only problem is that it has been decreasing in younger adults, and in college students who identify as men. Previous research has found that compared with white students, Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander students had uniformly lower rates of self-reported past-year psychiatric diagnosis and higher rates of symptoms of mental illness, with notable exceptions (Chen et al., 2019). Despite established literature on mental health differences by race and ethnicity, there is less research on gendered differences in mental health, especially coping strategies among young men. Because men are less likely than women to self-report their mental health, it is more likely that there is not enough information on how college men deal with these stressors. argue that men, especially men of color, have worse mental health than women because they have fewer outlets for sharing their emotions and seeking help. To test this argument, I collaborated with a team to conduct a survey of college students at a public university in the western United States. The survey assessed different stressors that are found in college students. We asked questions about managing academic deadlines, self-care, and how often they receive support from others. We looked at variations in responses by gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and coping mechanisms. There was a total of fifty-six women and forty-five men who participated in this survey. The data used for this paper will be based only on variations in responses based on race/ethnicity and gender. The results indicate that college students who identify as men do have some levels of stress. However, women are much more likely to report feelings of stress. Between women and men, 61.5 percent of women express that they are likely to experience stress every day, compared to 30.8 percent of men. In terms of academics in particular, 35 percent of women said that they are likely to stress about assignments every day, compared to 15 percent of college men. These results are unsurprising given the research on men’s greater likelihood of suppressing emotions and not admitting vulnerabilities (McKenzie et al., 2018). An interesting finding from the survey concerns coping strategies. Men and women in who took the survey reported diverse ways of coping with stress. Women are more likely to part-take in self-care activities such as connecting with family and friends (79.4 percent reported this). As for men, they are most likely to cope with physical activity and exercise (68.4 percent). These fits gendered expectations of women having closer friendships and other relationships than men, who are expected to deal with their problems on their own. Physical activity is a socially acceptable outlet for men that does not involve discussion of feelings or vulnerabilities (McKenzie et al., 2018). Another comparison was the awareness of available sources on campus to help manage stress and academic pressure. As for female participants, there was 45.8 percent knew about these resources and 67.7 percent did not. As for male participants, there was 47.2 percent that knew about the resources and 32.3 percent did not know them. As for race and ethnicity, it was hard to find variation because the university is predominately white, which was reflected in the survey data. According to a study, White individuals are more likely to have mental health issues compared to minority groups (Harris, Edlund, and Larson, 2005). The data were categorized into white, Hispanic/Latino, and other. We found that 60 percent of white students reported having great mental well-being, compared to only 25 percent of Hispanic students. Even though women are more likely to report having stress than men are, we suspect that women may be more open to realizing their emotions. Research shows that men hesitate to admit their vulnerabilities, even to themselves which can affect the data. The finding that men who do report stress say that they cope through individual activities like exercise suggests that men continue to keep their feelings quiet. Many of these responses have demonstrated that universities need to reach out to more men because they are less likely to self-report their mental health. An effective way to reach out to students is by having more resources shown on campus and checking on students once or twice a month. There should also be more opportunities for college men to engage in physical outlets with others aside from being part of collegiate athletic teams. Informal classes, clubs, etc., could be a good place to connect men with community and resources. This research shows that women are more likely to express mental health, but men still need more social support from colleges because they are less likely to seek it themselves. References Chen, Justin A., Courtney Stevens, Sylvia H. M. Wong, and Cindy H. Liu. 2019. “Psychiatric Symptoms and Diagnoses among U.S. College Students: A Comparison by Race and Ethnicity.” Psychiatric Services (Washington, D.C.) 70(6):442–49. doi: https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201800388. Harris, Katherine M., Mark J. Edlund, and Sharon Larson. 2005. “Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Mental Health Problems and Use of Mental Health Care.” Medical Care 43(8):775–84. McKenzie, Sarah K., Sunny Collings, Gabrielle Jenkin, and Jo River. 2018. “Masculinity, Social Connectedness, and Mental Health: Men’s Diverse Patterns of Practice.” American Journal of Men’s Health 12(5):1247–61. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1557988318772732.

Medical knowledge, particularly as it relates to social factors, has a long history of being discriminatory. This discriminatory nature of this knowledge has several long-standing implications, and it is based in the social construction of health and wellness as well as medicalization. The social construction of medical knowledge is integral to our current healthcare system, and it is imperative to interrogate the ways in which this social construction shapes this system. In thinking about the birth of gynecology, and the roots of medical knowledge about women’s bodies, I want to understand more about how various social dynamics pervade throughout healthcare, especially within the interpersonal relationship between doctor and patient. There is an inherent authority present in this relationship, the patient as unknowing and unreliable in some sense, and the doctor as the holder of all knowledge, all-knowing about the condition of the human body. The way that a doctor engages in a conversation has profound consequences on the patient and how they feel about their particular medicalized condition. The doctor-patient relationship is heavily affected by social dynamics, given their pervasiveness, and may prove to be a concrete example of how indicators of social groups and networks (i.e. race, gender, and class) can influence one aspect of the healthcare system. The primary claims that I will be working to highlight through my research is the coercive and condescending nature of medical knowledge—given that the patient is not prioritized in the production of this knowledge—and the power differential within the relationship of doctor and patient. Many doctors tend to demarcate medical knowledge as only being produced in traditional, formal ways, and when patients present knowledge, it is often brushed off in favor of a more condescending approach to informing a patient (Stevens 2018). The perception of the patient by the doctor has been explored through some work of Mann et. al (2022) and there is evidence to conclude that there may be a relationship between socially constructed power dynamics and the doctor’s treatment of the patient. This work provides good context for a quantitative approach to the question of doctor-patient relationships as my research aims to do. Considering some of the reasons behind this relationship today and how it has been affected over time, there is some research to suggest that despite widely available internet access to informal medical knowledge, people still rely on their providers (Song et. al 2012); indicating that there is not an inherent need for condescension and coercion when it comes to reproducing and communicating medical knowledge. The patient is not prioritized in the sense that the reproduction of formal science is more important in the current healthcare system, even if informal information seems potentially helpful. Other research has challenged the persistence of gendered understandings of healthcare interactions and turns to race instead (Brubaker 2007), highlighting consequences of power differentials, and demonstrating the need for broader quantitative data. Using the 2017-2019 National Survey of Family Growth, administered by the National Center for Health Statistics within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I will conduct a series of cross tabulations to better understand the ramifications of social factors on the doctor-patient relationship. My selected dataset is produced from the female respondents, aged 15-49, from a multi-stage, probability based, representative sample of American households. This captured information on health data: reproductive healthcare, relationship status factors, and attitudes about sex and family, to name a few. My primary independent variable will be the general impression of the patient of how their provider responds to their concerns, questions, and comprehensively feeling heard. Several dependent variables will be tested to determine their impact on this independent variable, primarily surrounding social factors that I am interested in. Education level, religious affiliation, race, and income will be some of the dependent variables, as well as the patient’s use of contraception, to include an element of how doctors present to their patients who have already made use of some form of reproductive health care. I will use multivariate statistical analysis of several independent variables on one dependent variable. With this, I will attempt to understand the relationship of a sample social factors that may influence the doctor-patient relationship. More information is generally available on the impact gender has on the doctor-patient relationship, but with my research controlling for gender, this presents an opportunity to explore other social factors. Quantitative indicators and analysis of the intersection of social dynamics within the doctor-patient relationship situate conversations about the evolving healthcare system into the growth of medical sociology and the branching foundation of the social construction of medical knowledge. In thinking about and diving deeper into the realm of data analysis in the context of healthcare, I have come to appreciate the intersections of power structures within medical knowledge and how that is reproduced in social interactions. Taking a multivariate approach drives me to pursue a comprehensive look at this data and its potential for exposing notable social dynamics and their repercussions in reproducing medical knowledge. Works Cited Brubaker, Sarah Jane. 2007. “Denied, Embracing, and Resisting Medicalization.” Gender & Society 21(4):528–52. Retrieved December 1, 2023 (https://www-jstor-org.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/stable/27640990?searchText=%28%28sociology+of+health+and+illness%29+AND+%28reproduct*+and+provider+and+healthcare+and+doctor+and+contracept*%29%29&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3Dsociology%2Bof%2Bhealth%2Band%2Billness%26q1%3Dreproduct%252A%2Band%2Bprovider%2Band%2Bhealthcare%2Band%2Bdoctor%2Band%2Bcontracept%252A%26f0%3Dall%26c1%3DAND%26f1%3Dall%26acc%3Don&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_expensive_solr_cloud%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aa48147c84f062de3fb9e00d1f4fc7ffb). Mann, Emily S., Andrew M. Chen, and Christiana L. Johnson. 2022. “Doctor Knows Best? Provider Bias in the Context of Contraceptive Counseling in the United States.” Contraception 110:66–70. doi: 10.1016/j.contraception.2021.11.009. Song, Felicia Wu, Jennifer Ellis West, Lisa Lundy, and Nicole Smith Dahmen. 2012. “Women, Pregnancy, and Health Information Online.” Gender & Society 26(5):773–98. Stevens, Lindsay M. 2018. “‘We Have to Be Mythbusters’: Clinician Attitudes about the Legitimacy of Patient Concerns and Dissatisfaction with Contraception.” Social Science & Medicine 212:145–52. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.07.020.

Research Question: In the United States, Black women/birthing individuals experience disproportionate maternal mortality rates. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “In 2020, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.9 times the rate for non-Hispanic White women” (2022). This research study was driven by two primary research questions: (1) How do race and racism impact the maternal healthcare experiences of Black women/birthing individuals in Colorado? (2) How are maternal health care providers working to improve the maternal health care experiences of Black women/birthing individuals in Colorado? To answer these questions, 6 interviews were conducted: 3 interviews with Black women/birthing individuals and 3 interviews with healthcare providers who support and care for Black women/birthing individuals during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. Interviews with Black women/birthing individuals focused on their general experiences receiving maternal health care. Interviews with providers explored how they are working to alleviate the disparities that Black women/birthing individuals face in pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. Intended Contribution to Research: The project is in dialogue with a long body of research exploring Black women's health and reproductive experiences. Researchers such as Cancelmo (2021), Owens & Fett (2019), and Prather et al. (2018) contend that the current state of Black maternal health can be traced to slavery. Black women were commodified through childbearing by slaveowners, and the fertility of enslaved women was relied upon to have a successful economic system where Black children and women were treated as capital (Owens & Fett, 2019). Today, Black women’s symptoms are often overlooked and minimized. One of the causes of this is the biases that physicians hold and the role that medical schools play in creating or affirming the bias. A study by Zhuang et al. (2023) found that nearly half of Black mothers reported some degree of disrespect from providers, and some women also reported cultural stereotypes and abusive practices. Furthermore, some healthcare professionals disregard the feelings and needs of Black women by doing things such as not asking for consent, being neglectful, and policing Black women’s bodies (Davis, 2019). Hall et al. (2015) also found that some of the biases that physicians hold include viewing Black American patients as “less intelligent, less able to adhere to treatment regimens and more likely to engage in risky health behaviors” when compared to White Americans (Hall et al., 2015, para. 13). All the historical and contemporary factors discussed contribute to the high rates of pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality that Black women experience every day. Contemporary factors continue to build upon the broken foundation that was laid on the suffering of enslaved women. This project to seeks to affirm the experiences of Black women/birthing individuals in Colorado and to educate maternal health care providers in order to alleviate the disproportionate maternal mortality rates. Black women’s voices are often not found in research, and their experiences largely go ignored. The study seeks to honor and provide the space for their voices to be heard. Moreover, the study aims to inform providers of the experiences that Black women/birthing individuals face in their maternal health care experience. Theory: The research utilized critical race theory due to race being the main component of the research. CRT states that “that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies” (Sawchuk, 2023, para. 5). Intersectionality theory was also utilized due to how race, class, and gender intersect to shape the experiences of Black women who interact with the maternal health care system. These theories were focused on to analyze the data. Methods: The research was conducted using a qualitative snowball sample methodology where data was drawn from 3 semi-structured interviews with Black women/birthing individuals and 3 healthcare providers. Black women/birthing individuals who had given birth in the last five years, were Colorado residents, and ranged from the ages of 18 to 45 were looked for. Comorbidities, socioeconomic status, or other variables were not filtered. The interviews were conducted over Zoom and lasted 45 minutes to an hour in length. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed via Rev.com. All transcribed interviews were coded via Microsoft Word. An abductive analytical approach was adopted to code the data. The theories and themes that were coded for include discrimination, racism, bias, patient-provider relationships, and trauma-informed care. References: Cancelmo, C. M. (2021). Protecting black mothers: How the history of midwifery can inform doula activism. Sociology Compass, 15(4), n/a. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12867 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2023, March 16). Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2021. Https://www.cdc.gov. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2021/maternal-mortality-rates-2021.htm#:~:text=In%202021%2C%201%2C205%20women%20died,20.1%20in%202019%20(Table). Davis, D. (2019). Obstetric racism: The racial politics of pregnancy, labor, and birthing. Medical Anthropology, 38(7), 560-573. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2018.1549389 Hall, W. J., Chapman, M. V., Lee, K. M., Merino, Y. M., Thomas, T. W., Payne, B. K., Eng, E., Day, S. H., & Coyne-Beasley, T. (2015). Implicit Racial/Ethnic Bias Among Health Care Professionals and Its Influence on Health Care Outcomes: A Systematic Review. American journal of public health, 105(12), e60–e76. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302903 Owens, D. C., & Fett, S. M. (2019). Black Maternal and Infant Health: Historical Legacies of Slavery. American Journal of Public Health, 109(10), 1342–1345. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243 Prather, C., Fuller, T. R., Jeffries, W. L., Marshall, K. J., Howell, A. V., Belyue-Umole, A., & King, W. (2018). Racism, African American Women, and their Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Evidence and Implications for Health Equity. Health Equity, 2(1), 249-259. Sawchuk, Stephen. “What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It under Attack?” Education Week, 24 Mar. 2023, www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why- is-it-under-attack/2021/05. Zhuang, J., Goldbort, J., Bogdan-Lovis, E., Bresnahan, M., & Shareef, S. (2023). Black mothers’ birthing experiences: In search of birthing justice. Ethnicity & Health, 28(1), 46-60.

Abstract: Throughout history Black women have consistently been underrepresented in almost every aspect of society. This is a preliminary study intended to expose systemic inequalities that contribute to alcohol abuse among Black women who are socio-economically disadvantaged. We will examine the intersections of race, class, gender, and social systems as they relate to hyperarousal PTSD. Although there is an abundance of literature regarding substance abuse, it has been reiterated that substance abuse among African American women is severely understudied, thus misunderstood. The method(s) of this research consists of a scoping review examining critical theoretical concepts, observation, and a proposed longitudinal study that could significantly impact future substance abuse treatment for this group. Further methods are to be developed. Our hypothesis (H1) is that Black women with a low/absent window of tolerance for stress will form an alcohol/substance use disorder within their lifetime. Public Significance Statement: Systemic inequality has been contributing to hyperarousal post traumatic stress by hindering the ability to control emotional responses which allude to alcohol and substance abuse. Hyperarousal PTSD occurs when there is a low threshold window of tolerance, resulting in an over-reactive state of being. We found a strong emphasis on the need to address these inequalities in order for substance abuse treatment to be positively impactful. This research suggests that hyperarousal PTSD serves as a direct determinant for alcohol abuse in African American women. Keywords: hyperarousal PTSD, African American women, alcohol abuse, socioeconomically disadvantaged, stigma, gender Hyperarousal PTSD and Social Systems: Hyperarousal PTSD is referred to in the DSM-IV as persistent symptoms of increased arousal such as sleep problems, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, irritability or anger outbursts, and concentration difficulties (Florez et. al., 2022, p. 187). The symptoms that fall under the category of hyperarousal are panic, fear, worry, irritation, anger, frustration, impulsivity, high energy, stress, aggression, anxiety, and reckless behavior. The physiological traits are fast heart rate, shallow and quick breathing, high blood pressure, high cortisol and adrenaline, and muscle tension. For decades there has been a running archetype of the “angry Black woman” who has been judged for her response to her immediate outside world. Upon examining alcohol abuse in the severely understudied group of African American women, special attention has been paid to the concrete effects of systemic inequalities in relation to mental health – particularly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There are many causes for developing hyperarousal PTSD and the underdevelopment of the window of tolerance, all of which are examined in this review. The “angry Black woman” is often called upon to be strong in the face of adversity without any allowance of grace. The pressure to be resilient serves as a risk to her mental and physical health. The self-medication hypothesis posits that individuals with PTSD use alcohol to relieve their trauma-related symptoms and may explain why avoidant coping serves as a risk factor for alcohol misuse (Florez et al., 2022, p. 188). Additionally, Black women who face adversity on a regular basis often operate at a baseline of primary emotions (animalistic instinct), which feeds into the belief that Black people are more animal-like and less human – thus contributing directly to hyperarousal. Fuchshuber et al. (2019) found that those who report greater frequency of experiencing anger and fear—primary emotions—were at increased risk of substance abuse and reported more anxiety and depression symptoms (McCleary-Gaddy and James, 2022, p. 3). Systemic barriers seated in the form of gender expectations have proven to have negative effects on Black women. Black men have historically been targeted for being criminals and face harsher consequences for minor offenses than their white counterparts. When the legal system incarcerates the “head of the household”, the Black woman is left to not only take care of the family, but also find a means to financially support her household, further adding to the hyperarousal state that her trauma and socio-economic status has invoked. Derived from the American slavery system to justify White enslavers’ abuse of enslaved Black women, a core concept of the “strong Black woman” is the pursuit of immense strength and resilience (McCleary-Gaddy and James, 2022, p. 2). This “immense strength and resilience” implies that the Black woman cannot have compassion or grace towards herself because she’s expected to always remain strong not only for herself, but for her family. Her strength inevitably puts her last in priority: “While several women were in contact with their partners’ families, these relationships were focused on the partner’s well-being rather than that of the participant” (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 181) (regarding partner incarceration). The Black woman struggling with alcohol abuse, let alone any other substance issues, suffers the most under the pretense that she has immense strength and resilience. This serves as a reason why Black women don’t come forward when seeking help in dealing with their addiction. The threat of incarceration is accompanied by the risk of losing her children to child welfare services with slim odds of being reunited. These punitive CWS policies have a negative effect on mothers struggling to cope with the loss of their children, and rather than decrease maternal drug use, may contribute to an increase in these behaviors, thus reducing a mother’s chances of being rehabilitated and reunited with her children (Harp and Bunting, 2020, p. 269). Perhaps the most critical element in the construct of gender is the comparison between man and woman regarding how substance use is viewed. Women have a harder time accepting themselves, let alone their own usage. Women suffer direr health-related consequences from their substance use while carrying greater social stigma or guilt because of drug and alcohol use compared to men (Green, 2006; McHugh et al., 2018). According to the World Health Organization (2008) [WHO], mental health issues disproportionately affect women compared to men. (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 3). Comparison strips away self-security thus blinding the woman from her own essence, causing her to harden herself for protection against judgment. Underinvestment in urban neighborhoods leaves the inhabitants without access to critical resources such as reliable transportation, better quality food, and safe, affordable housing. It’s been reported that resources to address social and economic needs are limited. Interviewees commonly described the lack of affordable housing, public transportation, and economic opportunities in communities of color as primary challenges for people in treatment and recovery (Bui et al., 2022, p. 7). The lack of ability to physically get to treatment centers provokes a feeling of hopelessness due to help being unattainable. The stress of being “trapped” in an undesirable environment contributes to the overall irritability and frustration of the Black woman struggling with alcohol addiction. Furthermore, Black women statistically earn less wages than White women, and women in general earn less than their male counterparts. This wage gap creates susceptibility to higher risks. Women tend to have greater gender specific risk factors such as poverty, as more women tend to live in poverty, earn lower wages and have lower employment, and experience relationship violence. (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 3). Additionally, the lack of affordable and safe housing is a serious issue for low-income women who are getting out of recovery and having to return to their previous environments (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 8). Neighborhood segregation is another key factor in the over consumption of alcohol as a coping mechanism. Neighborhood segregation is extended to licensing of alcohol outlets, frequently restricting them to communities of color instead of White neighborhoods likely due to the association of alcohol outlets with crime and other unwanted behavior (Otiniano Verissimo et al., 2023, p. 2). With helpful resources being kept at more than an arm’s length away and substances being readily available, those searching for relief from their grievances are left to the mercy of those substances. In a recent systematic review, Collins concluded that although groups with greater socioeconomic advantages (income, education, and other indicators at the individual, family, or neighborhood levels) had similar or greater levels of alcohol consumption than those with fewer advantages, the groups with fewer socioeconomic advantages were at greater risk for alcohol-related problems (Mulia, 2020, p. 5). With a lack of tools for basic survival, insecurity runs high. This insecurity not only affects the women, but their children too. Several studies found that the largest predictor of whether an infant will experience drug- or alcohol-related birth defects is socioeconomic status (Harp and Bunting, 2020, p. 264). Evidently, socioeconomic status has a hold on the family, but even more profound are the roadblocks that being disadvantaged has on Black women who want better for themselves. According to Wilson, when traditional pathways to success are impeded or perceived to be blocked, people will seek other ways to find meaning and purpose in their lives (Montemayor, 2019). Historical oppression contributes to the development of hyperarousal PTSD by way of cultural subjectivity. It’s recognized that people who have unhealthy substance use and are from communities with a history of systemic racism or other institutionalized barriers often have faced or are facing traumatic experiences which might involve abuse, neighborhood violence, criminal justice involvement, racism and discrimination, and intergenerational trauma (Bui et al., 2022, p. 6). This cultural subjectivity adds to the lack of funding in healthcare services. It’s been viewed that the lack of stable funding to address behavioral health and social service needs in communities of color as being part of historical racism and structural oppression (Bui et al., 2022, p. 8). It has also been emphasized that there is a lack of knowledge and relatability in health care settings designed for recovery. Structural inequities not only make it difficult to enter treatment but make it less desirable to stay in treatment due to lack of preparedness from their providers. Women felt the treatment centers were not equipped to help them deal with the trauma and other psychological issues in their lives, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 9). Adding to structural inequities, the lack of availability in facilities poses another barrier to getting professional help. Per 10,000 adults in the Los Angeles County population, there are just 3.8 beds for detox services and 7.0 beds for residential treatment. (Dekin, 2022). Financial insecurity poses as a triggering occurrence and adds to the distrust that the Black community has for the health care system. Funding contributes to treatment readiness, so the lack of funding strips away the opportunity to be properly treated. Considering intervention or improving service utilization for African American women with substance use issues, it’s important to further explore the role treatment readiness plays in the lack of help-seeking within this population and how it might contribute directly to unmet service needs (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 11). Also, the importance of relatability in treatment providers is high, as traditionally not many mental health professionals shared the same intersecting identities. This creates difficulty in connecting. Difficulty arises in trying to find a therapist that has the qualifications needed to help this population. Jones et al. found African American women had a preference for the same race, same gender therapist when possible (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 6). Although ideas for improvement have been proposed, “organizations must be built intentionally to provide culturally effective care, including the staffing, policies, and organizational culture” (Bui et al., 2022, p. 4), the need for cultural competency and cultural humility is crucial for successful rehabilitation. Being that hyperarousal causes irritability and aggression, maintaining defensiveness from a patients’ perspective makes it even more difficult to have breakthroughs in treatment when discussing (or not discussing) past trauma. This persistent state of fight-or-flight could account for the number of times relapse occurs. Early unresolved trauma may be associated with more severe and persistent drug use, thus frustrating attempts at recovery and leading to more frequent relapse (Marcenko et al., 2000, p. 323). Failed attempts at recovery fuels the idea of learned helplessness which creates an ominous sense of shame. Hyperarousal PTSD and Intergroup Dynamics: A key cultural belief in the Black community is that seeking psychological help for mental illness or addictions is a sign of weakness. There are cultural/community factors which may impact their belief or ability to seek treatment such as family responsibility or cultural beliefs about treatment (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 3). Not only is this cultural belief a hindrance to the overall mental health of the entire community, but this internal stigma prevents struggling Black women from acknowledging their own avoidance and reactions to stressors. With the burden of stigma comes hesitance in seeking help, and this hesitance is part of the driving force for women having to self- heal. Regarding acknowledgement, what has been culturally acceptable in the Black community for decades is to downplay or ignore symptoms as being catastrophic to overall health, especially mental health. This inability to come forward with true emotions in seeking help for trauma is what inevitably keeps black women emotionally enslaved, thus leading to risky coping mechanisms. African Americans are less likely to report or categorize traumatic experiences as trauma or seek treatment when symptoms occur; therapy and the use of medications to treat mental illness and substance use disorders are often unmentionable in the Black community...consequently, these communities may be at higher risk of using substances as a maladaptive method to cope with stressors and to suppress thoughts and feelings associated with trauma (Shah, Monteiro 2020). The family plays an important role in alcohol/substance abuse, and this factor has been shown to affect females more than males. Family discipline in childhood and family cohesion and parental rule setting during adolescence seem to be key factors in predicting later substance use for females (Doherty et al., 2008, p. 250). Abuse experienced in childhood in relation to the development of PTSD is important when considering treatment strategies. For our Black women to either bypass or overcome their substance usage, acknowledgement and psychological treatment of childhood abuse must be made available during formative years. Statistical results indicate that African American women who reported being abused as children may be at increased risk for substance use in adulthood if they develop PTSS that are severe, particularly if the symptoms associated with hyperarousal and/or avoidance are severe in nature (Florez et al., 2022, p. 186). Whether the abuse is emotional, physical, or verbal, Black women are more susceptible to severe symptoms of alcohol abuse resulting from unacknowledged and untreated hyperarousal PTSD. PTSS severity mediated the association between each type of childhood abuse and later alcohol misuse...this suggests that symptom severity is critically linked to increased risk for alcohol misuse in African American women, regardless of the type of childhood abuse experienced (Florez et al., 2022, p. 187). The Black family also tends to be less supportive of the woman enduring alcohol abuse due to her own “choices.” This lack of support is another deterrent for seeking help. Some women discussed losing family support over the course of their lives (including economic support) because family members disapproved of their substance misuse or choice of partners (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 178). What’s most interesting about this lack of support from the family is that it leaks into the larger social system, turning our attention to the lack of overall compassion for the Black woman. She’s forced to turn inward and seek spiritual support over physical support because of the absence of compassion from her community. When asked about their main source of support during this period, all women discussed their strong relationship with God (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 181). This reinforces the fact that Black women must “stay strong” for their own sake, removing their essence of femininity. Furthermore, substance abusing women tend to conform to their partners' usage, which poses a major threat to the mental health of the Black woman because she continues to relinquish what little control she has over her own wellbeing. Women’s partners can reinforce their drug use and women may calibrate their use, so it is in sync with that of their partners (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 177). The duality in attachment styles developed in childhood, be it anxious/avoidant, codependent/interdependent, play a direct role in the type of relationship these women have with men (or women). The majority (∼70%) of heterosexual drug using women form relationships with drug using men (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 177). Black women with hyperarousal PTSD are most likely avoidant in daily life tasks and anxious in relationships. This anxiousness creates fear of the partner leaving, therefore keeping her in her state of abuse out of the need for love and approval from her partner. Since relationships play such a significant role in women’s lives, women living with a substance-using partner may be deterred from seeking treatment because they fear the loss of the relationship (“Substance abuse treatment and care for women: case studies and lessons learned”, 2005, p. 23). The established hyperarousal PTSD also acts as a catalyst for codependent behavior (further fueling alcohol abuse) in women who were not anxiously attached to their partners. “Other women had weaker emotional bonds with their partner. Their relationships were often longer lasting than those described above and were characterized by frequent conflict, break ups, or violence.” (Cooper et al., 2014, p. 180). Deeply rooted embarrassment that weighs on the consciousness of Black women results in denial, ultimately hindering their mental health and contributing to their ongoing hyperarousal. Regarding mental health, interpersonal and direct experiences with discrimination can lead to heightened vigilance, challenge one’s beliefs about fairness and justice, create internalized stigma towards oneself, and exacerbate physiological and psychological stress, all of which contribute to poorer mental health outcome (Vu et al., 2019, p. 2). A pretentious sense of pride and self-blame acts as a barrier to connecting with the true self. Among African American women, SBW schema endorsement is associated with greater negative attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help (ATSPPH) and poorer mental health (McCleary-Gaddy and James, 2022, p. 1). With pride and embarrassment comes the fear of punishment and creates instability. For Black women – especially mothers, this combination is catastrophic when seeking treatment because it eliminates the desire to be treated. The penal system has historically been used to reframe unaccepted behavior which ends up becoming a real threat to the family. “Prison and foster care function together to discipline and control poor and low-income Black women by keeping them under intense state supervision and blaming them for the hardships their families face as a result of social inequalities” (Harp and Bunting, 2020, p. 269). The overflow of pride, embarrassment, and fear of punishment contributes to the avoidance that keeps Black women out of sight and uninvolved in their own treatment. This is concerning since African Americans compared to other racial/ethnic groups have a longer duration of substance use and tend to seek help once the problem is severe (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 2). Methods: The electronic databases psychINFO, psychARTICLES, and Google Scholar were used to carry out the retrieval of information using the following keywords and phrases: hyperarousal PTSD, African American women, alcohol abuse, socioeconomically disadvantaged, stigma, gender, Black women, substance abuse, and low-income. Articles maintained relevance by adjusting publication time frames from years 2016-2023. Selection criteria for this study included articles containing factors associated with systemic barriers, mental health treatment, and social dissonance. In the completed scoping review, 28 studies were dissected which consisted of qualitative and quantitative information. Of these studies, only 3 were specific to alcohol abuse, however the remainder were specific to substance use which included alcohol, cocaine, meth, and heroine. 7 of these articles were specific to trauma and abuse. These articles were also restricted to African American women, however few articles mentioned a variety of ethnicities and mixed gender populations. Further aims such as ethical observation and a longitudinal study are contingent upon approval by the Institutional Review Board of Nevada State University. Measures: The proposed longitudinal study characteristics contain the following criteria: African American women, ages 18-70, low socioeconomic status, physical and psychological traits categorized under hyperarousal PTSD, previous trauma, and suffering from substance abuse - specifically alcohol. The emotional intelligence psychometrics test will be used along with an affect grid and qualitative interviews of participants throughout the span of one year. These measures are set to support our hypothesis that Black women with a low/absent window of tolerance for stress will form an alcohol/substance use disorder within their lifetime. Conclusion: Hyperarousal PTSD stemming from, and combined with, social inequalities such as the intersection of gender, race, and class, stigma, oppressors, relationships, the health system, and a false sense of self, fosters the unhealthy, unloving, and unsupportive livelihood of a Black woman struggling with alcohol abuse. Interventions proposed by industry professionals provide insight on where to start regarding treatment, “Meaning, intervening on the issue of stigma, guilt, and shame on levels directly addressing family, culture, community and environment.” (Redmond et al., 2020, p. 7), however for there to be real change in the way this group is helped there would need to be a deep cultural understanding in the helping fields of psychology, social services, medicine, and criminal justice. Practical interventions in treatment are to be determined. Acknowledgements: This research was supported by Trio McNair Scholarship funding awarded by Nevada State University. References: Redmond, M. L., Smith, S., & Collins, T. C. (2020). Exploring African American Women’s’ experiences with substance use treatment: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Community Psychology, 48(2), 337–350. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22241 Harp, K. L. H., & Bunting, A. M. (2020). The Racialized Nature of Child Welfare Policies and the Social Control of Black Bodies. Social Politics, 27(2), 258–281. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxz039 McCleary-Gaddy, A. T., & James, D. (2022). Dehumanization, attitudes toward seeking professional psychological care, and mental health among African American women. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000554 Vu, M., Li, J., Haardörfer, R., Windle, M., & Berg, C. J. (2019). Mental health and substance use among women and men at the intersections of identities and experiences of discrimination: Insights from the intersectionality framework. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 108. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6430-0 Cooper, H. L., Clark, C. D., Barham, T., Embry, V., Caruso, B., & Comfort, M. (2014). “He Was the Story of My Drug Use Life”: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study of the Impact of Partner Incarceration on Substance Misuse Patterns Among African American Women. Substance Use & Misuse, 49(1–2), 176–188. https://doi.org/10.3109/10826084.2013.824474 Vereinte Nationen (Ed.). (2005). Substance abuse treatment and care for women: Case studies and lessons learned. United Nations. Florez, I. A., Mekawi, Y., Hunnicutt-Ferguson, K., Visser, K. F., Clunie, A. M., Dunn, S. E., & Kaslow, N. J. (2022). Childhood abuse, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and alcohol misuse among African-American women. Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, 21(1), 174–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332640.2020.1725707 Doherty, E. E., Green, K. M., Reisinger, H. S., & Ensminger, M. E. (2008). Long-Term Patterns of Drug Use Among an Urban African- American Cohort: The Role of Gender and Family. Journal of Urban Health, 85(2), 250–267. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524- 007-9246-7 Blog: Substance use disorder stigma must end for Black, African American communities | AHA News. (n.d.). Retrieved June 2, 2023, from https://www.aha.org/news/blog/2020-12-08-blog-substance-use-disorder-stigma-must-end-black-african- american-communities Marcenko, M. O., Kemp, S. P., & Larson, N. C. (2000). Childhood experiences of abuse, later substance use, and parenting outcomes among low-income mothers. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 70(3), 316–326. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0087853 Bui, J., Waters, A., & Ghertner, R. (2022). Addressing Substance Use and Social Needs of People of Color with Substance Use Disorders. Dekin, S. (2022, October 11). Creating Consciousness: Addressing The Substance Abuse Problem in Los Angeles. Mission Harbor Behavioral Health. https://sbtreatment.com/blog/creating-consciousness-addressing-the-substance-abuse-problem-in-los-angeles/ Montemayor, 2019. Sexuality in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood. 1 Edition. Mulia, N. (2020). Alcohol-related Disparities among Women: Evidence and Potential Explanations. Alcohol Research: Current Reviews, 40(2), arcr.v40.2.09. https://doi.org/10.35946/arcr.v40.2.09 Otiniano Verissimo, A. D., Gee, G. C., & Grella, C. (2023). Examining the relationship between intersectional discrimination and substance use disorders by race/ethnicity and gender. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000599

Proposal I look forward to exploring the presence of sexual coercion in the online discourse space and how anti-feminist ideals are being discussed. As an avid online user, discussions regarding sexual violence and patriarchal ideals are constantly refreshing with every swipe (Marron, M.B., 2020). With new modern media expanding, the urge to eliminate sexist ideology comes with constant backlash from different pro-men, white supremacist, and patriarchal groups on the internet (Botto, M. & Gottzén, L., 2023). While modern feminist warriors like Drew Afualo and Dylan Mulvaney are making great impacts on the online conversation, influencers such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan provide a distasteful use of bigotry regarding women’s rights (The Observer, 2023) (The Times, 2023). With an Incel presence on the rise (Sunday Times, 2023) (Solea, A.I., Sugiura, L., 2023) and podcasts becoming an increasingly popular space for discussion (Singh, et al., 2023), a question of the current climate of patriarchal beliefs must be paid attention to. As the internet continues to age and expand social dilemmas become more prominent online than in real life (Mina, A.X., 2019, p.3). Following the beginning of these discussions travels back to the past, present, and future of the infamous #Metoo movement, the Red/Black Pill movement, and the essence of sexual coercion in the media. With the lack of present resources available and the ethics of the topic, I plan to use content analysis referring to past and current research. Additionally, with the newer relevancy of podcasts (Singh, et al., 2023) I will dissect those that are targeted towards male listeners. Using podcasts to collect data provides an efficient and undisclosed discussion from influencers. Without hiding behind a username such podcasters must go on the record with their beliefs. TikTok is mostly responsible for my use of podcast transcriptions. Some TikTok users will post the most controversial parts of podcasts to reach a higher audience. Applications such as TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram comment sections while having great evidence pose difficulty in transcribing. As this project has a timeline of a few months, transcriptions from other social media platforms will have to be analyzed in future research. I will be picking about 30 podcasts with the most reach (views) that surround the topics of sexual violence, coercion, masculinity, antifeminism, heterosexual relationships, etc. Anything that possesses patriarchal or anti-feminist ideology in the podcasts will find its way into this research. I suspect that there is a concerning amount of sexual coercion happening in society and these patriarchal and antifeminist beliefs posed in the media are contributors to this problem. The male podcasters and influencers who promote anti-feminist ideals reflect this problem with their large audience outreach. While I believe the wave of feminist literature and influencers are making even greater strives against toxic masculinity and hate targeted towards women, there is still an abundant amount of this hate reaching young men (Simões, R.B. & Silveirinha, M.J, 2022). This can negatively impact not just women and girls but men and boys as well (Sunday Times, 2023). Their overall well-being will crumble as they find pleasure in hating the opposite sex and women will continue to be sexual targets (Byerly, C.M., 2020) (Rajagopalan, 2019). This research will create a better understanding of the presence and effects of antifeminist media discourse. It will also create a bigger space to speak on sexual coercion as it is not discussed at the lengths it should be in both online spaces and reality (Pugh, B., & Becker, P., 2018). As an undergraduate honors thesis candidate, I plan to defend this research in the Spring of 2024. Additionally, my thesis is a class requirement and must be completed to graduate from CU Boulder in the Spring of 2024.   References Botto, M., & Gottzén, L. (2023). Swallowing and spitting out the red pill: young men, vulnerability, and radicalization pathways in the manosphere, Journal of Gender Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2023.2260318 Byerly, C.M. (2020). Incels online reframing sexual violence, The Communication Review, 23:4, 290-308, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2020.1829305 Don't talk to pupils about misogynist Andrew Tate, government urges teachers in England; Advice comes despite charity's warning that social media figure is fuelling shocking growth of misogyny in schools. (2023, April 29). Observer [London, England], NA. https://link-gale-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A747499222/ITOF?u=coloboulder&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b4500866 Marron, M.B. (2020). Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump. Lexington Books. Mina, A.X. (2019). Memes to Movements : How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power. Beacon Press. Pugh, B., & Becker, P. (2018). Exploring Definitions and Prevalence of Verbal Sexual Coercion and Its Relationship to Consent to Unwanted Sex: Implications for Affirmative Consent Standards on College Campuses. Behavioral Sciences (2076-328X), 8(8), 69. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs8080069 Rajagopalan, S. (2019). Misogyny, solidarity and postfeminism on social media: The work of being Diana Shurygina, survivor-celebrity. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(5-6), 739-762. https://doi-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1367549419856828 Simões, R.B., & Silveirinha, M.J. (2022). Framing street harassment: legal developments and popular misogyny in social media. Feminist Media Studies, 22:3, 621-637. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2019.1704816 Singh, N.T, Kaur, P., Kaur, S. & Kaur, D. (2023). A Modern Podcast Player for Mobile Platform. 2023 IEEE International Conference on Integrated Circuits and Communication Systems (ICICACS), 1-6. doi: 10.1109/ICICACS57338.2023.10100023 Solea, A.I., & Sugiura, L. (2023). Mainstreaming the Blackpill: Understanding the Incel Community on TikTok. Eur J Crim Policy Res, 29, 311–336. https://doi-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s10610-023-09559-5 Talk to your sons before they idolise Andrew Tate; Toxic masculinity will prosper as long as society neglects its young men. (2023, January 15). Sunday Times [London, England], 14. https://link-gale-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A733384782/AONE?u=coloboulder&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=549e009f Web of money-making and misogny; Influencers inspired by Andrew Tate have millions of views on social media, Ben Ellery and Ali Mitib report. (2023, January 9). Times [London, England], 15. https://link-gale-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A732679750/AONE?u=coloboulder&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=b093917e

INTRODUCTION For decades certain neighborhoods & social classes have been limited to certain healthier food options and compelled to eat less healthier options just based on where they live. This notion has been normal in society because it been a practice for generations. There is a lot of different organizational input that goes into placing these establishments in counties; such as, City input, Federal input, & even State input. This paper will explain how the food industry impacts communities based on their racial economic class. Are communities where people of color live stripped of healthy food options based on the zip code they reside in? By examining how Fast Food Chains and Supermarkets are strategically geographically located to gain economic power, we will see if they are limiting access to healthier food options to communities of people of color. In regards to Orange County, CA, you will see a breakdown how two different societal groups have access to two different food types. LITERATURE REVIEW One average in the most populated cities in the country, 17.7% of black neighborhoods have limited access to supermarkets, while only 7.6% of white neighborhoods do. (CNN). When Supermarkets & Fast Food Chains are considering expanding & opening new locations, they are reviewing census data that shows them racial zonings, economic income levels, and population. White flight is the theory that white people are moving out of urban areas to more suburban areas to escape neighborhoods where there are highly minority populated. Supermarkets have expanded highly in the suburb neighborhoods starting in the late 1980s due to White Flight. Has of January 2022, Orange County - CA currently has an estimated population of 3,222,341 people. According to The Orange County Register, Orange County Neighborhoods are not diverse. As a whole Orange County is diverse; 44% of the population is White, 34% are Hispanic, 18% Asian, & the remaining 4% are other races. Whites tend to live in a white-majority neighborhood, while Hispanics will live in Hispanic-majority neighborhoods, and so on. This phenomenon is believed to have long lasting effects how these racial groups live in this county. Not only how they live & operate, but also how companies & politicians offer services & resources to those specific zip codes. According to The Orange County Register, the most wealthy neighborhood or area in Orange County is categorized as Zip Code, 92657 in Newport Coast with an average household income of $475,757. As the most poorest neighborhood or area is categorized as Zip Code, 92703 in Santa Ana with an average household income of $27,683. Comparing these two areas, both of these populations live a totally different life based on where they live & have access to. Newport Coast residents have access to multiple supermarket options close by, such as Trader Joe’s, Gel-Son’s & even Pavilion’s, which can be portrayed as having more expensive & healthier products. On the contrary, 92657 residents have very limited options to fast food options unfortunately. Their closest options such as In-N-Out Burger & McDonald’s are about 5 miles away in Costa Mesa & Irvine. Residents in West Santa Ana have very limited access to name-brand supermarkets in their neighborhood. There is a local Walmart & El Super located in the same complex, but their other options are local mom & pop markets such as, “Mom’s Supermarket” & “AA Marketplace”. Now has far as fast food chains, residents in 92703 have an abundant amount of options to chose from. Just in a 2 mile radius, they can get access to at least 10 different restaurants including, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, McDonald’s, & even Jack in the Box. This realty poses a huge problem for how People of Color can have access to healthier food options. There is a racial bias to where Supermarkets & Fast Food Chains are expanding to & where they “want” to place their new locations. By reviewing data from the census, business leaders create a demographical profile that highlights communities that are either not low income based or not highly minority populated. Relatively speaking, anyone can & do have access to all food options; grocery stores like Trade Joe’s are not turning away people of color, and restaurants such as Popeyes are not turning away white people. But by strategically placing these certain stores in the areas they feel will impact the most, does limit options to certain groups. The limitation comes from transportation, income, and mental disparities. The lack of transportation to get to these further options poses an issue to where a shorter distance is more applicable. Having less income limits their options drastically; if someone can get more for a dollar at one place then another, then that option is more applicable. Feeling comfortable is the upmost position everyone wants to be in when visiting a place. It is more applicable for people to visit a place where they feel wanted, like a family, and not out a place than to visit a place that is the opposite. METHOD Upon of my findings of my personal research, conversations & visuals I wanted to take a further look into the data & realization of how these outcomes were coming about. Certain local city databases & websites gather their numbers from certain surveys but also from the yearly & decade census the government collects. DATA USA showcases & displays data specifically by county & city lines on gender, racial, economic, geographical, wage, age, and occupational disparities. This data was checked in the early of November but the data was collected & released in January of 2021. Within the data you will see representation shown within the Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties around the population of racial groups, their yearly income, and their access to grocery chains & fast food restaurants. The data shown, shows the differences in these counties on different levels by who may have access to healthier food options based on how much income you bring in & the amount of people living in a geographical area. According to the data found & reported in the census; areas that have more persons of color in population tend to exhibit a higher quantity of of fast food restaurants over grocery store chains. ANALYSIS This racial disparity in food accessibility between Whites & People of Color is outlined and explained using Conflict Theory. This idea that major companies & chains are strategically geographically placing their stores based on racial & income data is a threat that’s creating a conflict between whites and people of color. This is categorized as Institutional Racism where companies are gaining economic and symbolic power by placing higher end stores in neighborhoods where they know the population will by rather than lower income neighborhoods. This is a systematic approach for the upper class men to feel superior to gain advantage in agriculture preparedness. With these certain stores placed racially geographically in cities, this also affects the income levels in these populations. I believe a wage exploitation is occurring because since less cheaper food options are placed in more lower income neighborhoods, they are inclined to pay less to match the budget they are receiving from consumers. Same as for the higher end stores, they are able to pay their employees higher wages to match the budget they are receiving from consumers. This poses as a racial disparity in income as people of color enter the workforce to bring money back to their families. Considering the wage gap from Whites & People of Color, by technicality, Whites can afford more expensive supermarkets . Since these “expensive supermarkets” hold the more healthier options than others, this becomes white privilege simply that they are benefiting from this industry that is providing more for this particular social group. CONCLUSION Food accessibility in Orange County, CA is definitely being controlled by Politicians, Company Leaders, and even Local Leaders. These practices are used today to advance new placement of stores in regions where the company feels they will receive the most bargain. According to CNN, most available land are found in low income neighborhoods due to the simple fact that not many businesses want to relocate or set grounds there because of the potential of low cash flow. This also makes a stand that local mom & pop shops & Fast Food Restaurants tend to attract more of the population with lower income than those with high income. As far as Supermarkets, this industry tends to attract a higher income population than lower income. This ideal can easily have long lasting effects on people of color, specifically to their health. The food industry is monopolized for financial gain & growth over less dominant social groups. I believe once people start talking about the long lasting effects on how Supermarkets & Fast Food Chains serve their specific neighborhoods, I think a change in overall health & acceptance will start to occur. REFERENCES Meyersohn, Nathaniel. 2020. 'How the rise of supermarkets left out black America'. Retrieved September 20, 2022 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/business/grocery-stores-access-race-inequality/index.html). Orange County Register. 2008. ‘Poorest ZIPs in O.C. and California’. Retrieved September 22, 2022. (https://www.ocregister.com/2008/01/01/poorest-zips-in-oc-and-california/). Orange County Register. 2007. ‘Wealthiest ZIPs in O.C and California’. Retrieved September 22, 2022. (https://www.ocregister.com/2007/12/01/wealthiest-zips-in-oc-and-california/). Johnson, Jake. 2022. General Manager. Supermarket in Long Beach, California. Retrieved September 21, 2022. Data USA. 2020. ‘Los Angeles County’. ‘Orange County’. ‘San Bernardino County’. Retrieved November 8th, 2022. (https://datausa.io/profile/geo/) Government Census. 2020. ‘Grocery Stores by county’. ‘Fast Food Restaurants by county’. Retrieved November 8th, 2022. (https://www.census.gov/)

Research design The overall research question to the research project is “how do BIPOC student parents navigate higher education”. The main topic behind it is to understand each BIPOC student parent’s experience on a college campus and what are some of their difficulties to better support their journey as a non-traditional student. The method I am choosing to investigate the topic is through qualitative research, specifically with an in-depth interview. This is the most appropriate for the research due to their designs. First, I would start off with screening my participants and their demographics of being an individual of color, parent, and an undergraduate/graduate student is present since these are the three required demographics for the research. Then I would conduct individual interviews with the selected participants to understand their experience being a student in college as a parent, especially understanding the barriers that come in their way from succeeding. Sampling The sampling strategy behind this research is non-probability because it is a method of selecting cases from a population that is not randomly selected. In all, the sampling works best in these cases of sampling individual participants. The sampling of the research would occur in multiple college campuses to reach other participants nationwide, due reducing the risk of errors. These students must be enrolled in an undergraduate/graduate program at a college or university, where they identify themselves as a student, an individual of color, and parent. The sampling frame of the research will consist of a complete list of students in a file from the college/university’s registrar. One thing to mention however, is how important it is to decide on what to observe from the in-depth interviews. Thus, the sampling design of the research will be involving two methods, purposive and snowball. Using the two benefits the research because of how the sampling being purposive involves careful analysis of selection of cases that can represent the studied population. However, if I struggle with searching and selecting participants, using the snowball sampling will allow a chain referral of eligible individuals who are willing to participate. My sample goal of the in-depth interviews would be 30, although essentially the number of cases is dependent on the level of precision, I want to achieve with the resources I have been provided. Therefore, the number should be based on the concept of saturation, to the point where there is no new information that can be taken from the data. Recruitment I will recruit individuals to participate in the interview study through multiple methods. The first method would be through posting flyers in public spaces in campuses (if permission is given). Adding onto this, with connections in various colleges, especially in student affairs offices, it would benefit asking them about the flyers, but also encourage a student parent to fill out the survey and get in contact with me to conduct an interview. Another method of recruiting would be through promoting a social media profile, precisely an Instagram profile. With creating the profile or even having a QR code to scan from the flier, it would make it more accessible to the wider public. The third method for the research would be by using word of mouth and in promoting the research. Data Management In collecting data, the best mode for the project would be through various ways in conducting interviews. The idea behind this research is for it to be accessible to all participants, so there is not just one, but many including face to face, virtual, and phone. If distance becomes an issue for the participant, having the options of doing it virtually or through the phone would best accommodate their situation. However, if not the case, I would be willing to travel within my home state to hear their experience and take note. I plan to manage the data on a private computer and a private Google Drive, so that it can only be accessed through passwords. Once the research is completed, the data will be destroyed. In protecting the participant’s identities, I would first protect their rights to control access to their participation in the research; limiting information collected to only to information that is essential to the research, only once consent has been obtained. I would also ensure using key codes or assigning a pseudonym to participants, ensuring that participants do not have any personal identifiers-direct or indirect that would link responses. Reflexivity When considering my own positionality in the research, there comes to be some strengths and weaknesses. As a student-parent and individual of color myself, I would be able to connect with the participant with their vulnerability to participating in the research. Allowing them to feel safe with their information. However, the weakness to this is that I would not want them to consider me as a friend during or after the research because of the similarities that there would be between us. However, this is where I limit the information between each of us so that it remains only the essential information for the research. Ethics The ethical issues or considerations with this project goes back to paragraph 4 in maintaining the data safe. Having their informed consent is essential when it comes to conducting the interviews. The research participants must be given all the information on the research, including its risks and benefits. Invasion of privacy as mentioned before as well becomes essential to the research because it is the right of the participant to disclose what they want to reveal about their experience in college. Privacy protection is key to every study that is conducted. That is why confidentiality is essential for the participants to understand their rights and how we as researchers are protecting them. Limitations Some limitations for this research are that present in the research are how reliability and validity could be based on biases of the researcher since there is only one researcher to the project. They are highly dependent on the skills of the researcher including observational, interactive, and most importantly interpretive. Findings can be influenced from the personal biases of the researcher. However, to address those concerns it would be best to compare findings to other data sources, and cross-checking interviews with other data that the participants include, in cases of misremembering. References Bell E, Hunter C, Benitez T, et al. Intervention Strategies and Lessons Learned From a Student-Led Initiative to Support Lactating Women in the University Setting. Health Promotion Practice. 2022;23(1):154-165. doi:10.1177/15248399211004283 Brooks, R. (2013). Negotiating Time and Space for Study: Student-parents and Familial Relationships. Sociology, 47(3), 443–459. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24433300 Estes, D. K. (2011). Managing the Student-Parent Dilemma: Mothers and Fathers in Higher Education. Symbolic Interaction, 34(2), 198–219. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2011.34.2.198 Katz, S. (2013). “Give Us a Chance to Get an Education”: Single Mothers’ Survival Narratives and Strategies for Pursuing Higher Education on Welfare. Journal of Poverty, 17(3), 273–304. https://doi-org.ezproxy.plu.edu/10.1080/10875549.2013.804477 Moreau, M.-P. (2013). Lone parents’ experiences as higher education students: learning to juggle. Gender & Education, 25(5), 656–658. https://doi-org.ezproxy.plu.edu/10.1080/09540253.2013.816820 Moreau, M.-P., & Kerner, C. (2015). Care in academia: an exploration of student parents’ experiences. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36(2), 215–233. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43818781 Navarro-Cruz, G. E., Dávila, B. A., & Kouyoumdjian, C. (2021). From Teen Parent to Student Parent: Latina Mothers’ Persistence in Higher Education. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 20(4), 466–480. https://doi-org.ezproxy.plu.edu/10.1177/1538192720980308 Pio, E., & Graham, M. (2018). Transitioning to higher education: journeying with Indigenous Maori teen mothers. Gender & Education, 30(7), 846–865. https://doi-org.ezproxy.plu.edu/10.1080/09540253.2016.1269157 Rana, Meenal. “RESILIENCE AMONG STUDENT PARENTS IN COLLEGE: VOICES OF LATINA STUDENT MOTHERS.” Research in human development. 19.3/4 (2022): 75–100. Web. Torres, Lisette E. “Sobreviviendo Sin Sacrificando (Surviving Without Sacrificing)– An Intersectional DisCrit Testimonio from a Tired Mother-Scholar of Color.” Race, Ethnicity & Education 24.5 (2021): 623–636. W

The following research proposal is based on qualitative analysis of 33 semi-longitudinal in-depth interviews conducted in 2011 and 2012 with San Diego County residents who had recently timed-out of welfare (2023). Through 2 rounds of interviews, parents detailed their experiences surrounding “…family wellbeing, making ends meet with reduced welfare benefits, work and work-family balance, and the effects of timing out” (Weigt 2023, p. 4). Through my research, I will apply a new context to the Community Cultural Wealth framework by addressing the question: In what ways are disconnected mothers, resilient survivors of poverty who are maneuvering through inequitable institutions, able to use their emotional labor to transmit aspirational capital to their children in the hopes of increasing future social mobility? I examine the lived experiences of “disconnected” women who maneuver in the margins of the informal and formal labor market to make ends meet and provide care to their children. Researchers have used the term “disconnected” to categorize families who have been largely estranged from the formal labor market and timed-out of welfare by reaching their lifetime limit (for example, Weigt 2023). My preliminary findings indicate that disconnected mothers have a wealth of capital, albeit delegitimized, as it does not directly influence the advancement of the economy through the formal labor market. Rather, these mothers are using highly specialized knowledge they’ve obtained from navigating an inequitable welfare system to package community resources to subsist and provide emotional labor to their children. After inductively coding the interview transcripts and noting many instances of resiliency and cultural wealth, I returned to the data with a more deductive eye and analyzed it using a Community Cultural Wealth framework (CCW) (Yosso 2005). Yosso’s work is heavily influenced by Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital as well as Critical Race Theory (2005). Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory has been employed in contemporary research to underscore deficits in low-income and marginalized communities (Yosso 2005). CCW seeks to include the “communal funds of knowledge” that marginalized communities possess as legitimate forms of capital (Yosso 2005, p. 76; Yosso and Garcia 2006). This framework recognizes the existence and value of other types of cultural knowledge such as: aspirational capital, familial capital, resistance capital, navigational capital, social capital, and linguistic capital (2005). Navigational capital is obtained by learning to maneuver through the constraints and inequality of institutions (Yosso 2005). Yosso defines aspirational capital as the resiliency expressed through hope and dreams of the future despite the barriers of one’s circumstances (2005). Stanton-Salazar and Spina’s redefinition of resilience plays an important role in Yosso’s work because it broadens and applies the understanding of resiliency to the unacknowledged lower-class (2005 and 2000). Additionally, O’Brien’s (2009) research on carework informs us on the legitimacy and value of emotional capital as an intergenerational pathway to cultural capital regardless of the embodied capital women possess. Her work brings attention to the extensive emotional labor cost required for raising children in the attempt to bring about social mobility (O’Brien 2009). Too much of the current research is deficit-focused regarding this population and other marginalized groups (Yosso 2006; Yosso & Garcia 2007). My intended contribution through this research is to further the available literature on the conditions, importance, and relevance of “disconnected” families. Moreover, I wish to reveal the resiliency of disconnected and low-income mothers and emphasize their strengths as productive and important members of society. This research informs on the emotional toll mothers experience in their attempts to raise their children and develop systems of support that maintain their values and cultural desires for their children despite neoliberal ideologies that seek to delegitimize their labor. References O’Brien, Maeve. 2009. “The Impact of Economic, Social, Cultural, and Emotional Capital on Mothers’ Love and Care Work in Education.” Pp. 158-179 in Affective Equality: Love, Care, and Injustice. edited by K. Lynch, J. Baker, M. Lyons. University College Dublin:Ireland. Stanton-Salazar, Ricardo D. and Stephanie U. Spina. 2000. “The Network Orientations of Highly Resilient Urban Minority Youth: A Network-Analytic Account of Minority Socialization and Its Educational Implications.” The Urban Review 32(3):227-261. Retrieved November 18, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005122211864). Weigt, Jill. 2023. “Trajectories to timing out and the snare of undermining conditions: A retrospective analysis of meeting lifetime limits to welfare.” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment. Retrieved November 26, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2023.2167029). Yosso, Tara J. 2005. “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education 8(1):69-91. Retrieved November 15, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006). Yosso, Tara J. and David G. García. 2007. “‘This is no Slum!’: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Community Cultural Wealth in Culture Clash’s ‘Chavez Ravine.’” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32(1):145-179. Retrieved November 15, 2023 (https://shorturl.at/iMS02).

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to understand how Eurocentric societal beauty standards impact women of color both as individuals and within their respective racial/ethnic groups. This study focuses on Black, Latina, and Asian women, as these racial groups make up the majority of the current U.S. population in terms of race and ethnicity after White individuals. This study includes important information on how Eurocentric beauty standards may uphold White supremacy and cause potentially negative outcomes to a woman of color’s livelihood. Beauty for women is a societal norm, and understanding how race, gender, and beauty operate on intersecting levels gives us insight into how women of color face a larger burden in maintaining this standard and the toll it takes on their self-esteem and livelihood. Fifteen women of color were interviewed in order to collect data on women of color’s experiences with Eurocentric beauty standards. In conclusion, the data supports that Eurocentric beauty standards negatively impact women of color on an individual and systemic level, with varying degrees of consequences dependent on a multitude of factors, including one’s racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic background. Learning how race, gender, and beauty intersect highlights underlying causes of systemic oppression. With this knowledge, we can create spaces and structures to dismantle oppressive forces. Study Design: The interviews aimed to understand the participants’ experiences with being women of color in a society that specifically values Eurocentric beauty standards. As I interviewed more participants, I eventually began to notice significant similarities in their answers and felt I had reached saturation, as no new information was being collected (Saunders et al. 2018). It was important for this study to reach saturation as I did not want to disregard any participants’ unique experiences. I began each interview by exchanging pleasantries with the participants and introducing myself if they did not already know who I was. Within my qualitative research, it was important for me to have a warm, empathic presence for my participants, as I wished to make them as comfortable as possible before we spoke about vulnerable thoughts and experiences (Prior 2018). In the interview, I made sure each participant had signed their consent form via DocuSign and reminded them they were able to stop the interview at any time if need be. I also reminded them they are able to contact me after and pull their interviews from the study if they so wish. With their verbal and written consent, I was then able to begin the interviews. During the interviews, I used an interview guide that consisted of eight open-ended questions and asked each participant all eight questions. Each interview varied in the follow-up questions I asked due to participants’ varying answers. Most answers I followed up with other questions were about communities I am not a part of and wanted to have a full understanding of one’s experience which I am not privy to. Follow up questions, sometimes also known as probing, are a key factor in obtaining rich information from one’s participants (Qu and Dumay 2011). I did not take notes during the interviews as no one declined the interviews’ audio being recorded. Audio recordings of the interviews were captured using Zoom. The audio recordings were downloaded to my computer immediately after each interview was over. I transcribed two interviews for the sake of transcription practice. Thirteen of the fifteen interviews were transcribed professionally by HomePro Transcribing, a company specializing in transcription for academic research. My former thesis advisor, Dr. Lori Peek, aided in organizing the process of transcribing my interviews with the help of her colleague, Dr. Jennifer Tobin. Each of the fifteen interviews was transcribed verbatim. Interviews lasted between 13 to 47 minutes. Location varied from in-person interviews to remote interviews that were agreed upon by the participants for the sake of participant confidentiality and comfortability. Conclusion: This thesis clarifies the questions women of color have when inquiring about the reasons for systemic racism and misogyny and can be used to create systemic change. It can be used to prove how embedded White supremacy is within many facets of our society. This study also illustrates that White supremacy is not always overt, through white hoods and violent hate crimes. Covert White supremacy, including Eurocentric beauty standards, is woven into the fabric of the United States’ society and should be recognized and denounced at all costs. Works Cited: Qu, S. Q., & Dumay, J. (2011). The qualitative research interview. Qualitative research in accounting & management, 8(3), 238-264. Saunders, B., Sim, J., Kingstone, T., Baker, S., Waterfield, J., Bartlam, B., ... & Jinks, C. (2018). Saturation in qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and operationalization. Quality & quantity, 52, 1893-1907.

The following research study has been formatted to investigate the role of race and its influence on survivors decision making in seeking help in a situation of intimate partner violence (IPV). This proposal will focus on the following three concepts that have been previously proven to have an impact on this matter: racial discrimination in institutions, socioeconomic status, and racial and gender stereotypes (Monterrosa 2021). Participants of this research will include 10 Black and 10 White women identifying students from California State University East Bay. The research presented will be based on a mixed methods approach consisting of a quantitative correlational survey and an in depth qualitative interview process to collect data. This proposal ultimately aims to develop a better understanding of the factors that contribute to race having an influence on survivors' decision to seek help in an incident of intimate partner violence. Literature Review: This proposal is aimed to investigate and provide more understanding as to how race can influence survivors and their decision to seek help in an incident of intimate partner violence (IPV). Research conducted in the past has neglected the societal factors that contribute to different attitudes towards IPV, specifically components associated with a person’s racial background. Various journal articles have dissected the presence and effect of IPV in different ethnic communities through racial discrimination in institutions, socioeconomic status, and racial and gender stereotypes. That said, focusing on these concepts and conducting further research of my own will lead to providing a critical analysis to the research question: How does race affect the likelihood that survivors will seek help following an incident of IPV? Racial Discrimination in Institutions Racial discrimination in the United States has affected the relationship between institutions and communities of color (Monterossa 2021). This systemic issue has resulted in communities avoiding formal assistance from institutions in situations of emergency, and in this case intimate partner violence. Green and Satyen (2023) noted that people from non-White communities were less likely to seek help in situations of IPV from formal and criminal justice services. The lack of trust in institutions in the United States has impacted communities and the likelihood of survivors to seek help in situations of intimate partner violence. Using formal services in cases of IPV have been proven to have beneficial results for women that improve their overall wellbeing and trauma recovery (Green and Satyen 2023). However, Monterrosa (2021) highlighted in their research study that women were more likely to use informal sources of support such as family and friends instead of formal services such as domestic violence help centers, mental health providers, and law enforcement. It was noted that Black women’s use of informal services in cases of intimate partner violence was connected to racial biases within law enforcement and lack of access and inability to afford health care (Monterrosa 2021). In a qualitative study conducted by Monterrosa (2021) consisting of five White and ten Black women IPV victims, it was revealed that one White participant had used law enforcement as a formal support system under the belief that the police were there to help her. She did not consider any institutional forces that could potentially affect her or her abusive partner (Monterosa 2021). On the other hand, two Black participants revealed that they refused to rely on law enforcement due to the belief that police do not exist to help the Black community and the fear of being blamed due to them not caring about the wellbeing of Black women (Monterrosa 2021). Socioeconomic Status: Socioeconomic status refers to the measure of a person’s position within society based on income, education, and occupation (Worthy, Lavigne, and Romero 2020). A person’s socioeconomic status can affect their access to proper resources along with their ability to access support services outside of their immediate family. Lacey, West, Matusko, and Jackson (2016) explained in their research study the role of socioeconomic status and how women with less access to economic resources report higher levels of IPV which ultimately affects the likelihood in them to seek help from support services. With this fact kept in mind, one can assume that financial status affecting a person’s access to resources will also influence a person’s actions in seeking help in situations of IPV. Ponder (2016) conducted a study focussing on the aftermath of 2005 Hurricane Katrina and its effects on domestic violence victims. It was noted that African American women in Louisiana were murdered by men at a rate of two and a half times higher than the rate of Caucasian women (Ponder 2016). It was emphasized that along with the lack of services that make access to domestic violence shelters more difficult, funding cuts that directly impacted the Governor's Office on Women’s Policy budget, which provided much of the funding for local programs that combat intimate partner violence, also affected Black women in Louisiana and other victims from different racial backgrounds (Ponder 2016). Other factors that contributed to survivors not using both formal and informal support services included lack of social network and denial of relief funds which would ultimately aid them in their escape and recovery journey (Ponder 2016). Overall, lack of financial stability and access to domestic violence support programs contributed to Black women and other marginalized groups remaining in situations of intimate partner violence. Racial and Gender Stereotypes: Racial and gender stereotypes have the ability to affect a victim and outside person's attitude and view towards intimate partner violence. Black women are affected by the ‘strong Black woman’ and ‘Jezebel’ stereotype in situations of intimate partner violence due to them being viewed as indestructible beings capable of experiencing violence without harm(Cheeseborough, Overstreet, and Ward 2020). The ‘strong Black woman’ stereotype refers to the notion that Black women are incapable of experiencing physical or emotional pain (Monterrosa 2021). The term ‘jezebel’ is a racial characterization of Black women as sexually promiscuous beings (Cheeseborough, Overstreet, and Ward 2020). White women and other women of color tend to be affected by the ‘battered woman’ stereotype as IPV victims which paints them as stupid, helpless, and at fault for their abuse (Monterrosa 2021). Cheeseborough, Overstreet, and Ward (2020) conducted a research study using an online survey as their research method that surveyed 432 Black Americans that revealed Black men’s endorsement of the Jezebel stereotype was associated with greater justification of violence toward women. Monterrosa’s (2021) qualitative study revealed the Black women participants avoided seeking help from formal services due to them believing that they were okay and capable of handling their own trauma. Some women reported not using informal support systems such as family and friends until after in fear that they may burden them with their problems (Monterrosa 2021). On the other hand, White women participant’s self-image was affected by the battered woman stereotype, which is rooted in gender, but this did not affect their choice in help-seeking (Monterrosa 2021). Racial stereotyping of Black women has encouraged society to both minimize their stories as victims and justify situations of intimate partner violence. In the end, this has affected Black women’s decision making in seeking help in cases of IPV (Monterossa 2021). Summary: Intimate partner violence is an ongoing matter in society that is affected by a variety of factors. In the previously discussed journal articles, some of the most common themes that continuously showed up in different research studies were racial discrimination in institutions, socioeconomic status, and racial and gender stereotypes. Racial discrimination experienced by communities of color from formal institutions results in them avoiding them when they decide to seek help (Monterrosa 2021). Racial and gender stereotypes negatively affect Black women and non-Black women as IPV victims which ultimately shape their perception of intimate partner violence and their ability to be a victim in the situation (Monterrosa 2021). Lastly, a person’s socioeconomic status can affect their access to resources such as formal support services and include economic stressors which result in higher rates of intimate partner violence (Lacey, West, Matusko, and Jackson 2016). Overall, these three concepts have been previously studied and proven to have great effects on the attitudes of people of different racial groups toward intimate partner violence. My proposal and use of mixed methods research through qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys will provide further insight on these concepts. The results will be specifically extracted from participants in a confined population which will remove potential weaknesses that may have been present in previous research. The goal of this research study is to develop a deeper understanding of how race can contribute to the previously listed factors that influence survivors' access to formal support services and their desire to seek help in situations of intimate partner violence. Quantitative Research Design: I will be using a quantitative survey with correlational analysis to collect my quantitative data. This process is best used to collect a wide range of facts consisting of background and biographical along with some conceptual framework of control, independent, and dependent variables (Punch 2014). This survey will consist of both twenty-five survey questions and likert style statements. With my research question focussing on how race influences survivors in seeking help in incidents of intimate partner violence (IPV), it will be important that the quantitative method measures the attitudes, beliefs, and values of the participants, and surveys with correlational analysis are capable of doing so (Punch 2014). Using a survey with correlational analysis as my quantitative research method will allow me to collect information from a larger sample size compared to my qualitative research method which only consists of four interviewees. The overall goal of this research study is to measure the correlation between race influencing survivors decision making in seeking help in a situation of IPV and racial discrimination in institutions, socioeconomic status, and racial and gender stereotypes. A quantitative survey will allow me to accurately measure the correlation between the research question and all three concepts while controlling for race and gender since only White and Black women will be participating in this study. While the sample size is relatively large compared to the qualitative research method, it will still only consist of twenty participants which isn’t enough to accurately generalize to the overall population (Punch 2014). Other limitations with using a survey with correlational analysis include the majority of the questions only having an option for predetermined answers (Punch 2014). As explained in the qualitative research design, a mixed research method consisting of both a quantitative and qualitative data collection that will provide insight not found in survey responses will be used to address these weaknesses. Quantitative Data Collection: The survey will consist of twenty-six questions and likert style statements. The beginning of the survey will be composed of ten demographic questions inquiring about the participants age, race & ethnic background, gender, and socioeconomic status. I will be controlling for race and gender by only surveying and interviewing White and Black women. The second portion of the survey will ask five questions concerning the participant’s relationship and attitude towards law enforcement and formal support services. The purpose of this portion of the survey is to gain insight on each individual’s experience with law enforcement and other formal institutions in cases of IPV and other forms of emergency. The last two sections of the survey consist of ten questions surrounding socioeconomic status and racial and gender stereotypes. This section is used to measure how the participant’s socioeconomic status along with their identity as Black and White women can potentially affect their decision making in seeking help in an incident of IPV. Ensuring validity and reliability are a critical aspect in forming surveys (Punch 2014). Since reliability involves consistency over time with answers produced by participants, it is important that all of the items present in the questions and statements all work in the same direction (Punch 2014). In addition to this, I will ensure validity by creating each question and statement to accurately measure all three concepts. Each concept has been given five questions that are relevant to the study and aren’t off topic which will ultimately make the process easier for participants and hopefully produce accurate and insightful results. In order to ensure reliability and validity, the survey will be both revised and randomly distributed to willing participants as a form of pre-test. This survey will be administered by using an in-person face to face method. The population will consist specifically of Black and White adult women, and I will be gathering participants on East Bay college campus. This method will be used to ensure willingness in participation and for participants to fully understand the meaning and background behind the research study. While the survey should take no longer than fifteen minutes since the questions and statements have been crafted to be time efficient for all involved, participants will be encouraged to take their time completing it while also being reminded that there isn’t any pressure for them to finish. They will have the option to complete the survey within proximity of me, and they will also have the option to do so on their own time since they will be provided a QR code. Quantitative Hypotheses and Variables: The likelihood of a survivor seeking help following an incident of IPV will be measured using specific variables that were highlighted in previously listed journal articles. The dependent variable for the survey will be help-seeking in situations of intimate partner violence, and the independent variables will be the following: racial discrimination in institutions, socioeconomic status, and racial and gender stereotypes. The following chart will provide imagery to accurately showcase the relationships between the independent and dependent variables and the overall research question. Outside of socioeconomic status, the listed independent variables are latent traits meaning they cannot be directly observed and therefore must be inferred through measurable concepts (Punch 2014). Both race and gender will be measured discretely as nominal variables, while questions surrounding socioeconomic status such as household income and education level will be measured as ordinal variables since they can be placed in order (Punch 2014). Each concept will also consist of ordinal likert-style statements using a likert-scale which will be used to gauge participants' attitudes and opinions. To aid in this process, I’ve developed a hypothesis for each concept to explain how race influences survivors and their decision to seek help in an incident of IPV. Hypothesis #1: I hypothesize that Black women will be less likely to use formal support services such as law enforcement in an incident of intimate partner violence. Green and Satyen (2023) revealed in their research study that non-White communities were less likely to seek help from law enforcement and other formal support services in situations of IPV. Black women participants in another research study also expressed that they viewed law enforcement as a last resort option and that they were taught that they weren’t there to truly help people that looked like them (Monterrosa 2021). Hypothesis #2: I hypothesize that a lower socioeconomic status and less access to resources will decrease the likelihood of survivors to seek help in an incident of intimate partner violence. Women that reported incidents of IPV were more likely to be lower in socioeconomic status (Lacey, West, Matusko, and Jackson 2016). Ponder (2016) also emphasized the connection between having access to formal support services such as domestic violence shelters and women in situations of intimate partner violence being able to successfully leave. The overall data produced in Ponder’s research study revealed that barriers such as social capital, institutional failures, and limited access to economic resources are all barriers that negatively impact survivors in trying to seek help in situations of IPV (Ponder 2016). Hypothesis #3: I hypothesize that Black women who are affected by racial and gender stereotypes will be less likely to seek help in an incident of intimate partner violence. Cheeseborough, Overstreet, and Ward (2020) revealed that Black women are negatively impacted by racial stereotypes such as ‘the strong Black woman’ narrative that ultimately influences their decision making in seeking help in an incident of IPV. Black women also reported not using both formal and informal support services in fear of being a burden on their close family and friends which is a direct result of the strong Black woman stereotype being enforced into their community (Monterrosa 2021). While White women were affected by gender stereotypes, this did not influence their decision making in help-seeking (Monterrosa 2021). Quantitative Sampling Strategy: My population consists of Black and White women at a public university located in Hayward California. I will use a stratified cluster sampling method which uses a naturally occurring mixed group of people to create my sample of ten Black and ten White women students (Austin 2023). This method will be done by using a number generator to decide which two buildings I will be collecting participants from. Once this is done, I will obtain information on class schedules that are being held in both buildings and randomly choose which classes to conduct my survey. Using this method will allow there to be some form of random sampling which will give students equal opportunity to be a part of the study. This will also eliminate some convenience from this process in that participants will be randomly selected based on results from the number generator and class scheduling. While using this form of sampling for my quantitative data collection will be my best option, it will also come with its limitations. I recognize the fact that communities of other racial backgrounds and gender identities outside of Black and White women are affected by intimate partner violence and each concept previously listed. Due to time restraints and my inability as a full time student to conduct a research study consisting of all racial and gender identities, the results produced from this survey and interview process aren’t representative of all communities affected by intimate partner violence. Also, due to the sample only consisting of ten Black and ten White women students at a small public university in California, the results won’t be representative of all Black and White women in the United States. In addition to these limitations, conducting in person surveys on campus will eliminate a large population of students from participating in the study. East Bay campus consists of a large portion of commuter students and people who have a mixture of online and in person classes. This will also prohibit me from being able to generalize about the population of students at the university. Qualitative Research Design: In order to ensure that I collect fruitful and high quality data I will be using semi-structured in-depth interviews as my form of qualitative research method. Structured interviews provide the interviewer with only a small amount of flexibility in their questions and consist of pre-set response categories which result in little to no variation in participant responses (Punch 2014). Using in-depth semi-structured interviews allows participants to provide thorough and meaningful responses while also giving me the ability to ask open ended questions (Punch 2014). In the end, this method will hopefully produce insightful data that other research studies have yet to uncover. While using semi-structured in-depth interviews will ensure quality responses, it will also be accompanied by limitations that I plan to combat by practicing certain policies and strategies. In this specific research study I will only be conducting four in-depth interviews which is a small-scale sample size. Small sample sizes prohibit researchers from being able to generalize (Punch 2014). In order to accommodate for my small sample size this research study will be conducted by using a mixed methods research approach by also containing a quantitative survey. This quantitative research method will consist of a larger sample size of twenty participants which will ultimately provide more understanding and representation of the chosen population. In addition to this, maintaining confidentiality and providing a safe environment for the interviews to take place will potentially be a limitation to this study. That said, interviewees will be required to sign a consent form and their private information will not be revealed in the study. Participants will also have the ability to choose their desired location for the interview to be conducted to assure comfortability and privacy. Qualitative Data Collection As detailed above, interviewees will have the option to choose the location of the interview. This will be done to ensure comfortability, privacy, and convenience for the participant. If the participant doesn’t have a desired location, I will reserve a private room at the East Bay Campus Core Library in advance. Each interview will be 90 minutes long and will allow participants to provide detailed answers and time for follow-up questions to be asked if need be. Along with taking excellent notes, each interview will be recorded on an Iphone and the participant will be notified of this action in the consent form. Doing so will allow me to transcribe the interviews using Microsoft Word software. The overall goal of the interview set up is to ensure productivity and participant satisfaction. My interview sample will include two White adults and two Black adults in order to provide cultural insight from both communities since they’re the highlight of this research study. Given the historical context behind both communities and the power imbalance between White and Black people in the United States, having my qualitative sample be equally divided between the two races will provide different experiences in connection to intimate partner violence. The participant will be asked twenty questions that range from general information to the following concepts: discrimination in institutions, race and gender stereotypes, and socioeconomic status. Due to the seriousness of the topic and its potential to bring up trauma in the interviewee, the interview will start off with a simple introduction and conversation in order to establish rapport. Once this is done, I will begin with general questions that uncover information about the participant and their connection to IPV, and then swiftly move into questions that are directly connected to the three concepts. Qualitative Sampling Strategy My population will consist of adult college students ages 18-30 at California State University East Bay. Since my sample size will only include two Black and two White students, I will use a non-probability purposive sampling method. Using this method will be my best option in that it is often used when generalizability is not possible and the characteristics of the participants are critical to the study (Chamblis & Schutt 2016). This will be done by selecting interviewees from my quantitative survey who noted that they would be interested in being a part of the interview process. This form of sampling will best support my research study since the topic concerns adults of different racial backgrounds who have either experienced or know someone who has been in a situation of intimate partner violence. Selecting participants from the quantitative sample will guarantee certain characteristics that will further support my proposal. Due to the size of my qualitative sample and the need for specific characteristics in order for the interview to be successful, using a probability sample would not be time efficient or meaningful to the study. Works Cited Chamblis, Daniel F., and Russell K. Schutt. 2016. “CH 5: Sampling and Generalizability.” In Social World: Methods of Investigation, Fifth Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Cheeseborough, Thekia, Nicole Overstreet, and L. Monique Ward. 2020. “Interpersonal Sexual Objectification, Jezebel Stereotype Endorsement, and Justification of Intimate Partner Violence Toward Women.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 44(2):203–16. doi: 10.1177/0361684319896345. Green, Jane, Lata Satyen, and John W. Toumbourou. 2023. “Influence of Cultural Norms on Formal Service Engagement Among Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis.” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 15248380231162971–15248380231162971. doi: 10.1177/15248380231162971. Lacey, Krim K., Carolyn M. West, Niki Matusko, and James S. Jackson. 2016. “Prevalence and Factors Associated With Severe Physical Intimate Partner Violence Among U.S. Black Women: A Comparison of African American and Caribbean Blacks.” Violence Against Women 22(6):651–70. doi: 10.1177/1077801215610014. Monterrosa, Allison E. 2021. “How Race and Gender Stereotypes Influence Help-Seeking for Intimate Partner Violence.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 36(17-18):NP9153–NP9174. doi: 10.1177/0886260519853403. Ponder, Kelley V. 2016. “Perceptions of Domestic Violence and Help-Seeking Behaviors among Women in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Punch, Keith. 2014. “Ch. 10: Quantitative Research Design,” pp. 205-225 in Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative & Qualitative Approaches. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Punch, Keith. 2014. “Ch. 11: Collecting Quantitative Data,” pp. 227-248 in Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative & Qualitative Approaches. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Worthy, L. D., T. Lavigne, and F. Romero. 2020a. “Socioeconomic Status (SES).” Culture and Psychology. Retrieved October 9, 2023 (https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology/chapter/socioeconomic-status-ses/).

Abstract: Amidst the under-enrollment of Black undergraduate students and the history of institutional racism at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley or Cal), there are numerous Black student affinity coalitions that advocate for their presence on Cal’s campus. Including the Black Student Resource Center (BRRC), Black Greek life including sororities and fraternities, and research and academic initiatives such as Black Lives at Cal (BLAC). Each of these organizations strive for Black students to learn about Black individuals at Cal that came before them using different methods. For instance, at BLAC we work to research, preserve, and publicize Black history. Learning about Black history within these diverse coalitions, how does this impact Black undergraduate students’ sense of belonging and identity formation? The underrepresentation of Black students within Berkeley’s population impacts the Black community’s sense of belonging on campus. For instance, students involved more with the social and academic resources of the university they attend impact their sense of belonging within their own community at their university (Hausmann, 2007, p.3) It is important for Black students at Cal to be involved in different resources within their community that uplift their identities. To get students involved BLAC believes that this can be through helping students connect with the past to help improve the Black student experience. More specifically, the BLAC initiative is an Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program at Berkeley composed of eleven undergraduate students headed by three graduate student researchers. Throughout the years BLAC focuses on sharing Black history on campus with students and staff through content creation, research, and special projects. Findings: Despite the long attendance of Black students at UC Berkeley since 1881 to 1900’s such as Mr. Dumas Jones who was the first Black man to enroll in Berkeley who studied civil engineering (Beasely, 1919). The enrollment rate of Black students has since declined. After 1996, the Black student population steadily diminished, to 6.5%. Yet, according to Berkeley News Center recent statistics shares that in 1997 the number of New Freshmen Enrollment was 7.3 %. Just three years later, in 2000, the population decreased once again to 4.1%. Now, according to UC Berkeley’s Fall Enrollment Data for New Undergraduate Students, Black undergraduates only represent 3.4 % of the population. This fluctuating decline was especially apparent after Prop 209 was passed in the state of California in 1996, the law that prohibited state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity (aka affirmative action) causing the Black retention rate to gradually diminish (Watanabe, 2022). With these impacts, Black people reported the highest rate — 68% — of experiencing exclusionary acts on campus according to Berkeley’s campus-wide survey in 2018 (Berkeley survey: Campus Climate, 2021). Evidencing the under-enrollment of the Black student population at Cal connects the erasure of the Black community due to institutional racism. Recognizing the enrollment rate suggests that despite the existence of a small demographic of the Black community, it is still crucial for the campus to create a sense of belonging that Black coalitions on our campus strive to do. Our previous findings to this question revolved around, “How does learning about this history from BLAC impact Black undergraduate students’ sense of belonging and identity formation?” At first, we held an event named “The Upload” where current student interacted with Black archival history at Cal while past alumni came to the event to share and see their own archives. We found the response of event was positive and hosted a focus group with an event called “The Download” that included primarily undergraduate students engaging with archives of Black history at Cal. Including newspapers, poetry, yearbooks and many more. We found that many students after engaging with archives of Black history on campus had a sense of belonging and identity formation. For instance, undergraduate students such as Anita in our focus group stated, “But your mere existence on this campus is kinda a protest to its entire identity.” While, another undergraduate student in our focus group named Sara stated, “Also, it comes with the imposter syndrome of being a Black person at a PWI. I think its important to see who’s come before you, and how important it is that you’re here. It reinforces that.” Each of these answers we received from students connected to Black students sense of belonging and identity formation. With this continuation of this research not only did we want to share how that is seen through the shared history by BLAC but other Black coalitions on Berkeley’s campus. Research Methods & Signifigance: With the initiatives of BLAC there are different methods our team produces to share the enriching history of Black people at Cal. One method includes our BLAC Self-Guided Black History Tour of Campus created by BLAC’s undergraduate research apprentice Daniella Lake and Gia White who is an alumna at Berkeley and a steering committee member of BLAC. The audio tour is comprised of 14 stops and locations on our campus grounds that shares the history made by the Black community for over 100 years. Including history made by students and faculty as well as prominent events. The main goal of the audio tour is to make Black history at Cal more accessible for people inside and outside of campus. While, most importantly recognizing Black people at Cal in the past and present today. In connection to our research our team plans to explore when Black students engage with the audio tour how that impacts Black students sense of belonging and identity formation. Specifically, we plan to conduct at least 5 individual interviews with Black students who have listened to the audio tour by themselves or attended our Black History Walk Event where students walked and listened to each stop in-person with Daniella Lake and Gia White. In order, to recruit these 5 students we will do a focus group. Creating a flyer stating that we want to interview students who have engaged with the tour. Providing students an incentive such as food to provide a meal for college students within the Black community. Sharing this flyer will look like sending it to Black student organizations to share with their students and our Black community email with a large list of undergraduate and graduate students. While, accessing the Black communities messaging channel within GroupMe to gather students for our focus group to interview. Within the focus group with students who have engaged with the audio tour we will ask questions such as, “how did it feel interacting with this Black history?,” “Which stop was most signficantly personal or vital for you to learn about?,” and “Why do you feel this acknowledgement of Black history through this tour is vital?” Each question will answer our research question of if the interaction of Black history altered Black students sense of belonging and identity formation. While, with a continuation of another “The Upload” event BLAC plans to have in the Spring Semester that will be another source of our research methods. As we will interview Berkeley students at the event to hear their thoughts about interacting with archival evidence of Black history. Our research team will engage further with two Black Coalitions on campus, the TRIAD and the Divine 9. The TRIAD comprised of the African American Student Development, Black Recruitment and Retention Center, and the Black Student Union. This coalition serves as the three pillars of the Black community, with each organization focused on a specific faucet of issues which affect and impact the larger Black community. The Divine 9 is compromised of the historically Black soroities and fraturnaties, the active chapters on UC Berkeley’s campus are Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Delta Sigma Theta, and Sigma Gamma Rho. Both the coalitions identified hold historial significance on our campus, so we are interested in how the history of these coalitions impacts Black students' sense of belonging and identity formation. We intend to interview 6 active leaders from each coalition and 3 faculty or staff members who share and tell this organization's history. As well as holding focus groups for the coalitions to engage with. To organize the interviews and focus groups we will rely on BLAC research apprentices’ personal relationships with the leaders, to connect with the various organizations and individuals via email or text message. This communication will look like a brief explainnaiton of BLAC, this project, and the scope of the interview/focus group. The focus group and interview will ask similar questions in regards to learning about Black history within diverse coalitions it’s impact on Black undergraduate students’ sense of belonging and identity formation. Some questions will we ask are, “how does it feel to know the history of the TRIAD/Divine 9?,” “why is it important for you to know this history?,” and “how does this history impact your experience on campus?.” We plan for our research to share the importance of Black history at Berkeley and how this alters their belonging and identity formation on our campus grounds. References: Beasley, D. L. (1919). The Negro Trail Blazers of California : A compilation of records from the California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, in ... HathiTrust. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010000427453&view=1up&seq=1 Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis. (Updated 2022, September 28). UC Berkeley Fall Enrollment Data (New Students). UC Berkeley Fall Enrollment Data for New Undergraduates. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-new-undergraduates Hausmann, L.R.M., Schofield, J.W. & Woods, R.L. Sense of Belonging as a Predictor of Intentions to Persist Among African American and White First-Year College Students. Res High Educ 48, 649-652 (2007). Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.academia.edu/47682679/Sense_of_Belonging_and_Persistence_in_White_and_African_American_First_Year_Students?email_work_card=view-paper Public Affairs. (2021, March 2). Berkeley survey: Campus Climate Overall is positive, but marginalized still feel excluded. Berkeley News. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/02/25/berkeley-survey-campus-climate-overall-is-positive-but-marginalized-still-feel-excluded/ UC Berkeley News Center. (n.d.). UC Berkeley archival enrollment data. UC Berkeley new student enrollment by ethnicity, (1996-2007). Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/12/enroll_archival.shtml Watanabe, T. (2022, October 31). California banned affirmative action in 1996. Inside the UC struggle for diversity. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-31/california-banned-affirmative-action-uc-struggles-for-diversity

The Pacific Northwest, particularly Western Washington, faces a persistent threat of tsunamis and earthquakes, requiring comprehensive preparedness measures within local communities. According to the Washington Emergency Management Division (WEMD, 2021), the region is prone to seismic activities, with historical records indicating a 15% probability of a major earthquake occurring in the Puget Sound region within the next 50 years. Additionally, the WEMD reports that only 25% of households in Washington have taken adequate steps to prepare for disasters, highlighting a concerning preparedness gap (Washington Emergency Management Division, 2021). Moreover, while awareness regarding seismic threats is relatively high, practical steps towards readiness, including emergency supplies and evacuation plans, remain insufficient among residents (Ahn et al., 2021). Much of the education around response to earthquakes and tsunamis is focused on what to do in the moment, and is targeted towards younger students. Preparedness for these natural disasters is not further expanded on in further education. However education has an impact on income level and subsequently resources needed to be prepared for a tsunami or earthquake. I would like to build on previous research and taking into account various levels of education from solely primary education to higher level degrees, and assess the impact they have on people’s adaptive ability in the context of disaster preparedness. This poster will present a mixed-methods approach to assessing and understanding impact of education level on an individual’s practical preparedness in the case of a major earthquake or tsunami in Western Washington. This strategy will include quantitative surveys, qualitative data, further interview of 5-10 individuals from each educational tier to contextualize this data. I will control for race, languages spoken, and gender to ascertain the potential influence of these variables on preparedness levels across education tiers. This could be a useful addition in the body of work understanding what steps need to be prioritized for effective tsunami and earthquake preparedness in Western Washington. Bibliography Ahn, A. Y. E., Takikawa, H., Maly, E., Bostrom, A., Kuriyama, S., Matsubara, H., Izumi, T., Torayashiki, T., & Imamura, F. (2021). Perception of earthquake risks and disaster prevention awareness: A comparison of resident surveys in Sendai, Japan and Seattle, WA, USA. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 66, 102624. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420921005859) Washington Emergency Management Division. (2021). Disaster Preparedness Statistics: Washington State.

As an Arab-American student attending the University of California, Irvine, I have had a first hand look into what it is like to be a part of the minority Arab-American community and the challenges that accompany carrying this identity. From the lack of engagement in Arab-American student organizations to the very few encounters with other Arab-American students that I have had, I felt isolated from an identity that shapes such a big part of who I am. I figured that the campus just didn’t have many Arab-American students, which compared to other groups is proportionally true, however there still does exist a large population of these students. A qualitative observation that I have made over my time here has led me to this conclusion. It seems that the only time the Arab-American student population is ever really “seen” collectively on campus is during times of conflict in the Middle East. The specific instance that made me notice this was during October of 2023, when Arab-American students collectively began protesting on campus after the Hamas attacks on Israel and the declaration of war by Israel on the Gaza strip. I vividly recall walking out of class and seeing hundrends of Arab-American students protesting the invasion and bringing light to the conflict occuring in the Middle East. Seeing this many Arab-American students congregate together to bring light to such a prevalent issue led me to initially feel like empowered and proud to see my people standing up for what they believe in, however this led me to question if the only time Arab-American students are seen is during times of conflict in the Middle East? As I was thinking about this question, I realized that if this is the only time Arab-American students are really noticed on campus, this could have some serious implications and lead to other students to have misconceptions or a negative association between conflict in the Middle East and Arab-American students. This in turn may affect the way that Arab-American students experience and navigate the university setting. This in total led to the following research question to be investigated: Do times of conflict surrounding the Middle East correlate to a change in the experiences of Arab-American students and subsequently affect their potential for success across different university campuses? Research shows that Arab-American students, like many other minoritized groups, face unique challenges that effect their university experience and may ultimately effect their potential for success. Research Design: The research study will consist of the collection of qualitative data from various interviews with Arab-American university students. The study will be a comparative study of Arab-American students from the University of California, Irvine and of Arab-American students from Chapman University. The reason for choosing these two universities is because Arab-American students exist as a minority on both campuses, however the campuses differ on a variety of things, such as Chapman having a predominantly Judeo-Christian association and UCI being unaffiliated with religion. Having interviewees coming from campuses with different foundations is of interest to this study because different campuses tend to have different foundations and cultures. It is not of interest to have all the students interviewed all come from the same university because the influence of the educational institution each student comes from is of interest in this study. In terms of accessing participants, Arab-American students from both campuses will need to be accessed in order for interviews to be conducted. As a student at the University of California, Irvine, I plan on advertising the study to various Arab-American student organizations on campus as well as through flyers that asks for participants and explicitly outlines who is eligible and the research question at hand. A similar approach will be taken for students at Chapman University, with myself reaching out to various Arab-American student associations through social media and posting physical flyers on the campus. The goal of the study is to recruit 5 Arab-American students from UCI and 5 Arab-American students from Chapman University. Data collection will consist of semi-structured interviews, as this approach allows an in-depth exploration of participants perspectives and allows for nuanced insights into their experiences. The interview questions will surround topics such as background, challenges faced, support systems, and perceptions of cultural identity in an educational setting. Each interview will also approximately last 60 minutes. The interviews will be transcribed, with the consent of the participants, using an online software called riverside.fm. The transcribed text will then be analyzed using Qualtrics in order to screen for commonalities and differences in statements and interviews. Prior to the interview, participants will be provided with an informed consent form outlining the purpose of the study, potential risks, and confidentiality measures. Each participant must sign the form and acknowledge it prior to participation. An opportunity to ask questions regarding the interview process or the consent form will also be presented to each potential participant. References: Abouchadid, Kamal and Ramzi Nasser. 2006. “Info-Bias Mechanism and American College Students’ Attitudes towards Arabs.” International Studies Perspectives 7(2):204–12. Noureddine, Ikbal and Julian Vasquez Heilig. 2020. “The Role of Schools: Middle Eastern and North African Newcomers’ Challenges in Restorative versus Non-Restorative Ethea High Schools.” Multicultural Education Review 12(4):284–305. Shammas, Diane. 2016. “Underreporting Discrimination among Arab American and Muslim American Community College Students.” Journal of Mixed Methods Research 11(1):99–123. Bonet, Sally Wesley. 2011. “Educating Muslim American Youth in a Post-9/11 ERA: A Critical Review of Policy and Practice.” The High School Journal 95(1):46–55.

Research shows that low-income and underrepresented communities are disproportionately affected by Earthquakes and Tsunamis. Stanton & Tilt point out in their research on Oregon Coastal communities “In this case study, we examine how Latinx coastal community residents in Oregon (USA) perceive current critical facilities and their values associated with these places”, as well as the identification of new locations that are valued as critical to their community and seen as places they would go to in times of need. Another point on the subject is made by Burke, Bethel & Britt reference that “Limited research shows that vulnerable populations such as the low-income, socially isolated migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) are particularly susceptible to the effects of natural disasters”. Underrepresented communities are less likely to feel prepared for an emergency and to have an emergency plan than the general public. This reality holds true for Latine community members 18-30 years of age in rural Oregon rural communities. Latine community members are overexposed to dangers because of labor and housing patterns that push underrepresented community members to reside in the most hazardous locations. Furthermore, preparedness for Earthquakes and Tsunamis by public institutions and authorities is not accessible or welcoming for Latine communities. Most of the information pamphlets or websites are not even offered in Spanish. Most of the material is geared toward the dominant English-speaking population, these efforts tend to be carried out in English and require community members to engage with authority figures or state institutions in public places. As Burke, Bethel & Britt explains “This research project assessed the awareness, perceived risk, and practices regarding disaster preparedness and response resources and identified barriers to utilization of community and government services during or after a natural disaster among Latino MSFWs’ and their families”. Because of the threat of detention or deportation, Latine community families of mixed immigration status – where family members may be citizens, permanent residents, undocumented and/or “temporal worker” status – tend to be wary of attending educational sessions or other forms of public assistance particularly when they are offered with state officials like the police, fire services in attendance. My research focuses on how Non-governmental Earthquake and Tsunami preparedness efforts can more effectively engage Latine communities in Oregon. Using Cascadia CoPes Hub surveys and interviews, and peer-reviewed research from across the country, I identify trends in the ways Latine communities have responded to disaster threats in the past and disaster preparedness needs Oregon Latine community members have identified. Eisenman et al (date) point out the importance of “culturally targeted, informal social networking approaches to improving disaster preparedness” in Latine communities. Similarly, Stanton and Tilt (date) point out the importance of understanding “what is considered ‘critical’ in a community” to building disaster preparedness infrastructures that effectively reach Latine community members and other underrepresented populations. Cultural and language relevancy is key to equitable disaster preparedness. Burke, Bethel & Britt’s (date) point out that the involvement of Latine community members who speak Spanish is key in preparedness material preparation for gaining trust and for conveying information to communities who are marginalized. Analyzing CoPes data, in dialogue with other research on disaster preparedness in Latine communities, my poster will detail a more effective model for engaging Latine communities in Oregon in the preparation for tsunamis and earthquakes. References: Building Resilient Oregon Coastal Communities: Reimagining Critical Facilities through Latinx Sense of Place by Stanton & Tilt https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212420923000808 Assessing Disaster Preparedness among Latino Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers in Eastern North Carolina https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/9/3115 Improving Latino Disaster Preparedness Using Social Networks https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379709006060

Communities in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States (Washington, Oregon, and northern California) face a risk of harm from both earthquakes and tsunamis (U.S. Geological Survey, 2022). These states fall along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a fault zone which has an estimated 37% likelihood of producing an earthquake above 7.1 magnitude (Oregon Department of Emergency Management, n.d.). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), earthquakes caused 750,000 deaths and displaced or injured a further 125 million people between 1998-2017; tsunamis caused 250,000 deaths over the same time period (WHO, 2019b ; WHO, 2019d). Earthquakes and tsunamis cause traumatic injury, increased risk for infectious illnesses, and psychological harm, among other health impacts; infrastructure damage reduces health systems’ capacity to respond to these impacts effectively (WHO, 2019a ; WHO, 2019c). Previous research shows that women and gender minority populations face forms of oppression which make them more vulnerable to natural disasters (Arora, 2022; Cutter, 2017; Dominey-Howes et al, 2013). This study aims to build off of research on gendered disaster vulnerability by examining how gender identity affects risk perception and disaster preparedness for residents of this region. My analysis draws on social capital theory to consider participants’ social ties as well as material resource availability (Aldrich, 2014). People affected by natural disasters rely on family and community connections for information, rescue, monetary support, and other immediate needs; possession of more social ties has been linked to improved post-disaster recovery (Aldrich, 2014). The CHARTER undergraduate fellows developed an online survey instrument which was distributed to residents of Washington, Oregon, and California on February 15, 2023 and remains open. Crosstabulations of current data from this survey will be supplemented by interview data from transgender 18-30 year olds living in the Pacific Northwest (n = 10). These findings will identify how women and gender minorities may be uniquely positioned with regard to awareness of and planning for natural disasters. Disaster policy that incorporates understanding of these differences could enable people of all genders to build resilience to earthquakes and tsunamis. Aldrich, D. P., & Meyer, M. A. (2014). Social capital and community resilience. American Behavioral Scientist, 59(2), 254–269. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764214550299 Arora, S. (2022). Intersectional vulnerability in post‐disaster contexts: lived experiences of Dalit women after the Nepal earthquake, 2015. Disasters, 46(2), 329–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12471 Cutter, S. (2017). The forgotten casualties redux: women, children, and disaster risk. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.12.010 Dominey‐Howes, D., Gorman‐Murray, A., & McKinnon, S. J. (2013). Queering disasters: on the need to account for LGBTI experiences in natural disaster contexts. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(7), 905–918. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2013.802673 Oregon Department of Emergency Management. (n.d.). Hazards and Preparedness: Cascadia Subduction Zone. https://www.oregon.gov/OEM/hazardsprep/Pages/Cascadia-Subduction-Zone.aspx U.S. Geological Survey. (2022, November 10). Pacific Northwest Hazards. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/science/pacific-northwest-hazards#overview World Health Organization: WHO. (2019a, November 8). Earthquakes: Impact. https://www.who.int/health-topics/earthquakes/#tab=tab_2 World Health Organization: WHO. (2019b, November 8). Earthquakes: Overview. https://www.who.int/health-topics/earthquakes/#tab=tab_1 World Health Organization: WHO. (2019c, November 26). Tsunamis: Impact. https://www.who.int/health-topics/tsunamis/#tab=tab_2 World Health Organization: WHO. (2019d, November 26). Tsunamis: Overview. https://www.who.int/health-topics/tsunamis/#tab=tab_1

Native American communities are a population that is impacted by climate change and the natural disasters that are arising due to these new conditions. Natural disasters, such as rising sea levels, tsunamis, earthquakes, and flooding can displace Native Americans from their homelands, traditional gathering and fishing sites. From previous work around disaster management there were only two case studies honing in on Native American community preparedness (Kendig, 2012). Further research was conducted in this study, by using questionnaires that were analyzed by each demographic. For Native Americans communities, there is a need for understanding how tribal nations work with the federal government in regard to natural disaster preparedness such as earthquakes, tsunamis and wildfires. Understanding this relation, more knowledge can be known in regards to overall preparedness in Oregon. My poster will report on the findings from research conducted by the use of life-history interviews (n=5-10) and focus groups conversations with the same population (n=2) with young people (18-25) who are Native American and currently reside in Oregon. Questions will be focused on awareness and fears of natural occurring disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunami’s and wildfires, to-go bags, resources for after a disaster occurs, and general preparedness. Supplemental evidence will come from the CoPes Hub Charter Fellows’ online survey that was created in February 2023. The purpose of this poster is to address the concerns of natural disasters and how prepared Native American communities are for the inevitability of these natural disasters. RQ1: How can these Native American communities prepare themselves, others, and homelands to respond to these natural disasters? Literature cited: Kendig, M. R. (2012). Disaster management for socioeconomic status challenged populations in the united states (Order No. 3534890). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global; Publicly Available Content Database. (1282646770). Retrieved from https://uoregon.idm.oclc.org/loginurl=https:/ /www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/disaster-management-socioeconomic-status/docview/1282646770/se-2 Mund, E. (2008). Tribal preparedness: Shoalwater Bay Indians involve their entire community in developing plans for the threat they face. EMS Magazine, 37(2), 64-66. Retrieved from http://www.emsworld.com. Peate, W. F., & Mullins, J. (2008). Disaster preparedness training for tribal leaders. Journal of Occupational Medicine & Toxicology, 3, 1-5. doi:10.1186/1745-6673- 3-2

Research Question How does the perception of police differ among various sociodemographic communities, and what factors shape these perceptions? Why do these differing perspectives exist? Sociological Significance The killings of unarmed black men in the last decade have awakened a renewed call to action for police and law enforcement to be held accountable for their misconduct (Drakulich et al., 2023). Understanding why the same event can be perceived differently by different individuals is what is driving my curiosity. I believe that when an action is wrong, it is morally impermissible. In the world we live in, this is not the case. There have been calls to defund the police, to abolish law enforcement, or dismantle entire departments but why do some people feel like this is the correct step, while others feel these actions are not necessary and the police should continue to manage their departments how they see fit. This work will bring to light the various opinions people have, but more importantly it will address how the subjects came to hold these perceptions and opinions (Foster et al., 2022). Gaining an understanding of what affects people’s sentiment of law enforcement is necessary to be able to implement changes to the structure of the police departments that have been causing strife in our communities across the country (Nadal & Davidoff, 2015). Proposed Source of Data I will be using interviews to gather data. I will attempt to gather two groups of people, one that fits in the category of people of color, and one that is exclusively white, non-Hispanic. I will use a convenience sample, and use the snowball method to acquire more participants. I will select 5 people of color, can identify as any race/ethnicity except white, and 5 people who identify as white, non-Hispanic. Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria During my initial inquiry into whether a subject qualifies to be part of my sample, I will exclude participants who do not identify as part of the demographics I set forth. I will include individuals who identify as mixed race/ethnicity and place them in the people of color category. Work Cited Drakulich, K., Robles, J., Rodriguez-Whitney, E., & Pereira, C. (2023). Who believes that the police use excessive force? Centering racism in research on perceptions of the police. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 60(1), 112–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221120781 Foster, K., Jones, M. S., & Pierce, H. (2022). Race and ethnicity differences in police contact and perceptions of and attitudes toward the police among youth. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 49(5), 660–680. https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221078296 Nadal, K. L., & Davidoff, K. C. (2015). Perceptions of police scale (pops): Measuring attitudes towards law enforcement and beliefs about police bias. Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Science, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.15640/jpbs.v3n2a1

Marriage and divorce, are two significant life events that an individual encounters within their lifetime. Marriage for many is seen as a ‘divine’ union, a permanent vow that must not be broken, and a lifelong commitment between two individuals even through the good and bad times in life. But what happens when such commitment is no longer functionable in the life of either individual and dissatisfaction becomes the result? Does this then ensue for the conversation of divorce in attempts to restore and self-preserve the individual outside of the relationship? That question is often dependent on the personal attitudes of the individual which are often influenced by the vast intersectional dimensions of one’s identity. Divorce is often viewed in a negative connotation; Seen as a decision that contradicts the traditional marital standards of society, a decision that appears as an “easy” way out from dissolution of marriage (Ellison, Wolfinger, and Ramos-Wada 2012). But, for many it creates the opportunity to improve overall happiness and life satisfaction. Marriage and divorce are life events that all individuals have the opportunity to take part in. However, there is recognition that the intersectional dimensions of one’s identity play a tremendous role in how either life event results. Dimensions such as age of gender, race/ethnicity, and age of marriage are prominent variables that reveal variation in decision-making with regard to marriage and divorce. In specificity, past research has examined the variation in divorce decision-making between men and women of distinct race/ethnicity; Finding that women more often than men initiated the divorce process, yet divorce rates were relatively lower for people of color (i.e Hispanics, African Americans) compared to their white counterparts (Amato and Previti 2003). Past research also recognized the emotional repercussions divorce has on both men and women. Authors conducting such research found that emotional well-being varied among gender based on the rationale behind the decision for the divorce ( E.g Overall dissatisfaction, emotional neglect, discontent with partner, etc.) and the overall level of accountability the pair had on the downfall of the marriage (Amato 2010) (Amato and Preveti 2003). Age of marriage is another significant variable found in past research that is attributed to the decision of divorce; Authors finding that those that married at a relatively young age were tentatively more likely to divorce due to the lack of individuality and educational attainment, this reality also associated to one’s ethnicity background (Aughinbaugh, Robles, and Sun 2013). Past research has analyzed such variables separately amounting to few results briefly mentioned above, yet they are lacking in the context of intersectionality and conjunction of mentioned variables and their relationship to life satisfaction post divorce. The scope of my research aims to supplement and add onto predecessor findings. The conversation pertaining to divorce is continuous with numerous authors conducting studies on distinct realities within the realm of divorce. Yet, there is no evidence or study on the implications divorce has on life satisfaction among Hispanic men and women that marry young. In this research, it will be assumed that Hispanic women experience higher levels of life satisfaction after divorce compared to Hispanic men. In compliment to this assumption, the findings of past research will be used to reveal connections between such variables. An analysis on past literature pertaining to gender differences, cultural differences, age of marriage, individuality, marriage satisfaction, divorce satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction will be conducted to further supplement the research at hand. Rooted in emotional expression, the decision-making process for divorce appears to be a gendered experience where women are often found to initiate the process (Amato and Previti 2003). Women more than men acknowledge relational/emotional issues. Oftentimes, women express discontent with their partner's personality or basic unhappiness inside of the relationship, whereas, men usually are not the first to engage in conversation pertaining to unhappiness within the relationship (Amato and Previti 2003). Men in the context of divorce discussion and emotional expression are secondary to their female significant other due to the toxic masculinity stigma that drives men to suppress their emotions in fear of being seen as weak. Because of this, authors found that this leads to issues within the relationship to go unnoticed and unaccounted for until marital dissatisfaction occurs often resulting in divorce decision-making (Amato and Previti 2003) Following the decision of divorce, it was found that men and women experience distinct realities due to the level of social integration either partner established outside of marriage. Men found it easier for social adjustment post divorce, whereas, women had a more difficult time constructing new social ties (Gerstel 1988). Withdrawal from friends during marriage was a prime indicator as to how men and women were able to adjust after divorce. The author noted that women were frequent to withdraw from friends during marriage, therefore, leading to a fragmented adjustment style post divorce where they found issues in the attempts to rebuild social ties due to the constraints felt within their marriage (Gerstel 1988). On the other hand, men were more likely to maintain friendships and outside relationships within a marriage that assisted with more positive experiences post divorce (Gerstel 1988). Recognizing the experiences of both counterparts, it can be said that marriage in a given context constraints, leading to low levels of life satisfaction, but divorce decision-making has the ability to liberate either individual experiencing dissatisfaction. Cultural attitudes are highly reflective of the values and norms of a given racial/ethnic group. Oftentimes, they become tremendous influencers on the decisions an individual makes. In particular, Hispanic culture is relatively traditional, “machista,” and has high expectations for marriage (Gutierrez, Barden, and Tobey 2014). Because of this, we see many individuals follow custom and intertwine such values within their identity and relationships. Amato (2010) noted in his study that Hispanics and African Americans compared to Whites tend to end their marriages through permanent separation rather than divorce and this can possibly be attributed to the distinct cultural norms and values that each racial/ethnic group have on marriage and divorce. Where traditional Hispanic culture values marriage and sees divorce as a disservice to the Hispanic community. Continually, Hispanic households emphasize the importance of marriage, family construction, and gender roles and institute them on individuals at early ages (Aughinbaugh, Robles, and Sun 2013). “Machista” culture often leads to the man having higher say and authority within relationships and family structures. Men are often, viewed in distinct light compared to their female counterparts that are often subject to scrutinization and judgment if they are not compliant with what is expected of them (Ellison, Wolfinger, and Ramos-Wada 2012).We see the establishment of religion become a prominent force within Hispanic culture, altering individual attitudes and influencing the decision one makes. Aughinbaugh et. al (2013) study examines the distinctions among Latino/a that follow Catholicism and those that are Protestant, denoting the reality that those of Protestant faith hold marriage, divorce, and sex in higher regard compared to their religious counterparts and believe that divorce is okay when both partners fall out of love. In essence, it was found that Latino/a individuals that follow protestant faith show more acceptance to divorce than counterparts, but still obtain traditional views that shape many individuals' experience with marriage and divorce. The youth and adolescence of an individual has the purpose of providing opportunity for individual growth and development. In most cases, individuals use such periods in life to pursue self interest such as educational attainment, travel, career development, and so forth before settling down, getting married, and having children. However, the individuals that arent granted such opportunity due to the decision and/or influence of early marriage are subject to a future where the lack of individual construction leads to marital dissatisfaction and divorce (Aughinbaugh, Robles, and Sun 2013). In particular we see, Hispanic men and women have lower education attainment and this has the potential to be explained by the age in which they were married and other marital factors that possibly contribute to divorce decision-making. The lack of identity construction that comes from early marriage, is minimally explored but, is nevertheless significant in contributing to the conversation of divorce and marital dissolution. The scope of my research aspires to explore this reality further in depth in the context of life satisfaction post divorce among Hispanic men and women that marry young. For this research, secondary data analysis will be conducted. Data is collected from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). It is a longitudinal study that follows the lives of more than twenty-thousand adolescents in grades seventh through twelfth through (aged 12-19 in the United States). The study begins in 1994-1995 followed by a series of waves every six years. Respondents are provided in-home interviews where questions tracked livelihood and life experiences including but not limited to: peer relationship dyad, parents, siblings, neighborhoods, etc. (Add Health 2022). For my research, there is a focus on the Third Wave (2001-2002). In this period, the sample was aged 18-26 years old, amounting to a sample population of 15197 respondents. For this in-home interview a sample of 1507 partners were randomly selected and interviewed. This filled quota samples of about 500 hundred married, 500 cohabitating, and 500 dating partners. For the Third Wave partner in-home interview, there was an average response rate of 77.4%. This wave in particular is most significant to my research in that it provides data on the following variables I plan on covering: gender, race/ethnicity, age, age of first marriage, age of first divorce, and level of life satisfaction. Independent Variable: The independent variable of my study is gender. This is operationalized as a respondent either being male or female. The interview question being used to contribute to my own research is: Section 01- Respondent Gender: 1= Male, 2= Female (Coding) Dependent Variable: The dependent variable of my study is level of life satisfaction after divorce. The variable of life satisfaction within the study is an ordinal level of measurement, whose responses range from: Section 12- 3.) How satisfied are you with your life as a whole? H3SP3 1 Very Satisfied 2 Satisfied 3 neither satisfied nor dissatisfied 4 dissatisfied INTERSECTING VARIABLES: The following list of questions are derived from the same Code Book from the Add Health data set. They provide information and data input for other intersectional variables within the scope of my study such as Hispanic background, age at which relationship first started, the month and year of first marriage, and how first marriage resulted (i.e divorce statistics). I plan on applying ANOVA test to address the various categorical and interval/ratios to evaluate any given significant relationship. ***Considering first relationship (<PARTNER>) results in marriage*** (<PARTNER>) signifies the sequence of relationship. I.e “First relationship,” second relationship,” etc. Section 19 of Add Health Codebook “Romantic Pairs File” accounts for the sequence in relationships, start date, age of respondents when relationship began, how relationship resulted (marriage, cohabitation, single, etc.), marriage date, how marriage resulted (annulment, divorce, etc.), and etc. This section is significant to the study as it examines the romantic history of respondents and their significant other. It collects data on vital assets to my study in question such as age of respondents, marital status, divorce, and length of marriage. Section 19- 4. How old were you when your romantic relationship with <PARTNER> began? H3RD4 Years range 2 to 38 Question not asked of this respondent Refused Dont know Not applicable Section 19- How old was he/she? H3RD5 Years range 10-42 Question not asked of this respondent Refused Legitimate skip First Marriage Sequence: (section 14) 2.) In what month (and year) were you married? H3MR2M_A Month responses (January- December) Year responses (1975- 2002) 3.) Are you still married? H3MR3_A No Yes Legitimate Skip Not applicable How did this marriage end? H3MR4_A ( First Marriage Sequence) -Annulment -Divorce -Legitimate skip -Not applicable Section 19- 123. How long were you married to <PARTNER>? Type the number into th e box below, then press the Enter key. Then select years, months, or days from the list. Years Months Question not asked of this respondent Legitimate Skip Missing ***General Demographic Information*** Includes racial/ethnic background Section 1- 3. What is your Hispanic or Latino background? You may give more than one answer. H3OD3A Mexican/ Mexican American Chicano/ Chicana Cuban/ Cuban American Puerto Rican Central/ South American Other Hispanic Legitimate Skip Section 17- H3TR7 7. Is {INITIALS}of Hispanic or Latino origin? No, this person is not Hispanic Yes,this person is Hispanic Refused Don't know Not applicable Bibliography Amato, Paul R. and Denise Previti. 2003. “People’s Reasons for Divorcing: Gender, Social Class, the Life Course, and Adjustment.” Journal of Family Issues 24(5):602-26. Amato, Paul R. 2010. “Research on Divorce: Continuing Trends and New Developments.” Journal of Marriage and Family 72(2):650-66. Aughinbaugh, Alison, Omar Robles, and Hugette Sun. 2013. “Marriage and Divorce: Patterns by Gender, Race, and Educational Attainment.” Monthly Labor Review pp:1-19. Ellison, Christopher G., Nicholas H. Wolfinger, and Aida I. Ramos-Wada. 2012. “Attitudes Toward Marriage, Divorce, Cohabitation, and Casual Sex Among Working-Age Latinos: Does Religion Matter?” Journal of Family Issues 34(3):295-322. Gerstel, Naomi. 1988. “Divorce, Gender, and Social Integration.” Gender and Society 2(3):343-67. Gutierrez, Daniel, Sejal M. Barden, and Marisol H. Tobey. 2014. “ Mejorando Matrimonios: Relationship Education as a Vehicle to Overcome Barriers for Hispanic Couples.” The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families 22(2):148-55. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). 2022. “Romantic Pairs Files.”https://addhealth.cpc.unc.edu/documentation/codebooks/

At time of Presentation: formal (finished) paper Statement of Problem: The misdiagnosis of women with invisible illness (any medical condition that is not outwardly visible to others, even medical professionals), is widespread within the medical field (Sisk, 2007). Some argue that “seeing is believing” and unless a patient’s symptoms are presenting themselves empirically, their complaints will be dismissed; women are simply told that their symptoms are “made up” (Dobson, 2021; Merone et al., 2022). Often masking symptoms of other common maladies, patients get dismissed as being healthy, repeatedly told that they “don’t look sick” and are left feeling misunderstood, hopeless, and in pain with no treatment in sight (Dobson, 2021; Samulowitz et al., 2018). Signs and symptoms that that no one else sees or feels, the illness remains invisible to everyone, except those experiencing it. In a world with endless new medical discoveries, doctors continue to follow the same sexist and archaic literature when dealing with the female body and diagnosing women’s illnesses (Mazumder, 2023). Women’s health problems are simply attributed to the “hysteria” associated with one’s femininity, and time and time again, women’s symptoms are simply written off as being psychological, furthering their silence (Mazumder, 2023; Igler et al., 2017; Koerber, 2018). Research Question and Sociological Significance: My research question I am proposing is, what are the experiences (including the treatment, diagnosis, and marginalization) that women with invisible illnesses (specifically, autoimmune diseases) have had with medical professionals? My research question is sociologically significant because it is shaped around the treatment of chronically ill women by physicians looking at the why (what drives this treatment) and the outcome (how this has affected women’s personal lives and their overall health). Based on my research thus far, the literature has revealed the deeply rooted andronormative bias in healthcare, a consequence of the patriarchal structures upon which society is founded (Mazumder, 2023; Samulowitz et al., 2018). For instance, many medical professionals (regardless of gender) create a treatment plan for a woman’s illness on the basis of maintaining her traditional familial roles (Samulowitz et al., 2018). Women’s experiences with chronic illness are branded with so much shame and stigma (from society, doctors, and a woman’s family) that they are ultimately forced to have to “accept” that their illness is just an inherent part of their identity (Vlassoff, 2007). Hence this topic shapes our understanding of different groups because it not only focuses on the interactions of women with medical professionals, but with their families and friends. This topic looks directly at how women are marginalized by physicians just because they are biologically women, while simultaneously stigmatized by their social groups for having an illness (Mazumder, 2023; Samulowitz et al., 2018). In this project I will not only delve into the experiences of women, but explore why women face these challenges in healthcare (studying the history of the treatment of women and the bias embedded within medicine, the portrayal of femininity within society, and the challenges women have faced because of their experiences (such as economic, familial, and employment challenges) (Mazumder, 2023; Sempere et al., 2023; Vlassoff, 2007). Definition of Concepts: For the purpose of this project invisible illness will specifically be defined as an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune diseases are classified as disorders that occur when the immune system attacks itself, unable to differentiate between healthy and harmful cells (Smith & Germolec, 1999). There are over 100 autoimmune diseases and it is important to note that autoimmune diseases are not infectious diseases, but a chronic lifelong illness that can be life-threatening and in some cases debilitating (AARDA, 2019). The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association estimates that 50 million Americans have one or more autoimmune diseases with 75% of those affected being female (AARDA, 2019). In fact, women are actually more likely to develop autoimmune diseases than men, especially young women (Smith & Germolec, 1999). In regard to my research question, experiences will be defined as pertaining to misdiagnosis, treatment, and marginalization. Misdiagnosis will be categorized by the number of times a patient was misdiagnosed, what they were misdiagnosed with, and the consequences that the misdiagnosis had on the patient. Misdiagnosis frequently comes from lack of knowledge (surrounding the female body) and the gendering of diseases and oftentimes has severe physical and social implications for the patient (Merone et al., 2022; Jovani et al., 2018; Samulowitz et al., 2018). Treatment will be classified as both drug-related therapy and the verbal/physical treatment of the patient by the medical professional, while marginalization will consist of how a women’s identity as a female influenced her overall diagnosis/disease outcome (Werner et al., 2004). Experiences are expected to be negative in some way, either affecting a woman’s physical or psychological health (or both). Medical professionals will be classified as doctors (of any gender, race, or age) since they make the formal diagnoses for patients and have the most interactions with them in terms of the discussion of their illness. Methods My study will be conducted through a content analysis of the social media discussion platforms, Reddit and Facebook. More specifically, I will be looking at public and semi-public groups such as the semi-public Facebook group, “Girls with Guts Private Forum: Support for Women with IBD and/or Ostomies,” and the public Reddit groups consisting of “TwoXChromosomes” and “Ankylosing Spondylitis.” I will exclusively be reviewing the Reddit threads, Women who were misdiagnosed as having “anxiety,” what did you really have? (from the “TwoXChromosomes” group) and Women with AS, share your journey to a diagnosis! (a prompt from the group, “Ankylosing Spondylitis”). I will primarily be focusing on social media groups because of the widely available access – the information is public, thus, I do not need to worry about Institutional Review Board approval. Social media groups offer a safe space for people allowing them to retain factors of anonymity (which is of the utmost importance, especially when it comes to healthcare). Anonymity is something that is often relinquished with in-person discussion, frequently making people refrain from participation, therefore, social media platforms are essential to my data collection and sample construction. It should be stated that although these pages are public, they usually require some type of screening for members in order to adhere to community guidelines and limit the spread of misinformation. My goal for my sample is to try and gather information from 10-15 posts (in total across all discussion platforms), however, there will be no limit to this number. Oftentimes, when one person shares their story, others will contribute their own personal experiences in the comments, thus, I will count any comments that fit my sample criteria as individual posts. It is important to note that a Reddit thread will not be considered a post, rather, the responses will be; comments are merely a response to someone’s reply/answer to the original discussion prompt. To conclude, the sample that I am constructing is purposive/theoretical as the posts that I am choosing to analyze meet specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Works Cited American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA). (2019). “Autoimmune Facts.” American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association Inc. https://autoimmune.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/1-in-5-Brochure.pdf Dobson, J. (2021) “Invisible Illness and Measurability.” American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 23(7). doi: 10.1001/amajethics.2021.512. Edley, P. P., & Battaglia, J. E. (2016). Dying of dismissal: an autoethnographic journey of chronic illness, feminist agency, and health advocacy. Women and Language, 39(1), 33–48. Hwang, M. C., Rozycki, M., Kauffman, D., Arndt, T., Yi, E., & Weisman, M. H. (2022). Does Gender Impact a Diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis? ACR Open Rheumatology, 4(6), 540–546. https://doi.org/10.1002/acr2.11428 Igler, E. C., Defenderfer, E. K., Lang, A. C., Bauer, K., Uihlein, J., & Davies, W. H. (2017). Gender differences in the experience of pain dismissal in adolescence. Journal of Child Health Care, 21(4), 381–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367493517727132 Jovani, V., Blasco-Blasco, M., Pascual, E., & Teresa Ruiz-Cantero, M. (2018). Challenges to conquer from the gender perspective in medicine: The case of spondyloarthritis. PloS One, 13(10), e0205751–e0205751. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205751 Koerber, A. (2018). From Hysteria to Hormones and Back Again: Centuries of Outrageous Remarks About Female Biology. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 1(1), 179–192. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2018.1004 Mazumder, H. (2023). Cleghorn Elinor. Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World: Penguin Random House, 2021, 386 pp [Review of Cleghorn Elinor. Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World: Penguin Random House, 2021, 386 pp]. Women’s Studies, 52(1), 140–143. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2022.2151444 Merone, L., Tsey, K., Russell, D., & Nagle, C. (2022). "I Just Want to Feel Safe Going to a Doctor": Experiences of Female Patients with Chronic Conditions in Australia. Women's health reports (New Rochelle, N.Y.), 3(1), 1016–1028. https://doi.org/10.1089/whr.2022.0052 Ogdie, A., Benjamin Nowell, W., Reynolds, R., Gavigan, K., Venkatachalam, S., de la Cruz, M., Flood, E., Schwartz, E. J., Romero, B., & Park, Y. (2019). Real-World Patient Experience on the Path to Diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis. Rheumatology and Therapy., 6(2), 255–267. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40744-019-0153-7 Samulowitz, A., Gremyr, I., Eriksson, E., & Hensing, G. (2018). “Brave Men” and “Emotional Women”: A Theory-Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms towards Patients with Chronic Pain. Pain Research & Management, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/6358624 Sempere, L., Bernabeu, P., Cameo, J., Gutierrez, A., Gloria Garcia, M., Fe Garcia, M., Aguas, M., Belen, O., Zapater, P., Jover, R., van-der Hofstadt, C., & Teresa Ruiz-Cantero, M. (2023). Gender Biases and Diagnostic Delay in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Multicenter Observational Study. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. https://doi.org/10.1093/ibd/izad001 Sisk, J. (2007). Invisible Illness — “What You Can’t See Does Hurt Her.” Social Work Today, 7(6), 18. https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/novdec2007p18.shtml#:~:text=The%20term%20invisible%20illness%20refers,autoimmune%20disorders%2C%20and%20even%20cancer. Smith, D. A., & Germolec, D. R. (1999). Introduction to immunology and autoimmunity. Environmental health perspectives, 107(5), 661–665. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.99107s5661 Vlassoff, C. (2007). Gender Differences in Determinants and Consequences of Health and Illness. Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition, 25(1), 47–61. Werner, A., Isaksen, L. W., & Malterud, K. (2004). “I am not the kind of woman who complains of everything”: Illness stories on self and shame in women with chronic pain. Social Science & Medicine (1982), 59(5), 1035–1045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.12.001

Research Question This research seeks to explore how the political climate of school districts local to the Sacramento Region shape how educators think about and do their job. For the purposes of this research, political climate refers to the external forces that take the form of policy, public pressure, or power, and come from district administration, media, politicians, parents, or activist groups. This research will focus on interviewing faculty members in high school settings within Rocklin Unified School District, Davis Joint Unified School District, San Juan Unified School District, Sacramento City Unified School District, and Folsom-Cordova Unified School District. The definition of an educator’s job for the purpose of research is a faculty member’s perceived responsibilities and duties, as well as their interactions with students, teaching of curriculum, and use of classroom routine. Intended Contribution of Research The primary aim of this research is to broaden our understanding of the impact of political climates on educators. By investigating the effects of political environments on teachers, this study endeavors to uncover nuanced insights to the existing body of knowledge in education and shed light on the dynamics between political contexts and the personal and professional experiences of high school faculty members. Ultimately, this research aspires to foster a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented to educators by the intersection of politics and education. Theory & Methods Qualitative data will be gathered regarding faculty’s perceptions on how they think about and do their job based on the political climate via zoom interviews. In conjunction with the qualitative data, surveyees will be asked to complete surveys regarding their demographic characteristics. The selection of schools within identified districts will be stratified across various socioeconomic statuses, determined by the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunches, ensuring a comprehensive representation We expect school districts with policies or political environments that are interpreted as hostile to discussion of currently controversial topics to conflict with faculty’s ability to do their job, due to faculty feeling pressured from the perceived hostile environment for fear of facing violence or persecution or professional consequence if they were to speak up. We additionally expect faculty whose personal political stances are more similar to those of the district’s political environment will perceive less conflict with the district. Thirdly, we expect more perceived conflict with the district’s political environment when the environment is seen as hostile to a faculty member’s demographic group. Literature Review In our literature review, we read that two non instructional factors for constraining faculty discussion were feeling as if in the event of a student or parent complaining, they would not be supported by the school. The next factor is the politically tense school environment, and fear of the actions of students with ideologically opposing views. Faculty view principals' leadership skills as being important for how these two factors develop. The Leadership Practices inventory is a 30 question survey that has been used to measure the leadership abilities of principals. List of source references Journell, W. (2022). Classroom Controversy in the Midst of Political Polarization: The Essential Role of School Administrators. NASSP Bulletin, 106(2), 133-153. https://doi-org.ezproxy.losrios.edu/10.1177/01926365221100589 Kouzes, J., Posner, B. (2012). LPI: Leadership Practices Inventory Observer. tlc-lpi-360-english-v5.pdf (leadershipchallenge.com) Jafeth E. Sanchez, Jeffrey M. Paul & Bill W. Thornton (2022) Relationships among teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership and teachers’ perceptions of school climate in the high school setting, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 25:6, 855-875, DOI: 10.1080/13603124.2019.1708471 Preble, B., & Taylor, L. (2008). Through Students' Eyes. Educational Leadership, 2009.

Many people today see that technology is driving humanity towards total annihilation. Whether it comes through irreversible ecological damage or the loss of what it means to be human, our species has been in an ever-decreasing state due to modern technical feats. There have been increases in human life expectancy in so-called “advanced” countries, but at the cost of human dignity, stripping away fulfilling lives and causing unprecedented psychological issues (and physical damage in developing countries). These atrocious outcomes all occur under the guise of "technological progress,” and its continued advancement may cause us to lose control completely. Contemporary thinkers have already seen the coming innovations in technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI) or gene modification, as extremely dangerous to our survival, and that halting their progress is the first step to securing our future. In the case that the system does reduce physical and psychological suffering to a minimum, it will come at the cost of a long and excruciating period that will no less end us in a state of being nothing but mere cogs in a machine if we weren't already made irrelevant by AI. This study will analyze the multiple aspects of modern technique within society, the consequences of continuing technical advancements, how they will lead to the destruction of humanity, and the steps to take to mitigate damage.

Abstract: In the last 12 months alone there have been 25 confirmed climate disasters in the United States resulting in over 450 deaths. (“Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters”). With the help of increasing technology, scientists are better able to predict and define what threat earthquakes and tsunamis pose to the community and how we should prepare for them, but this is only helpful if the community knows about the possible natural hazards in their area. How prepared are individuals among 18-25 years old who live in Oregon? My poster will examine if college students between the ages of 18-25 are aware of or practice emergency preparedness for naturally occurring earthquakes or tsunamis. This category of individuals is important to research because there is a mixture of local people who know about possible natural disasters, and others who are not native to the State of Oregon and are not educated about the natural hazards. This research is based on data collected from (N=350) people in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. This is the survey that was completed by Cohort 1. My efforts will be on engaging with doing research also but you will interview people 18-30 years old Why might this be important? This is crucial in understanding the condition of a community after the event of a natural disaster. This will also impact the efforts of the community in rehabilitation and restoration after an event. By being able to understand how much information is known among college students we can identify the level of consciousness about natural disasters and the level of preparedness. This also impacts individuals in many different ways. Our participants would be encouraged to start thinking about emergency preparedness as well as having a plan in place in case of a natural disaster. Cite Gadberry, M. (n.d.). Emergency Preparedness Among College Students at the University of Arkansas. National Planning Frameworks. FEMA.gov. (n.d.). https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparedness/frameworks NCEI.Monitoring.Info@noaa.gov. (n.d.). Billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/#:~:text=In%202023%20(as%20of%20November,and%201%20winter%20storm%20event. Restoration and rehabilitation portal. FRAMES. (n.d.). https://www.frames.gov/restoration-and-rehabilitation#:~:text=Definition%3A%20Restoration%20%2D%20An%20intentional%20activity,by%20wildfire%20or%20suppression%20activity.

Evangelicals & Immigration in Spokane Introduction Since its founding, immigration in the United States has been a controversial subject. From whom should be allowed to immigrate to how the process should happen, the answers have continually evolved and changed throughout the decades. However, in recent years, immigration and refugee policies have become more hotly debated since 2016 when Donald Trump became President of the U.S. Overall, researchers have found that negative attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policies stem from multiple factors such as religiousness, religious social identity, political orientation, racial divides, Christian nationalism, and the rise of populism (Al- Kire et al., 2021; Melkonian and Kellstedt, 2019; Ott and Tellez, 2019). In particular, many studies have found that white, Evangelical Christians demonstrate the highest prejudice towards immigrants and refugees as well as endorse stricter immigration policies (Ott and Tellez, 2019). On the other hand, studies have also shown that religion can often fuel feelings of compassion towards immigrants and refugees and interestingly, religious groups and organizations often play a vital role in providing resources for those coming in from other countries (Borja and Gibson, 2019). This paradox has been the center of research as of late and many explanations have come from all sides. Literature Review Evangelical Views on Immigration in the United States Dominant Evangelical Views By reviewing numerous empirical studies and statements by top evangelical leaders and organizations in America, researchers Ott and Tellez (2019) share that typical evangelical views involve advocating for just and compassionate treatment of immigrants both in the church and in government policy while frequently quoting Scripture to back it up. When making statements about public policy, evangelical leaders, and organizations such as The National Association of Evangelicals and The Southern Baptist Convention, call for reforms that generally reflect values of human dignity, preservation of the family, compassion, and reasonable legislation that secures our borders but also makes way for legal immigration. It was also specified that when evangelical leaders make these statements, they are intended just as much for their congregation to help form opinions as well as for the ears of politicians (Ott and Tellez, 2019). There are some alternative viewpoints and statements that have been shared by what appears to be a minority of evangelical leaders such as Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration who support very restrictive reforms such as strengthening borders, strictly enforcing immigration law, and opposing amnesty for undocumented immigrants while also quoting biblical scripture (Ott and Tellez, 2019). However, while all evangelical leaders support legal immigration and border security, the general tone among most is humanitarian. When looking at Christianity Today, a widely read evangelical magazine, articles from 2007 to 2012 showed a range of views on immigration but with only one being outwardly critical of “liberalizing immigration reform.” Through these examples, we can see that the dominant evangelical views on immigration in America are generally positive when it comes to policy reform and attitudes towards immigration with leaders often calling Christians to affirm the dignity of immigrants, exercise hospitality, and share the gospel with them (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Paradoxes Within Evangelical Views Compassion versus Law and Order Through several empirical studies and surveys, several paradoxes were found after comparing public statements by national evangelical leaders to the opinions and attitudes of ordinary evangelical (Ott and Tellez, 2019). First, when it came to compassion versus law and order, the latter overshadowed the former overwhelmingly. In a 2015 Lifeway Research titled, “Evangelical Views on Immigration,” they found that nearly nine out of ten evangelicals believe that immigration reform should respect the rule of law and secure the borders, 68 percent support increases to border security as well as a path to citizenship but only two out of five evangelicals see their presence as an opportunity to show them love. Further, many other studies done in 2010 and 2013 found that when isolating white evangelicals, they supported strict enforcement of immigration laws more than any other religious or ethnic group and had the least support for a path to citizenship. Additionally, they found that the majority of white evangelicals believe that immigrants are a burden and take jobs, housing, and healthcare away from current residents as well as threaten American customs and values. While evangelicals are in favor of immigrants being treated humanely and keeping families together, there is a higher value placed on viewing immigrants negatively and focusing on law and order due to an overall belief that most immigrants are a threat to American values, a drain on our economy, and have ulterior motives for coming to the country (Ott and Tellez, 2019). To Evangelize or Not Interestingly, while evangelicals believe that they should evangelize to immigrants, they are rarely encouraged to do so by their church and have few relationships with them showing a second paradox (Ott and Tellez, 2019). The 2015 Lifeway study found that 73 percent of evangelicals agreed that “the arrival of immigrants presents a great opportunity to share Jesus Christ,” however, only 42 percent agreed to this rephrased statement in the same survey, “the number of recent immigrants in the U.S. are an opportunity to introduce them to Jesus Christ.” In general, evangelicals actually have very little to no personal interaction with immigrants and one in five evangelicals say they have been encouraged by their church to reach out to immigrants in their communities. Additionally, evangelicals report being bothered by the language barrier and thus, opportunities to evangelize and show compassion are limited (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Views of National Leaders versus Views of Ordinary Evangelicals The third paradox can be found when examining how the views of national leaders and the views of ordinary evangelicals on immigration do not match up (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Despite the statements from national leaders that call for positive, humanitarian approaches to immigration, ordinary evangelicals, and especially white evangelicals, have more negative attitudes and restrictive views on immigrants and immigration policy than most Americans. Empirical studies have consistently shown that attendance at religious services reduces hostility towards immigrants however, evangelicals still continue to have more negative attitudes towards immigrants than any other Christian tradition showing a large gap between views and bringing up questions of why congregations are not following their recognized national leaders (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Silence From Pastors This leads to the fourth paradox that shows that despite national evangelical leaders calling for churches to inform their congregation on immigration issues, very few evangelical churches or pastors have done so (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Surveys revealed that 60 percent of white evangelicals look to religion for most of their guidance on right and wrong however, when it comes to immigration, only 12 percent claim that religion is the most important influence. In Lifeway’s 2015 study, only two percent of evangelicals said that church influenced their views on immigration. Looking at the views of evangelical pastors seem to match up to the views of their congregations with eight out of ten Protestant pastors agreeing that the government has the responsibility to stop illegal immigration, but 76 percent agree or strongly agree that Christians have a responsibility to assist immigrants, even if in the country illegally. Unfortunately, there are no conclusive answers yet as to why this is, and further research is needed to understand the gaps in these views (Ott and Tellez, 2019). The Relevance of Biblical Authority Finally, exploring the relevance or irrelevance of biblical authority and how it informs evangelicals on immigration issues leads to the fifth paradox (Ott and Tellez, 2019). While evangelicals are known for viewing the Bible with a high level of authority and 53 percent claimed that they are “very familiar with what the Bible says about how immigrants should be treated,” only 12 percent said that the Bible influenced their views of immigration. Evidently, evangelicals claim to know biblical teachings on immigration, yet they don’t see those teaching as influential in their views and opinions on the subject. A possible explanation for this could be a separation in personal values and views on public policies since the Bible does not have teaching specifically on immigration legislation, only moral values such as “loving one’s neighbor.” However, if it is true that many evangelicals believe that they should show love and share the gospel with immigrants then separating moral values from public policy does not make much sense. Instead, the results from many studies show that the biblical command to love one’s neighbor must not apply to immigrants even at a personal level (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Possible Factors Influencing the Paradoxes Socioeconomic Status There are many studies that have demonstrated different explanations for these paradoxes such as socioeconomic status being more influential in forming opinions on public issues than religion (Ott &amp; Tellez, 2019). In fact, negative views of immigrants and immigration are associated with lower levels of education (Ott &amp; Tellez, 2019). Additionally, Melkonian and Kellstedt (2019) found that when church teachings were based on themes such as hospitality and “welcoming the stranger,” evangelical elites who attended church regularly engaged in immigration more. Whereas the evangelical laity has moved more toward the right and have been more influenced by political campaigns on their immigration views (Melkonian and Kellstedt, 2019). Little Immigrant Interaction Another explanation could be that evangelicals have less personal interaction with immigrants than other groups (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Through several studies, it was found that white evangelicals are less likely to report having friends who were born outside the US and that it has little to do with shaping their views on immigration. Additionally, white evangelicals are by far, the most bothered by non-English speaking immigrants. This divide in interaction with immigrants is likely an important factor even though it cannot fully explain all of the paradoxes (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Christian Nationalism and the Racial Divide Evangelical views on Christian nationalism and ethnic affinity are also strong explanations for these paradoxes (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Lifeways 2015 study found that only 20 percent of evangelicals see immigrants as a threat to American customs and traditions, however, the Pew Research study found that 69 percent of evangelicals agree that “The American way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence.” After isolating the views of white evangelicals, Pew Research found that 58 percent agree that immigrants threaten traditional American customs and values (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Evangelicals who see traditional American values as interlaced with the Christian faith tend to see immigrants as a threat as well. A study by Al-Kire and colleagues (2021), found that Christian nationalism was a significant and consistent predictor of anti-immigrant stereotypes, prejudice, dehumanization, and support for anti- immigrant policies. Additionally, they found that perceived threats from immigrants facilitated the relationship between Christian nationalism and the dehumanization of immigrants, and attitudes toward immigration policies (Al-Kire et al., 2021). While regularly attending church services might reduce negative views of immigrants in general, that is only the case when Christian nationalism is also not present (Ott and Tellez, 2019. Research has shown that when studying the Bible and forming beliefs around it, readings are shaped by communities, not individuals, who share common beliefs about the text such as interpreting the Bible literally. For example, whites, Latino Americans, and African Americans who all interpret the Bible literally tend to identity with different political parties and policies along racial lines showing that cultural identity and social normal dictate how much influence religion will have. Furthermore, evangelicals are also more likely to attend a church that does not challenge their views and they are less likely to attend a church that preaches about immigration if they already hold negative attitudes towards immigrants. If evangelical attitudes tend to conform to the views of their ethnic affinity and attend churches that line up with their values, then this could partly explain the struggle evangelical leaders have influencing their congregation’s opinions (Ott and Tellez, 2019). Religious Response to Immigration According to the research available, active responses to immigration from religious institutions in the United States seem to be solely focused on refugee relief and resettlement and not immigrants who come voluntarily whether legally or illegally. This shows a discrepancy that might be from a lack in defining immigrants and refugees as separate issues. But overall, refugee relief and resettlement in the U.S. is a public-private initiative where religious organizations such as Catholic Charities USA, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, World Relief, and the International Rescue Committee often play vital roles (Borja and Gibson, 2019). In 2010, 70 percent of refugees were resettled by religious voluntary agencies, so while there is disagreement over immigration policies and reform within religious congregations, there is no debate that religious organizations are very effective in helping refugees integrate into American society (Borja and Gibson, 2019). In a study that compared the incorporation of Haitian refugees into three different countries, it was found that Haitian refugees in Miami were able to integrate better socio-economically because of strong facilitation from religious institutions (Mooney, 2013). Whereas Haitian immigrants in both Montreal and Paris suffered more in terms of employment and education due to secular nationalism and poor mediating institutions (Mooney, 2013). In general, faith-based agencies, especially Christian organizations, have been involved in overseas aid and domestic resettlement work since World War II and research has shown they are very successful in assisting refugees due to the broad network of support they provide (Borja and Gibson, 2019). Evangelical Response Historically, evangelical response to aiding refugees has been guided by a deep belief and commitment to serving the Christian community and following Christian mission principles (Borja and Gibson, 2019). Due to this, Christian churches have mostly been interested in offering aid to fellow Christians and in times of aiding non-Christians refugees, they make sure to use it as an evangelical opportunity for their congregations. Unlike Catholic and Lutheran charities who make an effort to keep their aid work secular, evangelicals have always been determined on using their refugee relief work to evangelize. This has created many conflicts, partly due to receiving public funding, but also in the experiences of refugees and feeling pressure to convert in order to receive help. Because refugee resettlement is much more tightly controlled than regular immigration, refugees have little resources, finances, or control over where they are located. Because of this, refugees often rely on Christian groups and organizations for finding housing, job opportunities, and community giving these institutions a lot of power. While it is common for denominations to favor helping their own, Christian refugees continue to receive a kinder welcome today compared to other groups (Borja and Gibson, 2019). Syrian Refugee Crises The Syrian refugee crises is one of the more recent cases in the US that has been covered in the literature. Religious and Christian-based organizations all over America have responded in many different ways and Captari and colleagues (2019) show that of those who endorsed openness to refugee immigration, 65 percent were religiously unaffiliated, 63 percent were Black protestants, 50 percent were Catholic, and 43 percent were White Mainline Protestants. However, only 25 percent of White evangelicals agreed that America has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country and 44 percent of pastors reported fear within their congregation about refugees coming to the US. Additionally, 72 percent reported that their church had not shared about caring for refugees locally or had heard of any opportunities for outreach (Captari et al., 2019). Types of Refugees and Immigrants Americans Prefer When looking at what type of refugee Americans prefer, Adida and colleagues (2019) found that when asking about Syrian refugees, Americans preferred an English-speaking, female who was high-skilled and Christian (Adida et al., 2019). In another study looking at perceptions about fleeing religious persecution, Kane and Jacobs (2017) found that while respondents believed that asylum should be granted to those fleeing religious persecution, there were some differences concerning age and gender. First, respondents were fine with not following all the laws if it meant not allowing an elderly female into the US but much more interested in following all laws when it came to a young males, young females, and elderly males. Next, respondents were much more likely to believe that a young male would be a predictor of harm but that a 68 year old female immigrant would not be. Interestingly, respondents were more likely to deport an illegal immigrant if the immigrant was older, both female and male, as well as a younger male while respondents were only slightly less likely to want to deport a younger female. Overall, respondents were much more likely to apply strict policies to males than females (Kane and Jacobs, 2017). Immigrant and Refugee Experiences with the Christian Church Refugee Experiences Refugees coming to the US experience overt discrimination, both religious and racial, and report feeling “othered” due to cultural and religious differences (Captari et al., 2019). In particular, Syrian refugees have been dehumanized through Islamophobia—fear and distrust of foreigners who identify as Muslim and consequently, they are labeled as “unknown” and “potentially dangerous.” Societal attitudes such as these have extensive consequences, both psychological and societal, since any group that is “othered” has the potential to be further dehumanized and discriminated against by the dominant group. The effects of discrimination can include increases in stress, impacts on post-migration functioning, and effects on any earlier traumatic experiences all of which compromises physical and mental health. Additionally, refugee youth are particularly at risk for many negative outcomes (Captari et al., 2019). Bhutanese Refugees in Spokane Bhutanese refugees from Nepal have been resettling by the thousands in various countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since 2008 and one of the first Bhutanese families that resettled in the US was welcomed to Spokane, Washington (Karki, 2018). In their research paper Karki found that since 2008, hundreds of Bhutanese families have moved to Spokane and been received by organizations such as World Relief and Refugee Connections who have helped the families make connections and find work. Of the families they interviewed, many had converted to Christianity to aid in the difficult transition of integrating into a new society and culture. One of the strongest reasons for converting was to receive prayers and help for a sick family member. For those who did not convert, their transition was easier due to having a family member to aid in their adjusting. However, many still found it difficult to practice their religion because of a lack of religious diversity in worship places. It was clear in Karki’s research that Bhutanese refugees in Spokane valued their religion and when they could not find enough representation of their own and they were having a difficult time integrating, they converted to Christianity to meet those needs (Karki, 2019). Immigrant Experiences Identity formation for immigrants coming to the US is a long and complicated process with many influences. After exploring Latino immigrants’ church affiliation and beliefs about what it means to be American, Taylor and colleagues (2014) found that religious traditions and institutions have a significant effect on beliefs about American identity among Latino immigrants. Specifically, Protestant Latinos were more likely to identify as “American” and believe that being Christian is a defining feature of being “American” than Catholic Latinos. It was also found that being a member of a Protestant church increased immigrants’ likelihood of associating Christianity with being “American” and are more likely to embrace an “American” identity when compared to the Catholic majority. These findings are important as discussion around the consequences of contemporary immigration continue (Taylor et al., 2014). When looking at undocumented Latinx youth in Tennessee and their experiences attending white evangelical universities, Flores (2022) found that while private Christian colleges provide financial support for undocumented youth (that isn’t available elsewhere), the institutions still struggle to meet the needs of undocumented and minoritized individuals. While higher education is often seen as the only way to ensure upward economic and social mobility, there are many personal costs involved for youth of color and specifically Latinx immigrant youth. Navigating the tensions between racial segregation and hostility within evangelical traditions and their new status of being a symbol of “diversity” often cause students to become ambivalent about their higher education and the promises of upward mobility, especially if that mobility is contingent on conforming to a “respectable” form of diversity (Flores, 2022). Differences in Immigrant and Refugee Experiences Research comparing immigrant and refugee experiences in the US is severely lacking. However, a study by Jamil and colleagues (2012) shows that there is a significant difference between immigrating to the US voluntarily and those seeking refugee status. After surveying 148 Iraqi professional refugees and 111 Iraqi professional immigrants residing in the US, the researchers found that Iraqi refugees faired much worse in employment rates and self-rated health compared to Iraqi immigrants (Jamil et al., 2012). Next Steps The literature on evangelical views of immigration is vast however, there is a huge lack in research on how religious and evangelical outreach affects immigrants and refugees. Further, there is not much academic information on separating the experiences of refugees from immigrants and legal immigrants from illegal immigrants. This literature review also shows that more research is needed in exploring the paradoxes found in several studies such as the racial divide, the evangelical class divide, and Christian nationalism as well as more research that looks at how these disparities between native-born Americans and immigrants can be bridged. Overall, the current hostility towards immigrants and refugees in the US continues to be rooted in the perception of them as racial and religious “others” who pose a threat to national security, economic stability, and American culture (Borja and Gibson, 2019). Either way, it is clear that refugee resettlement remains generally unpopular despite some positive views and attitudes within evangelicals and other religious groups. The next steps involve figuring out a way to change those views and dispel the hostility. Objective From May 2023 through October 2023, I was a research assistant for Dr. Stacy George who was looking at evangelical views and attitudes towards immigration and immigrants under World Relief. Our objective was to gather data from three different churches and then compare our results to a recent Lifeway survey that found that evangelical views on immigration are becoming much more positive. We found evidence of positive views on immigration but more importantly, we found that while there were connections between the churches and refugee relief organizations, there was a large lack of understanding on immigration issues and lack of interaction between church members and refugees. Little was known about the real needs of both refugees and immigrants in Spokane. After finishing research with Dr. George, I would like to interview local immigrants and refugees and learn about their experiences coming to Spokane. Additionally, all refugee relief organizations in Spokane are religious and I would like to explore how this effects refugee’s settlement here. I expect to gather data on the gaps in effectively helping refugees and immigrants settle here and hope to provide knowledge on how we can close those gaps. Intended Contribution The research on the experiences of immigrants and refugees is sparse, especially the research on immigrants and refugees as separate groups. Additionally, it seems that immigration is often used as a catchall term when in reality, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees are all distinct groups with completely different experiences that come with various inequalities. My goal is to not only learn about how Spokane views and approaches immigrants, refugees, and immigration but to also contribute to the existing literature by gathering perspectives from the immigrants and refugees themselves. Additionally, by exploring the process of evangelical organization refugee aid and the experiences of the people they help, my hope is that whatever I find will better inform us on how the Spokane community can be more effective in helping immigrants and refugees integrate well into our city. Current Research Questions 1. What are the experiences of Spokane refugees? 2. What are the experiences of Spokane immigrants? 3. Is there a difference in experience between immigrants and refugees of color compared to those who are white? 4. Did they receive any help from religious organizations or churches? If so, was it helpful? In what ways? 5. Did any immigrants or refugees convert to Christianity after coming to Spokane? If so, why? 6. Do immigrants and refugees in Spokane feel helped to the fully helped by Spokane evangelical churches/religious groups? 7. What is the biggest barrier to getting settled in Spokane? 8. What could be done differently? Current Hypotheses I hypothesize that there will be a difference in experience between immigrants and refugees of color compared to immigrants and refugees that are white. I hypothesize that the bulk of Spokane refugee aid efforts are religious and likely evangelical which would also match the current research. I hypothesize that immigrant and refugee experiences will differ both in socio-economic status, physical health, and mental health. I hypothesize that some families will have converted to Christianity in hopes of getting better help. I hypothesize that the biggest barrier for refugees and immigrants getting settled in Spokane will be religious motives getting in the way of effective help. I hypothesize that the current refugee aid in Spokane will have many gaps such as language barriers, effective resources such as job placement, and more. Methodology My study will be applied research as I will be seeking to answer a real world issue and be evaluating the effectiveness of Spokane’s Christian refugee aid. In order to answer my research questions well, my study will be mostly qualitative and involve interviews, focus groups, and other existing data such as websites, newsletters, and sermons. This will be the best method since the subject I’m exploring is very nuanced and data such as interviews will give me the best chance at fully understanding them. Quantitative data on this subject has been done in depth but there is not enough research to explain why that is. Due to this, the research will be exploratory and explanatory as I aim to explain the differences between immigrant and refugee experiences and what, if any, discrepancies are between evangelical views, action, and impact. My research is also taking an inductive approach as my hypotheses will develop as I go. When I begin my project, I anticipate using purposive sampling within two different sampling frames: Spokane refugee aid organizations and the greater Spokane population. Within these two sampling frames I hope to get a variety of immigrant and refugee experiences who have received help through these aid organizations. I might need to use snowball sampling as well depending on how easy it is to find individuals willing to be interviewed. This inductive and qualitative approach will be the best way to go about this project as it is a subject that you must learn in depth about first to fully understand and then develop a hypothesis. This route will provide a rich and in depth look at Spokane refugee and immigrant aid that quantitative data would not be able to do. Additionally, I should be able to do much of my data gathering for free (online data) and I believe getting access to individuals who are willing to be interviewed will not be difficult. The only cons of this type of research are that it is time-consuming and sometimes costly. Personally, I will have a time limit due to school and only have one semester to gather data. There’s a possibility I might have to stop researching before reaching saturation. Research Timeline Currently, I am gathering research I can access for free such as church and refugee aid organization websites, sermons, periodicals, and newsletters. Next, I am applying for IRB approval through my university this week. As soon as I receive approval, I will begin setting up interviews and hope to be done gathering the bulk of my research by the end of February. By the end of March, I plan to have things wrapped up and ready to present at the 2024 Pacific Sociological Association Conference. References Adida, C. L., Lo, A., &amp; Platas, M. R. (2019). Americans preferred Syrian refugees who are female, English-speaking, and Christian on the eve of Donald Trump’s election. PLOS ONE, 14(10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222504 Al-Kire, R., Pasek, M., Tsang, J.-A., Leman, J., &amp; Rowatt, W. (2021). Protecting America’s borders: Christian nationalism, threat, and attitudes toward immigrants in the United States. Group Processes &amp; Intergroup Relations, 25(2), 354–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220978291 Borja, M., &amp; Gibson, J. (2019). Internationalism with evangelical characteristics: The case of evangelical responses to Southeast Asian refugees. The Review of Faith &amp; International Affairs, 17(3), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 Captari, L. E., Shannonhouse, L., Hook, J. N., Aten, J. D., Davis, E. B., Davis, D. E., Van Tongeren, D., &amp; Ranter Hook, J. (2019). Prejudicial and welcoming attitudes toward Syrian refugees: The roles of cultural humility and moral foundations. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 47(2), 123–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091647119837013 Flores, A. (2022). “I’ve lived everything they are trying to teach me”: Latinx immigrant youth’s ambivalent educational mobility in White Evangelical Universities. Social Sciences, 12(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12010007 Jamil, H., Aldhalimi, A., &amp; Arnetz, B. B. (2012). Post-displacement employment and health in professional Iraqi refugees vs. professional Iraqi immigrants. Journal of Immigrant &amp; Refugee Studies, 10(4), 395–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2012.717826 Kane, M., &amp; Jacobs, R. J. (2017). Perceptions about fleeing religious persecution and entrance to the US. Mental Health, Religion &amp; Culture, 20(10), 1002–1014. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2017.1423047 Karki, P. (2018). Religious conversion among Bhutanese refugee families. Whitworth University. Melkonian-Hoover, R. M., &amp; Kellstedt, L. A. (2019). Evangelicals and Immigration Fault Lines among the faithful. Springer International Publishing. Mooney, M. A. (2013). Religion as a context of reception: The case of Haitian immigrants in Miami, Montreal and Paris. International Migration, 51(3), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12073 Ott, C., &amp; Téllez, J. C. (2019). The paradox of American evangelical views on immigration: A review of the empirical research. Missiology: An International Review, 47(3), 252–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091829619858215 Taylor, J. B., Gershon, S. A., &amp; Pantoja, A. D. (2014). Christian America? Understanding the link between churches, attitudes, and “being American” among Latino immigrants. Politics and Religion, 7(2), 339–365. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755048314000042

Environmental conservation in the United States is enmeshed within settler-colonial logics that structure relationality with land. Land trusts are a relatively recent method of conservation that offer a community-based model land stewardship. However, Indigenous leaders and activists criticize the predominance of majority white, settler-led trusts that often entirely disregard Native values, leadership, and knowledge. I analyze current and proposed structures of land trusts in the state of Oregon through organizational documents, interviews, and media framing to find how changing the model of land trusts and centering Indigenous leadership can facilitate land access, land return, tribal sovereignty, and resurgent futures. Additionally, I study the Willamette Falls Legacy Project as an alternative model of land trust governance and instance of the reinstatement of Indigenous stewardship. Through this work, I aim to explore what it means to cultivate healing partnerships in Indigenous-led environmental governance.

Scholars of the transnational environmental movement have focused on diffusion resulting in “meaning making” cross-nationally (Boli, John and Frank Lechner. 2002, Frank, David John, Ann hironaka, John W. Meyer, Evan Schofer and Nancy B. Tuma. 1999, and more). Globalization scholars argue for top-down world society influence that legitimates the environmental movement, equipping organizations with knowledge and skills; but a clear description on how the world society-influence builds up domestic environmental movements is needed. Focusing on the case of South Korea’s environmental protection movement, this research provides an exploratory explanation on the emergence of environmental action and the mechanisms and discursive interactions involved. Environmental organizations have existed in South Korea since the 1960s; however, the development of the environmental movement did not take full force until the late 1980s. Following the democratic transition, new social movement groups raising concern about the environment emerged and the expansion of environmentalism began. Looking at the rapid emergence of these organizations, it is important to ask: how did this increasing attention to environmental protection happen? This research will analyze 16 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016 with environmental non-governmental organizations in South Korea. I will use Dedoose and Excel to analyze the data. The goal of this research is to understand the emergence of environmentalism in South Korea, and how local civil society groups create meaning around environmental action and convey global cultural scripts or deploy more local rationales.

In August 2017, the world witnessed a massive humanitarian disaster in Myanmar. An influx of more than 742,000 Rohingya refugees crossed the border to seek refuge in Bangladesh. Cox’s Bazar has become a centre for addressing the challenges of Refugee displacement and environmental justice. This abstract illustrates that the impact of the access resources and opportunities and protection from environmental harm of the Rohingya refugee population established in Ukhia and Teknaf mega camp. Matrix analysis was conducted using secondary information and subsequently, reviewed qualitative data through key informant interviews. During the interviews, the study categorized the population into distinct groups, such as teachers, community leaders, youth influencers, religious figures, the general populace, and government authorities. Based on the analysis, the study concludes the complex dynamics among Refugee settlement, environmental sustainability, protection of the environment and social justice. However, the complexity of the Rohingya crisis needs international attention. The study underscores the holistic approach to ensure the environmental justice among Refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh to mitigate the impact of environmental harm of the Refugees. Keywords: Refugees, Environmental Justice, Humanitarian disaster, Holistic approach, Bangladesh.

The purpose of this presentation is to contextualize food systems in the 21st century. Through the use of ethnography, this study examines the habitus of upper-middle-class grocery stores as well as the concept of eco-conscious shopping at these stores. We will then move on to the second section, which will explore the myths and practices that surround the food practices that exist in urban communities. Next we will examine that climate change and climate adaption has impacted food choices. As a final section, we will examine how food sovereignty is viewed within communities of color. Throughout the presentation, we argue that when food practices are evaluated through the lens of community capital, it leads to the reframing of food systems in urban and rural settings. In conclusion, the presentation concludes with some possible contributions to the study of food in American society that could be used to reframe the sociology of food.

This presentation focuses on how the descendants of migrants are shaping and leading radical leftist political movements in the United States via grassroots political organizing. Capitalism continues to intensify the forced migration of people from the global south through the economic and political destabilization of their home countries. The history of colonization, coupled with an emerging transnational capitalist class, has intensified the exploitation of natural resources, human labor, and the justification of genocide for long-term profit. Simultaneously, this forced displacement contributes to the formation of an emerging population composed of descendants of victims of poverty, war, political persecution, state violence etc. The descendants of working class migrants have formed anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist political organizations in the United States to advance liberation and democracy in their home countries.

As institutions of higher education have become more diverse over the past several decades, building a strong sense of community in the classroom has emerged as a core moral and pedagogical imperative to make students from all backgrounds feel welcome and promote their academic success. In this paper I argue that the pedagogy that underlies the impetus for community-building in the classroom is premised on a problematic understanding of the type of bonds that connect students in a genuinely diverse classroom. In Durkheimian terms, these bonds are more akin to organic solidarity (bonds by virtue of mutual reliance) than mechanical solidarity (bonds by virtue of shared cultural and moral beliefs). Instead of community building, I propose deliberative interdependence as a more effective model for generating collaborative learning in diverse classrooms. I illustrate how to apply this model through innovative learning and assessment methods and draw on student course evaluations to document their effectiveness.

Walter Benjamin’s materialism in the Arcades Project offers us a physiology of capitalism. By focusing on the building materials that made novel architecture possible–and therefore made novel modes of interaction via production, transportation, distribution, and consumption possible–he produced x-ray images of the insides of the Modern Prometheus. Ironwork superstructures and the chemistry of concrete enabled the emergence of the arcades as centralized spaces for consumption, as much as those building materials and technologies enabled industrial production, rail transport, and unprecedented bridge spans. Benjamin documented the 19th Century rise and fall of the Parisian arcade from icons of luxury and the vanguard of bourgeois taste, to shabby relics of a bygone era supplanted by the emergence of the department store just as contemporary critics and observers document the rise and fall of the shopping mall, and the cultural significance of their emergence and decay. I argue that contemporary sociology can build on Benjamin's work by documenting similar empirical changes in architecture, technology, and patterns of consumption. Doing so allows us to think holistically about the deployment of technologies and ideologies enabling the emergence of dominant forms of interaction for a given period, as well as potentials for their more humane transcendence. If iron and concrete combine with the logic of private property to form the interior and exterior life of the individual in Benjamin's work, steel and fiber optics combine with global capital to produce the fulfillment center and social media in our time.

Recently scholars have examined issues of “servingness” and anti-Black racism in Hispanic-Serving institutions of higher education. While it is important to understand how anti-Black racism shows up and how it is experienced, it is also vital to learn how it is resisted. Drawn from interview and focus group data, here we share myriad forms of the negotiations made by Black staff, faculty and students as they confront the everyday systemic anti-Black racism that is baked into institutional structures and culture. Sometimes their confrontation is individualized, simple as “talking back” in everyday interactions. But central to resistance are opportunities Black campus members make to create counter spaces where they can share narratives and support. These spaces also promote critical consciousness and collective action. However, given few counter spaces and a dearth of Black faculty, staff and students, resistance may show up as isolation and exodus.

This exploratory research aims to capture the experiences of Black college students at a Hispanic-Serving Institute (HSI). Previous research focuses on the experiences at Historically Black College/University (HBCUs) and Predominately White Institute (PWIs). Experiences at an HSI are where the gap lies. The Black experience has been measured through campus climate (sense of belonging), negative stereotypes, and race-related stressors. These are the common themes used to measure Black experiences. I draw upon Critical Theory in Education and Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF) to understand the experiences of Black college students at an HSI. The Black experience will be extracted through semi-structured interviews at two HSIs in hopes of comparing the data to analyze the experiences. The goal of this research is to capture the experiences of Black college students at HSIs. The research question that will drive this research is: What is the Black college student experience at a Hispanic-serving institute.

This study examines social and demographic factors that influence Black student outcomes while attending a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). Specifically, this research describes the likelihood of Black students’ favorably rating their educational experience and their likelihood of reattending California State University Fullerton (CSUF). Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) for CSUF (2020 – 2022) is used to explore how race, interactions with campus personnel, and students’ sense of belonging influence student’s satisfaction of their educational experience and their likelihood of reattending CSUF. A set of nested models generated with RStudio are used to first see the effects of demographic variables. Then variables measuring the quality of interactions between respondents, students, advisors, and faculty were incorporated to understand the effects of social interactions on the dependent variables. Lastly, variables measuring students’ sense of belonging were incorporated to illustrate the effects of students’ sense of belonging on the dependent variables. The results suggests that while controlling for race, the quality of social interactions, and students’ sense of belonging, Black students are less likely to be satisfied with their educational experience and less likely to reattend CSUF. Although they are adequately serving their target populations, CSUF may be underserving Black students. This study may help CSUF to better serve the racial and ethnic minorities currently in attendance, and work to diversify its student body.

This research adopts a mixed-methods approach to investigate the dynamic interplay between Instagram and the social perspectives of college students aged 18-30. Through semi-structured zoom interviews and open-ended survey questions, the study comprehensively explores the experiences of both male and female participants. The central focus is to identify diverse factors contributing to Instagram's impact, including self-perception, body image, pressure to present a certain image, unrealistic beauty standards, and comparison to other women seen in the media. Other factors in the work will also consider if the media has ever affected participants' academics or influenced them in pursuing a degree. By engaging with a diverse sample, this research aims to portray the intricate relationship between Instagram usage and social perspectives. Semi-structured interviews encourage participants to share personal experiences, offering insights into how Instagram content shapes their perceptions of self and others. In addition to the interviews, open-ended survey questions help gather quantitative data, allowing for the identification of patterns and correlations. The research studies the potential correlation between Instagram-influenced self-perception, body image, and external pressures, and their impact on academic performance. Through this examination, the study seeks to contribute valuable insights to the existing body of knowledge on the influence of social media on the lives of college students. The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods ensures a thorough understanding by incorporating in-depth insights along with a wide range of numerical data. In certain findings, it emerged that specific college students have encountered these influences; however, a notable observation was the resilience and learning evident in their growth from these experiences. Ultimately, the research aims to provide a subtle portrayal of the complex relationship between Instagram, various societal pressures, self-perception, and academic success among college students.

Drawing upon 60 in-depth interviews with young adult women, this study examines how mobile dating apps (like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge) generate relationship ambiguity. In this paper, I uncover how these uncertainties reinforce inequalities in dating/sexual markets. Findings suggest that the cultural norms of young adulthood compel young adults to approach dating apps casually, where users must obscure their motivations for downloading apps. As a result, users “go with the flow”—an openness to seeing how the relationship will unfold. This ambiguity, however, generates gendered consequences, where men shape which script (hookup or dating) they tap into depending on a woman’s ability to act casually and perceived desirability. To interrogate these differences, I introduce the concept of the dating app erotic market, which allows us to examine women's erotic status across different digital platforms. My findings reveal how the intersection of race and class shapes women's experiences in the young adult dating app erotic market. In this market, men treat women from white and (or) affluent backgrounds as dating partners and women of color from working-class backgrounds as hook-up partners. In uncovering this process, this paper reveals how relationship ambiguity among dating app users has gendered consequences that reestablish racial and classed based hierarchies within young adult dating markets.

Abstract: Due to IT and especially FinTech and Blockchain technology advances, the world economy and because of it, the economies of countries have entered a new phase of their evolution. The world community and the international economy have now become a single organism, due to Financial Communications and mutual investments and currencies, any change in the components of it, as fast as the spread of the corona virus will affect the whole organism of the world economy. Money, which is interpreted as the lifeblood of the economy "because of cryptocurrency initiative" will make such a big difference in the world economy, that many of the political, economic, and social relations of the world community will change in the near future. Due to the decentralized and uncontrollable nature of cryptocurrencies, this study will examine the consequences and effects of cryptocurrencies in the international economy and through it, changes that potentially this emerging phenomenon can be effect in changing the political, economic and social structure of human societies in the coming years. This study examines the impact of money on social, political and economic relations and its role as a tool of power and governance, and then examines the effects that a decentralized currency with a global influence can have on the transformation of social, economic and political relations.

In this presentation, I will discuss the design of a qualitative analysis investigating how violence is being desensitized via the glorification of school shootings in the United States on social media. I will outline my process of analyzing the aftermath of school shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Uvalde to explore how each incident was glorified online at different points in time. In addition, I will discuss my process of determining which social platform was at its peak at the time of each tragedy to determine how various platforms covered the aftermath of violence. By focusing upon comments, unique posts, videos, and photos posted on social media I hope to discover how online interactions contribute to desensitization and glorification of deadly gun violence. This study is still in progress with the intention to help further discussion and research on how social media is a contributor in shaping public discourse on school shootings.

There are four established paradigms of thought on how social order should be structured beginning with the earliest humans who were expected to abide by tradition. Maintaining the traditions of a culture remains as a popular paradigm today in many societies. The introduction of faith and spirituality, and later, organized religion, led to the formation of another powerful doctrine of thought. The idea that humans should behave and interact with one another in a common sense manner has existed throughout time. The fourth paradigm of thought, enlightened rational thought came about in earnest during the 18th century. Scientific developments and advancements in social thought have spearheaded the development of artificial intelligence (AI). We have reached the point where society is experiencing great changes in thinking and structural organization. Sociologists are among those best suited to study this evolutionary change. This paper will explore some of the many implications of a society dominated by AI.

The paper aims to consider how Black and Chicana/o college students leveraged technology’s strengths and weaknesses in making and protecting Ethnic Studies at a seaside California university. The connections between two separate computer takeovers in 1968 and 1975 are examined as critical actions of racial struggle at UC Santa Barbara. Important is how each group of students identified technology as a strategic target to 1) create a spectacle and 2) leverage their identities and bodies to captivate university-wide support. Based on interviews and archival research, the paper introduces the notion of “contested fields of articulation” to show how “interest convergence” operated in the struggle for Ethnic Studies at UCSB. Therefore, the paper looks at how technology was converted into a site of redress when it comes to racism and justice in the university. The 1968 computer takeover marked a significant shift in university race relations, yet the institution’s withering support in the following years contributed to the second computer takeover in 1975.

This paper explores the content and frequency of discrimination among New Mexico's long-standing Mexican American population, referred to as Nuevomexicanos. Unlike other Mexican Americans, Nuevomexicanos have an established history of political and demographic dominance in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Despite residing in a long-time Hispanic-majority context, the findings demonstrate that Nuevomexicanos still encounter discrimination and that whiteness is still valued. As we think of majority-minority demographic change in the United States, I argue that numerical dominance does not curtail discrimination toward Latinos or potentially other racialized groups. Instead, we should focus on the explicit and implicit ways racism is reproduced in institutions and structures.

From 1947-1965 there were 35 known racially motivated bombings in Birmingham, AL. This paper uses this historical case as a case study to begin to explore the dynamics of the destruction of Black churches during the Civil Rights Era. I predict that the bombing of homes is best explained by traditional theories of racial violence and hate crimes, specifically Defended Neighborhood theory, but that the bombing of congregations is best understood in the context of social movements and Resource Mobilization theory. Using GIS and QCA to analyze the bombings I find support for both predictions.

Scholars have long explored the intersection of race, gender, and religion in the United States. The megachurch phenomenon and the accompanying megachurch movement (MCM) are spaces where racial and gender dynamics unfold, profoundly impacting evangelicalism and the broader religious landscape. The significant influence of megachurches on Protestantism, more generally, underscores the pressure for these organizations to exemplify and approximate specific levels of racial and gender diversity. Megachurches set the standard for churches across denominations and less formal church networks, both directly and indirectly, in virtually every city and region (Bird & Thumma, 2020). The MCM thereby merits separate study, particularly with respect to dimensions of race and gender diversity. Furthermore, the sociology of religion has yet to extensively focus on the online presence of religious institutions. Church websites, typically the first impression for church visitors, may prove valuable in indicating the perceived diversity of the church, reflecting the ideology or nature of the congregation. This study will employ quantitative deductive and inductive content analyses of a representative sample of 1,800 megachurch websites, exploring verbal and visual occurrences of diversity and examining the presence of non-English-language services and resources. By expanding the scope of research on the racial and gender diversity of megachurches, which represent a distinct subset of the U.S. evangelical churches, this research elucidates institutional responses to the growing percentages of ethnic-minority evangelicals.

This paper discusses the experience of Interprofessional education (IPE) between undergraduates in a Sociology Capstone course and MSW students at a private, multi-city university in California. We discuss the benefits, challenges, and opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students participating in the IPE with the goal of building teamwork through empathy, recognizing strengths and mutual respect; practicing communication skills; conducting research; and reflecting on one’s personal educational journey. The project involves undergraduates and graduate students partnering to create a virtual presentation explaining a professional and academic pathway from high school to college and an MSW program leading to the Health Care Master of Social Work profession to community college and high school students. The small groups included a mix of both MSW and Capstone students. For the undergraduate students, many of whom are interested in pursuing a career in social work or an adjacent helping profession, the project provided a backstage view of graduate-level work and connections to graduate students and faculty. The MSW students offered guidance and insight while empowering the Capstone students to use their voices and perspectives to complete the work. Our paper provides a general overview of IPE as a practice, a theoretical framing of IPE, and a detailed discussion of the class project as a relatively successful pilot experiential learning assignment between departments for undergraduate and graduate students.

This research builds on prior work (Virnoche 2023) on the design and outcomes of a major-based sociology professional development course. In that article published in Teaching Sociology, Virnoche provided early evidence that the seminar "may mitigate first generation inequities in both the type of jobs secured and related satisfaction." The data for that work addressed experiences of students in a pandemic online seminar modality. In this paper, Virnoche and Meisel consider 2022-23 pre and post experience paired sample data across three semesters of students enrolled face-to-face seminars.

Undergraduate research is a high-impact learning practice but for many sociology students, especially those attending Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), these opportunities can be overwhelming, daunting, and perceived to be out of their reach. There are significant benefits for students presenting their research at PSA (or other conferences) but it is often difficult for students with limited experience to conceptualize delivering a research poster or roundtable presentation. This presentation discusses the efforts of an undergraduate research office at a regional, public, HSI campus to engage Sociology students in undergraduate research with goals to present at PSA through a scaffolded approach that attempts to “demystify” student research in hopes that they will get involved. We will discuss our efforts in utilizing an assets-based approach to get students to think of themselves as sociology student researchers and build the confidence to submit to PSA. We will also share our strategies to leverage campus resources to support sociology students interested in attending and presenting at research conferences such as the Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research (SCCUR) and PSA. Lastly, we hope to engage in discussion with fellow mentors on challenges and opportunities we encounter in engaging sociology students in research.

Oregon Tech is home to an integrated sociology program (Nathenson & Chapman, 2022) that prepares students to enter health-related fields and apply a sociological perspective and methods. This presentation reviews results from a qualitative study of graduates 2-5 years post-graduation. Participants responded to questions on the extent to which they are able to apply sociology in their careers.

Focusing on equity is a useful endeavor, but it can sometimes feel a bit abstract. What does it actually mean to use the lens of equity to transform student success? For us, it means centering student voices and experiences, revolutionizing our textbooks and course builds, and transforming our teaching. Our goal is to create books and courses that are freely available, valid, and written by diverse teams from the field. More specifically, the Open Oregon Educational Resources Targeted Pathways Project is developing free textbooks and courses in Introduction to Sociology, Social Change, Social Problems, and Sociology of Gender Our development Model seeks to dismantle structures of power and oppression entrenched in barriers to course material access. We provide tools and resources to make diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) primary considerations when faculty choose, adapt, and create course materials. In promoting DEI, our project is committed to: - Ensuring diversity of representation within our team and the materials we distribute - Publishing materials that use accessible, clear language for our target audience - Sharing course materials that directly address and interrogate systems of oppression, equipping students and educators with the knowledge to do the same Here we would like to share the model, the dream, and the steps that this collaborative statewide team took to create a book, course design, and successful courses for students. The process includes an intersectional DEI approach to editing and revisions, along with multiple revisions for inclusion from the community and accessibility for all. We will also share the preliminary outcomes of our work. A discussion of the steps and vision with peers who are also experts in their fields would help guide our next steps.

The use of #digitalpowerups is a technique that involves associating keywords with prompts in online discussion forums, which enables students to have more choice and voice. This project examines how the #digitalpowerups strategy supports learning in a virtual community for Environmental Issues in the Environmental Sociology Course through content analysis of student discussion postings. Additionally, the article shares theoretical underpinnings and results from scholarship of teaching learning studies using #digitalpowerups. Our research aims to provide insights into the potential benefits of using hashtags or digital powerups as a tool to promote student-centered learning and collaborative knowledge creation. By sharing our findings with the larger educational community, we intend to encourage new approaches to digital classrooms that prioritize student engagement, collaboration, and active participation, eventually leading to more effective and influential educational experiences for all. By understanding how students interact and develop in online discussion forums, this paper seeks to illuminate the growing potential for digital technology to revolutionize educational experiences, from how students approach class material to how well they understand it.

This research-in-progress presents three case studies demonstrating the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in undergraduate education, specifically in Introduction to Sociology, Human Rights Regimes, and Cultural Criminology. This research explores how AI can revolutionize teaching methodologies and deepen student understanding in varied disciplinary areas. In Introduction to (Global) Sociology, students use ChatGPT to engage with sociological concepts like social stratification, cultural norms, and youth deviance as applied to current events in their focus country. Initial observations indicate an enhanced comprehension of sociological theories and principles among students, as they develop awareness of how globalization impacts their focus country. The second case study focuses on Human Rights Regimes, where students use AI to analyze global human rights data in their focus country. This application enables students to identify patterns, trends, and violations using AI-driven data analysis tools. This approach provides experience in understanding global human rights issues, fostering critical thinking and analytical skills through iterative writing assignments with ChatGPT. In Cultural Criminology, students deploy AI to analyze cultural artifacts and media representations of crime and deviance. Students integrate ChatGPT in the field, as they examine how social actors construct and disseminate cultural narratives around crime. This approach encourages students to evaluate the intersection of culture, media, and criminology. Our preliminary findings suggest the AI-enhanced undergraduate classroom not only meshes student engagement and learning outcomes but also provides an innovative approach to understanding and interpreting social science data and theories.

Colorism has been a persistent and ingrained issue in the history of the United States, with far-reaching consequences that continue to affect various aspects of daily life, institutional policies, public spaces, economic structures, and social norms. This complex problem has had a particularly profound impact on the African American community, shaping how they are perceived and treated within society at large. The prevalence of negative stereotypes surrounding African Americans can lead to severe repercussions such as discrimination and mental health disparities. The effects of such biases can also materialize in diverse forms, impacting the well-being and livelihoods of individuals within this community. Current research has examined how people from different racial groups perceive different skin tones of Black people, looking at the cognitive processes that manifest through categorization and stereotypes. Additionally, studies observed consequences related to colorism and how it directly affects those with darker versus lighter skin tones. However, not much research has been conducted on the influence of stereotypes associated with various skin tones. In the present study, it is hypothesized that participants in Group A will rate positive stereotypes associated with lighter skin tones significantly higher than positive stereotypes associated with darker skin tones. It is also hypothesized that participants in Group B will rate negative stereotypes associated with darker skin tones significantly higher than negative stereotypes associated with lighter skin tones. For this study, a quantitative study on stereotypes of skin tone representation within the African American community will be conducted. Participants will rate the accuracy of various visual representations within mass media (e.g., social media) of African Americans with light skin tones and dark skin tones using a Likert scale. Participants will also be provided a questionnaire further examining the perception of stereotypes and how this affects their interactions with African Americans with lighter versus darker skin tones. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of skin tone portrayals on African Americans, including associated stereotypes and societal perceptions. It is expected that participants will more likely associate negative stereotypes with African Americans, as this is a common and reinforced viewpoint in the cultural and social system. References Hannon, L., Keith, V. M., DeFina, R., & Campbell, M. A. (2020). Do White People See Variation in Black Skin Tones? Reexamining a Purported Outgroup Homogeneity Effect. Social Psychology Quarterly, 84(1), 95–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272520961408 Harrison, M. T., & Thomas, K. M. (2009a). The Hidden Prejudice in Selection: A Research Investigation on Skin Color Bias. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39(1), 134–168. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00433.x Landor, A. M., Simons, L. G., Simons, R. L., Brody, G. H., Bryant, C. M., Gibbons, F. X., Granberg, E. M., & Melby, J. N. (2013). Exploring the impact of skin tone on family dynamics and race-related outcomes. Journal of Family Psychology, 27(5), 817–826. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033883 Lavalley, R., & Johnson, K. R. (2020). Occupation, injustice, and anti-Black racism in the United States of America. Journal of Occupational Science, 29(4), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2020.1810111 Louie, P. (2019). Revisiting the Cost of Skin Color: Discrimination, Mastery, and Mental Health among Black Adolescents. Society and Mental Health, 10(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869318820092 Maddox, K. B., & Gray, S. S. (2002). Cognitive Representations of Black Americans: Reexploring the Role of Skin Tone. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(2), 250–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202282010 Marira, T. D., & Mitra, P. (2013). Colorism: Ubiquitous Yet Understudied. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 6(1), 103–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/iops.12018

As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and revealed the extent of our national mental health crisis, especially among undergraduate students and young adults. According to the National College Health Assessment survey in 2021, almost 75% of undergraduates nationwide reported moderate or severe psychological distress. Researchers are attributing this crisis to insufficient sleep, social media use and/or abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual or emotional abuse, low social support, trauma, etc. Sociologically, this is a crisis not only of individual suffering but of frail, fractured, and stressed relationships. Supportive and joyous relationships are crucial for wellbeing, but feelings of despair may themselves create barriers to building and maintaining those relationships. I want to develop a closer sociological investigation into the social and emotional lives of young adults to understand the everyday challenges of having fun together. I want to understand how young adults have fun together, and what are the personal, social, emotional, and relational barriers that make having fun challenging. What are the consequences of struggles to have fun for their mental and emotional health and wellbeing? Over the summer of 2023, I completed a comprehensive literature review on studies surrounding themes of emotions, mental health, social relationships, drug use, college students, and young adults. According to “The Sociology of Emotions,” emotions are viewed by social psychologists as a product of social influences and determinants of emotional experiences are not psychological but sociocultural (Thoits 1989). For example, Emerson (2011) shows how the emotional lives of young adults are shaped by their relationships with roommates. Emerson’s respondents would feel irritated, then frustrated, then angry, then once the problem was addressed, occasionally ashamed for having ever made a big deal of it. I want to investigate and track some of these emotion cycles to be able to understand the implications they have on relationships and wellbeing. I want to learn more about how shame cycles work in college student’s lives because I want to understand common reasons for an emotion spiral to start, how people work on stopping it, and the thought process behind these emotions.  In addition to learning about the sociology of emotions, I reviewed studies and reports about mental health resources on college campuses. Many colleges and universities lack sufficient on-campus mental health resources. 95% of community colleges and 58.8% of traditional universities have no on-campus psychiatric services (Katz, Et. All, 2014). Not only are the numbers of counselors at community colleges and commuter schools much less than at universities, but the student population has a greater need for help due to financial stress, family situations, lower socioeconomic status, coming from broken homes, parents who are less likely to encourage growth, etc. Thus, college students are often turning to their friends for mental health support. The friend attempting to give advice may struggle with how to help and what to do, which adds stress and anxiety to their life as well (Ezarik, Melissa, 2022). In this way, mental health struggles on campus may become contagious. Further, many students do not know if they are even eligible for care. Even if they do know that they are eligible, in small schools the certified counselor to student ratio is 1:1000-2000, and large schools is 1:2000-3500 according to “The College Mental Health Crisis: A Call for Cultural Change”, making access to care competitive and difficult to come by (Beresin, Eliza Abdu-Glass, Steven Schlozman, MD, Gene, 2017). During the summer, I also began analyzing anonymous undergraduate reflections of fun occasions in their lives to generate new ideas for another round of data collection. I coded these fun reflections and was able to identify some important barriers to fun that consistently emerged in their reports. Oftentimes, people became hyper self-aware of how others see them. Yet, other times, I found that these instances of “fun trouble” bonded people together-sometimes against a common enemy or other. I am now preparing a 2-part survey and interview procedure involving Gonzaga students and students from other Spokane colleges: public, private, and community colleges. The online survey instrument will collect some basic information from the respondent and then prompt them to provide a written reflection of a time they had fun or set out to have fun. Then, during the in- person interview phase of data collection, I will ask the respondent to provide more detail about the occasion they described in the survey and attempt to understand how they felt at certain moments and how common those situations are in their life. I will code and analyze these interviews to find common themes. Overall, I want to develop a humanistic understanding of how people feel when they are trying to have fun, and the kinds of interpersonal and interactional barriers that can keep that joy out of reach. Fully understanding these dynamics requires studying how feelings of sadness and isolation are met with efforts to spark authentic joy, fun, and connection. I believe that the study of joy and everyday life of young adults can be used as a tool to implement intervention strategies used to assist those who are struggling to build authentic and joyous social relationships. I aim to develop implications for student affairs, counseling centers, university administrators, and for students themselves. I am passionate about this research because I have personally felt experiences of strained relationships. And when college students struggle to find joyous relationships, they may become hyper self-aware of this oftentimes via social media. Social media can then exacerbate the struggles for finding authentic and meaningful connections due to comparison to peers. I want young people to know they are not alone. Works Cited and Consulted Beresin, E. A.-G., Steven Schlozman, MD, Gene. (2017, March 6). The College Mental Health Crisis: A Call for Cultural Change – Part 2. MGH Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds. https://www.mghclaycenter.org/parenting-concerns/college-mental-health-crisis-call-cultural-change-part-2/ Borghouts, Judith, Elizabeth V. Eikey, Gloria Mark, Cinthia De Leon, Stephen M. Schueller, Margaret Schneider, Nicole Stadnick, Kai Zheng, Dana B. Mikael, and Dara H. Sorkin. 2021. “Understanding Mental Health App Use Among Community College Students: Web-Based Survey Study.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 23(9):e27745. Doi: 10.2196/27745. Emerson, R. (2011). From Normal Conflict to Normative Deviance: The Micro-Politics of Trouble in Close Relationships. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40(1), 3–38. Ezarik, M. (n.d.). Student Mental Health Status Report: Struggles, Stressors and Supports. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved June 1, 2023, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/04/19/survey-college-students-reflect-mental-health-and-campus-help Fincham, B. (2016). The sociology of fun. Springer. Fine, Gary Alan, and Ugo Corte. 2017. “Group Pleasures: Collaborative Commitments, Shared Narrative, and the Sociology of Fun.” Sociological Theory 35(1):64–86. Goffman, Alice. 2019. “Go to More Parties? Social Occasions as Home to Unexpected Turning Points in Life Trajectories.” Social Psychology Quarterly 82(1):51–74. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1979. “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology 85(3):551–75. Katz, D., & Davison, K. (n.d.). Community College Student Mental Health: A Comparative Analysis. Scheff, Thomas. 2014. “Goffman on Emotions: The Pride-Shame System.” Symbolic Interaction 37(1):108–21. Doi: 10.1002/symb.86. Sontag-Padilla, Lisa, Michelle W. Woodbridge, Joshua Mendelsohn, Elizabeth J. D’Amico, Karen Chan Ocilla, Lisa H. Jaycox, Nicole K. Eberhart, Audrey M. Burnam, and Bradley D. Stein. 2016. “Factors Affecting Mental Health Service Utilization Among California Public College and University Students.” Psychiatric Services 67(8):890–97. Doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201500307. Thoits, P. A. (1989). The Sociology of Emotions. Annual Review of Sociology, 15(1), 317–342. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.15.080189.001533 Wade, Lisa. 2017. American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus. WW Norton & Company.

The research question: There has been a large amount of research done on the negative effects of materialism and consumerism on individual and couple relationships. Diverse struggles such as increased loneliness, lower levels of couple relationship satisfaction, and a negative impact on the overall well-being of individuals. There have also been both theories and evidence found that suggest there are multiple types of materialism. The question this study hopes to answer is: Does a higher level of materialism relate to a lower quantity and quality of social relationships and a person's willingness to participate in pro-social activities? This question will be explored using the different subtypes of materials classified by Richins and Dawson (1992) to see if the different categories result in different outcomes. Contributions: Materialism and consumerism have been linked to higher levels of loneliness, an increased focus on extrinsic goals, various social challenges, and lower overall well-being of individuals (Fumagalli, Shrum, and Lowrey., 2022; Pieters, 2013). Other research has found people with higher levels of consumeristic/materialistic values to a lower frequency of intrinsic and pro-social pursuits (Pratono, 2019; Sheldon and Kasser, 2018). These previous studies have focused on individual consequences and relationships consisting of two individuals. This study hopes to see if there is any difference in the impact of materialism on non-didactic friend-based relationships. This study will add to this discussion by implementing the use of the subtypes of materialism proposed by Richins and Dawson (1992) in a similar manner to that used by Pieters (2013) where he identified interesting differences suggesting that not all the subtypes of materialism yield the same impact on loneliness. Pieters's research found that loneliness is negatively impacted by materialism when treated as a whole but when it was separated into three subtypes, defined by Richins and Dawson, that acquisition centrality lowered loneliness over time in contrast to the results of the other measures. Following this same pattern this study will try to see if there are similar differences of the subtypes in relation to their impact on social relationships and behaviors. Data and Methods: This study will employ a mixed methods approach including both quantitative and qualitative assessments. Data is being gathered through the use of online surveys and interviews being collected through the use of survey-sharing services, social media, and snowball sampling. Participation is limited to individuals residing in the United States who are at least 18 years of age. Due to this demographic focus and the sole use of online collection methods, any conclusions include a description of these limitations. The survey includes 20 questions including 5 questions about the participants demographic, 9 on materialism, 3 about relationships, and 3 relating to pro-social attitudes and behaviors. The non-demographic questions ask for numerical behavioral information and attitudes with responses being given on a Likert scale. Data from the surveys will be collected and coded in order to be studied using multivariate analysis. The interview questions include a related list of demographic questions and two to three opened questions on consumerism, relationships, and empathy being used to relate to pro-social attitudes. The interviews will be recorded and transcribed and then the use of coding and thematic analysis will be applied to the interview data. References: Fumagalli, E., Shrum, L. J., & Lowrey, T. M. 2022. “Consuming in response to loneliness: Bright side and dark side effects.” Current Opinion in Psychology, (46):101329. Retrieved September 11, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101329) Pieters, R. 2013. Bidirectional Dynamics of materialism and loneliness: Not just a vicious cycle. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(4):615–631. Retrieved October 23, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1086/671564) Pratono, A. H. 2019. “Linking Religiosity to Citizenship Behaviour under Materialism Attitude: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia.” International Journal of Ethics and Systems 35(1):75–89. Richins, Marsha L., Scott Dawson. 1992. “A Consumer Values Orientation for Materialism and Its Measurement: Scale Development and Validation.” Journal of Consumer Research 19 (3):303–316. Retrieved April 5, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1086/209304) Sheldon, K. M., & Kasser, T. 2008. “Psychological threat and extrinsic goal striving.” Motivation and Emotion, 32(1):37–45. Retrieved October 23, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-008-9081-5)

Introduction Athletes are expected to make many sacrifices for the game such as accepting risks and playing through pain and/or injury, pushing their physical and mental limits, striving for distinction, dedicating themselves to the game, and limiting their time involving social interactions, family, education, and relationships in order to stay “locked in” for their sport (Fournier, Parent & Paradis, 2021). These expectations are referred to as the sport ethic; a guide used to evaluate positive attitudes and actions in the social world of sports. The idea of athletes going beyond the social norm of being hard working, committed, focused, and determined is termed as deviant overconformity. Sport has been known to be a ‘culture of risk’ in which athletes are expected to engage in risks for personal and social gains in their sport, as well as push boundaries in an effort to maximize and maintain their athletic identity (Coker-Cranney, Watson, Bernstein, Voelker & Coakley, 2018). The decisions to overconform are primarily rooted in the belief that commitment to the sport ethic provides an athlete with mental, social, and physical advantages. Theory The sociological theory I have chosen for my study is the interactionist theory, also known as symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism is the sociological perspective on self and society. The central theme of this theory is that human life is lived in the symbolic domain in which these symbols provide meaning and construct reality. The three basic premises of symbolic interactionism are 1) humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them, 2) the meanings of things derive from social interaction, and 3) these meanings are dependent on, and modified by, an interpretive process of the people who interact with one another. This theory is essential in guiding research as it uses concepts such as social interaction, socialization, role models, significant others, self-concept, identity, labeling, deviance, and stereotyping to study social development and connects with how these symbols can influence society on both the micro and macro level. Statement of Problem There are multiple reasons why there is a need to do this research. First, there is currently limited research and data available, leaving a large gap in this area of study. This poses the issue that this topic does not have as much awareness as it should. Second, the research that is available among this topic is inconsistent. This poses the issue of contradictory results regarding the topic of athletes overconforming to the sport ethic. The most important reason for why there is a need to do this research is to bring awareness about this topic. It is important for athletes, coaches, parents, and other relevant personnel to understand when to draw the line and understand when too much is too much so that appropriate boundaries can be set and followed through with. Bringing awareness about this topic may also decrease unhealthy habits of sacrifice among athletes and allow coaches to respect and accept boundaries. Purpose of Study The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the coach-athlete relationship, deviant overconformity to the sport ethic, and athletic perfectionism. Contribution/Application of Findings The findings of this study will contribute to current research among athletes and deviant conformity and can be applied to individual athletes as well as coaches when it comes to boundary setting and overconforming behaviors. Overview of Variables in Study There are six different variables within my study. The first one being the coach-athlete relationship. The coach-athlete relationship variable measures six different factors: dependability, vulnerability, acceptance, connection, value, and closeness. The second variable is overconforming behaviors. These behaviors are split up into five categories: physical sacrifice, mental sacrifice, family sacrifice, educational sacrifice, and social sacrifice. The third variable is athletic perfectionism and measures five different factors: Needs to be perfect, criticism, fear of mistakes, perfectionistic self-presentation, and satisfaction. The fourth variable is confidence and self-image, variable 5 is boundary setting, and the last variable, variable 6, is motivators in sport. Methodology Recruitment Current and previous collegiate student-athletes who are still enrolled in college will be recruited to participate in this study via convenience sampling. Procedure A survey will be sent out via google forms for all current/previous collegiate student-athletes who are 18+ and still enrolled in school, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. The survey will involve 2 different nominal questionnaires and 4 different Likert scales. The two nominal questionnaires include 1) demographics and 2) motivators in sport participation (MSP). The three Likert scales include 1) Confidence, Self-Image, and Boundary Setting Questionnaire (CSBSQ), 2) Coach-Athlete Relationship Scale (CARS), 3) Deviant Overconformity to the Sport Ethic Scale (DOSES), and 4) the Athletic Perfectionism Scale (APS). The four Likert scales will be looked at in correlation with each other and the nominal questionnaires will serve the purpose of 1) ruling out confounding variables and 2) potentially help to further elaborate the reasoning behind results of the Likert scales. Statistical Analysis Frequency, Pearson’s correlation, linear regression, and factor analysis will be used. Operational Definition of Dependent Variable Over conformity to the sport ethic: Participating in physical, social, family, mental, and educational sacrifice for the purpose of the sport/participation in sport. Operational Definitions of Independent Variables Coach-athlete relationship: A relationship between a coach and athlete involving mutual dependability, vulnerability, acceptance, connection, value, and closeness. Athletic perfectionism: An athlete experiencing the need to be perfect, very critical of themselves, fear of making mistakes, feeling the need to appear to be perfect, and self-satisfaction. Boundary setting: The ability of an athlete to set and follow through with boundaries. References Coker-Cranney, A., Watson, J., Bernstein, M., Voelker, D. & Coakley, J. (2018). How far is too far? Understanding identity and over conformity in collegiate wrestlers. Qual Res Sport Exercise Health, 10(1), 92-116. How far is too far? Understanding identity and overconformity in collegiate wrestlers (nih.gov) Fournier, C., Parent, S. & Paradis, H. (2021). The relationship between psychological violence by coaches and conformity of young athletes to the sport ethic norms. European Journal for Sport and Society. Accepted manuscript (researchgate.net)

There is no denying that social media apps play an interesting role in shaping modern dating. For my research topic, I propose to study the relationship between young adults' use of social media and feelings of jealousy or insecurity in their intimate partner relationships. I will begin the basis of my research using previous research from a Pew Research Center article titled “Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age” by Emily Vogels and Monica Anderson. For my literature review I will focus on three main concepts found in my previous research in understanding the relationship between social media and feelings of insecurities and jealousy in young adults’ intimate partner relationships. The three main concepts found in my previous studies included young adults’ social comparisons, behaviors on social media, and the amount of time spent on social media. With these contributing factors I will be able to have a foundation for understanding my general research question which states, “what is the relationship between young adults’ use of social media and feelings of jealousy and insecurities in their intimate partner relationships?” Social Comparisons Young adults use social media as a way to publicly display their new profound relationships (Fejes, Vékássy, Ujhelyi, Faragó, 2020). This represents a sense of “popularity” and being seen as “cool”, compared to those who are not in a relationship (Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, Beckert, 2017). This leads to pressures of young adults getting into relationships and posting their partner for the approval of their peers (Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, Beckert, 2017). However, this leaves an ample amount of room for unrealistic expectations as to how their intimate relationships should transpire (Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, Beckert, 2017). According to the research conducted by Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, and Beckert (2017), many young adults argued that social media often portrays the overly “joyfulness” of these relationships and they are also highly regulated by gender roles. There is an unrealistic expectation as for how young men and women should behave in their relationships, such as young men having to be extreme gentlemen, or young women following a certain appearance to attract young men (Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, Beckert, 2017). The activity of what couples post varies depending on the status of their relationship as well (Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, Beckert, 2017). Couples in new relationships tend to post their partners more often and also have less activity on social media, while couples who recently have broken up show more activity on social media (Vaterlaus, Tulane, Porter, Beckert, 2017). In a study of 18 instagram users ranging from the ages 20-25, conducted by Fejes, Vékássy, Ujhelyi, and Faragó (2020), found that individuals with who recently broke up with their partners made indirect posts directed towards their ex’s, or they posted more images of themselves. These posts are meant to show their former partners what they are “missing out on”, ultimately leading to feelings of jealousy (Fejes, Vékássy, Ujhelyi, Faragó, 2020). Behaviors on Social Media Social media behaviors that can induce feelings of jealousy or insecurities in intimate partnerships include liking, commenting, or posting images of individuals from the opposite sex (Ouytsel, Walrave, Ponnet, Willems, Van Dam, 2019). Although these are the main ways to connect with peers, being in a relationship complicates these factors because it can lead to partner’s feeling insecure about a third party interfering (Ouytsel, Walrave, Ponnet, Willems, Van Dam, 2019). Additional social media behaviors that cause these negative feelings include messaging other’s, being left on “read”, or receiving “dry messages” (Ouytsel, Walrave, Ponnet, Willems, Van Dam, 2019). Reactions to these behaviors can also lead to unhealthy acts of “electronic intrusions”, which includes stalking their partners’ social media, going through their phones, or monitoring their partners’ behavior on social media (Reed, Tolman, & Safyer, 2015). Reed, Tolman, & Safyer (2015), conducted a study on college students to understand how attachment styles can lead to “electronic intrusion” in romantic relationships. In their previous research, they found that out of 306 college students, 42.8% of the students reported that they have looked through their partners’ private digital accounts (Reed, Tolman, & Safyer, 2015). Students also reported their fear of having sexual images of them being posted due to altercations with their intimate partners (Reed, Tolman, & Safyer, 2015). Therefore, social media behaviors can not only be a leading cause in feelings of jealousy and insecurities in young adults relationships, but it can also lead to digital dating abuse (Reed, Tolman, & Safyer, 2015). Time Spent on Social Media The amount of time individuals spend on social media can have a direct impact on their feelings of jealousy and insecurities in their relationships. With the feasibility of searching and access to information, many young adults who spend a large amount of time on social media can be inclined to feel higher rates of insecurities (Reed, Tolman, & Safyer, 2015). This can also become problematic in their relationships due to individuals who feel like their partners’ are spending too much time on their phones (Vogels & Anderson, 2020). In a Pew Research Center Study, Vogels and Anderson (2020), found that out of a study of 4,860 US adults, 40% of the individuals reported that they were bothered by how much their partners spend on their phones. Moreover, 24% of individuals reported that they felt bothered by how much time their partner spends on social media (Vogels & Anderson, 2020). In an additional study of how jealousy on social media can lead to intimate partner violence (IPV), researchers found that one of the primary factors that causes IPV is the amount of time and frequency individuals spend on social (Edmonds, Vaillancourt-Morel, Métellus, Brassard, & Daspe, 2023). To conclude, this study is very important in understanding the influence social media has on young adults. The information that they soak in constantly can have a negative effect on the way they manage their own relationships which can lead to unhealthy, toxic relationships. Social comparisons allow young adults to compare their own relationships with their peers and even celebrities which can incite unrealistic expectations for relationships. Behaviors on social media such as liking, commenting, and posting certain images, gives contextual knowledge as to potential triggers of feelings of insecurities and jealousy in their intimate partner relationships. Lastly, the amount of time spent on social media can not only cause jealousy and insecurities from partners who are using social media more frequently, but also their partners’ who feel like they are being neglected due to how much time their partner spends on social media. Ultimately, these main concepts give me a basis to conduct my own research in understanding these different relationships. The best method to collect my quantitative data will be to use a correlation survey. Punch (2014, p. 216) defines correlation surveys as a way to study the relationships between different variables in a study. This will be the most helpful strategy to collect my data due to time constraints and limited finances. I will be surveying at least 20 individuals between the ages of 18-30. Limitations to this type of data collection is that my sample size is very small and therefore lacks generalization (Punch 2014). This is also a survey with predetermined answers causing a lack of variation with answers. I will combat these limitations by using in-depth interviews which will provide broader responses. Quantitative Data Collection I will use a correlation survey to understand the relationships between social media and feelings of jealousy and insecurities in intimate partner relationships. I will be surveying 20 people using Instagram to provide my survey link. This does have limitations because only my followers will be able to see the link to my survey but it will also be random because I will make a general post and I have a decent following so I may receive more than 20 responses. My survey questions will measure their thoughts on whether social comparisons, behaviors on social media, and the amount of time they spent on social media contribute to feelings of jealousy and insecurities in intimate partner relationships. I will begin by asking demographic questions such as their gender, age, and race. This will give me a deeper understanding of who my respondents are and if they fall into my age range of social media users. My questions will ask questions about how much time the respondents use on social media, and are there certain features (liking, commenting, posting, etc..) that can cause problems in their romantic relationships. Quantitative Hypotheses and Variables My dependent variable in this study is feelings of jealousy and insecurities in intimate partner relationships, while my independent variables are social comparisons, behaviors on social media, and time spent on social media. When measuring social comparisons and behaviors on social media, I mainly used a likert-type (Punch 2014) scale to determine how strongly the participants agree or disagree with the questions. Time spent on social media is a continuous variable because people may not know the exact amount of time they spend on a particular app and it may change. The chart below shows a demonstration of the dependent variable in the green box and the three independent variables in the blue boxes. Hypothesis 1 I hypothesize that an increase in social media usage will cause an increase in feelings of jealousy and insecurities in intimate partner relationships. Voguels and Anderson (2020) found that many young adults share a concern for how much time their partner spends on social media apps. This elicits jealousy because they are unsure of their partners behaviors on the apps (Voguels and Anderson 2020). Hypothesis 2 I hypothesize that individuals who compare their relationships to content on social media will cause an increase in feelings of jealousy and insecurities in their intimate partner relationships. Social media posts often highlight couples who are happy and “joyful” which can cause individuals to compare their relationship (Ouytsel, Walrave, Ponnet, Willems, Van Dam, 2019). This can also lead to unrealistic expectations as to how couples should manage their intimate partner relationships (Ouytsel, Walrave, Ponnet, Willems, Van Dam, 2019). Quantitative Sampling Strategy I will be using the cluster sampling method by surveying 20 individuals using Instagram through the “story” feature. I will make a general post on my story asking if people would like to take my survey and I will provide the link. This is the best method for me because the majority of my followers are between the ages of 18 to 35 which fits my age range. I also anticipate that I may receive a little more than 20 responses which will make my population size larger. This is also the best method for my research because it is time and cost efficient. Of course there will still be limitations because my instagram account is not public but I will combat these limitations with my in-depth interviews. For my qualitative research, I will be conducting structured and in-depth, face-to-face interviews (Punch 2014). This is the most appropriate method for my research because I will be able to gather personal experiences and thoughts through my open-ended questions (Punch 2014). This will allow room for flexibility and responses that directly correlate with my research question. Limitations that will occur while conducting this study is that my sample size is relatively small which lacks generalization (Punch 2014). I will combat this by including a quantitative survey with a larger sample size. Qualitative Data Collection I will be interviewing 4 individuals for my interviews. Each interview should last approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. My qualitative interview guide consists of questions in regards to my concepts of social comparisons, behaviors on social media, and the amount of time spent on social media as contributing factors to feelings of jealousy and insecurities in relationships. I will begin with general questions about my interview participants which will demonstrate how they relate to my research topic. I proceed to ask questions about how participants feel about the content they see on social media and if it causes them to compare their relationships to the standards of social media. Next, I ask questions about behaviors on social media such as liking and commenting on posts and how they feel about their partners’ behaviors on social media. Lastly, I ask questions about the amount of time they spend on social media and how they feel like this impacts their own relationship. My reasoning for designing these questions in this order is to show the multiple effects social media can have on relationships and how each concept relates to one another. I will conduct my interviews in a calm setting such as a coffee shop or park depending on weather conditions. I will dress casual and will also record the interview with my participant’s consent. I will transcribe my interviews on my laptop using google docs. In order to show my appreciation for my participants allowing me to interview them, I will also give them a $10 starbucks gift card. Qualitative Sampling Strategy For my sampling method I will utilize a non-probability purposeful sampling method (Punch 2014). I will make an announcement on my Instagram account with an attached link to my survey for individuals to take if they would like to. In the survey I will include a question asking if individuals would like to be interviewed and to attach the best way to contact them if they would like to. From the respondents who agree to be interviewed I will choose them based on their survey responses. I will conduct 4 interviews which will include 2 boys and 2 girls. This method of sampling is most appropriate because it will allow me to choose participants who fit the criteria for my research topic. This method also creates limitations because my social media is limited to only my followers which lacks generalization as well. However, I have a larger population on social media and may receive greater than 15 responses for my survey which will increase my sample size. Works Cited Emond, Marianne, Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel, Sarafina Métellus, Audrey Brassard, and Marie-Ève Daspe. 2023. “Social Media Jealousy and Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adults’ Romantic Relationships: A Longitudinal Study.” Telematics and Informatics 79:101956. Fejes-Vékássy, L., A. Ujhelyi, and L. Faragó. 2020. “From #relationshipgoals to #heartbreak – We Use Instagram Differently in Various Romantic Relationship Statuses.” Current Psychology 41(10):6825–37. Reed, Lauren A., Richard M. Tolman, and Paige Safyer. 2015. “Too Close for Comfort: Attachment Insecurity and Electronic Intrusion in College Students’ Dating Relationships.” Computers in Human Behavior 50:431–38. Van Ouytsel, Joris, Michel Walrave, Koen Ponnet, An-Sofie Willems, and Melissa Van Dam. 2019. “Adolescents’ Perceptions of Digital Media’s Potential to Elicit Jealousy, Conflict and Monitoring Behaviors within Romantic Relationships.” Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 13(3). Vaterlaus, J. Mitchell, Sarah Tulane, Brandon D. Porter, and Troy E. Beckert. 2017. “The Perceived Influence of Media and Technology on Adolescent Romantic Relationships.” Journal of Adolescent Research 33(6):651–71. Vogels, Emily A. 2020. “Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved October 10, 2023 (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/05/08/dating-and-relationships-in-the-digital-age/).

The purpose of my study is to determine the extent and effectiveness of relationships between students and staff in after school programs, specifically in YMCA after school programs. Previous research has indicated that relationship building is a key factor to student success within these programs (Jordan 2014; Huang, Coordt, La Torre, Leon, Miyoshi, Perez, and Peterson 2007; Rhodes 2004). There is a gap in the research, however, showing how relationship building between students and staff occurs and functions throughout a wide variety of after school programs. Current literature mainly focuses either on how successful very specific after school programs are, which may or may not include relationship building as a component to that research, or they look at relationship building without specifically focusing on after school programming (Huang et al. 2007; Wenger 2000; Colistra, Bixler, and Schmalz 2018). Additionally, very little literature specifically focuses on how the staff at after school programs build meaningful relationships with the students they work with. As after school programming continues to expand across the United States, understanding how relationship building occurs in these programs more broadly, and understanding how staff develop meaningful relationships, will be a crucial component to the success of these programs. This research project can provide insights for educators, policy makers, nonprofits focused on after school programming, and after school programs themselves for how these programs can be best structured to promote relationship building between students and staff. My research questions are 1. Does the structure of after school programs promote and/or impede the development of relationships between students and staff? 2. What aspects of the structure of after school programs are the most influential, especially for relationship building? And 3. Is relationship building in after school programs important to their success, measured by staff engagement and enjoyment of working at the program? My hypotheses are that 1. After school program structure matters for the development of relationships between students and staff, and quality structures will promote relationship development between students and staff. More specifically, after school programs with a structure focused on relationship building and working together will report more relationships between staff and students at the program. 2. A climate where bonding is encouraged between not only students and staff, but between the staff with each other and the staff with administrators, is the most influential structural component of after school programs for relationship building. 3. Relationship building is crucial to the success of after school programs. Thousands of kids across the country take part in after school programs, which begs the question, is there any merit to them; if so what is that merit; and how is value created from these programs? Literature on after school programs has found that yes, these programs do have merit for the kids that attend them, and that value comes from many factors such as homework help for students, the opportunity to improve social skills, programs providing academic support and making learning more fun, safety and supervision that the programs provide, and the opportunity for children to build confidence (Kelly 2023). These programs also can improve psychological and identity-related outcomes for marginalized, low-income, youth of color, and have been associated with positive mental health outcomes, especially for these students (Christensen, Kremer, Poon, and Rhodes 2023). These benefits from after school programs come from key program factors, such as relationship building between the staff that work at the programs and the students that attend them, as these programs provide students with an expanded network of adults and mentors to work with (Huang, Coordt, La Torre, Leon, Miyoshi, Perez, and Peterson 2007). Positive relationships between students and teachers is defined by the authors of the paper "Facilitating Student Engagement: Lessons Learned from Check and Connect Longitudinal Studies" as a relationship "based upon mutual trust and open communication" (Sinclair, Christensen, Lehr, and Andersen 2003:5). Relationships with these characteristics can occur in after school programs and have reported benefits for students such as increased motivation, higher academic competence, positive engagement, and increased school value (Huang et al. 2007). Relationship building in after school programs can occur because these staff are often closer in age to the participants than people such as parents or teachers, so these staff are often in a prime position to provide life advice and guidance to these students (Rhodes 2004). So, what are some key factors to promoting relationship building in after school programs? Five ways that positive relationships can be formed are by encouraging positive relationships between staff and students, linking to the school-day staff, supporting and training program staff, engaging families, and collaborating with community organizations (Jordan 2014). Some other important factors for strong student-staff relationships include teamwork and communication, trust, bonding, and support (Huang et al. 2007). Youth programs can promote these factors because they often have a more relational climate where it is less teacher-centered, they can be an emotional safe space, students are given more autonomy, and the space itself provides many opportunities to talk (Griffith and Johnson 2019). While both youth and staff help to create a space where strong bonds can be formed, staff especially can help create this space in a couple ways. One way is they can create authentic conversations by checking in with youth, making themselves available, getting to know youth, and engaging in informal conversations (Griffith and Johnson 2019). Another way is by developing trust with students, which they can do by respecting youth, building rapport, being consistent, and taking a nuanced adult role in students' lives (Griffith and Johnson 2019). An example of an after school program organization that has had a lot of success, especially with relationship building, is The After-School Corporation (TASC). TASC incorporated projects into their after school programs, and these projects prompted students to have daily, friendly conversations with peers, which were modeled by the adult staff (Policy Studies Associates, Inc. 2014). The relationship students developed with staff has been shown to be a main way that students develop a sense of self-worth, sense of community, and mindfulness about their own future (Policy Studies Associates, Inc. 2014). A gap in the literature is specifically looking at relationship building across a large range of after school programs, as most of the current literature that looks at relationship building in after school programs looks at a specific program, such as the LA's BEST program (Huang et al. 2007), as opposed to how relationship building occurs in after school programs more broadly. There is also not a lot of literature that looks at how staff build relationships in after school programs, as most of the literature focuses on how students build relationships. Furthermore, a lot of the literature is based on theories of what hypothetically would work for relationship building in after school programs, but few studies specifically evaluate if this relationship building, especially from a staff perspective, is occurring and how effective staff feel this relationship building is. The project is important to conduct because understanding how and why relationship building occurs, especially from a staff perspective, in after school programs could help lead to a greater understanding of how to conduct after school programs and staff trainings in order to best promote student learning and success. Having a better understanding of how relationship building in after school programs function could also potentially lead to better after school experiences for thousands of students. For my project methods, I created a survey to measure after school staff’s perceptions of the quality of their relationships with students they work with in after school programs. Before sending out the survey, I completed an IRB and got my project approved. In order to find staff to participate in my survey, I started by creating a list of YMCA websites that included websites from YMCAs in all 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and U.S. military bases. On each website, I tried to find who was the program or site director at that YMCA location for their after school programs and what was their email. For sites that listed emails of program or site directors (for which many websites did), I copied their emails into a spreadsheet. I then emailed the names of over 500 after school program directors from the emails I had on my spreadsheet to ask if they would be willing to share a short survey (5-15 min long) with their program staff. If they said yes, then they gave the survey link to their staff who were able to fill out the survey anonymously. To measure staff-student relationships in YMCA after school programs, I surveyed after school program staff from across the country 14 questions to ask about the following topics. The first 1-7 questions asked staff about if and how they build relationships with their students, including by asking about traits that are necessary for relationship building. For example, staff were asked if they have been able to build trust with the students that they work with. They are also asked questions about communicating with other staff and adults in the lives of the children they work with, along with being asked about how much they are able to talk with the children in which they work with about their lives and interests. The next 8-13 questions ask about demographic information, such as the U.S. state in which one works, gender identity, race/ethnicity, and age. The last question asks if staff would like to share anything with me, the researcher, that wasn’t covered through the other survey questions. I will compare the responses from the relationship building questions to the demographic information that is shared to see if there is any significance between the relationship building responses and different demographics. In creating my survey, I utilized several questions that were used to ask about student-staff relationships in the LA’s BEST after school program in California. I also added in a number of my own questions to make the survey more in line with my research question. In questions 1-7, most of the multiple choice questions are pulled directly from the survey used to evaluate the LA’s BEST after school program. However, most of the responses that ask for a written response were my own questions. The demographics questions are similar demographics questions to those asked in many surveys and represent answer choices that are fairly common for surveys. (For example, when asking about gender identity, the choices are male, female, non-binary/third gender, and prefer not to say, which are fairly standard options for that type of question.) References Colistra, Craig, Robert Bixler, and Dorothy Schmalz. 2019. "Exploring Factors That Contribute to Relationship Building in a Community Center." Journal of Leisure Research 50(1):1-17. doi: 10.1080/00222216.2018.1542527. Christensen, Kirsten M., Kristen P. Kremer, Cyanea Y. S. Poon, and Jean E. Rhodes. 2023. "A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of after-School Programmes among Youth with Marginalized Identities." Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 33(4):882-913. doi: 10.1002/casp.2681. Griffith, Aisha N., and Haley E. Johnson. 2019. "Building Trust: Reflections of Adults Working with High-School-Age Youth in Project-Based Programs." Children and Youth Services Review 96:439-50. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.11.056. Huang, Denise., Allison Coordt, Deborah La Torre, Seth Leon, Judy Miyoshi, Patricia Perez, and Cynthia Peterson. 2007. The Afterschool Hours: Examining the Relationship between Afterschool Staff-Based Social Capital and Student Engagement in LA's BEST. CRESST/ University of California, Los Angeles. Jordan, Catherine. 2014. "Building Supportive Relationships in Afterschool." SEDL Insights 2(1). Kelly, Kate. "Benefits of Afterschool Programs | Child After School Programs." Understood. Retrieved August 4, 2023 (https://www.understood.org/en/articles/benefits-afterschool-programs-kids-with-learning-thinking-differences). Policy Studies Associates, Inc. 2004. Building Quality, Scale, and Effectiveness in After-School Programs. Rhodes, Jean E. 2004. "The Critical Ingredient: Caring Youth-Staff Relationships in after-School Settings." New Directions for Youth Development 2004(101):145-61. doi: 10.1002/yd.75. Sinclair, Mary F., Sandra L. Christenson, Camilla A. Lehr, and Amy Reschly Anderson. 2003. "Facilitating Student Engagement: Lessons Learned from Check & Connect Longitudinal Studies." The California School Psychologist 8(1):29-41. doi: 10.1007/BF03340894. Wenger, Etienne. 2000. "Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems." Organization 7(2):225-46. doi: 10.1177/135050840072002. YMCA. 2023. "Our Locations." The YMCA. Retrieved Sept. 6, 2023. YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh. 2020. "Nationwide Membership." The YMCA. Retrieved Sept. 6, 2023.

Introduction In theory, merit acts as a great equalizer. The American education system is structured to reward individuals with merit. By structuring society around this idea, advocates of neoliberalism argue that those who are the most deserving of power are the ones who will receive it. In actuality, merit can justify inequalities by rewarding those with pre-existing privileges and punishing those with social barriers to success. The idea of merit and deservingness creates a socially-stratified system where “the winners must believe they have earned their success through their own talent and hard work” and the losers have nobody to blame but themselves (Sandel, 2020). Historical and social factors influence one’s ability to succeed. By focusing on merit and ignoring these larger forces, one comes to believe that their success and failures are the result of their efforts and abilities. In American society, ideals of masculinity are also ideals of merit. Common traits of merit like competition, self-assertion, strength, forwardness, and technological mastery are all traits of merit and masculinity. When these traits are taken to the extremes, they become signs of toxic masculinity. These traits are manifested particularly well in geek masculinity. Geek masculinity allows previously-outcast white men to find a path to masculinity (and thus patriarchal power) through merit. What happens when the traditional beneficiaries of patriarchy exist in a merit-based society, and what role does higher education play? Puzzle Garlick (2023) claims that masculinity is a tool to respond to the uncertainty of neoliberalism, but what happens when masculinity is the thing that is unstable? How is toxicity a reaction to the neoliberal-driven uncertainty surrounding masculinity? How does meritocracy and the neoliberal-driven rise of technology changed masculinity, and how does this change fuel toxic masculinity? How does neoliberalism’s emphasis on individualized responsibility and justification of inequality fuel the fires of toxic masculinity? How do the masculinized merit traits of competition and STEM fetishization in higher education contribute to this issue? Formula Expectation 1: Neoliberal masculinized promises → upward mobility to white men Expectation 2: Neoliberal emphasis on technology development → new route for competition and mastery (masculine ideals of merit) → economic power → merit-justified success and power for men who previously didn’t have a route to hegemonic masculinity Reality: Neoliberal emphasis on technology development → new route for competition and mastery (masculine ideals of merit) → undermining of traditional masculine ideals related to laborious work → disillusionment when not able to get masculinized merit → use of violence and threats of violence to reclaim masculinity → rise in toxic masculinity Theoretical Question How does the combination of masculinized ideals of merit and the neoliberal promise of technologically-driven upward mobility affect toxic masculinity? Empirical Question How do students’ experiences/perspectives on gendered forms of competition in STEM affect their views and experiences with overt sexism and contribute to the normalization of male violence? Theoretical Y: Toxic Masculinity Toxic masculinity is a form of hyper-masculine domination that places high levels of importance on competition, hierarchy, and strength and “ involves the need to aggressively compete and dominate others” (Haider, 2016). Toxic masculinity is different from hegemonic masculinity because it is inherently reactionary and violent. Toxic masculinity emerged in the 1980’s in the men’s rights movement and acted as a response to second-wave feminism (Harrington, 2021). The movement described a militaristic, authoritarian, and violent form of masculinity that was originally attributed a lack of fatherly influence (Harrington, 2021). When the term was originally coined, it was used primarily to describe marginalized men as aggressive and violent, but in recent years the term has been used to describe the misogynistic actions of white elite men (Harrington, 2021). Masculinity is inherently associated with violence. “If violence is constitutive of masculinity, then violence becomes the mode by which one asserts one’s masculinity” (Haider 2016). Symbolic violence–power structures that legitimize hierarchy and naturalize the status quo–along with physical violence, are some ways that masculinity can assert control (Lee, 2016; Haider, 2016). When there is a disconnect between masculinity and violence, masculinity, which is already associated with violence, becomes toxic and violence is seen as a justified way to assert dominance. What differentiates toxic masculinity from other forms of masculinity is that it is reactionary to the “threat” of gender equality. This “threat” to traditional norms of masculinity and patriarchy justification of violence as a route to maintain social order. Systems of patriarchy, classism, and racism have long afforded affluent white men with status-based power. “White masculine identity may be tied to small relative advantages in workplace power and income. Advantage is hard to give up: Increasing equality with devalued groups can be seen and felt as an assault on dignity and masculinity” (Acker 2006). This assault on identity is used to justify toxic responses from men to reassert power. Crisis of Masculinity and Replacement Theory The crisis of masculinity rhetoric is “the idea that men are suffering at the hands of women in general and feminists in particular” (Dupuis-Déri, 2018). The crisis of masculinity has emerged in recent years in response to discussions of toxic masculinity and argues that there is a “crisis” where traditional masculinity is being rejected by society (Dupuis-Déri, 2018). THis crisis provides justification for the reassertion of gendered roles through potentially violent means and allows for the dismissal of the root cause of the crisis, feminists and women (Dupuis-Déri, 2018). Crisis of masculinity rhetoric is spread by mostly wealthy and middle-class men with higher-than-average levels of education and successful careers (Dupuis-Déri, 2018). The crisis of masculinity is also a response to feminist movements and “implies that equality is a feminine value that threatens male identity” (Dupuis-Déri, 2018). This reminds me of replacement theory, an idea that finds its roots in white supremacy. Replacement theory is an ethno-nationalist conspiracy that warns that white people that they are being replaced by non-european immigrants (Great Replacement Theory, n.d.). While this theory is also connected to patriarchal ideals, there are similarities between the crisis of masculinity and replacement theory. In the crisis of masculinity, men are being “replaced” by women and nonbinary people. Both replacement theory and the crisis of masculinity justify toxic (and frequently violent) actions as self-defense and as ways of restoring the normal order of things. Sandel (2020) argues that overt sexism, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, and xenophobia may be misdirected frustrations at the neoliberalism system of merit. Garlick notes that “the workplace is often a key site in which men stake a claim to masculinity. Aside from financial compensation and the ability to provide for one’s family, work potentially offers status, the capacity to exercise power, and the ability to establish control over a domain of activity” (2023). This connection between masculinity and work means that when a man’s economic power is threatened, his manhood is, too. With the rise of neoliberal-induced economic instability in the 1980s, a man’s economic path to power and masculinity were threatened. Instead of placing the blame on the neoliberal political and economic systems of the time, second-wave feminism was blamed for an attack on masculinity, which was used as a justification for the rise in toxic masculinity occurring roughly at the same time. “Troubled Individuals” or a Social Issue? Significant amounts of surrounding literature critique toxic masculinity for placing the blame of misogyny on the individual (for example “that guy is toxic” or “that is a toxic work culture”) without addressing the systemic roots that are causing this toxicity. Harrington (2021) discussed how privileged rich white men can use toxic masculinity in their favor. They can renounce toxic masculinity while still maintaining their forms of masculinized power and do not have to work to make the system more equitable. Maybe this individualization of failure (merit) works to dismiss the “obvious” forms of toxicity that are present in society while still maintaining organizational patriarchy. When discussing the connection between toxic masculinity and extremism, the International Peace Institute writes that ‘“the tendency to pathologize certain men without considering the structural and societal circumstances that lead to their sense of exclusion plays into the hands of violent extremist groups.” This blaming of the individual works to perpetuate toxic masculinity because it allows the individual’s actions to be shamed without critiquing the larger social forces at play that feed toxic masculinity. Neoliberalism places “risk” on the individual by making them responsible for their own successes or failures. Maybe this idea of individualized risk is a way of masking the formation of toxic masculinity. By emphasizing merit (and thus individualism), neoliberalism is able to dismiss instances of toxic masculinity as individual failures. Theoretical X: Masculinity, Merit, and Technology as a Route to Upward Mobility Failing to address the connections between masculinity and merit obscures the root causes of many gender-related social issues. Joan Acker writes that “standing behind the gender neutral human being and gender neutral societal processes were assumptions based on men's experiences. These concepts and frameworks were deeply gendered, reflecting part of the reality of male and capitalist dominated societies, while obscuring other important aspects, such as the realities of women and minorities” (1989). Neoliberalism uses merit as a justification to ignore historical power imbalances and institutional inequalities. Neoliberalism takes many ideals related to masculinity (competition, aggression, assertiveness, dominance, mastery, work, etc). And uses them to describe the “ideal worker” and someone with the most merit. By doing this, merit is injected with masculine ideals. When (white) men act in ways that align with merit ideals, there is a level of congruency because men are supposed to be aggressive, competitive, dominant, hardworking, etc. In contrast, when people who are not men act in ways that display merit, there is cognitive dissonance; these people are not supposed to be competitive, aggressive, skilled, dominant, etc. By making the assumption that merit is genderless we fail to recognize biases and institutional inequalities that persist. Masculinity Masculinities are “norms, practices, social expectations, and power dynamics associated with being a man” and are context-dependent, relationatal, and performative (Dier & Baldwin, 2022). Hegemonic masculinity is the culturally-accepted manifestation of patriarchy that promotes men in a dominant position in society (Connell,1995/2005, p. 77). Hegemonic masculinity is context-dependent and ever-changing; it is therefore achievable (Garlick, 2023). Due to the ever-changing nature of social constructs (and thus masculinity), hegemonic masculinity will shift as different forms of masculinity begin to become more prominent in everyday life. Hegemonic masculinity is thus seen as a way “to the top” of the social pyramid, at least in terms of gender. In contemporary western cultures, “traditional” hegemonic masculinity values physical strength, athleticism, aggressiveness, dominance, sexual prowess, independence, mastery, and being the breadwinner and the primary provider (Chandler & Munday, 2011). In places of higher education, these masculine ideals typically present in fraternities, athletics, and in majors that are male-dominated but not STEM (ex. Business, political science, etc). Competition through physical strength and sexual success acts as a route hierarchical power. Many of the ideals related to traditional masculinity are associated with war and violence (Dier & Baldwin, 2022). Geek masculinity, on the other hand, emerged alongside the development of the computer in the 1980s. The identity is characterized by a strong interest in technology and video games, and these interests become markers of intelligence, skill and act as important markers for inclusion and exclusion (Taylor, 2012, p. 111). Competitive technological skill and intellectual “strength” are positioned as routes to hierarchical power. Geek masculinity is frequently positioned as a smarter, less aggressive form of masculinity when compared to traditional masculinity. Historically, the term “geek” arose in the 1980s (along with the rise of the computer) and was used to put down men who had specific interests in things like technology and video games but had little social skills (Alfrey, 2016). At this time, being labeled as a geek was to be labeled as less than in the pyramid of a patriarchal society. Being a geek was to be less than a man who exhibited hegemonic masculinity. In recent years, however, geek masculinity has shifted and gained more social status thanks to the rise of the software industry. Billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk have become celebrities of sorts and have achieved a high level of wealth and power through the path of geek masculinity. Geek masculinity has turned technology into a place where white men who were previously ridiculed can gain masculine identity, money, and power. Geek masculinity is a combination of hegemonic masculinity and neoliberalism-driven technology and computer development. The development of cutting-edge technology “in the service of capital has become integral to a class of internationally mobile men with prominent roles in the global economy” (Salter, 2018). As social status has increased for those in tech jobs, geek masculinity has gained higher levels of social status to the point where it is in “competition” with hegemonic masculinity. Geek masculinity places high value on rationality, simplicity, and black-and-white thinking (as seen in programming, algorithms, and video games). Power is gained through intelligence and technical mastery, when contrasted with hegemonic masculinity, which places value on sexual prowess and physical strength. Geek masculinity may be an adaptation of hegemonic masculinity to better fit the more “intellectual” and “tech-driven” world that exists today. However, if geek masculinity is going to be a socially-accepted path to manhood, then geek masculinity must adopt the toxic aspects of hegemonic masculinity to maintain patriarchy. Salter explains that “geek masculinity thus contains a contradictory construction, in which a victimized “outsider” posture can obscure relations of dominance which are maintained through the control and assertion of technological power. This power is exercised between and over other men and boys in competitions for status and respect from which girls and women are often excluded, or may only participate by acting like “one of the boys” (2018). Here we see a pattern of geek self-victimization. In order to climb the social ladder, geeks pursue successful careers (that often correlate with power and wealth) while simultaneously excluding women and people of color from joining them. In this way, “the construction of masculine identities and relations grounded in technological control has drawn geek masculinity into close affinity with organized misogyny as a method for the perpetuation of gendered technological hegemony” (2018). By looking at the history of geek as an identity, we see two contrasting ideas: being a geek is an insult and being a geek is powerful. These two contrasting ideas result in some very interesting contradictions in geek culture. First, there is an interesting relationship between geeks being treated as “less than” in society while still possessing many status privileges such as being a middle-to-upper class white man. Additionally, geek men exist in a lower status level in the hegemonic masculinity pyramid. Additionally, there is an “underdog” mindset of having an identity that was once embarrassing and is now claimed by many successful and rich men. One of the most important ways that geek and hegemonic masculinity differ is in their approaches to achieving power. Hegemonic masculinity highlights that men should be strong, forceful, aggressive, domineering, and forward. These traits are pictured in the media, and they are often accompanied by violence. In geek masculinity, power is gained through logic and intelligence. In the media, geek men are often portrayed as the “smarter” and “less violent” alternative to traditional hegemonic ideals (McIntosh, 2017). This alternative path to domination and social capital impacts many of the main “markers” of hegemonic and toxic masculinity, including approaches to competition, aggression, violence, and sexualization of women. Something that is interesting is that this rise in intellectual power has really only emerged since the 1980’s when computers were becoming more mainstream and neoliberal practices were beginning. In the time periods before this, physical strength, aggression, and violence were more valued, likely due to the number of jobs that require physical labor or involvement in war. With the rise of computers came the rise of jobs that were not physically taxing and were not dependent on physical strength. This shift was combined with the rise in video games, which depicted male characters as domineering and female characters as sex objects, invisible side characters, or the villain. During the 1980s, computers and technology developed and gained a new level of importance. Globalization and a shift in economic strategy emerged at the same time as “geeky” interests such as hacking and video gaming, which also coincided with the push for men to enter the field of software engineering (Salter, 2018). All of these forces combined to create a geek-centric tech culture that was also male-dominated. It was then that geek masculinity was born. Merit The American Dream (and much of American culture) is rooted in the idea that if you work hard enough you will succeed and experience prosperity. These ideas of hard work, determination, grit, the right mindset, and being competitive are all tools used for upward mobility. In actuality, merit is a socially-acceptable form of hierarchy. The concept of merit is dependent on what society views as good. Sen notes that “there is some elementary tension between (1) the inclination to see merit in fixed and absolute terms, and (2) the ultimately instrumental character of merit—its dependence on the concept of “the good” in the relevant society” (1999). This vagueness of merit is what allows it to exist and work with seemingly-contradictory systems like patriarchy. Notions and habits of merit are flexible and are connected to other norms in society, such as masculinity. In order for merit to succeed in hierarchy formation, inequality is necessary. Acker notes that “In a culture that glorifies individual material success and applauds extreme competitive behavior in pursuit of success, inequality becomes a sign of success for those who win” (2006). As long as merit is used as a frame for “good” in society, inequality is required to maintain social order. Being hardworking is not enough to receive merit: merit is defined by what you have “earned” and what others have not. Take the title of being valedictorian for example. Valedictorians are not just defined by their hard work and academic abilities; they are defined by the fact that they are better than everyone else. More merit means more exclusivity which means more justification for social stratification. Merit works to normalize work-based hierarchies that perpetuate social inequalities and continuously associate masculinity with merit. Neoliberalism’s emphasis on merit as a route to upward mobility places the responsibilities of stability and success on the individual and encourages scarcity behaviors. As Tomlinson and Lipsitz explain, “neoliberal practices seek to produce neoliberal subjects through a social pedagogy that aims to naturalize hierarchy and exploitation by promoting internalized preferences for profits over the needs of people, relentless individuation of collective social processes, cultivation of hostile privatism and defensive localism based on exaggerated fears of difference, and mobilization of anger and resentment against vulnerable populations to render them disposable, displaceable, deportable, and docile” (2013). Neoliberalism’s emphasis on the individual simultaneously provides justification for why the rich are rich and dismisses the socially-disadvantaged. In order to maintain power in a neoliberal society, one must prescribe to merit-based social hierarchies and the competitive cultures that come along with it. Traits associated with merit are also associated with masculinity. Joan Acker notes that “the image of the successful leader share many of the same characteristics, such as strength, aggressiveness, and competitiveness” (Acker 2006). This connection between masculinity and merit creates a sense of congruence. Because the norms associated with masculinity and merit are the same, when men rise to power their rise is socially accepted and even expected. Stereotypes of women such as being caretakers, gentle, supportive, and homemakers exist in direct opposition to these masculinzed ideals of merit. This difference creates a sense of incongruence that acts as a barrier for women entering positions of leadership. As Joan Acker puts it elegantly: “women managers and professionals often face gendered contradictions when they attempt to use organizational power in actions similar to those of men. Women enacting power violate conventions of relative subordination to men, risking the label of ‘witches’ or ‘bitches.’” (Acker, 2006). Technology, Upward Mobility, and Masculinity The western association between technology, masculinity, and merit originated in the 1980s as a way for men to achieve upward mobility. Initially, computer science was viewed as “women’s work” and more akin to clerical and secretarial work as opposed to the “man’s job” engineering. As the importance of programming and computers became more apparent in the 1960s, there was a concerted effort to “masculinize” programming to recruit men to the field (Salter 2016). The term “software engineering” emerged to recategorize programming under the male-dominated and more prestigious field of engineering (Salter 2016). During the 1980s, computers and technology developed and gained a new level of importance. Globalization and a shift in economic strategy emerged at the same time as “geeky” interests such as hacking and video gaming, which also coincided with the push for men to enter the field of software engineering (Salter 2016). All of these forces combined to create a geek-centric tech culture that was also male-dominated. This combination produced geek masculinity, a form of masculinity that finds power in intellectual, as opposed to physical, strength. During the 1980s, a major shift in computer science took place. Women’s enrollment in undergraduate computer science programs in higher education peaked in 1984 when women pursued 37.1% of computer science degrees (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.). That number has declined drastically, hovering around 20% in recent years. Depictions of who “counted” as a computer scientist also changed and “depicted women’s relation to computing as primarily administrative or as the “sex object” to be obtained by the technologically skillful man” (Salter 2016).This idea of sexualizing and accessorizing women in computer science still exists today. Models of masculinity in video games as well the competitive and aggressive cultures associated with computer science programs worked to further masculine the industry. These changes resulted in the formation of geek masculinity, which “is conditioned by practices that have historically equated technological access and prowess with masculinity” (Braithwaite 2016). From looking at the history of computer science and technological development as well as the history of geek masculinity, we can see the two are intertwined. Geek masculinity is “a technologically-fused form of masculine subjectivity that requires, for its coherence, the maintenance of gendered stereotypes about male technological skill and female ineptitude” (Salter 2016). The power of geek masculinity in tech spheres has only grown in recent years. The emergence of many “superstar geeks” such as Bill Gates and Elon Musk have provided models of geek masculinity on a large scale. The “rolling-out of “high” or “cutting edge” technology in the service of capital has become integral to a class of internationally mobile men with prominent roles in the global economy” (Salter 2016). Tech jobs are known for their competitive environments, masculine workforce, high salaries, and levels of innovation. Sandel (2020) notes that “innovation, flexibility, entrepreneurialism, and a constant willingness to learn new skills” are effectively treated as requirements for getting a high-paying job. With these traits in mind, it should be no surprise that technology is sold as a route to upward mobility. In neoliberalism, technology is seen as a path to upward mobility. A rise in technology-related jobs occurred in-tandem with neoliberalism and is thus shaped highly by ideals related to merit and masculinity. Alfrey notes that “jobs in the technology industry operate through a prestige system that differs from the “hard” sciences in which access and success is dependent upon the acquisition of a specific degree” (2016). This observation reflects the distinctly competitive nature, high wages, and masculine culture that dominate the tech field. Neoliberal Promises vs Reality In order to succeed in a neoliberal society, investment in oneself is required to succeed. “The ideal subject within the neoliberal narrative will invest in themselves and their futures by acquiring the necessary levels of ‘human capital’ to succeed” (Houghton 2013). As a way of mitigating risk, one must do as much as they can to invest in themselves as to not fall victim to the uncertainties of neoliberalism. In the neoliberal education system, one says to themselves:“I am making a good investment, surely I won’t be impacted by the [insert social problem at the time]” The argument always stays the same: if you invest enough you will be immune from the damages caused by the unstable and unpredictable neoliberal system. If you fail, however, this means you didn't invest enough in yourself and you are reserving of whatever consequences you receive A houghton eloquently puts it, “enterprising subjects who actively seek to invest in their selves are securing their own futures, while those who do not are left to face the consequences alone” (2013). It then becomes a personal responsibility to successfully navigate the uncertainties and instabilities of neoliberalism. Those who are promised the most success and stability by neoliberalism are often the most shocked when the “simple” path to a middle-class life is not provided by their job. A good example of this occurs with engineers. Engineering is one of the most “neoliberal” majors (high success rate and profits, good job prospects, etc.) In engineering, “graduates rank among the highest-paid right after college, and the discipline is praised as central to the nation's military stature and economic competitiveness” (Berrett, 2016). Something to note here is that the idea of competition is highly valued in engineering, and it also happens to be one of the hallmarks of hegemonic masculinity and geek masculinity. When these engineering students graduate and experience high levels of uncertainty, there is a dissonance between what their neoliberal institution told them and what actually happens. A key quote from the Engineering Breeds Terrorists Article: “When people's hopes for individual and social advancement are raised and then dashed, a dynamic called relative deprivation can occur. People who experience relative deprivation don't need to be objectively disadvantaged; they must simply feel they've been denied their due. The theory makes intuitive sense for engineers in developing countries, where the programs' graduates enjoy high social status. Instead of finding lucrative careers, however, they often encounter limited job prospects in sclerotic economies. The gap between expectations and opportunities can come to feel galling, perhaps even humiliating” (Berrett, 2016). There is again a tension here: even students who pursued one of the “ideal” college majors, they still faced uncertainty. In this case, this high level of uncertainty combined with shame caused a high correlation between engineering students and terrorists (Berrett, 2016). This tension doesn’t have to result in such extremes, though. Tensions might look like students being dissatisfied with their careers post-graduation, having high levels of student loans, struggling to find a job, or choosing a job for the money rather than for a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Empirical Y: Views and Experiences with Overt Sexism and the Normalization of Male Violence Overt Sexism To target student’s views on the crisis of masculinity and gendered replacement theory, I will explore reactions to various equity initiatives. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are frequently framed as “reverse discrimination” from socially-dominant groups. Socially-privileged groups often view equity initiatives as giving advantages to certain groups or working to undermine those in power. Often, actions to level the playing field are seen as attacks in the dominant group. Examples of DEI initiatives that may elicit this type of reaction include scholarships, programs, and groups exclusively for marginalized groups, hiring and acceptance quotas, and mandatory training/classes about marginalized groups and inequality. An exploration of these initiatives provides a connection to the crisis of masculinity and replacement theory. In both of these cases, men view women and feminists as taking over. Common beliefs of these groups include the need to re-establish masculinity norms and ensure patriarchy is maintained. Gender-based DEI initiatives are working to promote equity, which is frequently interpreted as an attack on men. Violence Masculinity is highly associated with violence and maintenance of hierarchy. Haider writes “if violence is constitutive of masculinity, then violence becomes the mode by which one asserts one’s masculinity” (2016). Rape culture, high rates of male suicide, and violence against the LGBTQ+ community are all mainifestations of this masuline violence. 1 on 6 women will experience an attempted or completed rape during their lifetime (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, n.d.). While rape and sexual assault can impact people of all genders, nine out of ten victims of sexual assault are women, indicating that a larger rape culture is present (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, n.d.). Rape culture “is the social environment that allows sexual violence to be normalized and justified, fueled by the persistent gender inequalities and attitudes about gender and sexuality” (UN Women, 2019). Phrases like “she was asking for it” or “boys will be boys” are common examples of rape culture that appear in everyday conversations. These phrases are supported by social ideas related to masculinity and violence and portrayals of gender, violence, and sex in the media. Sexism and Violence in Video Games One media form that shapes perceptions of gender, violence, and sex are video games. Many video games are marketed towards the white male gaze, with women acting as background characters of sexual objects. (Braithwaite, 2016). In gaming, “Women can only be one of three things: sex objects, invisible, or the enemy” (Salter & Blodgett, 2012). This “victim or vixen” portrayal of women is most common in male-oriented fighting games rated teen or above, where violent or militaristic themes are more likely to occur (Lynch et. al., 2016). In these games, “sex is a form of discipline, administered by a real man to maintain the appropriate pattern of gender relations” (Braithwaite, 2016). Salter and Blodgett’s categories of “sex objects, invisible, or the enemy” are mirrored in the everyday experiences of women in STEM-related majors. Women are viewed as sex objects because a woman's value is directly tied to her level of femininity and sexual appeal. Women are treated as though they are invisible by being routinely talked over, left out of important conversations/social events, and ignored. When women are very successful, they may be treated as the enemy and are rejected by their peers, accused of taking away scholarships and jobs, and accused of being a diversity hire. If a woman does not let herself be reduced to her sexuality or talked over, she is automatically “problematic” and viewed as the villian. Video games are a central part of tech culture and shape perceptions of women and violence. Connections between technology, sex, and violence are routinely pictured and thus require examination. Empirical X: Students’ Experiences and Perspectives on Gendered Forms of Competition in STEM Masculine Ideals Although merit is supposed to be gender-neutral, it is actually highly connected to masculine traits. Common traits associated with masculinity include: Competitiveness Aggression Heterosexuality Hypersexuality Stoicism Independence Domination Strength Bold By contrast, traits associated with femininity include: Supportiveness Gentleness Compassionate Emotional Nurturing Accommodating Polite To explore how these masculine ideals are connected to merit, I will ask students what traits are associated with “masculine” majors such as computer science and engineering. I will also ask students what makes a good leader and explore if these traits are traditionally associated with masculinity. To directly connect the ideas of merit to gender, I will ask students what men need to do to succeed in female-dominated fiends and what women need to do to succeed in male-dominated fields. Masculinity can be performed by anyone of any gender, so I will be curious to see if students expect women and nonbinary people to adapt masculinized characteristics to succeed in STEM. Competition What defines a successful student? Their grades? Resume? Social Connections? In a neoliberal setting, success is defined by those who are at the top of the competition hierarchy. By placing an emphasis on individual grit and success stories while simultaneously ignoring social structures that enable social stratification, competition becomes synonymous with success. Competition is a trait of masculinity and of merit. In school, competition can appear between students, between different majors, or between different institutions. Students compete for the best grades, scholarships, leadership positions, job and internship opportunities, and letters or recommendation, among many other instances. Competition can also present as something between majors. Competition about which majors are the hardest, most rewarding, or have the best post-graduation job opportunities dominate conversations about college major choices. Competition between majors results in an unofficial hierarchy of majors that are ranked on difficulty and job opportunities. Competition also occurs between schools, which are often ranked against each other by competitiveness. Ivy League schools, for example, are seen as the most competitive schools and therefore the best. This connection between elitism, competition, and success are able to succeed through neoliberal practices and an emphasis on merit. Competition is also connected to masculinity. Competition is one of the hallmarks of hegemonic masculinity and is very apparent in both traditional hegemonic and geek masculinity. Competition in traditional hegemonic masculinity presents in sports or overt aggression and physical competition. With geek masculinity, competition is more intellectual or confined to a specific sub-category. Knowledge of computer science, level of technical skills, and the provenance of hacking and gaming subcultures all act as idealized masculine norms of competitiveness and aggression in the geek masculinity community (Salter, 2018). Competition in the workplace is prevalent for both masculinities. Wage levels, managerial positions, leadership hierarchies, and interpersonal power dynamics all act as ways that competition is displayed in a masculine form in the workplace. Garlick argues that “competition defines the nature of neoliberal markets, and masculinities function as technologies that work towards reducing the complexity of socio-economic systems so that competitive economic forces may maintain a privileged place in neoliberal societies” (2023). In other words, by reducing socio-economic systems to systems of merit (and thus competition), historical inequalities can be ignored in the face of race-neutral, class-neutral, and gender-neutral competition. Merit, and thus competition, act as ways to obscure institutional inequalities and justify the current economic system through a series of winners and losers. Conclusion Competition is a key trait of both patriarchy and merit. In merit, competition is connected to an idea of deservingness. In patriarchy, competition is a key trait of masculinity and is often the “instigator” for other traits of toxic masculinity (aggression, domination, violence, etc.). Something that I really want to explore is how technological skill (a tool of merit) is used as an assertion of masculinity (patriarchy). Geek masculinity is a form of masculinity (connection to patriarchy) that is rooted in intellectual power (merit). This identity is contradictory, just like the systems that shape the identity. Toxic geek masculinity may also be reactionary to social systems that are working to become more equal. Here, merit is a tool to justify masculinity as well as a threat to this masculine power. 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Research Proposal Introduction: Universities have shifted from being an institution of learning based on spreading knowledge, to a business that cares most about the number of zeros at the end of their bank account. This money focus shift in thinking has created a culture in the universities that no longer supports the interests of students and limits the amount of autonomy they have when making choices about their education. The market model is supposed to increase freedom but instead is doing the opposite by putting control over students’ success in the hands of businessmen and women masquerading as university officials. It has also turned full-service learning into limited learning with the focus being on how well the students can perform and turning them into model employees. Puzzle: Earning a college degree has historically had a connection with bringing autonomy to the individual. Not only to reinforce middle class economic comfort but also in the empowerment of individuals to choose their life-course. Universities market autonomy to potential students with the promise of self-reliance, economic reward, and job security post-graduation. Neoliberalism financially imprisons individuals and undermines the capacity for meaningful autonomy via many facets of the market model of education. Theoretical Question: How does the marketing of autonomy affect consumerist education? Empirical Question: How do students’ meaningful college experiences affect their desire to obtain a degree just to get a job vs. obtaining a degree to pursue education based on personal interests? Theoretical Y – Consumerist Higher Education: Consumerist higher education incorporates the privatization of higher education, the market model, and curriculum to create a college experience that promotes the idea of success for students’ post-graduation. It also highlights the decrease in oversight by the government through privatization. Through the decrease of public funding colleges have to come up with their own way to raise money for the school. They do this by promoting the value of a college degree in relation to getting a job after they graduate. Through the cost of tuition students can become successful by paying for their education and their college degree. Consumerist Equation: Neoliberalism believes “If a service is provided by the government, it should be privatized, that is turned over to a for-profit business” (Clawson & Page, 2011). This means that the responsibility of bringing in income lies with the university. Part of the for-profit business model includes letting go full-time employees with benefits to hire lower paid staff members or even contracted workers. There is also a notion to de-regulate from the government and instead govern from within the university. As quoted by Ronald Reagan, “The government is not the solution, it is the problem” (Clawson & Page, 2011). “Because neoliberalism dominates the larger society, every major institution is under pressure to run itself in terms of market mechanism” (Clawson & Page 2011). The market model (consumerist education) rationale of thinking moves universities away from education-based rationale. It puts an emphasis on schools to compete in the business market and the campus is seen as a corporation rather than a learning institution. Teachers then become “businesspersons” whose job is to provide goods and services, and students are seen as “consumers” (McMurtry,1991). What used to be the curriculum is now seen as a program package. Neoliberal higher education has increased the competition level of colleges in the sense that admission, access to financial aid, acceptance into certain programs, and more are all based on a student’s GPA and meeting a certain criterion that subconsciously pushes students to be the best. The consumerist idea of choice is not solely about choice itself but about making the “best” choice. Going to college is no longer good enough on its own, where you went to college matters, what you get a degree in, if you have a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PHD, the extracurricular activities you engaged in, and if you graduated with honors or not. “Consumerism is the social-economic orientation that values the purchase of goods and services as part of an overall accumulation of possessions.” (Tienken, 2013). Through the lens of education this looks like paying for school, to get a degree. Which will bring you better social status, more economic wealth, or even a combination of both. “For neoliberals, those who do not succeed are held to have made bad choices. Personal responsibility means nothing is society’s fault. People have only themselves to blame. Every social transaction is conceptualized as entrepreneurial, to be carried out purely for personal gain.” (Hursh, 2002). Not only does responsibility of acquiring profits fall to the education institutions, but responsibility of success also falls to the consumer. Critique: However, what consumerist education really looks like is more about universities targeting students to draw them in to one of their programs that supports the current capitalist job market. The university then will use any available avenue to draw money out of the student to line the universities pockets. Through limited learning the university will use a watered-down curriculum that intends to mold the students into the perfect employees for the job market that the university is trying to serve. However, with the emphasis on trying to create model employees the university actually fails to deliver a quality education that would truly make students better employees. While at the same time undermining what traditional education stands for and erasing the importance of learning and comprehension. “A criticism of modem consumer behavior that is commonly encountered is that it is materialistic” (Campbell, 2010). Aristotle noted “wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake of something else” (Newfield, 2008). Meaning that the idea of profit alone or an accumulation of wealth is not good enough to satisfy human desires or needs. In relation to a college education, money may be able to buy you a college education, and that education may be able to get you a job, but that does not mean that going to college will ensure a heightened send of learning and an accumulation of knowledge. Privatization of Institutions: The privatization of education is not just a concept followed in the United States but is being adopted internationally. Proponents of the privatization of institutions believe that institutions should “purchase instructional services from independent contractors instead of teachers” (Liberman, 1989). This means that instead of having a regular staff of teachers the teachers will now be instructors who are not full-time staff but hired to provide a service. One reason for hiring contracted workers is because contracted workers are more competitive and tend to be more efficient in their work because of this. “. Their incentives to be efficient are their need to avoid losing market share to competing contractors” (Liberman, 1989). If they are not a full-time employee of the college, they have no guarantee of a job each semester. Privatization also ensures that only the “best” or most dedicated students are accepted into college. Through pre-enrollment screening and prerequisites, the colleges and universities are able to weed out any individual who may not be serious about their education. This way they can continue to produce only the best market ready individuals into society after graduation. Whereas with public institutions there is a less rigorous screening process, and more people are widely accepted with little thought to how committed the individual might be. There is also more internal control over the regulation of the staff and the business. There is not as much direct oversight by the government and the internal staffing can manage departments and staff via a hierarchy system. This also leads to more efficiency for the consumer because they can get everything they need done in-house via the university. The university has departments for admissions, student accounts, transcripts, housing, etc. all in one place that is easy to access. Critique: While this model of the privatization of higher education sounds like it is about consumers (students) being able to pick and choose what choices best suit their college experience it fails to highlight its downsides and the fact that it is not truly choice in its full capacity. The privatization of higher education institutions favors the middle and upper classes in America. In short, you have to pay to play and if you have the money then you can buy the education that you want to receive. The cost of education is not the only price that is paid in the privatization of higher education though. “Neoliberalism requires government to reform the conduct of individuals to make them more competitive and efficient as a way of ensuring global economic advantage” (Priest and John, 2016). As in the job market the college education has become competitive and puts the responsibility of success solely onto the consumer. If the university is successful in creating a market ready individual who gets a job with ease after graduation, then the individual will buy into what the college is selling more. The universities’ goal is to then have those students as university alumni who will donate money back into the college because they believe in the work that the university is doing. The privatization of institutions consists of the defunding of institutions by the government. It also brings forth the selling of research and patents to profit corporations and the shareholders. This turns research into part of the commercial enterprise, taking away from it being about learning and growth. (Barber, 2002). As noted by the article “Privatization and Public Universities” the authors state, “Citizens with the rights to higher education become consumers of alternative education delivery systems capable of purchasing choice”. (Priest & John, 2006). Note that they don’t mention the consumers being capable of free thinking. The Market Model: “Quality is depicted as a driving goal for higher education: students who receive high-quality education not only get an immediate and future return on their investment but also acquire a level of education that equips them well for future economic life.” (Tomlinson, 2017). The market model offers students that high-quality level of learning that is going to give them that reward of financial gain post-graduation. I.E., a high level of education will bring individuals high paying jobs that will make them economically successful. “Given that private goods are effectively post-experience goods, their value is derived from the material private benefits that extend beyond immediate experience.” (Tomlinson, 2017). This means that the feeling of reward or success is directly tied to what the consumer can get to benefit themselves by obtaining a college degree. That makes the college experience via the market model about how the college can help the individual get the reward, with less concern about the experience getting to the reward. Critique: There are contradictions between education and education in the market model, being that the market model is based on business thinking. Corporate agents’ goals are to maximize private profits. The more money that that one person or corporation has the less money there is for others to have. Money is also linked to the purchasing of external goods. The market wants to be able to meet the needs of the people who have the money to purchase those goods. While on the other hand education is based on a completely different rationale. The main goal of education is to “advance and disseminate shared knowledge” (McMurtry, 1991). Education, unlike the goal of corporations, is to share more knowledge without excluding others from it. Education also is based on developing understanding whether it is desired or not. The cost of education in America has become a point of contention between the consumers (students) and the business (universities). Not only are students paying high dollars for their education, but the universities are also lining their pockets at any open opportunity. There are extra hidden fees associated with attending a university. You pay to park on campus, and you can only park in one area of the school. If you can’t purchase one of the limited amounts of parking permits, you have to pay an hourly rate to park every day that you go to class. There are extra fees if you take a course online vs in person. Curriculum: The following steps are what traditional full-service learning describes as the ways for students to be successful: 1. Take many demanding courses (requiring twenty or more pages of writing per term and forty or more pages of reading per week). 2. Spend much more than the current norm on academics (16% of the student’s week between class and homework). 3. Work with faculty members who have high expectations for his and her peers. 4.Minimize non-academic social commitments: No fraternities or sororities, minimal off campus socializing, and minimal group study. 5.Minimize working for pay. Never work off campus. Never work more than 10hrs / week. 6.Bring the net cost of college as close to $0 as possible with no student loans. 7. Major in a strong academia field in liberal arts and sciences, not in vocational or “practical fields of study. Liberal arts and Science are of fundamental importance. (Newfield, 2016). The ideals of full-service learning strive to not only bring intrinsically motivated learning to students but also help students to develop the framework for rigorous course work like research in their field of study. Students should be spending their time working on their course work as much as possible while also putting forth as much effort as possible. Different than neoliberal higher education, full-service education emphasizes the importance of Liberal Arts and Sciences and encourages time spent with professors who are professionals in their field of study. Also, different than neoliberal ideology to be successful in traditional curriculum you should minimize your social engagements that are not academic focused. You also should not work outside of the college campus and should not be working more than part time hours. “There has been a steady decline in the number of students in traditional disciplines and a disproportionately large growth in just three disciplinary areas: Business studies, engineering, and computer science” (Priest and John, 2016). The privatization of higher education is tipping the scales by funneling students into certain job markets creating an unequal mix of professionals in society. With consumerist higher education comes the relative association of education’s value in monetary terms. The neoliberal consumerist idea of value which is decided on by society and is seen through the lens of commodification and the number of transactions between students and the institutions. However, the traditional value of schools was seen to be the ways in which universities would act as agents of personal and intellectual growth (Tomlinson, 2017). . If the rhetoric around neoliberal thinking is that individuals need to meet a certain standard to keep up with the global economy how does the message in curriculum shift? Higher education has moved into limited learning which is a watered-down version of curriculum that prioritizes the focus on making a good employee for the future, not fulfilling internal desires for learning in students. It also changes the way that learning institutions gauge someone’s success in school. School is no longer about how well you understand the material you are learning but instead how well you can memorize information. If colleges can fill more seats in a classroom, while also reducing the amount of work the instructor has to do, they will increase their profit for the university, but at the cost of quality of curriculum. Limited Learning: The “College Learning Assessment” reports that college students are falling behind. Newfield reports “The CLA shows half of students have not taken a single course that required more than 20 pages of writing and approximately one third have not taken any courses that required more than 40 pages of reading per week” (Newfield, 2016). Academia is becoming less rigorous for not only the students but also for the instructors. Instructors are also getting a break, if they give out less work to do, they also have less work to do. “Faculty members make the work less rigorous so that they won’t have as much to grade or have to explain to students why they are not doing performing well” (Newfield, 2016). “Universities target graduate employability in their teaching, learning, assessment, and student support strategies, in response to policy and market pressures which prioritize employability outcomes as a purpose of personal and public investment into higher education.” (Healy, M. 2021). This central focus on creating students to become employable after graduation goes against the neo-liberal thinking of individuals being self-reliant, instead they are reliant on the college to make them into a model employee and reliant on businesses to hire them so they can be successful. “A century of career development research has provided a robust evidence base, with career development interventions shown to enhance university students’ career decision-making, self-efficacy, and adaptability (Healy, M. 2021). None of the skills cited match the traditional framework for what higher education strives to be. Instead, it has shifted curriculum and university messages to students that they need to fit a mold of capitalistic societal expectations, but nowhere mentions that they should have a desire for knowledge. Critique: “Higher education is in the midst of a major crisis of funding, affordability, mission, & organization” (Clawson & Page, 2011). Neoliberalism unintentionally puts education on the backburner because of the heavy focus on bringing in funds for the university. As a result, the quality of education has decreased. “One concern is that the skills of high school graduates do not match the needs of employers.” (Ladd, H. 1995). With the use of standardizes testing and performance-based learning, schools have shifted into factories, cloning American citizens to meet market standards of employment. Schooling has become less about deep intrinsic learning and more about how much information you can memorize and how well you place on a standardized test. The results then become deciding factors for you on how many and what kind of opportunities are available to you. However, consumerism is about having as much as you want in a sense, without limitations on how you can consume and what you can consume. While performance-based education is appealing to consumers of the job market it is restricting what it offers to students in the lens of education. Bowles and Gintis talk about “The Correspondence Principle” which is how schools’ structure social interactions and individual rewards to replicate the environment of the workplace. Their argument was made less in the roots of curriculum but instead into socialization aspect of learning the classroom. Again, to look back at the traditional value of what education strived to be it was primarily based in the curriculum and less about how educators socialize students in any specific manner. “The public university is failing not because it spends too much money on its core activities of teaching and research, but because it spends too little on them. This is in spite of the fact that students are paying more tuition and taking on more debt to get something out of college. The American Funding Model is producing the worst of both worlds – costs for students that are too high and spending on instruction and research that is too low.” (Newfield, 2016). Through the privatization of colleges, shift in curriculum, and efforts to meet market standards not only has the education experience changed, but there is also a shift in autonomy for the students, faculty, and the university itself. Not only does the college market things like degrees it also markets a notion of autonomy for incoming students during their time at college. It claims to offer them a sense of freedom and self-reliance that will benefit them in the future. Theoretical X –Marketing of Autonomy: Autonomy: “Human Development is about more than the rise and fall of national incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, relative lives in accord with their needs and interests” (Newfield, 2008). Autonomy is about individuals being able to thrive and live fulfilling lives based on self-interests. The ability for individuals to live successful lives, engage in experiences, and obtain knowledge. College’s market the idea of autonomy through the promotion of social engagement, expansion of your social circle, and through the expansion of opportunities available to them. Clubs, fraternities, sororities, sports, and social events are promoted as an opportunity to engage with the college community and make new personal connections. Colleges and universities also market the idea of freedom through on campus living and having restaurants, stores and entertainment so that you have everything you could need in one contained area without having to leave the campus. Most colleges also offer student jobs so that students can experience life on their own, make money, attend classes, and engage in social events through the campus. Students are told that they will make connections with their peers, engage with others who have like mined majors, and engage in campus experiences that will be internal joy and fulfillment to their lives. One of the ways in which individuals engage in autonomy is through choice. As defined by Chao Zhang, the Functional Model of Autonomy looks at the “What, When, and How” of an individual’s goals. They are as listed, “What – what decision sets the goal a person is going to achieve, when – timing of when the act will be performed, and How – the means through which the behavior is achieved” (Zhang, 2022). The “What, When, and How” ideology of looking at autonomy can also be a tool to highlighting restrictions being imposed on one’s autonomous freedom. When a group is looking to resolve a social problem each of these three categories may face certain restrictions. For example, if a college decides to raise the price of tuition for students the students “What, when, and how” or attending college may be impacted. The “what” being attending college (no matter what their motivators are for attending college). The “when” may impact when a student is able to actually start school. Finally, the “how” can impact how that student was planning to pay for school. The student still has the autonomy to choose if they want to go to college or not but the factors that make up that decision might be impacted now and limit some of their choices. Agency of control revolves around autonomy; early ideas of autonomy believe that one’s liberty should not be infringed upon unless it is for the protection of others. Personal autonomy requires self-governance, one’s motives must be their own, and that we script our motives from scratch (Santiago, 2005). Autonomy in individuals ranges somewhere between fully autonomous and fully non-autonomous, when we are fully autonomous, we deny that others have any control over us or our decision making. In life we make choices every single day. We choose what to wear, what to eat, what kind of coffee we want, etc. For the most part we operate in society in an autonomous way and some of those choices can be based on goals and values that we have. Another aspect of autonomy is the idea of “blindly obeying Vs obeying because you choose to obey” (Santiago, 2005), when we obey because we choose to, we exercise free will. We may choose to pursue a career because it is in an industry that means something to us and speaks to us intrinsically, or we may choose a job that pays us more money so we can be financially stable to enjoy the life that we are living, or even both. There are times in our life though where our autonomy may be restricted by other agents. In the workplace our autonomy may be limited to process and procedures set by the company to meet the companies’ values and goals with little to no concern about the individual’s goals and values. While true autonomy should be about the fulfillment of a good life with opportunity for social engagement and expansion of knowledge, there is a tension between freedom of choice and solving societal problems. Critique: While there is still some autonomy in education there are also many restricting factors. Some of the things that students do not have autonomy over are the cost of tuition, the curriculum that is taught, the path to getting a degree, and the type of education that they will receive. The cost of tuition is preset by the university and no matter how much bartering or haggling you do the price will not change even if you feel that it is unreasonable. You can choose not to go to college due to the cost, but you cannot choose how much you will pay to attend college. The curriculum is also set by the school, whether you think the information being taught is relevant and accurate or not that is what is going to be taught. Once you have made a decision on your major the school usually has already laid out what the next four years of your life will look like. You can choose to alter that course, but you do it fully accepting the risk that you may slow the process of your end goal of a degree. Finally, you can choose courses, but you cannot choose how the instructor will disseminate information and how they will determine whether or not your work is good enough. Neoliberal Autonomy: Neo-liberal autonomy is seen as individuals’ ability to be self-reliant. According to the 2020 article “Autonomy in Consumer Choice”, consumer autonomy is defined as, “Consumers’ ability to make and enact decision on their own, free from external influence imposed by other agents.” (Wertenbroch, K., Schrift, R.Y., Alba, J.W. et al, 2020). However, when consumers are exercising autonomy, they are really making choices freely based on a set of options. One factor that influences neoliberal autonomy is external influences. One example is the persuasion of choice options by corporations. By spending high dollars on advertising to the masses, corporations can influence individuals into what they think their choice selection is. Instead of individuals thinking about what it is they truly desire, doing their own research and making a choice on their own. This means that autonomy is subject to constraints in those options. Different from control, autonomy is about initiating behavior whether you can control the outcome or not. This may give off a sense of perceived control but is not control itself. In today’s market there is an increased number of choices, which can cause choice overload. That choice overload can cause consumers to be dissatisfied with their choices, effectively imposing the opposite desired effect of autonomy. If people feel like their free will is being threatened, they will react in a way that to them, shows that they have control over their choices. For example, if someone feels like their choices are safe or predictable, they will end up choosing something they don’t like or want as much just to prove they have autonomy. Which is not an exercise of your free will. Autonomy in School / Student Autonomy Consumerist students are heavily influenced in their decision making by extrinsic motivations imposed by society and the university, such as earning a degree or getting a well-paying job. “Students are encouraged to talk to former students about employment, earnings data, and satisfactions as key indicators of education quality” (Bunce, L., & Bennett, M, 2019), which goes against the neo-liberal thinking that individuals should be self-reliant. Instead, it encourages students to rely on the information gathered from others to make their own decisions and blindly follow reported numbers as good reasoning to trust in the education quality a university is delivering. It also goes against traditional ideals of autonomy because it does not suggest students find out if any of those individuals got jobs that fulfilled their dreams, if the money they made brought them a better life, or if satisfaction came from internal interests. Society tells students that they need a college education to obtain a good job, leaving students feeling pressured to go to college and find a degree that fits the mold society is looking for. This also makes students feel like their choices are limited. When in the past going to college gave students the liberty to choose their life path based on things they value or were interested in. The universities then decide how many years of schooling are necessary to be a professional in your field of study, which also imposes limits on student choice. According to Niemic and Ryan, self-determination theory is about one’s inherent interest in learning and developing one’s knowledge (Niemic & Ryan, 2009). Autonomy in the education system is a domino effect. The more autonomy those in power have create a more autonomous space for teachers, who then create an autonomous environment for their students. Part of autonomy is intrinsic vs extrinsic motivations. Intrinsic motivations are behaviors that are not externally influenced. Extrinsic motivations are about trying to reach a specific outcome. Extrinsic motivations can come in one of four ways; external regulations, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and integrated regulation. The most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation is integrated regulation. For extrinsic motivation to be successful the individual has to internalize the reasons for the extrinsic motivator. For example, someone may choose to become a doctor because they know it will help people and that matches their own personal values. According to Niemic and Ryan, “students are autonomous when they feel they are able to meet the challenges of their schoolwork and are willing to devote time and energy to studies” (Niemic & Ryan, 2009). This is the exact opposite feeling that neoliberal autonomy brings to students. In fact, neoliberal autonomy brings a sense of entitlement to students, they feel that the university owes them a degree despite how much effort they put into their schoolwork because they are paying for that degree. One of the ways the lack of autonomy is most strongly represented is in the school systems. Students must have permission to enter/exit the classroom, be told when they should sit or stand, told when they are allowed to speak, can only eat when it is permitted, and even need permission to go to the bathroom. This lack of autonomy is decreasing students’ motivation to learn. Teachers are also sacrificing the autonomy of their students by requiring everyone to do all assignments and projects in the same format with little to no room for creativity, all for the sake of streamlining the grading process for themselves. Once at a college or university students have more freedom to behave at their own discretion to some extent. When students have more autonomy support from teachers and advisors, they have greater motivation and seem to do better in their course work than when they do not feel they have autonomy support. Autonomy support as defined by the article “Effects of Perceived Autonomy Support on Academic Achievement and Motivation Among Higher Education Students: A Meta‐Analysis.” is “interpersonal context that fosters intrinsic motivation and encourages people to make their own choices” (Okada, R., 2023). The key factors to fostering successful autonomy support are, “Taking students perspectives into consideration, vitalizing inner motivational resources, providing explanatory rationales, using non-pressuring informative language, acknowledging and accepting negative effects, and displaying patience.” (Okada, R., 2023). In a study in Greece higher performing students were given more autonomy over when they had to come to class. The results of the study were that higher performing students exercised more autonomy over when they went to class with no change in their academic performance (Goulas, S, Griselda, S, Megalokonomou, R, 2023). Government agencies regulate what colleges and professors do for quality assurance, a sign that the government does not trust the college 100% to work autonomously. As noted in “The Autonomy of The University, and Neoliberal Politics”, a California governor stated, “Universities and higher education institutions will have to demonstrate a greater accountability towards social expectations in fulfilling their role and achieving results” (Kodelja, Z.,2013). Meaning colleges are being pressured to run their institutions based on the results they output. This constrains the autonomous freedom that colleges have regarding what is taught, how it is delivered, and to whom it goes to. As a result, universities have strayed away from the truth and pursuit of knowledge to competency of students. “If faculty are not nurturing students sufficiently it’s not because they don’t see student learning as their job but because they don’t have the resources to do their job completely” (Newfield, 2016). Empirical Y – Desire to Obtain a Degree to Get a Job Vs. Obtaining a Degree to Pursue Education Based on Personal Interests. Through the privatization of higher education colleges are being defunded by the government and using a for profit model to meet market standards. To see how this has played out in the university I will talk to students about their experiences with paying for college and the different ways in which the university is charging students for them to attend college. The consumerism of higher education has shifted the roles of teachers, students, and the curriculum to be more business minded. I plan to look at this by talking to students about their experience with college being transactional and any pressures put on them to become more business focused. Through talking to students about how they view themselves as consumers or if they even identify as consumers of higher education, I plan to see how those shifts have affected the college experience. College has become more competitive in ways that are like competing for a job. There are limited spots in programs or even to attend college, you have to meet many requirements and those who stand out (i.e., have high GPA’s, extracurriculars, and better test scores). I plan to talk to students about their experiences with competition in admission to college, programs, and even class work and how that has affected them as a student. Finally, the neoliberal notion is that one’s success is solely one’s own responsibility and no one else. I plan to talk to students about their views on paying for college and their degree and how that makes them feel more or less responsible for their own success in college. Through talking to students about their view on college being a right vs a privilege I am hoping to gain insight into students’ ideas of the value of college to them. Through my critique of consumerist higher education and privatization I look at how colleges are funneling students into degrees that match trending jobs. I intend to look at the ways students discovered their major and their motives behind choosing that major. For example, did they choose their major, did someone else choose their major for them, or was it decided for them before they even got to college based on expectations of family members? I will look at students’ views of their classroom experience to address students views on current curriculum and the way that it is delivered to see if it meets the expectations of traditional education goals or if there has been a shift. Also, through talking to students about meaningful classroom experiences. The market model is about maximizing private profit I will look at this through talking to students about the ways in which they have experienced the college asking them for donations or the ways in which they see the college using students to raise money for the college. In addition, the market wants to provide goods / services for those who have the money to pay for them. By asking about how money has affected their ability to go to college and their college experience or how it makes them view themselves as consumers. To look at the same issue from another perspective I will talk to students about how flexible the college is on making large-scale payments for things like tuition. High quality curriculum looks believes that students should spend ample amount of time on their course work, take challenging courses, minimize social activities, prioritize school over paid work, and major in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition, it is about the dissemination of knowledge for all without withholding from anyone. I will look at the ways this has either stayed the same or changed by talking to students about their status as traditional or non-traditional college student and how their lives outside of school affect their ability to commit to their education and their course work. Also, through their desire for quality learning vs easier coursework. Limited learning waters down the curriculum to make it easier for students and also easier for the professors because it reduces the amount of work both the student and the professor have to do. When looking at student’s status as a traditional vs non-traditional college student I will also be able to address their views on how academically challenging their course work is and how they feel that affects their education. Limited learning also creates a classroom experience that uses the instructor to mold students into model employees to make them more employable when they graduate. By finding out how well-prepared students feel to go out into the job market after graduation I will be able to explore if this is something instructors are actively doing and if it is effective. Empirical X – Students’ Meaningful College Experience Traditional autonomy is about the ways in which individuals are able to live fulfilling lives. By finding out what students believe will bring them a life where they feel fulfilled socially, academically, and financially vs. what their college experience brings them we can look at if students are gaining autonomy through their time at college. Colleges market that idea of autonomy through the promotion of social engagement, expansion of one’s social circle, and an expansion of opportunities available. Through finding out what kinds of campus activities students are involved in and if it has brought them any increase in fulfillment or feelings of expansion and freedom, I can look at how much the colleges market truly brings real autonomy. Everyone’s goals have a” what, where, and how” they become operationalized. Learning about students “what, when, and how” of their goals will help to explore what parts of college help them to achieve those goals. Similarly, autonomous motives are ones that are drafted from the individual without outside pressures. Finding out how students created those goals and if they came from their own internal desires will help to find out if the goals students are aiming to achieve are ones that are rooted in their own internal desires. Finally, blindly obeying vs obeying because it satisfies self interest can be explored through gaining an understanding of how students operate within the campus and classroom rules and why they comply or don’t comply. Neoliberal autonomy believes that individuals should be self-reliant, and their success is dependent on only themselves. This can be looked at by talking to students about how much responsibility they feel for their own success at college and if they believe anyone else is responsible for their success. Student consumer autonomy is based on extrinsic vs intrinsic motivators. Are students looking to simply purchase a degree or are they in college because they have a desire to learn? As cited in my Student Autonomy section Bunce & Bennet note that students are encouraged to look into employment rates, earning data, and satisfaction rates as an indicator of the school’s education quality. By asking students if they have ever used this kind of data to make their choice in which college they wanted to attend or if they were encouraged to look at this kind of data we can see if students feel these indicators are important. Not only is autonomy about the students themselves at the university. However, through the students we can get ideas of autonomy for instructors and the university itself. With the increase of adjunct faculty instructors have less autonomy over their own classroom and the curriculum they are teaching. Through talking to students about their experience with the curriculum being taught to them and ways that they have tried to explore different options for what is taught to them we can see how much autonomy instructors have over the curriculum they are delivering. Finally, the universities themselves are restricted by government oversight and regulations. References Au, W. (2023). UNEQUAL BY DESIGN High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality Second Edition. Routledge Barber, B. (n.d.). 2002. 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IMSRL Research Proposal - Danilla Kowalczuk PUZZLE: Existing literature on higher education in its persistence in elitism focuses on elite institutions though public universities also work towards this mission. Students entering Boise State University surely are not leaving elitists but their beliefs align with upholding the aristocracy. The truest tension I see is that commercialization leaves students seeking the path of least resistance, opting for limited learning, yet argue that their success was attributed to their hard work and merit. And in holding a certificate that claims achievement, it qualifies them to qualify who lacks merit in an seemingly objective way. The meritocratic way. Students through the Aristocracy have ideas about merit which through its justification rational transform intrinsic and extrinsic with seeing how elitism can benefit them. That in a student’s instrumentalization thought, see elitism as the path to increasing social status and that perpetuates inequality. Neoliberalism turns the university into a business model that creates students as consumers, who want their product of knowledge to be within their standards. Standards based on what the labor market needs from their workers, which in turn dictates the value of a person and what they view college as. They need a good job to support a lifestyle of higher social status. Hidden curriculum of how the university says it's good and it's the only way to think about your education, expect this and that from your education. THQ: How Does The Confluence Of Elitism And Racism Under Meritocracy Gain Student’s Consent To Commercialized Education? EMPQ: How Do Student’s Attitudes/Experiences With Exclusivity/Affirmative Action/Deserving Of Success And Support Affect Low Quality/High Cost College Education? THY: COMMERCIALIZED EDUCATION In the mid twentieth century higher education was sought as a public good which enriched the lives of individuals and society; though by economic faltering in the 80s, public opinion swayed about its purpose. Cutting taxes in response to economic uncertainty led to the weakening of public institutions. What followed after was a belief that individuals should now seek it upon themselves to fund their pursuit within their own education. Universities could then ask their attendees to cover the cost while outsourcing the other expenses (Newfield 2018:40). That sets up the scene today where public universities deliver low quality education at increasingly high costs. The high costs can be attributed to privatization, where the university assumes the responsibility of financing themselves opposed to receiving funding from the government. Where the university models itself as a business who is selling degrees, it structures itself similar to that of a factory with large lectures, automated grading, and minimal interactions between faculty and students (Newfield 2018:25). Commercialization is the outcome of the university undergoing neoliberal privatization in which the business model it mirrors manifests itself as. The teetering balance of quality of education to costs is unequal, skewed to the financial side. And following the logic that Tomlinson and Lipsitzs points out, “Neoliberalism produces many of the very problems it purports to solve” (2013:11), universities will argue the solution is to privatize more. This does not address the root of the issue: The autonomy the student holds has been thus reduced to an economic equation. Students as consumers apply economic rationale, due to the endorsement of the market model from neoliberal transactional education, to purchase the most competitive degree with investing the least so that they buy vocationalized knowledge in exchange for a lucrative job. Any traditional conceptions of development of oneself and strengthening agency are dismissed so that the intrinsic value of learning is cast aside. Success is then largely motivated by extrinsic risks and rewards that follow a transaction, leaving the student to understand that the cost and quality of their education have been calculated by market notions like supply and demand. When students model consumerism, influenced by commercialization, they reduce their relationship with higher education down to a transactional level. Now adopting a rational instrumental mindset, consent is generated to not only accept but rather seek limited learning. This results in a false understanding of autonomy, which is rather consumer choice, and leaves students attending school based more on their extrinsic motivations. And although students have justified limited learning, it does not foster any engagement on the student’s behalf. Attending a university should not be minimized to purchasing a degree and all consumer embodiment should be rejected. If full service learning can be dispersed to students, there will be more allowance for students to rely on their intrinsic values. Overall, this would give students a true sense of agency and autonomy, not just an illusion. This bolsters the learning to be meaningful and encourages students to create academic relationships to their benefit, which speaks to the supposed core mission of the university; to create a well-rounded citizen and to promote citizenry. Consumerism As the public institutions align more with a privatization model, consumer trends follow. Capitalism today has shown that one can engage in the consumption of conceptions not inherently tangible, and that includes education (Tomlinson 2017:452). Consumerism derives from reducing students’ pursuit of education as a transaction; students provide money, and if they are not able to do so, they acquire debt to purchase their degree. As consumers, students begin to have expectations of what standards their education should be upheld to. And when education is marketed for its economic value, students are then encouraged to see higher education as a “private, positional good which enhances their own relative value in the labour market” (Tomlinson 2018:724). Neoliberalism positions the university according to market logic, as a site where consumers can buy the credentials they believe they need to obtain jobs in the future. Although there are parts of this credentialing that emphasize competition, in many cases students are encouraged to view themselves as consumers who deserve a path of least resistance to the credentials they need. Students express assuming the role of consumer which impacts their relationship with higher education in various ways. Tomlinson (2017:465) reports that students who rejected consumerism thought this conceptualization of consumerism reduced the value of their degree, so as to quantify knowledge to a price, whereas others thought of this to explain the worth of their degree. The latter who reflected more transactional views wanted to see an outcome from their investment; if students are paying tuition at high costs, they want to be compensated with a job upon graduation. Where a degree is viewed as a positional good, it equates the purpose of the degree to how it furthers the individual’s personal worth to the labor market. This references the positional market which is “based on enduring levels of internal stratification and differentiation” (Tomlinson 2018:720). Here it is evident that with neoliberalism, higher education has modeled more so of this market model. The alternative, which once was the university’s model, is the public market. The power that lies in a degree being a positional good is such exclusivity that fuels the consumer student attitude. It is “privately funded, consumed and utilised for personal future economic return” (Tomlinson 2018:719). This contrasts to where a public good is sustained through public means, essentially in this case being education at little to no cost. If a degree were to be viewed as this it would diminish the transactional relationship that students have engaged with their school, and again Tomlinson states this is where students begin to have enhanced expectations around their educational experiences. Students may differ in how these expectations manifest, if they adopt more instrumental thought of viewing learning as job training or rather they feel empowered to ask for more quality education. Students believe their consumer power is helping guarantee quality though their transactional relationship is doing the opposite. It gives a false sense of agency, which I will detail later in regards to autonomy, while obtaining the approval of students to their value of education. Higher education serves to this duality that students hold, wanting to simply purchase a degree and also expecting quality education. A consumerist relationship asserts itself slightly further in the context of when the student is purchasing a degree. Students are at best spending to receive a credential. Tomlinson and Lipsitz (2013:16) illustrate that, “neoliberalism positions the university according to market logic, as a site where consumers can buy the credentialing they believe they need to obtain job in the future” and “in many cases students are encouraged to view themselves as consumers who deserve a path of least resistance to the credentials they need.” This path of least resistance is also an added benefit to the university who is no longer expected to supply high quality education because it has its students asking for low quality. It expedites the transactional relationship. Although students seem to be accepting of the less rigorous standards to abide by for the sake of easiest delivery to their outcome of a degree, their consent does not predate the structural changes to higher education that support such learning. Universities advocate for less investment in students. What Newfield (2016) refers to as the American Funding Model accomplishes too low of spending on educational instruction and research in contrast to costs that are too high for students. And yet the blame for lack of academic engagement is accrued to students and faculty. Newfield (2016) points out that it is not the failure of the institution but rather the failure of this commercialism model. Years of underinvestment has led for teaching and learning conditions to have been degraded. Budget cuts, an effect of privatization, can often force class sizes to be upwards of a hundred students. Then this follows the expectation for faculty to live up to unfair standards, like to give personal attention to each of these students in the classroom. Overall, such support is being constantly undermined due to this financialization. Newfield (2016) offers the alternative to this limited learning outcome by formulating how a student can achieve full-service learning. A student should take demanding courses, major in the liberal arts and sciences, study double the average time and work with proactive faculty; under the conditions in which non-academic commitments are minimized, time spent working is less than ten hours, and the net cost of college is little to none. This can be obtainable for students attending prestigious universities, but what about students attending public universities that are not so exclusive? Newfield calls for all public colleges to be transformed until they resemble the type of instruction given by elite institutions to produce the ideal outcome of high quality education at low costs; the inverse of the current model. He finds that the least selective public higher education institutions spend the least amount of money per student. And even the current costs of such public serving colleges create instances where students have to adapt by working more, in a means to support themselves and to fund their educational pursuits, leaving less time available to study. Students are ultimately sold to accept these limitations for their own benefit. In one instance they tend to major in more market-oriented fields, such as business and administration, and therefore are not upheld to such non-vocationalized standards that can be exemplified by the liberal arts and science fields. But it is expressed to them that those fields will guarantee a ticket into the middle class, deliver job skills and qualities to mold into any career, and allow for more time for such non-academic engagements that Newfield advocates against. It is a fast-food service learning. Public higher education has the potential to give students full-service learning in which those can separate themselves from their socioeconomic liabilities and their schools’ structural limitations but rather produce the same unequal delivery of knowledge that K-12 already purports. Autonomy Newfield explores how the educated person becomes redefined when public higher education undergoes privatization. The learner halts at pursuing their own developmental ends for the sake of doing so but rather for the sake of financial gain (Homoeconomicus). The full range of personal goals that strive for individual progress are typically noneconomic and center happiness, meaning, emotional clarity, creativity, and preparedness to engage in meaningful work. When this shift from these values to economic goals occurs, the student is focused on assuring their “future income to cover higher costs and debt” especially once public funding is converted into higher tuition. Overall, “[p]rivatized universities encourage graduates to think of their main purpose as the maximization of their own economic self-interest” (2016:33). McMurtry puts it plainly, “[w]hat was traditionally education’s by-product function is now proclaimed as its ultimate goal” (1991:2). Acquiring a job is now the main intention of a degree, which includes centering job training, and stimulating intellectual growth of students becomes understated. So how does education cope with this commodification of knowledge? Well it sells knowledge as commodities to students, then creating a relationship common between consumer and commodity. “[S]tudents see higher education, and the outcomes it produces, as a ‘right’ based on the increasingly ‘private’ nature of their contribution” (Tomlinson 2017:4). A student within the role of a consumer sees this exchange to model what the power of the dollar can do for them. They have purchased something, and they have a right to it. This also informs them, because of their buying power, to expect standards of teaching, learning, and experience to benefit them as an individual. Typically, this has to meet standards they believe will be instrumental to themselves. As mentioned, this relates to an acceptance of limited learning but also to instrumentally repurpose motivations to learning. This assumes the students have the autonomy they believe they do. Instead this agency was imposed by the institution to acquire their consent in seeing how limited learning serves them. It serves them in the way it gets them to their end goal, a degree, quicker. The student is still ultimately paying more for less and is more than willing to do so. Legitimate autonomy should be granted to the student and not solely for the fact they assume the role as paying customers. This falsehood of agency is rather an effect of consumer choice. Tomlinson concludes a “consumer-driven approach is one that reduces learners’ roles to purchasers and delimits their role and agency within the pedagogic process” (2017:455). The instrumentalism that students adopt is essentially consumer choice in how the illusion of autonomy can inform students to deliberately choose low quality education, based on economic outcomes. It is characterized by a means to an end that exemplifies instrumental rationality. Tomlinson states that instrumentalism is based on goal orientations that are motivated by pursuing “economically advantageous outcomes, often at the expense of more intrinsically educational ones” (Tomlinson 2017:453). Rather what I argue is that students need something to fuel their intrinsic motivations, which often is overshadowed by their extrinsic desires in concert with their credentials. Niemiec and Ryan declare “satisfaction of both autonomy and competence needs is essential to maintain intrinsic motivation” (2009:136). Furthering this, the authors note that the basis for learning derives from intrinsic motivation. When that is absent, extrinsic motivations serve as another incentive to learn. This is defined as, “behaviors performed to obtain some outcome separable from the activity itself” (Niemiec and Ryan 2009:136). For as long as students see their education as a means to an end, the value of education can only be realized to that extent. “Students’ ‘satisfaction’, however, can easily be conflated with the fulfilment of short term goals which may involve the attainment of desired outcomes and have limited relation to genuine quality or the intrinsic value of those experiences” (Tomlinson 2017:455). It falls short to what education could be. Only in the context of commercialized education can this consumer relationship bring students to believe their self-edifying goals will be best actualized through instrumental learning. When consumer choice is mistaken for authentic autonomy, students choose low quality education over engaging courses that would then undermine their assumption of choice. In response to this commercialized education model that produces a transactional relationship between students and their learning, less support for engaged learning, and a falsehood of autonomy, there needs to be a reestablished emphasis on human development. First, public higher education should be served as a public good and not marketed as either a private/positional good. As mentioned, education as a positional good is utilized for the sake of the labor market which neglects the process that entails engaged learning. Institutions that deliver that of,“ public good value, refers to goods which are widely distributed within the public domain, having been produced within a public institution which is sustained through public means” (Tomlinson 2018:719). In imagining these public serving places actually serving the public we can (1) emphasize learning through intrinsic over extrinsic values and (2) reverse the privatization that makes life’s development transactional to a job. Students possess intrinsic values but the pressures to have economically driven reasonings to justify choices overpowers them. In reality, the former “provides an important basis for learning” (Niemiec and Ryan 2009:136). When behaviors are enacted on the basis of engagement, challenge, and intrigue, they are emanating from oneself as opposed to external forces. Niemiec and Ryan remark that such autonomous functioning shows “intrinsic motivation is central to humans’ inherent tendencies to learn and to develop” (2009:135). This is evident in Tomlinson’s observation of students “who actively resisted the consumer ethic tended to emphasise the intrinsic value and benefits of their learning and its role in nurturing self-development” (Tomlinson 2017:462). Such self-development is the outcome that should be advocated for, or rather human development. Newfield defines human development as “a field that covered the social, cultural, intellectual, and psychological factors that are required for any forward movement of society. We can think of human development as a central though largely undiscussed outcome of the liberal arts'' (Newfield 2008:21). Along with referencing the United Nations in their briefing on human development in which it is described as not just an equation of the rise or fall of national incomes. It consists of promoting people to develop enriched lives meeting their needs and interests in a creative productive atmosphere. Lastly, “[d]evelopment is thus about expanding the choices people have to lead that they value. And it is thus about much more than economic growth, which is only a means– if a very important one– of enlarging people’s choices.” Here it is apparent of autonomy’s relevance in learning and nourishing one’s ability to actualize their full potential. Students positioned in a way to seek out the effects of a commercialized model of education confuse their consumer voice as autonomy and are left with low quality education and the burden to supplement for increasingly high costs. Similarly, the credential and dream of moving up the social ladder exemplified by consumerism are also factors of a meritocratic framework that supports racialized elilist aristocracy in the context of higher education as another byproduct of neoliberalism. We understand traditionally that class warfare of non-elite differentiation with race to be a means in obtaining compliance to unequal systems. That leads me to ask how does the concomitant racial and class stratification of higher education get students to consent to exploitative consumerist education? THX: CONFLUENCE OF ELITISM AND RACISM UNDER MERITOCRACY Elitism along with white privilege supports the aristocracy by using merit to justify inequalities. Students sold on the principle that hard work will allow them to improve their social conditions can either find this to be true in their instance, which fast forwards this formula, or fall in the category of most and not see this dream actualized. When upward mobility is not actualized, the degree that was to serve as a ticket into elitism can still be utilized. The degree entails a credential which is still valuable as it entails that work associated with such is to be valued and work without is to be devalued. This buy-in from students enacts as to serve towards justifying hierarchical class and race stratification. Merit is, as Markovitz (2019) puts it, a “counterfeit virtue, a false idol.” Where labor is a form of self expression it should be encouraged to work hard. Though once it becomes a means of qualifying the dignity of work, specifically the work of the non-elite associated, it is powerful in its tyrannical ways. Advocating for human flourishing is rejecting testocracy and redefining standards of success. Merit cannot be used to blame or claim who is deserving. Rather achievements should mirror contributions to general welfare. Higher education should create class solidarity rather than stratify it. The sharing of knowledge for the purpose of enriching everyone’s comprehension, despite their accessibility to education. Higher education initially started as an elitist institution but its elitist expressions have adapted to today’s neoliberalism paradigm of privatization. Where in the past, obtaining a degree within itself meant separating oneself into the elite, today going to college is a loss for many. Different avenues are used by universities to perpetuate elite privilege such as appropriating status through credentials, promising upward mobility, and creating class warfare. There is also an overarching framework which is riddled with elitism, which is meritocracy. Aristocracy The aristocracy I suggest is based on the transformation merit goes through when placed in an elitist context. It has become adopted by students to believe through hard work, anyone can achieve a standard of success linked to social mobility and status; Merit is how this idea is justified or rationalized though we know it kind of proves insignificant to the actual privatized model of higher education. Hard work does not exemplify how students coming from more affluent backgrounds are achieving more than that of students who do not (Armstrong and Hamilton 2015). Inheritance will still prove to be a determiner of success but aristocracy has a connotation of being a principle from the past, such meritocracy delivers the same outcomes but masked by the costume of equality. Where meritocracy rewards individuals based on the notion of merit, this stresses an individualistic nature that embodies neoliberalism as well. Meritocracy claims to distribute advantages based on hard work, and decides what merits reward. This glosses over stratification that possesses the populace. What occurs when this happens is that very specific individuals have their social esteem increased and as a result, others’ are decreased. It maintains inequality under the guise of stressing tangible achievement. Credentials are fetishized as rewards to the claimed hard work of students as they reduce their value to the labor market. The free market, with its instability, projects ideals to which students internalize. The winners of the sorting system of higher education (Newfield 2016) can justify their positionality on the caste system by displaying their hard work (Sandel 2020) often characterized by their credentials. Such symbolism reflects merit and achievement, while doing the work of deskilling the non-elite (Markovits 2019). To further the point that meritocracy asserts it creates a level playing field that is equal, Markovits claims that “American meritocracy has become precisely what it was invented to combat: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth, privilege, and caste across generations” which is also understood as an aristocracy. He also suggests that this “new caste order” establishes wealth not in “land or factories but rather in human capital, the free labor of skilled workers” (2019). Upward mobility (failure to deliver… lie of hierarchical meritocracy) There needs to be addressed this emphasis on attainable achievement as well that merit is being the supposed vehicle for. This relates to hierarchical merit which stresses status and social mobility. Higher education promises students a “ticket into the upper-middle class” (Armstrong & Hamilton 2015:228). Students enter higher education believing they will increase their social possession. If a student comes from a working class background and might deal with things like financial insecurity, then they may equate more financial stability with increasing their social status. What is the supposed means of doing this? Pursuing higher education to get a credential that proves one's worth to the labor market and in hopes they will be compensated for such value they possess. Though if you come from an upper middle class lifestyle then it is reasonable to not want to decrease your social status, because that means less power. Armstrong and Hamitlon (2015:32) heavily argue that the ability to do well is inherited, which they profess by using the term “inherited meritocracy.” It takes resources that are heavily dependent on background to achieve higher social status, and that expresses how merit cannot alone do that. This begins to foster an idea where work not associated with a credential, that higher education provides, is less valued. The overall idea that higher education increases one’s social mobility is rooted in class warfare, which I will address further down. To which students subject their value to the standards of the market, they are subjugating their motivations to this standard as well. The ideal outcome is maintained as a way to increase their social mobility but they have to do it in a way that serves the labor market and the marketized institution. The idea of elitism is also formed through how students interact with their exclusive purchased goods, as a private commodity to them. To move up the social ladder, you need a credential. Those without credentials are only to blame themselves. Color Blindness Meritocracy claims to be a qualifier that is neutral on all characteristics besides merit and assigns subjective blame and deservingness amongst people. Through avoiding accountability by using this seemingly equitable metric, Meritocracy can get away with justifying inequality. And as I point to this racialized manifestation of elitism in higher education, I would also like to point out abstract liberalism. Bonilla-Silva describes this meritocratic rationale as a “way of defending white privilege” (2006:33). Though the way it is done has to be race-neutral because meritocracy claims to reject having any other reasoning than just hard work, merit. Again, this creates a framework to blame individuals for their social position because it is understood that they just did not work hard enough. Color-blind racism depends on a person deflecting the claim that they are generalizing a group, which they understand to be racist, and claiming that everyone should be seen as individuals separate from their identifications. They can refute things such as affirmative action because of how it might impact them as an individual. Bonilla-Silva also differentiates attitudes towards race and class by using his survey results to infer that whites are more accepting of government programs or assistance when it was race-neutral, meaning that they were also more accepting of assistance to the poor than to that associated with race. One way merit is used in an unjust way is through measuring academic aptitude through standardized tests. Lani Guinier (2016) explores how the testocracy privileges test scores of students whose parents could afford test preparation over those who could not demonstrate merit. Unequal access to such resources are a proof of wealth stratification and are an unfair form of metric. For as long as this is the instrument to determine deservingness, it will point to unprivileged students as non belonging to academic institutions. The statuses in which students occupy will be a signifer to others despite these race and class neutral forms of measurement because they are neutral to the extent of societal neglect. The effects of such neutrality allows for the incitement of blame and deservingness to be dispersed by those who claim to have succeeded through merit onto the marginalized who struggle to break through the barriers placed before them. Nancy Ditomaso, Rochelle Parks-Yancy, and Corinne Post explore how whites can afford to be “blissfully unaware” of inequality that ultimately serves them because they uphold principles of equal opportunity within a color blindness lens (Doane and Bonilla-Silva 2013). This leads them to believe they have the authority to use this turn of phrase of equal opportunity to state people of color, especially Black folks, are unwilling to take advantage of the resources before them and could even afford to model whites. Though the very whites who claim to be such a model of exemplary merit were also minimizing the supports they relied on to their achievements. They could not afford to hold the same standards they were enforcing on people of color to themselves. This adds to an interesting assertion from whites who emphasize existing equal opportunity that affirmative action is unfair. The solution to them is to filter deserving individuals on the assumption of merit or qualifications, without regard to “race, creed, or color.” Qualifications are too a principle of meritocracy that is symbolized as a credential when focusing on higher education. Credentialism I have spelled prior out how a credential is symbolic of social status because of what it can offer, in terms of the labor market. Now I essentially argue that a credential has resulted to and becomes an objectification of elitism. Reducing the degree and learning of a student results in credentialism. It is the means to the end of which instrumentation expresses. As long as the system rewards those small titles given by these institutions based on who can access it, it will prove those without as of less value. In order to have social recognition and esteem, you need a credential. That lays out to the rational thought students adopt to adhere to the labor market. It is centered in class division, even if students from nearly every socioeconomic background have attended higher education. First, a degree is hardly guaranteed for those who are less affluent and second, it is only through the assumption that everyone will exit higher education with increased social mobility. This devaluing of working class labor that Sandel (2017) emphasizes, models after class warfare and that division line moves frequently. Who can access education varies immensely, especially considering the increasing burden students accept with financing their education. Following this thought of consumerism, this exchange for poor students is a higher risk bet than how it is more of a purchase of education for rich peers. A further critique of valorizing credentialism is how there is a belief that those of a lower socioeconomic status can improve their condition by just obtaining a college degree. This thought can undermine “social recognition and esteem for those who lack the credentials the system rewards” (Sandel 2017:86). This parallels how Black students can internalize social stigmas more so if they perceive that white students believe affirmative action is the only reason their Black peers are in this higher educational setting (Charles et. al 2009). Perception of others' views of oneself can result in adopting these similar thoughts. Students have manifested ideas about social status and not wishing to be lower than the status they occupy now, and they have motivation to seek a credential. Merit is then used as a mechanism to blame the poor and push individuals towards the path of a credential. It says, hard work is how one achieves this upward mobility but a credential never guarantees success. It offers another valuable asset to the student though. White Privilege for Class Warfare Essentially by defending white privilege, elites are not held accountable and instead can recruit non-elite to act on their behalf by ordering other whites to rationalize the status quo. Sandel attests that “meritocrats moralize success and failure and unwittingly promote credentialism—an insidious prejudice against those who have not been to college” (2017: 86). They are ultimately made to see systems of inequality as fair, and yet conversely with the advantage of serving them. Credentialization today is what W.E.B Du Bois conceptualized as a public and psychological wage. The context for which he used this term was to reduce class conflict between the elite and the white working class, but in the context of credentialization in higher education it reduces the class conflict between the elite and the aspiring elite. Sandel (2017) suggests W.E.B Du Bois’ public and psychological wage to be today’s white privilege. Olson (2008) looked at the same concept from W.E.B Du Bois and applied it to how whiteness provides a means of which one can derive their social esteem from by asserting that despite being marginalized in how it relates to class, they were at least not Black. A student with a credential can justify not being accepted into elitism but can still perpetuate elitist notions because it confirms they are not on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Referencing back to colorblindness, Tomlinson and Lipsitz highlights that the neoliberal project manages its contradictions by simultaneously “deploying” and “disavowing” race. Neoliberalism deploys race to encourage white working-class and middle-class to resort to privatization to combat their public institutions being “synonymous with communities of color” and disavows race to combat any identifiers that could inform a form of solidarity against the interests of market capitalism (2013:10). This disavowal can also be used to explain the effect of neutrality that results in feelings of estrangement from people of color in these white centered spaces. Olson (2008:709) notes that “whiteness as a norm is a system of tacit and concealed racial privileges” that manifests within “market forces, cultural habits, and other everyday practices that presume” white interests and expectations. It proposes that white advantage is something that results naturally from the free market and individuals. Olson (2008) further explains when whites can no longer rely on the state to guarantee their personal advantageous standing, they have to resort to adapting to enjoy this privilege at the group level as opposed to the individual level. It creates a frustration of an inability to see the white advantages as such, because of this ecological difference, despite continuing to enjoy them. This fuels a means of hostility that produces ressentiment. Perceiving/Feeling at a loss of racial standing is a contradiction to white normalization but the “irony is that normalization breeds ressentiment even as it perpetuates white advantage” (Olson 2008:709). Higher education creates an environment for people to work towards white privileges in hopes they may strive to that advantageous standing. They believe in the hierarchy despite their positionality if they believe that they, as an individual, can eventually achieve a higher social status in their lifetime. One pathway involves getting a substantial career that often requires a credential of some sort as a result of the fetishism of credentials. The promise of upward mobility through obtaining a degree is the end of the means for students. Of course, this dream, especially for those strivers that seek elitism, is rarely realized so it requires the consent of its supporters. With race hostility and class antagonisms as a source of tension, it can be used as a mechanism for whites to fight against solidarity for their own personal sake in obtaining rewards in the form of white privilege. Though this explanation describes something so overt and that is not how it manifests in higher education. Instead meritocracy serves as a guise to conduct acts of class warfare. It is easily adopted so that whites can justify their rejection of the term racist for themselves by stating they do not see color. Instead they use the metric of the valuable asset of hard work. But the means of measuring that is too subjective in a world where wealth informs educational attainment and that reproduces racial inequality in that form too. It is to this point that Lani Guinier (2016) asserts affirmative action “has failed because it has not gone far enough to address the unfairness of both our current merit system and its wealth-driven definition of merit.” Yet it is maintained as the basis of whites' proof to reproduce blame and deservingness only to people of color and continuously see advantage in privatizing this resource of education, a pathway for increased social status, for themselves. Sandel (2017:134) uses Rawls to point out how “it is a mistake to regard an economic system - or, for that matter, a constitution – as a scheme for honoring virtue or cultivating character” and that considerations of merit and virtue should fall after considerations of justice. The economic system has also been used to distort the efficiency of using a measurement of merit for character as wealth can be a signifier of one’s accessibility to resources. Education, in any form including higher education, should not be excluding knowledge to particular groups. Instead higher education should be made accessible to everyone. In associating a way to eliminate an unequal distribution of knowledge, Newfield (2008:99) refers to meritocracy II to possess a central notion that “intelligence is spread widely rather than narrowly in human societies.” He derived this from historian Christopher Lasch’s “democratization of intelligence” which he contrasted to social mobility. Social mobility in the way applied by white men to other white men is a poor actualized substitute to what its intended goal claims; the social mobility of an entire society by distributing intelligence throughout its population. Meritocracy II is said by Newfield to have its potential largely diminished by the presence of neoliberalism. He accredits Reagan-era general downsizing of public resources to be where this lack of support towards this idea arises. Lani Guinier (2016) addresses the American university as a place, “driven by competitive individualism and test scores, a place where students of color, poor students, and others unfavored by wealth-dependent standardized tests must face isolation and fatiguing odds.” Though this is not the only way to utilize our public institutions of higher education. Education in the current context in which it is inaccessible to individuals of particular socioeconomic classes and varying racial groups, it leaves this exclusive nature to equate access to credentials, like a degree, to be an explanation of status. As a result, work not associated with a degree nor credential is unvalued. Sandel (2020) calls for a reestablished dignity of work that contains roots in our ability to exercise the need to be needed by those around us sharing a common life. He says it is inappropriate to equate labor in this manner as the “sole end and object of economic activity.” Sandel advocates for contributive justice which promotes human flourishing by promoting our ability to contribute. It asserts we are our most human when we can earn the esteem of the receivers of our contributions. So when we devalue specific contributions, we are in a sense dehumanizing under a rejection of the proposed contributive justice framework. Though by renewing the sense of dignity with work, we reassert our moral principles that “technocratic politics” have distorted through the economic arrangements we have situated ourselves within. EMPY: STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES/EXPERIENCES REGARDING PAYING A LOT FOR LOW QUALITY LEARNING My theoretical concept is commercialized education. Commercialization can result in students reducing their relationship to education as a transaction, creating rational instrumental views to their learning, and confusing consumer choice for autonomy. A substantial effect of these aspects is limited learning in contrast to quality education. To speak to consumerism as it relates to the transaction of purchasing a degree, I intend to ask students about their experiences in the classroom: What are student’s meaningful classes that left lasting impressions on them? [And how this contrasts to their major, which might point to their economic extrinsicism, What might be the motive to cheat with AI (Chat GPT) if they have? Can students speak to their involvement with online classes? [they like it because they can get away with cheating or perhaps they find themselves more self motivated/driven]. On another note with this consumer power, I would like to ask students about what they would think having free education would be like? And to ask them: How would this impact the value of your degree? [This could result in me envisioning asking potential probes to respond to responses like believing the value of the degree would tank]. On the same idea of free education: If college was free what other major would you have done? Or what classes would you have taken? [A connection to falsehood of autonomy]. Two ideals of my theoretical concept I intend to probe students about are limited learning versus full service learning and positional good versus public good. These can get at how students view their more personal relation to their pursuit of their degree. Something I emphasized was the idea that students see it beneficial to seek the path of least resistance so I would want to ask a question that could determine if students saw their journey at the university as more so for the outcome or for the journey. This area of limited learning also can address agency. Do students prefer instrumental learning that models vocational skills over more cultural knowledge? Which can be translated into: Do you believe the university does an effective job in preparing you for your future career, and is that something you expect? To address my section on autonomy, I need to explore student’s intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations for being at the university along with their experiences in classes. And as well as addressing how they feel about their agency, as it pertains to confusing it as such instead of consumer choice. Is the consumer title or does a consumer relationship describe something students would ascribe to? More directly: How do you feel being a customer in buying a degree at BSU? I had informed prior that students carry a duality of both intrinsic and extrinsic reasoning when it pertains to their education. For extrinsic motivations, students may be able to report on financial pressures surrounding their class backgrounds, debt, and financial aid. Some may speak to lifestyles they glorify. Intrinsic motivations can also be exemplified by students by asking them about their class experiences: Tell me about one of your most positive experiences in a class? What have you taken away from class that had a positive impression on you? Or similar questions that get at engagement with class content: What have you learned in class that you’ve found yourself discussing frequently in non-academic settings? What content has been the easiest to retain? How did you learn it, or what made it easy to retain in contrast to your other classes? Tell me about your easiest class, the hardest? EMPX: STUDENTS' ATTITUDES/EXPERIENCES ABOUT WHAT THEIR DEGREE WILL PROVIDE THEM (EXCLUSIVITY OF DEGREE) AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION For my independent variable, I conceptualized it as Aristocracy (elitism and white privilege under meritocracy) and how merit, disguised to promote equality, perpetuates class warfare particularly through the racial splintering of non-elites. The notion of hard work guaranteeing success grants false promises to individuals about upward mobility. One idea to improve one’s social condition is to obtain a credential which leads to an overt fetishism of a degree equating status. Such status is rather a consolation prize, of a public and psychological wage, for when these false promises fall short. By creating a caste system, we can use the seemingly fair metric of merit to justify positionality within a hierarchy by applying blame and deservingness to the populace. There are a few ways I can address elitism as it pertains to classism. Asking students how they feel about income based affirmative action/scholarship can explore these ideals of blame and deservingness. The response of students can also seek to measure how much they use merit to justify their reasonings. Another question I intend to ask is what do students believe their degree will provide them with? Pointing to their exclusive relationship with their degree and also to see how sold they are on the promise of upward mobility through credentialism. A basic yet essential question to ask would be: What if we could deliver free higher education?, with the potential to follow up with questions regarding how this might distort the value of education for the student or society itself. To further the notion of exclusivity, I want to know how students value the work of the working class: How would we fill low-end jobs if everyone had a college degree? [answers point to some justification for hierarchy]. Another similar question could be asked regarding why upward mobility is so stagnant. How is it valuable to improve all jobs, or how might we improve all jobs? [better benefits aligned with more democratic societies or rather jobs like industry types are not worth improving…] Affirmative action seems to be an effective way in seeking to understand student’s thoughts about white privilege and race. Can students speak to being race-neutral while still ascribing racialized blame and deservingness to their peers? I intend to get at different angles about this by asking about race based affirmative action/scholarship, stigmas such as imposter syndrome, and the effectiveness of standardized test measurements. Are SAT/ACT (which is no longer required) a form of good measurement? This would speak to testocratic ideals. I can also ask about how affluent students have access to test prep/tutoring services or how they attribute their peers success to? [Do they think their peers succeed because they are hard workers with good work ethic or do they understand access to resources may improve achievements?]. White privilege will be precarious to how white people find difficulty recognizing their advantages, particularly low income whites, but I want to address white privilege as a consolation prize to not being accepted into elitism [like not achieving upward mobility]. I would as well find it beneficial to attempt to get a response about justifying one’s positionality by not being on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Investigating how students feel about race inequality could be addressed from a variety of angles/degrees. Starting with the affirmative action and testocratic questions and then segueing into mandatory race classes. From there that might be enough to prompt students to give honest answers about race. Though if not, we could ask about the abolishment of police [police brutality disproportionately against Black people] and also reparations [pointing to deservingness and blame…even white guilt]. Overall what I think can be achieved by these differing angles is perhaps to derive how white Americans, seemingly color-blind, do not want to discuss racial issues because they frequently think they are blown out of proportion. The term racist can even offset strong feelings from whites. Questions about how whites can afford to be lazy but are critical of black folk because they assume there is laziness and freeloading. That also allows me to think about many other marginalized groups who are characterized as milking our social institutions, like immigrant populations [also how it relates to people being lazy yet hard working at the same time]. For the most part, white Americans do not view themselves as ascribing to racism yet also if there was a perceived sense of loss of privileges would want to maintain the status quo. It would be vital to ask questions regarding this. When it comes to reporting on race-based support I could ask students: How important is it to screen applications? Why are Black people’s graduation rates lower than that of whites? How should race be taken into consideration in hiring? A more applicable question to students in regards to their positionality at their university about race may ask about their thoughts about the racial makeup of the contracted labor. I would also like to ask questions about this broader framework of meritocracy. When addressing the aristocracy, an elite fueled meritocracy, I laid out the oversimplification that is the belief in which anyone with hard work can “succeed.” In doing so, those can objectively declare who is deserving and who is to blame. It succeeds in justifying the hierarchy dependent on stratification. I could address this through the angle of how do students qualify hard work? This may lead to notions about playing by the rules and maintaining the status quo. If students appear to be neutral on race and class, in what ways do they justify hierarchy? [not a practical question but speaks to deservingness and blame]. Who is deserving of education? This question can very much speak to meritocracy and justifying hierarchy though. But also this can ask less provoking questions like, how is society better when everyone is educated? How does your degree intend to help other people? [Perhaps measuring how students adopt neoliberalism, there will be questions about how students adhere to individuality so this can contrast that to asking about community standards] What did you do to deserve college? As a follow up question, I believe we can use that to speak to where I hint at my X and Y being in relation to one another. If the student is searching for the path of least resistance but can state their achievements in contrast to their undeserving peers, that would be gratifying to me. Lastly, a question pertaining to the purpose of education can be used for either X or Y too depending on the answers. It can explain instrumentalism or it can point to deservingness too. CONCLUSION My intention with this proposal is to see if elitism and white privilege is employed by meritocracy as a means to gain student’s consent to commercialized education that sells low quality education at increasingly high costs. Empirically I wish to understand how neoliberal privatization of higher education makes education secondary to economic rationale. I advance the knowledge by using a more intersectional lens to a seemingly race and class neutral ideology of meritocracy as it devalues the flourishing of human development. References Armstrong, Elizabeth A., and Laura T. Hamilton. 2015. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. London, England: Harvard University Press. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. “The Central Frames of Color-Blind Racism.” Pp. 25–52 in Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Charles, Camille Z., Mary J. Fischer, Margarita A. Mooney, and Douglas S. Massey. 2016. Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ditomaso, Nancy, Rochelle Parks-Yancy, and Corinne Post. 2013. “White Views of Civil Rights: Color Blindness and Equal Opportunity.” Pp. 189–98 in White out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, edited by A. W. Doane and E. Bonilla-Silva. Routledge. Guinier, Lani. 2016. The Tyranny of the Meritocracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Markovits, Daniel. 2020. The Meritocracy Trap. Harlow, England: Penguin Books. McMurtry, John. 1991. “Education and the Market Model.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 25(2):209–17. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9752.1991.tb00642.x. Newfield, Christopher. 2011. Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class. London, England: Harvard University Press. Newfield, Christopher. 2018. The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Niemiec, Christopher P., and Richard M. Ryan. 2009. “Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness in the Classroom: Applying Self-Determination Theory to Educational Practice.” Theory and Research in Education 7(2):133–44. doi: 10.1177/1477878509104318. Olson, Joel. 2008. “Whiteness and the Polarization of American Politics.” Political Research Quarterly 61(4):704–18. doi: 10.1177/1065912908322408. Sandel, Michael J. 2021. The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? Harlow, England: Penguin Books. Tomlinson, Barbara, and George Lipsitz. 2013. “Insubordinate Spaces for Intemperate Times: Countering the Pedagogies of Neoliberalism.” The Review of Education Pedagogy & Cultural Studies 35(1):3–26. doi: 10.1080/10714413.2013.753758. Tomlinson, Michael. 2017. “Student Perceptions of Themselves as ‘Consumers’ of Higher Education.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 38(4):450–67. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2015.1113856. Tomlinson, Michael. 2018. “Conceptions of the Value of Higher Education in a Measured Market.” Higher Education 75(4):711–27. doi: 10.1007/s10734-017-0165-6.

Research Question: How does the amount of time spent taking a foreign language class affect students’ attitudes toward the teaching of critical race theory in public education? Key Concepts: - Foreign language learning - Critical race theory - Public education - Cross-cultural exposure - Cross-cultural awareness My Hypothesis: I believe there is going to be a relationship between time spent taking a foreign language class and students’ perspectives on the teaching of critical race theory. Taking foreign language classes exposes students to other cultures, countries, and groups of people, which might decrease feelings of xenophobia and increase intercultural awareness. This exposure to other cultures likely influences students’ perceptions of related concepts such as race and ethnicity. I hypothesize that the more time spent taking foreign language classes, the more likely students will support the teaching of critical race theory in public education. Intended Contribution: My research is both relevant and necessary because the topic of critical race theory and its perspective of race in American history continue to be heavily debated among Americans. With such passion on the side supporting CRT and such heated backlash on the other, learning about the factors that influence Americans’ views of the topic plays an important role in understanding why the topic is so controversial and how to properly address the issue. Though I am going to perform basic research, others could further the study through applied research that can actively work to resolve the tensions/debate regarding CRT. Research Strategy: For my approach, I am choosing to do a computer-assisted cross-sectional survey that will use stratified sampling. I believe a survey is the best option because it is strictly anonymous, time efficient, cheap, and will avoid social desirability bias, allowing respondents to answer anonymously on their own without the pressure to respond a certain way in the presence of others. Because I already have a hypothesis for how the variables might (if at all) be related, my study is deductive. Though it could become applied research due to its inherent quality of solving factors related to a political conflict, my study is basic in the sense that it is seeking to resolve an intellectual puzzle about social behavior (how aspects like foreign language classes might unconsciously influence political opinions). Being a survey, my study is quantitative research because responses can be quantified and summarized into numbers for coding. Because my study is focused on finding potential reasons for differences in attitudes about CRT, my research is explanatory. The pros of my approaches are that my survey can be easily administered (time/cost efficient), avoids social desirability bias/Hawthorne effect, and can be easily coded because it’s quantitative. However, some of the cons include the difficulty in encouraging students to take the survey since it will be sent via email, as well as the potential for accidentally making the questions confusing for respondents. Sampling: My population is all Whitworth undergraduate students and my sampling frame will be using all Whitworth undergraduate student emails. I will use stratified sampling for my survey. I will divide my sample into Whitworth students who are enrolled in any foreign language classes and those who are not, randomly sampling from both strata. This is the best strategy because I am making sure I am getting some information about students who are in foreign language classes and even likely oversampling since that population is going to likely be smaller than the rest of the student population not in a foreign language class. Dividing the Whitworth student population into the two strata will also ensure I have students who have taken a foreign language class for a varying number of years. I will likely have to weigh the responses of the foreign-language-class students smaller than those not in those classes because that population, though oversampled here, does not hold as great of a percentage of the Whitworth student population and would therefore overrepresent them. I will randomly sample students within each of the two strata to sample students with varying majors. Instrument: 1. What is your grade level at Whitworth? 1st year (freshman) 2nd year (sophomore) 3rd year (junior) 4th year (senior) 5th year or greater (undergrad) 2. What type of major(s) are you studying? Humanities Physical Sciences Social Sciences Business Education 3. Is English your first language? Yes No English and another equally 4. Have you ever participated in any of the following? (Mark all that apply)? Non-English language class in middle or high school Non-English language class in college/university Non-English language class through other institution/program Non-English language tutoring None of the above 5. If you have participated in any of the activities mentioned in Question 3, how many different languages have you studied? 1 2 3 4 5 or more Not applicable 6. If you have participated in any of the activities mentioned in Question 3, which of the following non-English languages have you studied? (Mark all that apply) Spanish French Chinese Japanese German Italian Other Not applicable 7. How many academic years have you studied a non-English language through a course/tutoring? (Assume 1/2 year = 1 semester term) 1/2 1-1 1/2 2-2 1/2 3-3 1/2 4-4 1/2 5-5 1/2 6-6 1/2 >7 Not applicable If more than 1 language, please submit entry here for the amount of academic years you’ve studied each language: 8. If you have participated in any of the activities mentioned in Question 3, please mark your reason for participation (Mark all that apply): Graduation requirement Elective credit Personal interest Vocational interest Parental pressure Peer pressure Other Not applicable 9. Please rate your level of familiarity with the topic of Critical Race Theory: Not familiar Somewhat familiar Familiar Very familiar Please rate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements: 10. “Race is a socially constructed concept and has no biological basis.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 11. “Racism is inherent in American law and legal institutions.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 12. “Though the United States has had a history of racism, generally all racial groups now share equal opportunities.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 13. “It is the responsibility of the American educational system to teach Critical Race Theory in public schools.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 14. “School districts should have the right to decide if they teach Critical Race Theory in public schools.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 15. “Critical Race Theory should be taught in middle school and high school, but elementary school is too early.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 16. “Critical Race Theory should only be taught at the college/university level.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 17. “Critical Race Theory should be taught regardless of a student’s age.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 18. “Teaching Critical Race Theory in American schools is harmful to students’ emotional, mental and/or academic well-being.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 19. “Teaching Critical Race Theory encourages more animosity/tension between racial groups.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 20. “Critical Race Theory teaches students that the United States has had a history of exploiting minority groups on the foundation of white supremacy.” Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 21. What is your gender identity? Female Male Non-Binary Other 22. What is your race/ethnicity? Asian/Asian American Black/African American Latinx/Hispanic Native American/Alaska Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander White/European American Other Resources Used in Research Process/Development: Albayrak, Hü, and Tü Sener. "The Relationship between Participation in Extracurricular Activities and Motivation of Foreign Language Learning." International Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, 2021, pp. 122-132. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ relationship-between-participation/docview/2550853690/se-2. Anne-Mieke M.M. Thieme, Kyra Hanekamp, Sible Andringa, Josje Verhagen & Folkert Kuiken (2022) The effects of foreign language programmes in early childhood education and care: a systematic review, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 35:3, 334-351, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2021.1984498 Cai, Lingling, and Chunrong Wu. "A Study on the Cultivation of Primary School Students' Cross-Cultural Awareness-Based on the Schema Theory." Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 10, no. 5, 2020, pp. 604-611. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ study-on-cultivation-primary-school-students/docview/2404395157/se-2, doi:https:// doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1005.15. Cole, Mike. "Critical Race Theory in Education, Marxism and Abstract Racial Domination." British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 33, no. 2, 2012, pp. 167-183. ProQuest, https://librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly- journals/critical-race-theory-education-marxism-abstract/docview/941022156/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2011.649830. Darr, Joshua P., et al. “Seeing Spanish: The Effects of Language-Based Media Choices on Resentment and Belonging.” Political Communication, vol. 37, no. 4, 2020, pp. 488–511., https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1713268. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=9b717b5b-6e25-4a99-bae2-8f3b19c2177e%40redis de Saint Leger, Diane. "Self-Assessment of Speaking Skills and Participation in a Foreign Language Class." Foreign Language Annals, vol. 42, no. 1, 2009, pp. 158-178. ProQuest, https://librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly- journals/self-assessment-speaking-skills-participation/docview/61860559/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2009.01013.x. Dixson, Adrienne D., and Celia R. Anderson. "Where are we? Critical Race Theory in Education 20 Years Later." Peabody Journal of Education, vol. 93, no. 1, 2018, pp. 121-131. ProQuest, https://librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/ scholarly-journals/where-are-we-critical-race-theory-education-20/docview/2097452066/ se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2017.1403194. Guillot, Marie-Noëlle. "Subtitling's Cross-Cultural Expressivity Put to the Test: A Cross- Sectional Study of Linguistic and Cultural Representation Across Romance and Germanic Languages." Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, vol. 38, no. 5, 2019, pp. 505-528. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ subtitlings-cross-cultural-expressivity-put-test/docview/2461144835/se-2, doi:https:// doi.org/10.1515/multi-2018-0116. Iaccarino, Antonio R. "The Role of Motivation and Controversial Conceptual Material in Foreign Language Classrooms." Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 3, no. 3, 2012, pp. 430-438. ProQuest, https://librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https:// www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/role-motivation-controversial-conceptual-material/ docview/1019434895/se-2. Klimova B, Pikhart M. Current Research on the Impact of Foreign Language Learning Among Healthy Seniors on Their Cognitive Functions From a Positive Psychology Perspective-A Systematic Review. Front Psychol. 2020 Apr 21;11:765. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00765. PMID: 32373038; PMCID: PMC7186493. Kissau, Scott, Mary J. Adams, and Bob Algozzine. "Middle School Foreign Language Instruction: A Missed Opportunity?" Foreign Language Annals, vol. 48, no. 2, 2015, pp. 284-303. ProQuest, https://librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https:// www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/middle-school-foreign-language-instruction- missed/docview/1698401993/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12133. Moore, Angie, Hana Vonkova, and Irem Altinkalp. Examining the Relationship between Exposure to English in Non-Language Classes and Motivation to use English during Free Time Activities. Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, 2022. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/reports/examining- relationship-between-exposure-english/docview/2732062170/se-2. Ortuno, Marian M. "Cross-Cultural Awareness in the Foreign Language Class: The Kluckhohn Model." The Modern Language Journal, vol. 75, no. 4, 1991, pp. 449. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ cross-cultural-awareness-foreign-language-class/docview/197275060/se-2. Parker, Laurence, and Octavio Villalpando. "A Race(Cialized) Perspective on Education Leadership: Critical Race Theory in Educational Administration." Educational Administration Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 5, 2007, pp. 519-524. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ race-cialized-perspective-on-education-leadership/docview/622132245/se-2, doi:https:// doi.org/10.1177/0013161X07307795. Rodríguez, Luis F. G. "Critical Intercultural Learning through Topics of Deep Culture in an EFL Classroom." Íkala, vol. 20, no. 1, 2015, pp. 43-59. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ critical-intercultural-learning-through-topics/docview/1734627891/se-2, doi:https:// doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v20n1a03. Scheunpflug, Annette. “Cross-Cultural Encounters as a Way of Overcoming Xenophobia.” International Review of Education/Internationale Zeitschrift Fur Erziehungswissenschaft/Revue Internationale De Pedagogie, vol. 43, no. 1, 1997, pp. 109–116., https://doi.org/0020-8566. Sergeeva, , M. G., et al. “Development of Teachers’ Cross-Cultural Literacy in the System of Further Vocational Education.” RELIGACIÓN. Revista De Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, vol. 4, no. 13, 2019. Sudha, Mannujan Mohini. “Incorporating Controversial Issues in Critical Thinking Lesson: A Case Study of EFL Classroom.” English Language Teaching, vol. 11, no. 9, 2018, p. 48., https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n9p48. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1187934 Writer, Jeannette Haynes. "Unmasking, Exposing, and Confronting: Critical Race Theory, Tribal Critical Race Theory and Multicultural Education." International Journal of Multicultural Education, vol. 10, no. 2, 2008. ProQuest, https:// librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ unmasking-exposing-confronting-critical-race/docview/2653298566/se-2, doi:https:// doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v10i2.137. Yao, Christina W., Chrystal George Mwangi A., and Victoria Malaney Brown K. "Exploring the Intersection of Transnationalism and Critical Race Theory: A Critical Race Analysis of International Student Experiences in the United States." Race, Ethnicity and Education, vol. 22, no. 1, 2019, pp. 38-58. ProQuest, https://librarysftp.whitworth.edu:2443/login? url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/exploring-intersection- transnationalism-critical/docview/2135462780/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13613324.2018.1497968.

*This study was conducted prior to the unprecedented events of October 7th With the rapid increase of the interconnected and digital world, the importance of global affairs and current events cannot be overstated. We live in a time when we are connected through various media, news, social media, and online outlets. Understanding international issues and conflicts has become critical to gaining knowledge for academic pursuits and being informed globally and socially. College campuses are epicenters for both intellectual growth and diverse growth as they serve as a foundational ground for exploring the awareness and knowledge of global affairs. Past research has indicated that many people, especially young individuals, need to be better versed in global affairs that do not pertain to the Western world. And with biased media heavily showcased within various news platforms, do college students have any knowledge about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Especially when considering news personalization, as technology is tailored to algorithms, and news adheres to one's taste, limiting what a college student can see and learn on social platforms (Powers, 2017). This study aimed to dive deeper into a broader question while navigating through a specific avenue: how much do college students know about global affairs, with a particular focus on one of the most enduring and contentious conflicts in international relations, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? This research explores the relationship between college students' media habits and their grasp of international issues and topics. As past studies have examined college students' and adolescents' news consumption, there has been limited research studying college student's awareness of global conflicts, especially those not heavily covered in Western media. This project addresses this gap by assessing students' knowledge of the current global and political affairs, highlighting the Israeli-Palestinian occupation. The findings deliver an account of whether students' media consumption correlates with their comprehension of non-Western affairs. The institution of Western colleges could emphasize media literacy to enhance global learning if higher news consumption is associated with greater understanding. If no correlation materializes, it can imply that other external factors drive knowledge and allow for further research to examine either why that is or another way to retain comprehension of the geopolitical scale of the world. Ultimately, this research can inform educational endeavors to increase and expand Western college students' international awareness. The present study asked about the relationship between students and their knowledge of current events, such as global affairs, international affairs, and ongoing global conflicts. This study hypothesizes that students with higher levels of media consumption will have higher knowledge surrounding global affairs and current events. To address this hypothesis, an experiment design study was administered using Qualtrics on students attending the University of Portland. Participants were also gathered through social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. The Media Consumption Measure was selected to measure media consumption (MC). The version of the scale was delivered by Dolliver et al., 2018, with questions being scored through a yes/no scale, how many days per week scale, and a 9-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = not important and 9 = very important. Questions will indicate (using a yes/no) what type of media they consume; options include local newspapers, local TV, and CNN. Questions will then indicate how many days per week they spend viewing each type of and how they access the media (TV, via a link to a particular site from social media, or online, via a link from another source). Finally, statements are asked to rank the importance of each media source using a 9-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = not important and 9 = very important. Participants were asked to answer questions pertaining to their familiarity with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Questions were asked in a true/false format. The scale was designed and constructed through the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) site regarding an Israel-Palestine quiz (Caabu, 2023). Participants were also asked about their knowledge of current and global affairs using a scale of 10 questions will be asked, with four choices of answers per each question. Questions such as "The media often reports on "Brexit." What does "Brexit" refer to?" and "What is the capital city of Afghanistan, which fell under Taliban control in August 2021?" However, within the duration of this study, unprecedented events broke out in the Middle East, which was accounted for in the study. Around half of the data was collected before October 7th, and the rest after that date. The study indicated a significant change in knowledge, both on the Israeli/Palestinian occupation and global affairs, after the events of October 7th, with knowledge and media consumption increasing after the said date. However, the correlation between higher news coverage and knowledge of the occupation seemed to have a negative correlation, indicating that maybe the media college students consume is not fit to answer factual questions regarding geopolitical affairs. Sources: Mihailidis, P., & Thevenin, B. (2013). Media literacy as a core competency for engaged citizenship in participatory democracy. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(11), 1611–1622. Boczkowski, P., Mitchelstein, E., & Matassi, M. (2017). Incidental news: How young people consume news on social media. Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2017). https://doi.org/10.24251/hicss.2017.217 Rosengard, D., Tucker-McLaughlin, M., & Brown, T. (2014). Students and social news. Electronic News, 8(2), 120–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1931243114546448 Silver, L. (2022, May 25). What do Americans know about international affairs?. Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/05/25/what-do-americans-know-about-international-affairs/ Wang, L. (2021). Understanding college students’ news sharing experience on Instagram. Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. https://doi.org/10.1145/3462204.3481779 Powers, E. (2017). My News Feed is filtered? Digital Journalism, 5(10), 1315–1335. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1286943 Al-Sarraj, W. F., & Lubbad, H. M. (2018). Bias detection of Palestinian/Israeli conflict in western media: A sentiment analysis experimental study. 2018 International Conference on Promising Electronic Technologies (ICPET). https://doi.org/10.1109/icpet.2018.00024 Heywood, E., & Goodman, S. (2018a). How palestinian students invoke the category “human” to challenge negative treatment and media representations. Journal of Community &amp; Applied Social Psychology, 29(2), 133–145. doi:10.1002/casp.2389 Edward W. Said. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981. Suleiman, M. W. (1984). Development of public opinion on the Palestine question. Journal of Palestine Studies, 13(3), 87–116. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.1984.13.3.00p0036p Head, A. J., DeFrain, E., Fister, B., & MacMillan, M. (2019). Across the great divide: How Today’s college students engage with news. First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v24i8.10166 Geers, S. (2020). News consumption across media platforms and content. Public Opinion Quarterly, 84(S1), 332–354. doi:10.1093/poq/nfaa010 Abouchedid., & Nasser, R. (2006). Info-bias mechanism and American college students’ attitudes towards Arabs. International Studies Perspectives, 7(2), 204–212. doi:10.1111/j.1528-3585.2006.00240.x Sperry, C. (2006). Seeking truth in the social studies classroom: media literacy, critical thinking and teaching about the Middle East. Social Education, 70(1), 37+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A142635618/AONE?u=s8474154&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=cbfa0de4 Klemm, T. (2015). News literacy in social work education. Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 20(1), 63–77. doi:10.18084/1084-7219-20.1.63 Fleming, D. B., & Weber, L. J. (1982). Teenage news knowledge and media use. Newspaper Research Journal, 4(1), 22–27. doi:10.1177/073953298200400103 Vincent, R. C., & Basil, M. D. (1997). College students’ news gratifications, media use, and current events knowledge. Journal of Broadcasting &amp; Electronic Media, 41(3), 380–392. doi:10.1080/08838159709364414 Park, C. S. (2019). Does Too Much News on Social Media Discourage News Seeking? Mediating Role of News Efficacy Between Perceived News Overload and News Avoidance on Social Media. Social Media + Society, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119872956 Schmidt, H.C. (2012). Media Literacy Education at the University Level. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 12, 64-77. Home: Council for Arab-British Understanding. Home | Council for Arab-British Understanding. (n.d.). https://www.caabu.org/ Israel and Palestine. Council for Arab-British Understanding. (n.d.). https://www.caabu.org/education/israel-and-palestine

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Historically, LGBTQ individuals congregated in LGBTQ-specific neighborhoods known as "gayborhoods" in urban cities to protect themselves from an unaccepting society (D'Emilio 1992; Ghaziani 2015). Throughout the second half of the 20th century, gayborhoods served as a safe haven for LGBTQ individuals seeking protection, love, community, affordable housing, and a sense of belonging (Ghaziani 2015). These areas provided a physical space for expressing a collective identity and political power to be gained in the face of oppression. The concentration of gay men and lesbians in these neighborhoods reshaped their collective spatial imagination and inspired future queer individuals to seek out these spaces because they perceived this space to be accepting (Castells 1983; Chancey 1994; Acosta 2008; Carrillo et al. 2014; Ghaziani 2015). However, in recent generations, queer individuals have been seeking to move beyond these historic residential patterns, which have led to the de-concentration of queer individuals in these historically gay neighborhoods (Ghaziani 2015a; Ghaziani 2015b). The reasons for these changes to queer life and gayborhoods have remained uncertain, with some explanations considering economic and cultural factors. This research seeks to understand how an LGBTQ person's individual political ideology (IPI), in contrast to a neighborhood's political ideology (NPI), influences their mobilities, imaginaries, perceptions of safe space, and residential selection in the United States when leaving traditional gay neighborhoods. In recent years, the political climate in the United States has become increasingly polarized. This polarization has led some individuals to seek locations that better align with their political beliefs. In a 2022 article, the National Public Radio (NPR) reported that a small group of conservative Americans had created a Facebook group encouraging people to move to Texas to escape California's liberal politics (Burnett 2011). The individuals in this article were straight (heterosexual), but it was evident that political ideology impacted their imaginaries of a particular space and feelings of belongingness. This is not an isolated incident. Many newspaper articles share similar themes, which could indicate political ideologies influencing the mobilities and imaginaries of Americans. According to a study conducted in 2011, people tend to move to spaces that match their political beliefs (McDonald 2011). As the LGBTQ community faces increasing hostility from socially conservative individuals, this could impact where LGBTQ individuals choose to live. The fear of not feeling welcome in areas not aligning with their political ideology is a genuine concern. I'm curious to know if an LGBTQ individual who identifies as more liberal would be deterred from living in a more conservative area where they might not feel a sense of belongingness. Historically, the LGBTQ community has migrated to specific areas where they feel safe expressing their queerness. However, with the decline of gayborhoods and increasing political polarization, the impact of political ideologies on migration, imaginaries, and the perception of safe spaces is still unclear and requires further exploration. For this study, I hypothesize that LGBTQ individuals are more likely to seek alignment between IPI and NPI than straight-identifying individuals, considering the current political climate and de-concentration of LGBTQ individuals in traditionally gay neighborhoods. To test my hypothesis, I will collect by conducting a stratified random sample of the LGBTQ Community and straight individuals. The LGBTQ community has long been subject to discrimination and marginalization, with politics playing a central role in perpetuating these issues. As political polarization continues to increase in the United States, LGBTQ individuals face an even greater risk of discrimination and violence. It is, therefore, crucial that we understand what factors contribute to a safe and welcoming environment for LGBTQ individuals and work to create such spaces wherever possible. To this end, I am conducting research to identify the impact of political ideologies on a safe and welcoming environment for LGBTQ individuals. By understanding these factors, we can develop strategies to create more inclusive and supportive environments in various settings, from schools and workplaces to public spaces and community organizations. This research is of utmost importance, as legislation is actively being proposed that discriminates against the LGBTQ community in the United States. By understanding what makes LGBTQ individuals feel safe and supported, we can work to counteract these harmful policies and create a more just and equitable society for all. I therefore urge you to support this critical research, which has the potential to make a significant impact on the lives of LGBTQ individuals and their communities. METHODS Studying the LGBTQ community in the past was challenging due to the difficulty in accessing their population compared to the general straight population. Previous research on the LGBTQ community has mainly employed qualitative methodologies or relied on secondary data analysis to understand the issues affecting the community (Umberson et al. 2015). However, to comprehensively examine how a person's individual political ideology (IPI) versus a neighborhood's political ideology (NPI) affects their mobilities, imaginaries, and perceptions of safe space in the United States, a quantitative method is required. A quantitative method is required for this study to see if there is a statistically significant difference between the straight and the LGBTQ populations. This study will use Survey Monkey, which allows researchers to target specific populations, like the LGBTQ community. This survey will ask about IPI, NPI, perception of space, and belongingness. The key to this research will be to isolate LGBTQ and straight individuals in the survey to understand if there is a difference between the two groups when choosing a space based on IPI and NPI. To conduct this survey effectively, I will conduct a stratified random sample to select a total of 1,200 individuals from the United States. This group will be divided into two separate target audiences. Through the Survey Monkey platform, I will administer to two distinct groups. The first group will consist of individuals who identify as "homosexual, bisexual, and other" (n=600), while the second group will consist of individuals who identify as "heterosexual" (n=600). These categories are intentionally broad to ensure a diverse range of responses from the LGBTQ community, and they conform to Survey Monkey's description of these variables. Also, I understand there are different groups, such as queer and transgender individuals, in the LGBTQ community that might not be captured in this study but are beyond the scope of this study. Once the data collection is done, I can conduct a series of bivariate analyses and inferential tests for each different question being asked of the participant to test my hypothesis that there is a statistically significant difference between the straight population and the LGBTQ population when it comes to the relationship between IPI, NPI, and the sense of belongingness. IMPACT Current scholarly work in my field has identified that LGBTQ people are now moving to more heteronormative spaces and not restricted to queer-specific spaces. However, we do not know to what extent political ideologies influence their decisions when perceiving safe places to live and navigating unfamiliar environments, which is where this research aims to expand upon to fill in the knowledge gaps. I am conducting this research to know if there is a statistically significant difference between the straight population and the LGBTQ population regarding the relationship between IPI, NPI, and the sense of belongingness. References Acosta, Katie L. 2008. "Lesbianas in the Borderlands: Shifting Identities and Imagined Communities." Gender & Society 22(5):639–59. doi: 10.1177/0891243208321169. Burnett, John. 2022. "Americans Are Fleeing to Places Where Political Views Match Their Own." NPR, February 18. Carrillo, Héctor, and Jorge Fontdevila. 2014. "Border Crossings and Shifting Sexualities among Mexican Gay Immigrant Men: Beyond Monolithic Conceptions." Sexualities 17(8):919–38. doi: 10.1177/1363460714552248. Castells, Manuel. 1983. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. University of California Press. Chauncey, George. c1994. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Basic Books. D'Emilio, John. 1992. "Capitalism and Gay Identity." in Making Trouble. Routledge. Ghaziani, Amin. 2015a. "'Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being PassÉ': How Assimilation Affects the Spatial Expressions of Sexuality in the United States: 'GAY ENCLAVES FACE PROSPECT OF BEING PASSÉ.'" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39(4):756–71. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.12209. Ghaziani, Amin. 2015b. "The Queer Metropolis." Pp. 305–30 in Handbook of the Sociology of Sexualities, Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, edited by J. DeLamater and R. F. Plante. Cham: Springer International Publishing. McDonald, Ian. 2011. "Migration and Sorting in the American Electorate: Evidence From the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study." American Politics Research 39(3):512–33. doi: 10.1177/1532673X10396303. Umberson, Debra, Mieke Beth Thomeer, Rhiannon A. Kroeger, Amy C. Lodge, and Minle Xu. 2015. "Challenges and Opportunities for Research on Same-Sex Relationships." Journal of Marriage and Family 77(1):96–111. doi: 10.1111/jomf.12155.

Research Question: Women have historically assumed an uneven burden of gendered responsibility for pregnancy prevention. There are countless options of hormonal birth control for women in comparison to the single option available for men: condoms. Do men recognize this inequitable division of labor where women are often solely in charge of contraception? I ask whether and under what conditions changes may be afoot among cisgender heterosexual Gen Z young couples with respect to their birth control practices and relationship dynamics. Intended Contribution: The intended contribution of my research is to explore Gen Z and also help provide evidence that current birth control methods could be advanced to better suit modern couples. There are few studies based in the age group of Gen Z (who are born from 1997-2012) about their sexual activity and the impacts it has on young peoples’ relationship dynamics. I begin to add to this scholarship via interview questions about birth control practices, partner dynamics, divisions of labor, and the beginning of a couples’ sexual activity. Through my research I ask questions about how men and women have changed across time. Overall, I want to compare past prominent couples’ dynamics to current dynamics among young people. In exploring how partners navigate the world of birth control and exposing that modern available methods don’t work for anyone and also need a lot of tending to, I hope that it becomes clear that birth control advancements can be made. Description of Theory and Methods: I engage past literature from J.L. Fennell (2011) and Krystale Littlejohn (2021) that emphasizes the importance of open and positive conversations about birth control practices for a deeper understanding of birth control from male partner’s perspectives. I employ a similar vignette approach to Hochschild (2012) to showcase how couples generate shared understandings about the labor of birth control and how it is distributed. These authors are the foundation for how I explore divisions of labor and partner dynamics throughout my research and interviews. I also utilize Barbara Risman’s (2018) gender ideology categorizations as a point of reference for understanding why partners may act the way they do in their relationships and the greater world. These categorizations are innovators, rebels, true believers, and straddlers. The categorizations are based in a persons’ individual, interactional, and macro beliefs in gender norms. Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Paula England, and Alison C. K. Fogarty (2012) discuss the increasing perceived autonomy for young woman participating in hook up culture. This article touches on a women’s feelings on being fulfilled in different relationships but also how this is a part of the stalled gender revolution that Kathleen Gerson (2010) discovered in her sample of men and women’s wants for traditional or modern relationship styles. In all, I utilize gender theory based in labor division, decision-making, partner dynamics, emerging adulthood, increasing autonomy, and a stalled gender revolution. This study uses in-depth interviews with college-age coupled men and women to understand how they are interacting or not interacting with birth control. It is also centered in interviews from students at Reed College. Reed is a private liberal arts college located in Portland, OR and has a small student population of around 1,500 as of 2022. Subjects had to be between 18 and 23 years of age and had been in a relationship that lasted longer than 3 months in the past year. Female participants were recruited by extending an invitation to be interviewed via the boyfriends whom I already interviewed. It was crucial that the couples I interview were heterosexual and sexually active to ensure that they were actively utilizing or choosing to forfeit the use of birth control. 15 interviews with 5 couples and 5 individual men were conducted. These interviews consisted of questions asked about the couple’s birth control practices, men’s perceptions on the labor birth control maintenance requires, and if they feel there is an equal distribution of labor in their relationship. The most prominent themes within these interviews were the influence and opinions of others, attempts to understand or equalize in the relationship, knowledge of birth control, divisions of labor, and characteristics of the different Risman categories. In order to get the most out of these interviews and coding, I utilized a vignette approach for results where I tell an in-depth story about each couple and how they navigate birth control.   Source References Armstrong, E. A., England, P., & Fogarty, A. C. (2012). Accounting for women’s orgasm and sexual enjoyment in college hookups and relationships. American Sociological Review, 77(3), 435–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122412445802 England, P. (2010). The gender revolution. Gender & Society, 24(2), 149–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243210361475 Fennell, J. L. (2011). Men bring condoms, women take pills. Gender & Society, 25(4), 496–521. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243211416113 Gerson, K. (2010). The unfinished revolution: Coming of age in a new era of gender, work, and family. Oxford University Press. Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (2012). The second shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. Penguin Books. Kimport, K. (2018). More than a physical burden: Women’s mental and emotional work in preventing pregnancy. The Journal of Sex Research, 55(9), 1096–1105. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1311834 Littlejohn, K. E. (2021). Just get on the pill: The uneven burden of reproductive politics. University of California Press. Risman, B. (2018). Where the millennials will take us: A new generation wrestles with the gender structure. Oxford University Press.

The topic of this research is investigating the impact of different state standards for sex education on high school students’ mental health and sexual behavior, and if more comprehensive sex education has an impact on LGBTQ students specifically. The intended contribution is to a provide more information about how different states educational standards impact students, especially with the rising rates of mental health disorders and controversy around the LGBTQ community. Comprehensive sexuality education that includes topics such as birth control, masturbation, and consent has been shown to have more positive outcomes, such as fewer teen pregnancies, more contraceptive use, and less sexual risk taking as compared to abstinence-focused programs. This paper is intended to look at whether adolescents identifying as orientations other than heterosexual experience these benefits to the same degree. Data was taken from the CDC’s annual Youth Risk Behavior survey. Five participating states with the most comprehensive standards for sex education have been compared to five states with the least comprehensive standards. Heterosexual and non-heterosexual students from the states with better sex education were compared with their counterparts from states with lower standards. Sources include: Sex and HIV Education. The Guttmacher Institute. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/sex-and-hiv-education ; Estes, Michael L. March 9, 2017. “If There’s One Benefit, You’re not Going to Get Pregnant: the Sexual Miseducation of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Individuals”. Springer Science & Business Media. ; and Kirby, Douglas B. 2007. “Abstinence, Sex, and STD/HIV Education Programs for Teens: Their Impact on Sexual Behavior, Pregnancy, and Sexually Transmitted Disease”. Annual Review of Sex Research Vol 18 pg 143-177.

Karson Bird Puzzle: How does managerialism, a recipe for normalized male domination, direct toxic masculinity toward women and away from the true source of neoliberal policies? Theoretical Q: How does managerialism affect the rise of toxic masculinity? Empirical Q: How does identity regulation in HE affect the normalization of toxic masculinity? Theoretical Y: Toxic Masculinity Hegemonic masculinity, an original neoliberal blueprint embedded in society, is adored by men and women alike; however, the new admiration for toxic masculinity has become increasingly popular as hegemony erodes. Toxic masculinity has gained the attention of the public within the past decade. Originally, toxic masculinity surfaced in the 1980s within men’s movements, and according to these movements, the aggression and frustration presented by men were due to being feminized by society, ultimately hindering boys from maturing into men (Salter, 2019). Now, the behavior is becoming normalized while its consequences are highlighted over and over again. “In the past decade, the term has moved from the margins of the men’s movement to the center of popular debates around what it means to be a man in the 21st century” (Mercer and McGlashan 2023). Neoliberalism Market Competition: The promotion of competition in the market assures an increase of power and success in one’s life as one competes against others in the market. “Under neoliberal governmentality, the state is reduced to a promote of the “free market” leading to the privatization of social welfare and the “marketization” of political and social life whereby populations are to be “free, self-managing, and self-enterprising individuals in different spheres of life – health, education, bureaucracy, the professions, and so on. The neoliberal subject is therefore not a citizen with claims on the state but a self-enterprising citizen-subject who is obligated to become an ‘entrepreneur of himself or herself’” (Ong 2006; Peterson and Runyan 2010; Marchand 2010). Power and wealth, simplified as entrepreneurism, appeal to men through the utilization of marketing highly masculine attributes with the individuals who succeed in the market. “The desired attributes of managers and capitalists as entrepreneurs (thrusting competitiveness, ruthlessness, focus on the bottom line, etc.) are coded masculine in gender ideology, and in cold fact the people who fulfill these functions are overwhelmingly men” (Connell 2005). Meaning, that market competition is a game made for men. Men are told they are the ones meant to succeed through masculine means. “[T]he Bush II Administration operated to encourage them to forget their class interests in return for promise to restore old-fashioned family values where threats to traditional masculine privilege, including feminism, gay liberation, abortion, and so on, would be eliminated” (Marchand 2010). Men engaged in competitive market behavior, working for those eliminations and masculine privileges that served their value. However, the effects of neoliberalism’s rise hurt them too: “Indeed, in the current deep recession. Not only working poor and working-class men have been laid off in large numbers, but older, more class-privileged white men in the US are losing their jobs. Moreover the “masters of the universe” have lost their popular luster, as they have been held responsible, at least rhetorically, for the near financial collapse. Thus Anglo-American hegemonic masculinity is in somewhat of a disarray, while subordinate masculinities proliferate around the globe” (Marchand 2010). Neoliberal Feminization: Neoliberal feminism erupted alongside market competition. Women entered the workforce with the intention of being independent and not giving into traditional gender norms (Rottenberg 2014). As neoliberal feminism progressed the domination of masculine figures in the workforce was threatened. “. . . New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported on socio-biological studies conducted in Britain that claimed to find that high levels of testosterone in male traders, which increased even more on the trading floor, made them take the kinds of financial risks that led to the near collapse of global capitalism. These studies suggest that were women to be in charge of financial markets and constitute the majority of traders, such large-scale crises could be averted . . .”(Kristof 2009; Marchand 2010). Women became the new solutions for problems. Jobs and qualities originally designated for men became open for women in the market as well. Masculine roles became feminized by the newcomers. The World Bank revealed that its new-found policy of inclusion and gender sensitivity was a weapon to advocate further neoliberal restructuring” (Marchand 2010). The intentions of neoliberal restructuring were known; however, the timing of market competition and feminization created detest against women who were believed to be the sole purpose for the decrease of men’s market power. When men perceive a loss of control, such as job insecurity, from women’s advancements they see themselves as victims of feminists, not of circumstances of society (Bayliss & Bell 2013). Men saw their failures as a direct result of women entering the market, working toward their seeming success too. The reactionary means against women from this insecurity utilized toxic masculinity. “Neo-liberalism similarly degrades the economic and social position of some men, but not all. Many men are relatively advantaged by the shift of social resources from the state to the market, and by the de-regulation of markets” (Connell 2005). Neoliberal advancements continue to benefit men in a patriarchal society. In a society structured around hegemonic masculinity for men’s gain, they will continue to be advantaged, not making neoliberalism gender-neutral. The reactionary toxic masculinity from the supposed degradation of men is a result of the power imbalance between men and neoliberal tactics. Tough Guise Originally a movie, the ‘tough guise’ became an identification of the harmful fronts men present that society has taught, condoned, and endorsed originating from hegemonic masculinity in order to maintain dominance. Men must put up a front, tough guise, to hide their vulnerabilities and non-masculine characteristics, and those who are not considered masculine are subjected to ridicule and shaming (Bayliss & Bell 2013). Explicit masculine characteristics are required in order for men to be seen as successful. The opposition to femininity is met with ridicule as feminization continues to be attacked. Deviating from the tough guise model means that a man is soft, weak, feminine, or gay (Bayliss & Bell 2013). Men compete with feminization amongst themselves as a way to produce hierarchy among each other, developing a new normalization. Men are being taught to use the tough guise since it is the only acceptable presentation and behavior, meaning they must not show too much emotion, never back down, not think too much, only show toughness, and be sexually aggressive with women (Bayliss & Bell 2013). These behaviors are the extremes of hegemonic masculinity. They have become new extreme entrepreneurial characteristics that strengthen the power dynamic between men and women through fear. The tough guise model is used in films, video games, sports, and advertisements, leading men to adopt a script that violence is the way to achieve and control, and they should follow the script whether they want to or not (Bayliss & Bell 2013). The teachings of violence through various models strengthen a normalized outlook on male behavior. The behavior, in entertainment and reality, is not questionable but enticing. The use of violence in entertainment also provides role models for men to look up to and identify with in order to continue the pushback against femininity. Hegemonic Masculinity “Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of the patriarchy, which guarantees the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (Connell 2005). The normalization of this masculinity convinces society that men are meant to be above everyone else. The continuous application of hegemonic masculinity becomes subtle yet effective in its shaping of men and control over women. Women do not acknowledge their inferiority as they have been socialized to view these practices as normal, and the indirect mistreatment of women is difficult for people to acknowledge making hegemonic masculinity the ideal setup. “Competitiveness, a combination of the calculative and the combative, is institutionalized in business and is central to hegemonic masculinity” (Donaldson 1993). Competition among men is endorsed and expected within different realms. As a result, the belief of superiority for men, including against each other, enables entitlement. This level of competitiveness remains unextreme in comparison to the toxic shift it can take once men feel threatened, and the normality of their competitive games changes. However, “it is the successful claim to authority, more than violence, that is the mark of hegemony” (Connell 2005). Hegemonic masculinity does not require overt force for men to gain respect in comparison to toxic masculinity. This division, originally marking hegemonic power, has eroded as toxic masculinity has claimed the means of authoritative power specifically through violence as it normalizes. “Hegemonic masculinity is naturalised in the form of the hero and presented through forms that revolve around heroes: sags, ballads, westerns, thrillers, in books, films, television, and in sporting events” (Donaldson 1993). These depictions of masculinity involve positivity toward normalized masculine behavior, not the glorification of toxic behavior or direct mistreatment of women. This creates a romanticization toward hegemony. People want to experience the depictions presented in entertainment. The origins of the original market businessman came from hegemonic masculinity. Connell states, “I would argue, therefore, that the rise of new groups of managers and owners to unprecedented global power is associated with new patterns of business masculinity and, by implication, new patterns of hegemony in gender relations” (2005). The neoliberal take on masculinity uses patriarchal hegemonic masculinity as a tool to toy with masculine validation for the market competition of men. Neoliberalism secretly moves away from overt hegemonic characteristics while promoting seemingly hegemonic success. “For instance this type of entrepreneurialism, increasingly detached from local gender orders, does not valorize the family or the husband/father position for men” (Connell 2005). Men are told that a successful masculine man will work hard competing in the market to provide for his priorities; however, in reality, neoliberalism uses the breadwinner promise to fuel the means for its market insecurity toward men. Theoretical X: Managerialism Practices Managerialism, a product of neoliberalism growth, reinvented the operations of businesses. From a neoliberal perspective, businesses that operate the same as one another allow for ideal mass order to remain consistent. This practice requires specific regulations in order to succeed. “[T]his order is the product of three dynamics: the seepage of managerial approaches into all facets of life; the gradual, worldwide homogenization of human organization; and the emergence of a global managerial elite straddling the public and private sectors” (Murphy 2007; Shatil 2020). The mechanisms of managerialism create an allure for its ability to regulate mass organizations as necessary for an increase in competitive market profile through its own internal tools. Managerial Allure Structure: Managerialism claims to be value-neutral, making it enticing, with a science-based upbringing that ensures tightly confined and regulated functions. “Scientific management aimed to establish “best practices” that would replace workers’ discretion over daily tasks, eliminate inefficient “rule-of-thumb” techniques, and curtail reliance on delayed incentives to elicit the initiative of unmotivated workers” (Wharton 2015). The methods for “best practices” prioritize efficiency by decreasing employee autonomy. The roles of managerialism give management power to manipulate and reshape organizations through seemingly effective methods: “Four key managerial responsibilities: (1) amass working knowledge traditionally possessed by workers, (2) reduce those techniques to a series of smaller tasks dedicated by written procedures, (3) scientifically select workers, train them, and ensure they use established methods, and (4) separate from manual workers the decision-making components of work tasks, including all aspects of planning and coordination” (Taylor 1903; Wharton 2015). (1) Having management accumulate knowledge of the jobs, while the workers’ expertise simultaneously decreases inhibits the autonomy and individuality of workers, promoting inferiority. Workers are no longer the experts in their craft, losing identity and power. On the other hand, management continues to be elite in the power and knowledge of the jobs within the organization. (2) (3) The distribution of work, having workers trained to only do specific tasks, and making sure they do as they are told strengthens the hierarchy of the organization. Workers will do their jobs; however, they are no longer doing the work they wanted to. Degrading technical skills down to something simple makes workers inferior and skillless while it is easy for management to produce many newly trained workers who can all do the same thing. The organization is trained to be cut and dry, continuously producing products. (4) Regulation is left up to management who were never experts in the functions of the organizations. There is no self-regulation or true teamwork when the managers call the shots for the labor. “Instead of encouraging subordination, [businesses] are promoting ‘empowerment’” (Heckscher 1995; Grey 1999). The road to ‘empowerment’ is the mask for the regulations managerialism enforces. Evaluation: Active cooperation is what prevails in managerialism. As a result, there is an increase in job insecurity for workers. “How are workers persuaded to cooperate in the pursuit of profit?...The continuous application of coercion, that is, by firing those who do not achieve a given quota” (Burawoy 1982). Efficiency is key and workers are disposable. When a worker misses the efficiency mark, management does not have any reservations about getting rid of them. A replacement worker will be brought in to assist in keeping the production going. Evaluation culture is utilized by management in order to produce the best workers that align with the organization’s predetermined “best workers” characteristics for the company (Wharton 2015). When workers do not perform well in their evaluations, it adds stress such as job insecurity. Stress to perform well propels the conformity into acing evaluations, creating the “best workers” organizations actually want, and meeting quotas. “Traditional modes of evaluation were supplemented and sometimes replaced by the power of reputation, and workers were judged on the basis of conformity to cultural expectations, a record of team success, and a combination of supervisory and peer surveillance” (Kunda 1992; Wharton 2015). Reputation and Conformity push for workers to only be one way, killing individuality. Thus, allowing for control through supervision and peer surveillance to keep the workgroups functioning in particular ways deemed necessary by the managers. Employees Under Managerialism “The element of uncertainty of outcome provided by ever-present possibilities of “bad breaks” made “quota” attainment an “exciting game” played against the clock on the wall, a “game” in which the elements of control provided by the application of knowledge, skill, ingenuity, speed and stamina heightened interest and lent to the exhilaration of “winning” feelings of “accomplishment” (Roy n.d.; Burawoy 1982). Making work a game out of work lets managers regulate workers while they feel satisfaction from playing the game. Managers can utilize aspects of games for the organization’s best interest. For example, creating competition drives the want for improvement for employees as the incentives of winning games benefit companies more than their workers. “The rewards of making out are defined in terms of factors immediately related to the labor process- reduction of fatigue, passing time, relieving boredom, and so on…” (Burawoy 1982). Workers can feel like winners by satisfying their boredom by working extra hard, meeting quotas, and beating other workers. Identity regulation is what leads workers to identify with the organizations and their values. “The stimulus to engage in such work games derives as much from inexorable coercion of coming to work, and subordination to the dictates of the labor process once there, as from the emergence of “radical needs”, “a new vision of work”, or a “nonlogical code” (Burawoy 1982). Workers are puppets on strings that are manipulated to believe in the great values organizations promise and preach. Workers become domesticated by the organizations they work for. “Once hired, firms mold workers, inducting them into a normative culture with emphasis on attitude, behavioral expectations, and organizational history, values, and practices. Though some workers resist, firms endeavor to hold them accountable to these standards through supervisory and peer surveillance and with pay tied to group performance” (Sewell 1998; Vallas 2003; Wharton 2015). Organizations require the domestication of workers in order to utilize them in the most efficient ways possible. Without identifying with an organization’s values, workers will not produce the best products, efficiency will be low, and ultimately, the organization will not be successful. Identifying with an organization's values and practices ensures success. Managers, themselves, manipulate workers through socialization when necessary, making them vital for organizations to run smoothly. Managers are the go-tos when handling employee dissatisfaction by redirecting unhappy workers toward the functioning of the teams: Managers use teamwork-based approaches in order to regulate workers' identities through self-understanding, resulting in identification with the organization where the values lay (Alvesson & Willmott 2015). In team settings, workers establish values and morals that they strongly believe in. When the group agrees on a set of values to follow, no worker wants to break them by opposing the team's function. Team players worry about the team and make sure to avoid conflicts that would jeopardize the organization. Team players must maintain the hegemony of managerialism by remaining neutral. There is a significant loss of autonomy when workers are unable to inject their own personalities or ideas. When workers assume self-understanding they maintain the expectations set in place for their identities within the team. They will listen when told what to do and remain loyal to the organization. “[“Relative satisfaction”] are feelings of temporary relief from the discomfort of certain work realities, feelings which arise when these factors have become part of the worker’s customary interpretation of his situation. They are, to this extent, only apparent satisfactions, which are actually derived from deprivation” (Baldmus n.d.; Burawoy 1982). When workers experience relative satisfaction, they continue to identify with an organization when they believe they are gaining real satisfaction instead of fixes based on their unhappiness. The workers do not realize or understand that their satisfaction is meaningless. Having workers repeat through relative satisfaction keeps them coming back to work without as many complaints. “Workers control their own machines instead of being controlled by them, and this enhances their autonomy. They put their machines into motion singlehandedly, and this creates the appearance that they can, as individuals, transform nature into useful commodities” (Burawoy 1982). The work workers produce is what becomes tied to their identities when they feel as if they still have power over their work. To them, they are doing great things for society without acknowledging their lack of autonomy. The production of their work aligns with the organizations’ efficiency as workers want to continue to produce products that they believe are important products of their hard work. Managerialism in HE Marketing and Performativity: “The marketisation of HE is reported to actively encourage students to act as rational investors, informed choice-makers and indeed consumers, of their education. The credentials they acquire are positional goods within a largely positional market, and their relative value strongly determines the ways they are economically consumed in the future” (Tomlinson 2017). Higher education, an endeavor for increased intrinsic knowledge, teaches students that their achievements are based solely on their post-graduation success. Educational value is irrelevant as long as necessary credentials are acquired. Simply, “privatized universities encourage graduates to think their main purpose as the maximization of their own economic self-interest” (Newfield 2016). Graduates see higher education as a means to a job and develop an entitlement to employment. They anticipate they will be a shoo-in for future jobs due to their degrees without anticipating further hurdles. Performativity heavily regulates students’ experiences within higher education. Performativity, “effectively enables institutions, and individuals within them, to be evaluated and scrutinised in terms of their measured output” (Tomlinson 2017). Grading and GPA are hot topics in student culture. Many students who are excelling on the performative scale openly discuss their grades and GPA, feeling superior. “The grade is effectively a marker of performative value, signaling the potential value of one’s achievement relative to the achievement of others” (Tomlinson 2017). Students begin to compete with each other for measured success, benefiting schools as they rely on good numbers for their own market value. “Performativity can also result in a process of so-called gaming on the part of students (Macfarlane 2016), including approaches to assessment and jumping through whatever hoops they can to attain desired outcomes” (Tomlinson 2017). Students resort to means that decrease the value of their education, such as cheating or having friends to their homework, in order to get good grades that are meant to reflect their success as learners. Overall, the intrinsic value of their education dies. Classrooms and Identity: Classes are designed with specific structures that promote the development of students in predetermined ways. “Embedded in the form, content, organization of the classroom, and the evaluation of students is a message system that conditions students to adopt the traits of punctuality, docility, cleanliness, and conformity” (Margolis 2002). Evaluation systems are tools used to regulate the performance of students that match what schools require to fit their production goals, not the students’ aspirations, causing student individualization to be diminished. “[Dreeben] examined the norms of school culture and concluded they taught students to “form transient social relationships, submerge much of their personal identity, and accept the legitimacy of categorical treatment” (1968). Students are homogenized into a pool of alikes, creating groups of people conditioned to function under the same conditions, allowing schools to continue mass order and consistency. Continuing on, education is one-size-fits-all. Students do not gain an individualized experience. The results of marketing and performativity hurt students while others succeed in climbing to the top. “It further entails the adoptions of largely homogenized units of assessments (i.e. pan-national and inter-institutional teaching quality markets) ahead of more fine-grained consideration of how this is played out in diverse institutional settings with heterogeneous types of learners programmes” (Tomlinson 2017). “The organization of schooling, such as having to wait before getting time with the teacher–transmits these ideas to students” (Margolis 2002). Regulating behavior and inferiority does not only come from waiting times. The hierarchy of student-professor relationships is formed with the predetermined functions of classroom organization. The professor is the individual who has the ability to call the shots as needed and directly shapes students. “[T]he teacher relied on the “normal” children keeping themselves occupied, a “bedrock of busyness” (Sharp and Green 1975, 122), while the teacher worked either with the problem children or with the bright ones who formed an elite, sharing “intersubjectivity” with the teacher herself. While on the surface there was encouragement of individualism, the reality was that the classroom was a stratified society that paralleled society at large” (Margolis 2002). Professors are managers of students’ learning environments, regulating their satisfaction as needed. Students’ place in a hierarchy under elites is determined, and they succumb to the regulation in order to gain what they want, their degree. Edutainment: With the production of technology and booms of creativity, edutainment has become a staple in education. “The purpose of edutainment is to attract and hold the attention of the learners by engaging their emotions through a computer monitor full of vividly coloured animations” (Buckingham and Scanlon 2000; Okan 2003). Exposure to edutainment evokes the belief that “learning is inevitably “fun” (Buckingham et al., 2000; Okan 2003). Edutainment attracts students, keeping them satisfied and engaged with their educational experience, regardless of external factors. Edutainment teaches students that they do not have to persevere through their education and that increased effort involving critical thinking and other important skills is not necessary (Okan 2003). Students do not become individualized thinkers, making them easily malleable from external forces, and they do not develop specific skills from their education. This form of entertainment, “embodies a form of thinking that orients a person to approach the world in a particular way” (Apple 1991; Okan 2003). Students are being influenced by new values by participating in superficial satisfaction that does not actually intrinsically or extrinsically serve a purpose to them. However, if learning is fun, then the stresses from competition, performativity, and classroom regulations are not big deals. Summary In sum, managerialism in the college experience consists of university-regulated competition among students, the molding of student behaviors and skills, and the use of edutainment to sustain the results. Performativity encourages gaming which students believe they are winners and losers. This engagement keeps some students happy while all students fight for the numbers institutions need for their own market value. With promises of success, students view their education as a necessary journey to make themselves hireable in the market. Therefore, if students fail, that is their own fault, not the institution they attended. Classroom interactions make students into the marketable future workers that higher education promises, and each student acquires the same behaviors and skills as the others, resulting in conformity. Satisfaction regulation from professors encourages the continued development of conformity. Edutainment is used to support and maintain student satisfaction and engagement when they become too individualized or dissatisfied. Preventing or fixing these issues is done through technology and festivities, resulting in less engagement with professors and peers when necessary. Students continue to view education as something that does not need to be valuable as long as they have fun enjoying their experiences and obtain the credentials they need to head into the market. Critique Non-managerial schools promote critical thinking, inquiry, and freedom in opposition to strict regulations for conformity. Parker’s school, “will provide imaginative resources for its students to do their own organizing, as well as requiring them to consider ways in which any form of organizing produces particular sorts of freedoms, communities, and futures” (2018). Student education is enriched, and students are challenged. Importantly, in relation to Plato’s The Republic, students would be trained to be thoughtful, modest, and compassionate instead of know-it-alls who possess entitlement from their educational commitment (2018). Ultimately, defeating the marketing promises and structure of a managerial university. Parker envisions a school that opposes the managerial university. He describes the school as, “a place where students want to study because it teaches about interesting things, and hopefully teaches them in interesting ways” (2018). This vision challenges the homogenous skillset production each student receives through their classroom experiences and focuses on intrinsic learning without the influence of extrinsic ends. “This will be a school for people who want to learn from other places, other times, other politics, and to consider the relevance of these lessons for their own attempts to create and participate in organizations” (Parker 2018). In Parker’s school, students will gain valuable knowledge that can be utilized to enable students’ involvement in future projects instead of signing up for a lack of knowledge for the promise of success. The expectations some students develop for their higher education experiences do really involve growth and learning. Students who are motivated by the substance of their learning and education become ambitious in gaining value that is marketed by universities (Newfield 2018). However, the value these students are interpreting does not align with the value and goods services higher education is prompting. The money coming from increased tuition, fund-raising, and corporate partnerships (Newfield 2016) with this new operation would have to be going somewhere. These students are looking to increase their intellect, not just prepare to learn how to work; however, there is no academic rigor (Newfield 2016). Students are unable to be challenged by material such as tests or homework even with school resources around them to help them during academic challenges. As a result, not all students are satisfied with the good they are paying for while fingers are pointed at them telling them they just are not good students. Empirical Y: Student Attitudes with Feminization I discussed toxic masculinity as a reaction to the feminization of society. I want to ask students about their thoughts on scholarships created for women. I want to understand if there are reactions to these scholarship opportunities consisting of motives against women. Gender studies have become a hot topic within the U.S., and hearing students’ perspectives on gender studies can tell me what students think of more education involving gender and gendered practices in higher education that teach equality. Moving into the market, I want to know students’ opinions on hiring diversity quotas for women for businesses and the inverse for men. The answers to these two questions could tell me if there is a motive for masculine male deservingness in comparison to what women are deserving of. Knowing students’ views on women in STEM, a predominantly male field would touch base on the reactionary beliefs of feminization and deservingness. Student perceptions of feminization would identify the levels of threat, if any, students perceive women’s advancements as and why they believe these advancements are happening. I am interested in asking students for their thoughts on the inverse of normalized gender roles to see reactions toward challenging masculinity. For example, I can ask students how they feel about men going into nursing, a predominantly female career. Inversely, I can ask how students feel about women advancing through medicine to become doctors instead of pursuing nursing, shifting the gender hierarchy. Similarly, I want to know how students feel about having women as managers in comparison to men. I can ask these questions to address the institutionalized power dynamic between men and women. With women in charge as more dominating figures, I want to know if students’ reactions reject the challenge to the patriarchal status quo and why. In my theoretical, I discussed the violent behaviors of toxic masculinity. I want to ask students about sexual assault on campus. I want to know what type of problem students view sexual assault on campus as and where it stems from. I can ask them if there is something that can be done about sexual assault on the individual and institutional level. Answers to these questions can tell me if toxicity is becoming normalized in higher education with how students perceive masculine-gendered social issues. Empirical X: Identity Regulation in HE Managerialism in higher education focuses on competition, classroom experiences, and edutainment to regulate the identities of students. Students’ thoughts and experiences with performativity competitions can show me the effectiveness of performativity on intrinsic and extrinsic learning. Regarding competition, schools create chords and other regalia to signify specific achievers at graduation. I want to ask students how they feel about achievement insignias being rewarded to high-achieving students and what that means to them. I can ask students how they feel about others who receive degrees yet barely pass their classes. I can utilize these questions to dive into how students view the importance of their education in comparison to extrinsic elements surrounding games and market employability, too. The intrinsic motivation for pursuing higher education is overshadowed by university marketing promises. I want to know what meaningful learning experiences students have had in class and what aspects of higher education students believe will prepare them the most for future employment. I want to know what skills students have gained that they believe will impact their future employment and if the skillsets students describe are similar across the board in relation to regulation. As professors are the elites that regulate students directly, I want to know what professors are doing to regulate students and how those experiences are shaping students. I want to know how students determine the validity and value of their professors. Along with professor validity, knowing students’ beliefs on the power dynamics between professors and the university can help me understand how the university regulates managerial practices among its employees and students. Importantly, I want to ask students for their input on how they want to provide themselves with more of a voice for impact and changes. Universities heavily rely on edutainment to keep students engaged and satisfied. Boise State is known for its blue turf and passion for sports. Football game days consist of passionate social media posts and bleachers full of students and family members cheering school spirit. I can ask students how often they are engaged in football games to see how an important figure of Boise State edutainment has impacted their college experience. Greek Life and clubs are popular among students for their heavy social lifestyle. I want to know what clubs or organizations students are part of, how they heard about them, and why they decided to join. The impacts of edutainment can be addressed by asking students about their edutainment life balance and how their involvement has enhanced their development. Conclusion With my research, I aim to understand how managerialism promotes toxic masculinity toward women. Identity regulation in higher education promotes gendered behavior through seemingly ungendered means. As students are prepped for future employment in mass organizations, the normalization of hegemonic competition is promoted for students to engage in using performativity. The construction of hierarchy in classrooms teaches students the importance of elitism and conformativity, mimicking the structure of patriarchy. Women advance through higher education alongside men, fueling the tensions managerialism inspires, resulting in attacks on women through toxic masculinity in retaliation for the decrease in male success. These managerial practices and effects teach men that women are the root of their issues. References Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2002). Identity Regulation as Organizational Control Producing the Appropriate Individual. Journal of Management Studies. Bayliss, N., & Bell, M. (2015). The Tough Guise: Teaching Violent Masculinity as the Only Way to Be a Man. Springer Science+Business Media New York. Burawoy, M. (1979). The Labor Process as a Game. In Manufacturing Consent (pp. 77–94). University of Chicago Press. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). University of California Press. Donaldson, M. (1993). What is hegemonic masculinity? Margolis, E., Soldatenko, M., Acker, S., & Gair, M. (2002). Peekabo. In Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education (pp. 1–6). Mercer, J., & McGlashan, M. (2023). Toxic Masculinity: Men, Meaning, and Digital Media (1st ed.). Routledge. Newfield, C. (2016). The Great Mistake. Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore. Okan, Z. (2003). Edutainment: is learning at risk? Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Parker, M. (2018). Shut Down the Business School: What’s Wrong with Management Education. Pluto Press. Rottenberg, C. (2014). The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism. Cultural Studies, 28(3), 418–437. Salter, M. (2019). The Problem With a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity. The Atlantic. Shatil, S. (2020). Managerialism - A Social Order on the Rise. Critical Sociology, 46(7–8), 1189-1206. Tomlinson, M. (2017). Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market. University of Southhampton Education School. Wharton, A. (2015). Working in America: Continuity, Conflict, and Change in a New Economic Era (4th ed.). Paradigm Publishers.

Introduction For my research, I examine gender differences in emotional and mental health among those who have experienced sexual assault. Furthermore, I investigate gender differences in access to coping outlets/resources for managing sexual assault. With an understanding of who has access to resources, I further analyze the role of resources as mediators for negative health outcomes. Mere acknowledgment of sexual assault has been perceived as a taboo topic until recent years when it began to emerge in the media, mainly with the ignition of the “#MeToo” movement (i.e., the movement highlighting personal accounts of sexual assault) commencing at the cessation of 2017 (Anderson and Toor 2018). Although many found themselves empowered, as they were provided a space to voice their experiences with sexual assault, others still found their stories being disregarded. Almost 1 of every 2 Americans are in support of the movement, yet the prominent reason as to why individuals support “#MeToo” revolves around the notion of equality for women (Brown 2022). This is one illustration of the various elements perpetuating the negation of men as victims when highlighting issues of sexual assault. Feeling excluded from the movement, as only 2.6% of engagement included groups outside of women according to Gallagher et al. (2019), men enacted the “#UsToo” movement as a means for sharing their stories. Detailing of the overwhelming recognition and support women have received over the years should not be confused as the issue. While every 1 in 2 women face sexual violence in their lifetime, every 1 in 3 men are confronted by this abuse as well (CDC 2022). These statistics depict the true dilemma– women are not the only ones being made to endure sexual assault. It is vital that we do not accept this idea, therefore forcing men to suffer in silence. In spite of the the gravity of this situation, there is minimal research illuminating the simultaneous impact of sexual assault on men and women. One of the primary deficiencies of current literature concerning sexual assault is the heterogeneity of definitions for such. Some researchers, such as Aiken and Griner (2022) and Smith et al. (2022), define sexual assault in an inclusive manner, highlighting factors such as men who are forced to penetrate and people still being victims when they face unwanted sex, even when they consent to it. Overwhelmingly, this is not a customary occurrence as most researchers (e.g., Choudary et al. 2012; Elliot et al. 2004; Krahe et al. 2003) define sexual assault on the basis of a lack of consent or by means of force. For my research, I am defining sexual assault as nonconsensual or unwanted sexual contact, either being achieved or attempted, by means of physical force or threats, one’s inability to consent or stop what is happening, or coercion (reference the variables section for a clear definition of sexual contact). Additionally, researchers often utilize general measures (e.g., number of poor mental health days experienced) when accounting for health. Of course, general measures are important to investigate, but there are various other factors which allow deeper insight into the true severity of sexual assault’s effects. Although research indicates that victims who access support systems are more equipped for healing from their experiences, this research solely illustrates the impact of these resources on women (Wright et al. 2023). As data only relates to the effect of support on women, it is essential to examine this variable in respect to men as well. This is further pressing when considering the fact that men who are victims of sexual assault are highly unlikely to seek professional help (Masho et al. 2010). With these limitations of literature regarding sexual assault, I ask: (1) Is there a gendered disparity regarding the health impacts of sexual assault?, (2) Is there a gendered disparity in respect to viable outlets/resources for managing the aftermath of sexual assault?, and (3) Do viable outlets/resources for managing the aftermath of sexual assault mediate health impacts of sexual assault? Literature Review Effects of Sexual Assault. Of the literature reflecting on sexual assault, some researchers account for the impact sexual sustains on victims. A majority of this work deals with samples of women, but there are studies pertaining to both men and women, as well as men alone. Often, researchers define effects of sexual assault on the basis of mental, emotional, and/or physical health. While some researchers measure these factors in respect to activity limitations (e.g., Etka et al. 2008; Etka et al. 2012; Smith et al. 2022), other researchers introduce measurements illustrating the true gravity of sexual assault’s impact, examining outcomes such as suicide (Walker et al. 2005) and risky sexual behavior (Aiken and Griner 2022; Elliot et al. 2004). No matter the measurement, one commonality amongst all researcher is that aspects such as physical, emotional, and/or mental health are statistically significantly poorer in those who have experienced sexual assault versus those who have not (Aiken and Griner 2022; Choudhary et al. 2010; Elliot et al. 2004; Smith et al. 2022; Choudary et al. 2012). Specifically, Elliot et al. (2004) finds that victims of sexual assault experience higher levels of trauma symptoms on all 10 scales of clinical trauma (e.g., depression, dissociation, impaired self reference) than those who are not victims. Highlighting the physical impact, Aiken and Griner (2022) as well as Smith et al. (2022) find that men who’ve experienced assault are at an increased likelihood for STIs, while Choudhary et al. (2008) finds that victims are significantly more likely than non-victims to engage in risk behaviors such as heavy drinking and smoking. When analyzing the emotional impact, victims of sexual assault who are men are significantly more prone to encountering prolonged periods of poor mental health days than men who aren’t sexually assaulted (Choudhary et al. 2010), and additionally, they also experience a higher average of days with anxiety and depression symptoms than women who are also victims (Choudhary et al. 2012). Elliot et al. (2004) further illustrates the more serious impact of sexual assault on men when compared to women as trauma symptoms are significantly greater in men who are victims of sexual assault than victims who are women; in any instance in which men do not face more severe repercussions, they only face mental impacts at the same level as women, never experiencing outcomes of a lesser extremity. The Role of Emotional Support. Literature which examines how emotional support mediates the extent of health impacts of sexual assault is very limited. Additionally, data of this nature solely pertains to women’s experiences, rather than both men and women. Though this is the case, this is still valuable information which portrays the positive impact of emotional support. Of the research which illuminates the role of emotional support for victims of sexual assault, it is consistently found that women engaging in some form of a support system lessen the severity of harms derived from being assaulted, such as impulsive thinking/behavior and depression (Santos et al. 2017; Trabold et al. 2020; Howard et al. 2003). Importantly, Trabold et al. (2020) finds that emotional support relating to solving these women’s problems and promoting solutions elicited the most significant impact as a mediator of poor outcomes resulting from sexual assault. The lack of data regarding the impact support has on men is possibly the consequence of the likelihood of them reaching out for help being much lower than that of women (Masho and Alvanzo 2010). This disparity among genders is not an individual issue alone. Donne et al. (2017) finds that men attempting to seek support for sexual assault experience both practical and social hindrances, such as hegemonic ideologies which perpetuate the idea that men are the protectors not the victimes. This phenomena is further amplified when examining cases of men who have been sexually assaulted via penetration (Monk-Turner and Light 2010). With an understanding of the current literature relating to the health implications of sexual assault, the inhibitions men face when attempting to access emotional support as victims, and the positive impact support has on victims of sexual assault, I hypothesize that: (1) health impacts pertaining to sexual assault are more severe in men than women, (2) Women who are victims of sexual assault are more likely to have have access to outlets/resources for managing such, as opposed to men who have experienced sexual assault, and (3) when managing sexual assault experiences with the utilization of outlets/resources, victims face less severe health impacts. Data I will be conducting a secondary data analysis of the 2019-2020 Longitudinal Cohort Study of Interpersonal Violence Among College-Aged Men and Women in the United States. After obtaining a national random sample of 18 year olds in the U.S., participants were recruited by mail. Enrollment of those recruited was applicable only when they consented to taking part in the study and met the study’s requirements (i.e., being 18 years old). Participants were asked to respond to two online questionnaires, with the final survey being implemented 6 months following their initial responses. As surveys were administered in two waves, wave 1 included a sample of 1,825 participants, while wave 2 included 1,159 participants; participation in wave 2 was only viable when being a part of the wave 1 survey. At the time of the study, participants were aged 18 and 19 years old; though all were recruited when they were 18 years old, the duration of the study resulted in some participants turning 19 years old during the process. Individuals in the study identified themselves as either being women (735 participants), men (425 participants), transgender (10 participants), or other (8 participants). I will solely be including those who identify as men and women in my sample, as the focus of my research regards these two groups. My second research question (i.e., Is there a gendered disparity in respect to viable outlets/resources for managing the aftermath of sexual assault?) will solely undergo this form of restriction. My first and third research questions (i.e., Is there a gendered disparity regarding the health impacts of sexual assault? Do viable outlets/resources for managing the aftermath of sexual assault mediate health impacts of sexual assault?) necessitate further restriction of the sample to men and women who have been sexually assaulted. Aside from this, the sample will be restricted in no other manner. Variables Research Question #1: Is there a gendered disparity regarding the health impacts of sexual assault? Health (dependent variable). Health, the dependent variable, is defined on the basis of emotional well-being and mental state. Overall, there are 15 questions employed to analyze these various aspects of health. Emotional well-being is measured by emotional distress (i.e., anger and upset) as well as depression. To gauge emotional distress and depression, participants were asked to respond to 9 statements. Statements relating to emotional distress included: In the past month I (1) was irritated more than people knew, (2) felt angry, (3) felt like I was ready to explode, (4) was grouchy, and (5) felt annoyed. Statements relating to depression included: In the past month I (6) felt worthless, (7) felt helpless, (8) felt depressed, and (9) felt hopeless. Responses to statements relating to emotional distress and depression were based on a 1-5 scale: 1-never, 2-rarely, 3-sometimes, 4-often, 5-always. Mental state is measured by risk behavior and problematic impulsivity. To gauge risk behavior and problematic impulsivity, participants were asked to respond to 6 questions/statements. Questions relating to risk behavior included: During the past 6 months, (1) how often did you have thoughts about ending your life?, and (2) did you ever seriously consider attempting suicide? Responses were based on a 1-4 scale: 1-never, 2-rarely, 3-sometimes, 4-frequently. Statements relating to problematic impulsivity included: In the past 6 months (3) I got in trouble for not considering the consequences of my actions, (4) I had legal problems because I couldn’t resist my impulses, (5) my impulsive decisions caused problems with my loved ones, and (6) my lack of self-control got me in trouble. Responses were based on a 1-4 scale: 1-true, 2-somewhat true, 3-somewhat false, 4-false. This dependent variable, health, will only be analyzed in regards to the wave 2 survey participants. Sexual Assault (independent variable). It is crucial to note that the measurements of health do not directly regard sexual assault. As I am seeking to understand the health impacts of sexual assault, rather than health alone, it is necessary to examine this variable only in those who have experienced some form of sexual assault. Sexual assault is defined as nonconsensual or unwanted sexual contact, either being achieved or attempted, by means of physical force or threats, one’s inability to consent or stop what is happening, or coercion. Moreover, sexual contact consists of sexual penetration (i.e., someone putting a penis, fingers, or object inside someone else’s vagina or anus), oral sex (someone’s mouth or tongue making contact with someone else’s genitals), kissing, touching of the body (i.e., the breasts, chest, crotch, groin, or bottom), or grabbing, groping, or rubbing against someone in a sexual way whether or not they are clothed. There were 5 statements implemented to measure whether or not participants had experienced sexual assault via physical force or threats; these statements included: How many times during the past 6 months someone used physical force or threats of physical force to (1) sexually penetrate me, (2) make me participate in oral sex, (3) attempt to sexually penetrate me, (4) attempt to make me participate in oral sex, or (5) kiss me, touch my body, or grab, grope, or rub against me in a sexual way, even if the touching was over my clothes. Additionally, there were 5 statements implemented to measure whether or not participants had experienced sexual assault via inability to consent or stop what was happening due to being passed out, asleep, or incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol. These statements follow the same format as those regarding physical force or threats. There were 3 statement implemented to measure whether or not participants had experienced sexual assault via coercion. Aside from the fact that these statements solely regard completed sexual assault, they follow the same format as the other statements. Responses to all of these statements consisted of 5 options: once, twice, three to five times, six or more times, never. The variable of sexual assault must be present prior to the variable of health in order for such to be defined as a health impact of sexual assault. Thus, only participants from the wave 1 survey who have been sexually assaulted at least one time will be considered. Gender (independent variable). For this study, gender is defined as identification of self as either a man or a woman. To measure gender the participants were asked to respond to the question: Do you currently describe yourself as a man, woman, or transgender. There were 4 response options: man, woman, transgender, none of these. Those who responded to the question as either a man or woman will be included in this study. Research Question #2: Is there a gendered disparity in respect to viable outlets/resources for managing the aftermath of sexual assault? Outlets/Resources (dependent variable). Outlets/Resources, the dependent variable, is defined on the basis of emotional support. Overall there are 8 statements used to measure emotional support; these statements include: I (1) have someone who will listen to me when I need to talk, (2) have someone to confide in or talk to about myself or my problems, (3) have someone who makes me feel appreciated, (4) have someone to talk with when I have a bad day, (5) have someone who understands my problems, (6) have someone I trust to talk with about my feelings, (7) have someone with whom to share my most private worries and fears, and (8) have someone I trust to talk with about my problems. Responses were based on a 1-5 scale: 1-never, 2-rarely, 3-sometimes, 4-often, 5-always. As gender is the only independent variable at play in this research question, whether the data derived from this variable comes from the wave 1 or 2 survey isn’t crucial. Due to this, I can analyze this dependent variable at both phases, wave 1 and 2, which may provide deeper insight into the impact of gender on outlets/resources. Although these outlets/resources are not explicitly connected to sexual assault, access to emotional support of any form is relevant for managing the aftermath of sexual assault. Gender (independent variable). Gender is defined and measured in the same manner as it will be for research question 1. Research Question #3: Do viable outlets/resources for managing the aftermath of sexual assault mediate health impacts of sexual assault? Health (dependent variable). Health is defined and measured in the same manner as it will be for research question 1. Sexual Assault (independent variable). Sexual assault is defined and measured in the same manner as it will be for research question 1. Outlets/Resources (independent variable). Although the independent variable in this research question, outlets/resources are defined and measured in the same manner as it will be for research question 2. The only exception is that this variable will only be considered in respect to the wave 1 survey. Being that it is the independent variable in this circumstance, it is necessary for outlets/resources to be present prior to the variable of health in order to understand its role on the health impacts of sexual assault. References Aiken, Julia, and Stacey B. Griner. 2022. “Health Associations for Male Survivors of Unwanted and Non-consensual Sex.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(21-22):19378–94. Anderson, Monica, and Skye Toor. 2018. “How social media users have discussed sexual harassment since #MeToo went viral.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/10/11/how-social-media-users-have-discussed-sexual-harassment-since-metoo-went-viral/ Bogen, Katherine W., Mohamed Mazheruddin M. Mulla, Michelle Haikalis, and Lindsay M. Orchowski. 2022. “Sexual Victimization Among Men: A Qualitative Analysis of the Twitter Hashtag #UsToo.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(9–10):7825–49. Brown, Anna. 2022. “More Than Twice as Many Americans Support Than Oppose the #MeToo Movement.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/09/29/more-than-twice-as-many-americans-support-than-oppose-the-metoo-movement/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2022. “Fast Facts: Preventing Sexual Violence.” National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html Choudhary, Ekta, Jeffrey H. Coben, and Robert M. Bossarte. 2008. “Gender and Time Differences in the Associations Between Sexual Violence Victimization, Health Outcomes, and Risk Behaviors.” American Journal of Men’s Health 2(3):254-9. Choudhary, Ekta, Jeffrey Coben, and Robert M. Bossarte. 2010. “Adverse Health Outcomes, Perpetrator Characteristics, and Sexual Violence Victimization Among U.S. Adult Males.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 25(8):1523–41. Choudhary, Ekta, Merideth Smith, and Robert M. Bossarte. 2012. “Depression, Anxiety, and Symptom Profiles Among Female and Male Victims of Sexual Violence.” American Journal of Men’s Health 6(1):28–36. Donne, Martina Delle, Joseph DeLuca, Pavel Pleskach, Christopher Bromson, Marcus P. Mosley, Edward T. Perez, Shibin G. Mathews, Rob Stephenson, and Victoria Frye. 2018. “Barriers to and Facilitators of Help-Seeking Behavior Among Men Who Experience Sexual Violence.” American Journal of Men’s Health 12(2):189–201. Elliott, Diana M., Doris S. Mok, and John Briere. 2004. “Adult Sexual Assault: Prevalence, Symptomatology, and Sex Differences in the General Population.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 17(3):203–11. Gallagher, Ryan, Elizabeth Stowell, Andrea Parker, and Brooke Foucault Welles. 2019. “Reclaiming Stigmatized Narratives: The Networked Disclosure Landscape of #MeToo.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3(96):1–30. Howard, April, Stephanie Riger, Rebecca Campbell, and Sharon Wasco. 2003. “Counseling Services for Battered Women: A Comparison of Outcomes for Physical and Sexual Assault Survivors.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 18(7):717–34. Krahe, Barbara, Renate Scheinberger-Olwig, and Steffen Bieneck. 2003. “Men’s Reports of Nonconsensual Sexual Interactions With Women: Prevalence and Impact.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 32(2):165-75. Masho, Saba W., and Anika Alvanzo. 2010. “Help-Seeking Behaviors of Men Sexual Assault Survivors.” American Journal of Men’s Health 4(3):237–42. Monk-Turner, Elizabeth, and David Light. 2010. “Male Sexual Assault and Rape: Who Seeks Counseling?” Sexual Abuse 22(3):255–65. Santos, Anita, Marlene Matos, and Andreia Machado. 2017. “Effectiveness of a Group Intervention Program for Female Victims of Intimate Partner Violence.” Small Group Research 48(1):34–61. Smith, Sharon G., Jieru Chen, Ashley N. Lowe, and Kathleen C. Basile. 2022. “Sexual Violence Victimization of U.S. Males: Negative Health Conditions Associated with Rape and Being Made to Penetrate.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(21-22):20953–71. Trabold, Nicole, James McMahon, Shannon Alsobrooks, Staci Whitney, and Mona Mittal. 2020. “A Systematic Review of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions: State of the Field and Implications for Practitioners.” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 21(2):311–25. Wright, Elizabeth Novack, Sheridan Miyamoto, and Jocelyn Anderson. 2023. “‘Having One Person Tell Me I Didn’t Do the Wrong Thing’: The Impact of Support on the Post-Sexual Assault Exam Experience.” Violence against Women 0(0):1-22.

Music is a powerful space for the construction of a self. The execution of a self in music requires intention behind each piece of musical practice. The relationship between music and the self is established through these choices. Musical practices can be used to communicate a self (DeNora 2010; Dibben 2002; Frith 1996; Merrill 2010). The exploration of a gendered self is a large component of the musical experiences of non-men, though it is not always explicit. Male norms pervade music and musical spaces are often considered to be masculine (Bloustien 2016; Clawson 1999; Kearney 2017; Wald 1998). As a result, non-men face distinctly gendered challenges in musical spaces. Gendered meanings may become salient through the choices made in musical practice in face of marginalization. The assertion and communication of a self demonstrates music’s capacity to aid in the construction of identity. I ask, How do non-men use music to construct identity? I explore the process of making music as a site for the construction of gender identity- music and identity are co-created in the act. I focus on gender identity in an effort to explore what it means for people who do not identify as men to navigate these spaces and contend with masculine norms in music. Furthermore, I understand music making as identity construction. Through the process of making, individuals engage and establish meanings of identity in their musical practices. I draw upon George H. Mead’s (1934) understanding of the self to frame my way of thinking about identity. Mead establishes the self as social and understood in relation to other selves. He further states that we derive a sense of self from a social group. Our construction of a self thus relies upon identification with a group. Importantly, Mead argues that the self appears in the ways we seek to communicate with others- in the process we are addressing both ourselves and others. These key ideas can be applied to an analysis of gender identity construction in music. Musical practices can be understood as a way to communicate a self. The choices made by individuals in musical practice consider audience and message, which are key components of communication. Furthermore, music has the capacity to produce a people and a form of identification. This demonstrates the role of groups in the creation of a self. I analyze the construction of identity and the self through 16 qualitative in-depth interviews with participants who identify as non-men. All participants in this study had experience with music-making, with backgrounds from diverse scenes and styles. The variety of musical practices allowed me to understand what individuals find in music and what is distinct about music as a form of meaning-making. Participants self-identified a number of ways as femme, non-binary, trans, or women, but all identified as non-men. A non-male participant sample allowed me to understand how gendered meanings take place in music. The types of questions I asked broadly covered participants’ musical history, music making practices, and the relationship between music and identity. The coding process made clear that gendered meanings produce, and are produced, by music. Codes such as identification, persona, and self-presentation that I gathered from the musical experiences of participants established this relationship. Participants expressed some sense of marginalization as a result of their gender. This involved implicit and explicit negotiation with gendered narratives. Importantly, forms of resistance and redefinition were also evidenced in their musical practices. I analyze these themes in non-men’s use of sound, voice, and persona in their musical practices. I define sound as any auditory component of music not produced by the participants’s voice. Sound encompasses all that is constructed in musical practice, which includes instrumentals, sound effects, and electronically modified audios. I define voice as a personal project that encompasses physical and metaphorical voice. Lastly, I define persona as the taking on of an archetype or character to be explored in music, which is often created through gendered understandings and narratives. Participants demonstrated forms of resistance through practices of sound, voice and persona. Previous research on the relationship between music and identity has focused on practices of music consumption as opposed to music making. This work aims to help address this by detailing the relationship between the music making practices of individuals and gender identity. Furthermore, I center the agency and identity work of non-men in their own forms of musical production. Their musical practices are ways in which they reassert themselves. The musical practices of non-men have the potential to take up struggles for agency that disrupt gendered norms and hierarchies. Participants often critiqued and at times openly embraced gendered stereotypes in their music. This form of engagement with normative gendered beliefs is innovative, and has been understudied. Past studies that have analyzed music making practices more closely have been dismissive of the potential found in the embrace of gender norms and stereotypes (Dibben 2002; Kearney 2006). We can learn a lot from the musical practices of non-men as they refute existing gendered norms while simultaneously engaging them in a critical manner. Furthermore, their musical practices ask us to consider new ways of defining the self and new forms of being. References Bloustien, Geraldine. 2016. “‘God is a DJ’: Girls, Music, Performance, and Negotiating Space.” Pp. 228-243. Girlhood and the Politics of Place, edited by Mitchell, C. and C. Rentschler. New York: Berghahn Books. Clawson, Mary Ann. 1999. “When Women Play the Bass: Instrument Specialization and Gender Interpretation in Alternative Rock Music.” Gender and Society 13(2):193–210. DeNora, Tia. 2010. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dibben, Nicola. 2002. “Gender and Identity.” Pp. 117-134. Musical Identities, edited by MacDonald, R., Hargreaves, D., and D. Miell. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. Frith, Simon. 1996. “Music and Identity.” Pp. 117-134. Questions of Cultural Identity: SAGE Publications, edited by Hall, S. and P. du Gay. London, UNITED KINGDOM: SAGE Publications, Limited. Kearney, Mary Celeste. 2006. Girls Make Media. New York: Routledge. Kearney, Mary Celeste. 2017. Gender and Rock. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merrill, Bryce. 2010. “Music to Remember Me By: Technologies of Memory in Home Recording.” Symbolic Interaction 33(3):456–74. doi: 10.1525/si.2010.33.3.456. Wald, Gayle. 1998. “Just a Girl? Rock Music, Feminism, and the Cultural Construction of Female Youth.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 23(3):585–610.

Contemporary emergency medical services and paramedics emerged out of the 1960s when attempts were made to professionalize a fledgling occupational group with the goal of instilling specialized medical knowledge and a variety of medical procedures and pharmaceutical interventions to “save patients and prevent further damage” in emergency situations (Swanson, 2005, p. 96, Campeau, 2008, p. 3). It was from this time and onward that the education of paramedics has undergone significant changes; in the past, individual “ambulance attendants” typically received on-the-job vocational training “post-employment” – training that lacked standardization and principles of evidence-based medicine. As emergency medical services (EMS) as a field and paramedics as a profession became more institutionalized, a shift in education occurred to a “pre-employment” model that often took place in higher education institutions (Brooks et al., 2018; O’Brien et al., 2014; Al Shammari et al., 2018). Such education has increasingly been standardized, regulated by different agencies/bodies (e.g. government bodies, regulatory agencies), and organized by core competencies deemed essential for the practicing paramedic. The professionalization of paramedics vis-à-vis educational and training programs can be seen within the broader context and evolution of health professions education (HPE). This presentation reports on initial findings from an institutional ethnographic study that explores: 1). The work that goes into becoming a paramedic? 2). How key discourses organize what paramedics are taught? 3). How "key competencies" are taught and certified in educational settings? As such, this research seeks to explore and explicate the social organization of health professional education in the context of paramedicine.

This study examines how people use TikTok to share about breast cancer and long covid. Researchers chose random days in October 2023 to look for videos posted on TikTok in the past 24 hours about breast cancer or long covid. Researchers looked at up to 20 videos for each disease, but most days there were no new videos about long covid. The final sample included 107 videos (21 for long covid, 86 for breast cancer). Each researcher examined components such as the qualifications of the TikToker, the general content of each video they watched, and the tone of any comments. Each researcher also wrote a short reflection paragraph. After the data collection was complete, the research team met to discuss possible coding and developed codes for tone (e.g., frustrated), content (e.g., treatment), and type of poster (e.g., medical professional). Each video was re-watched by a researcher who had not originally watched the video and coding was applied as well as comments on the general content of the videos. We found that most videos’ intent was to raise awareness. While the frustrated tone was split evenly between diseases, most of the encouraging videos were not long covid-related.

The internet has enabled patients to take a more active role in the process of acquiring a diagnosis, as the interactivity of “Dr. Google” and other online symptom-checkers demonstrates (Jutel 2017). Social media has emerged as a locus where (self-) diagnoses can be made through social interaction with others who identify as holding diagnostic identities. TikTok is unique in its foregrounding of its content recommendation algorithm in the user experience, with preliminary research demonstrating that users utilize the algorithm’s recommendations to help construct and legitimate their identities. Following Alper et al.’s concept of platformed diagnosis, this study seeks to examine how the distinct features and constraints of TikTok’s platform architecture shape the discourse of user self-diagnoses of autism, ADHD, and neurodivergent identities. Using digital ethnographic approaches, in this study I both engage with the TikTok algorithm to understand the process of (self-)diagnosis of these conditions on TikTok and also conduct a discourse analysis of TikToks of users discussing these conditions. This research speaks to how new technologies are impacting diagnostic identity construction.

This presentation provides an overview of the relevance of sociological concepts and perspectives to healthcare and health-related professions. Mechanisms for providing education and applying a sociological lens are discussed. Educational consulting is introduced as an example of applied sociology, and as a route for professors to engage professional work outside academia.

Scholars have identified many different understandings of citizenship, many with a focus on rights, obligations, or a combination of both (Lister 1997, Janowitz 1980). This has major implications for both citizens and noncitizens alike, as legal definitions of citizenship influence access to resources such as welfare and expectations around responsibilities—for example, paid work (Barbulescu and Favell 2020, Erel et al. 2018). Additionally, perceptions of citizenship held by United States-born long-term residents potentially affect immigrants’ experiences and opportunities to integrate and find belonging in the U.S. This qualitative project looks at longtime Utahns' conceptualizations and understandings of citizenship and subsequent policy implications to represent these views. Analysis of 20 interviews with longtime Utah residents born in the U.S. shows several themes in their conceptualizations of citizenship. Findings show that longtime Utahns put an emphasis on the legal rather than the social definition of citizenship, highlighting religious freedom in Utah's unique religious climate. The importance of citizenship to identity varies between age groups, with older generations tending toward strong identification with patriotism. Paid work was framed as a right rather than responsibility, contrasted with community participation. Regardless of demographics, participants famed Utah's political climate negatively. Additionally, the Latinx portion of the sample expressed disenchantment and fear around patriotic symbolism. These findings have implications for more representative, public-driven citizenship-related policies, especially important in a new-destination state for immigration. Changes might include updating welfare access requirements, building immigration-friendly policies, empowering moderate influence, and recreating a sense of safety for Utah's Latinx residents.

Zen is the oldest convert tradition in American Buddhism when their communities were established in the 1960s and 70s as the first generation of native-born Zen practitioners were authorized by their Japanese teachers to be teachers of their Zen communities (Seager 2002). The long history of American Zen communities offers an opportunity to examine changes in Buddhist communities in the United States. This paper is part of a larger study investigating the ways in which Zen communities in the United States have responded to the changing religious needs of Americans. A dataset of American Zen centers has been constructed using publicly available information about each organization. In this paper, I examine the two main ways Zen communities develop. One is the founding of new Zen communities by newly authorized teachers where the founding teacher explores ways to attract a following to sustain a center. The other is where the descendants of the founding teacher are given leadership and teaching roles in the center where they trained, building on the existing organizational capacity of the community established by the founder. Using the dataset, I analyze the prevalence of each mode of organizational development among Zen communities and how it affects their programs and organizational structure. I also discuss what this development means for the future of Zen communities in their ability to adapt to the changing landscape of religion in the U.S.

Catholic teachings have a long-standing tradition of defending migration as a “God-given human right.” The Catholic Church is extensively involved in advocacy, hospitality, and humanitarian efforts along the México-US border. Yet, all borders are becoming increasingly militarized, hostile, and violent, immigration policies legalize or criminalize certain groups based on narrow political definitions to determine who deserves life and safety and who deserves to be subjected to deportation, detention, or even death. To this end, this research seeks to understand how staff and volunteers of a humanitarian aid program of Catholic Charity Services in Southern Arizona are advancing their goal of creating “a compassionate and just community that upholds the God-given worth and dignity of every human being.” What values and beliefs influence staff and volunteers in serving asylum seekers? To what extent do they see these values in action at work and reflected in the mission of the program? Through ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews, faith and religious values emerge as a major theme for these workers. Underneath this benevolent act, however, the finding also reveals an undertone of white, paternalistic, self-righteous martyrdom in service of “guiding the stranger.” Various coping mechanisms and justifications by staff and volunteers also emerge as they recognize the limitations of humanitarian aid in light of the systemic injustices their clients face in an increasingly violent border regime.

Proponents of the “liberal paradox” argue that systemic pressures within liberal democracies, originating from neoliberal interests, civil society, and the rule of law, inevitably produce an expansive immigration policy. The “illiberal paradox” theory, however, points out that historically it has been liberal democratic states that adopted the most restrictive immigration policies and predicts that authoritarian, autocratic regimes would be more likely to shoulder the responsibility of refugee and asylum management. In order to test which side of the debate has more empirical support, I compiled and analyzed an original panel dataset of 162 countries covering the period 1967-2018, applying a panel regression model with fixed effects for country and year. While autocracies generally implemented more liberal policies than democracies in terms of hosting forced migrants, neither democracies nor autocracies hosted the highest levels of refugees or had the highest rates of asylum recognition. Rather it was anocracies, or hybrid regimes, that outperformed both, suggesting that both the liberal paradox and the illiberal paradox are overly simplistic as paradigms and that the relationship between refugee protection and political regime type is characterized by an “anocratic hump”, rather than the linearity predicted by both the liberal paradox and the illiberal paradox.

There has been extensive research assessing volunteerism in the United States and correlating it to the development of morality along with cultural/religious socialization from adolescence into adulthood. Simultaneously, past studies have reflected upon how Christian theology presents volunteer involvement as necessary for any Christ-loving identity. However, little is known about the actualized effects of this Christian theology and spirituality. This paper uses in-depth interviews with recent alumni from the St. Athanasius and St. Cyril Coptic Theological School, located in Newport Beach, CA, in order to examine the following questions: (1) What types of motivators do Coptic Christians frequently note for volunteer work? and (2) How do Coptic Christians correlate volunteer work to religion and theology? In the interviews, respondents often noted spiritual-related motivations and effects of service (volunteering), as predicted by the hypothesis. Concurrently, many of the interviewees referenced bible verses and the life of Jesus Christ to present volunteer involvement (or service, as they termed it) as an unspoken expectation arising out of their Christian identity. These findings shed light on how Christian theology regarding service work is actualized in one specific Orthodox community in the United States.

Peer support is a rapidly expanding evidence-based practice in which individuals with mental health conditions provide non-clinical support for others. While “shared lived experience” is lauded as the cornerstone of peer support, scant attention has been paid to the experience and impact of shared racial-ethnic identity among peer workers and clients. Expansion of the BIPOC peer supporter workforce is critical to address severe mental healthcare shortages and racial disparities. This qualitative research aims to assess the role that racial and ethnic concordance has within the mental health peer support field in California. We will assess how peer support workers understand and experience racial-ethnic concordance and discordance, and the meaning they place on multiple identities within the broader umbrella of “peerness”. Collaborating with a peer-run organization in the Bay Area, we will facilitate 12 1-hour-long online focus groups organized by self-identified racial/ ethnic identity (Black/ African American; Latine/ Hispanic; AAPI; and Mixed/Multi-Racial). We will conduct thematic analysis utilizing Dedoose software, with an iterative coding process. Particular attention will be paid to inter- and intra-group differences. We are beginning data collection in Nov. 2023 and will have preliminary findings to report at PSA.

Located amongst 524 abandoned uranium legacy mines, the Navajo Nation offers a glimpse into the risks associated with environmental exposures and the need for assessing community knowledge about those risks. This research aims to evaluate the understanding of the Western Agency of Navajo Nation community members’ and Tuba City Regional Health Care Center healthcare workers’ understanding of their environmental exposures and beliefs about how such exposure affects health. This research is part of a larger project: “Environmental Exposures from Legacy Mining as a Social Determinant of Health Linked to Kidney Cancer." My portion of the project involves two surveys presented to community members and health care workers of the Western Agency of the Navajo Nation. Using CBPR methods, along with inspiration from theories such as Tribal Critical Race and Indigenous Standpoint, we will use the information from the surveys to guide the project's final phase, community education. This will allow for reciprocity, equality, and mutuality in the research process and may direct future advocacy efforts for mine clean up. This presentation will provide a historical perspective to the monster “Leetso" and showcase the resiliency of the community on Navajo Nation. For the Navajo Nation to thrive the monster must go.

Despite psychiatry’s recent disavowal of social factors as shaping the discipline, its discourses and practices are deeply embedded in its social, political, and institutional history. This becomes especially evident when analyzing the discourses of psychiatrists in non-Western contexts where psychiatry was explicitly imported as a ‘Western’ science with attendant social meanings (Artvinli, 2018). Despite never having been directly colonized, Turkey displays a unique amalgam of discourses reminiscent of both postcolonial nations and previous imperial powers (Ahiska, 2003). Seen as a privileged science to modernize a nation’s psyche and daily conduct, psychiatry in Turkey has a forgotten role in the authoritative and, at times, eugenicist modernizing reforms of the early 20th-century (Salgirli, 2011). I conducted a content analysis of 80 psychiatric journal articles in Turkish psychiatric journals post-1990s, where authors stray from biomedicalism and make social commentaries. I place these discourses in the historical place psychiatry had both in the modernizing narratives of the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey. I found that modernization theory, in all its changing forms (Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Multiple Modernities), is institutionalized as a ‘system of judgment about conduct’ (Rose, 1996) within Turkish psychiatry, as a way of reading a non-Western setting through a ‘Western’ science.

This research uses a critical, sociological lens to explore social cohesion as a social determinant of health (SDoH). Using focus group data collected during a 2023 Coconino County community-based health equity project; this paper specifically centers the perspectives of young adults in the rural tourist town of Page, Arizona, as a snapshot for examining the potential connections between community and health. This paper re-evaluates public health's early and continued reliance on Emilé Durkheim, addressing the lack of a clear definition to offer a more comprehensive framework. Audre Lorde’s "Master’s Tools" (1979) serves as a main theoretical foundation in this queered intersectional analysis which interrogates the normative white, heteropatriarchal view of social cohesion and investigates the question: does a diverse population’s experience truly concur with social cohesion in the current US social structure? Queering social cohesion repositions marginalized communities as normative without requiring that they adjust or assimilate. What results is a new, practical way of understanding and utilizing social cohesion in public health interventions addressing social and health inequities affecting communities of difference.

By utilizing a YPAR approach to design a standards-based curriculum in the form of lessons, I worked with nine high school graduates of 2022 to analyze California State 12th-grade Social Studies standards and design lesson plans that disrupt cultural capital by centering community cultural wealth. Through standards analysis, curriculum design, workshops, and dialogue, I found that this group of nine youth had a foundational understanding of systemic influence, but had not been in a position to expand and further develop their sociological imagination. In addition, as a research team, we found many seemingly neutral findings within the California State Standards. These findings helped inform our curriculum design as it centered students’ experiences to reflect on what they had not been exposed to and incorporate ways they could include critical and sociologically imaginative concepts within lessons. Independent from the team, I found not only innovative and insightful ways to foster a sociological imagination, but that collaboration is key, and that youth do want to see social change. Bringing everything together, I have found that YPAR does have a way to disrupt cultural capital, and in turn, create an environment that helps youth feel welcome, included, and heard. The outcome of these findings created deliverables in the form of a redesigned survey, lesson plans, and implications for future research. Additionally, this study highlights the way that space can be designed intentionally in a way that is democratic in nature, disrupting traditional ideas of participation, permission, and engagement in research.

This study explores effective strategies for applying archival sources in designing K-12 curriculum and instruction on topics related to Black and Native American people. Several accounts illustrate that K-12 learning environments have consistently mitigated the historical experiences of these respective groups. Two interrelated perspectives. Sankofa, a Ghanaian principle along with the seventh-generation principle, derived from the Haudenosaunee nation framed this study. The findings indicate that framing curriculum and instruction through nondominant perspectives supports teachers in identifying curriculum violence. The study is significant because it provides a better understanding of practices that lead to equitable learning. By utilizing nondominant perspectives along with archival sources, preservice teachers learn the steps for building inclusive curriculum and instruction.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools has become a controversial topic nationwide, leading to widespread and alarming bans on the teaching of CRT. CRT has been accused of shaming white children, creating racial division, and creating a “victim mentality” amongst people of color. The CRT utilized in critical legal studies, ethnic studies, and sociology looks drastically different from what opponents claimed. So, what exactly is CRT - more importantly, what do opponents of CRT believe it to be, and why are they opposed to it? This session builds on the sociological field of critical whiteness, establishes the contextual background to the emergence of opposition to CRT, examines indepth interviews to understand the opposition to CRT and the concerning implications presented by the movement. This research is based around thirteen qualitative interviews with thirteen people in rural Northwestern Washington about their understanding and opinion of CRT taught in schools. These interviews identified the primary concern in opposition to CRT as concern for children, for white children and children of color. Opponents of CRT commonly utilized a “colorblind” framework towards racial relations, believing that the acknowledgment of racial differences and oppression would further perpetuate oppression, driving their opposition to CRT. This research contributes to an emerging field in sociology and educational studies focused on addressing the concerning and rapidly developing implications of opposition to CRT.

Since September 2020, 619 anti-critical race theory (CRT) measures targeting schools have been introduced (UCLA 2023). Amidst politicization of K-12 school curriculum, which individuals and groups are speaking up? Whose voices are being heard? To better understand the role of public actors in shaping local education governance, I focus on the case of local school board meetings in California, analyzing public speeches (n=125) concerning critical race theory ‘bans’ in schools. A qualitative analysis reveals that unaffiliated local actors, a group I term ‘ideological mercenaries,’ represent the largest social group making claims in these spaces. These individuals have no discernible connection to the school district, yet assert claims on issues of local school governance. This group represents a considerable, yet under-examined, demographic engaged in local education advocacy. I draw upon existing sociological literature on social movements to explore patterns that emerge in their strategic framing processes. This paper aims to address gaps in our understanding of the role of the general public in shaping students’ experiences. This work adds to existing literature on the sociology of education, particularly the ways in which youths’ experiences in schools are shaped by forces beyond the classroom.

Research on racial/ethnic inequalities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (i.e., STEM) education and careers shows that Black and Hispanic/Latino students lag behind whites and Asians in entry and sustained participation in the STEM pipeline. While past research identified the cause of Black and Hispanic/Latino educational inequalities as an oppositional culture towards education, a growing body of research acknowledges the structural inequalities that both groups face in the U.S. K-12 education system which limits their educational and career aspirations. Newer research is also paying increased attention to factors that may ameliorate this stark inequality and increase Black and Hispanic/Latino participation in the STEM pipeline in K-12 schooling. One area of this research identifies the importance of same-race/ethnicity STEM teachers and the positive influences they promote in Black and Hispanic/Latino students' continued participation in STEM education. However, this growing area of research has yet to look at whether this positive influence extends to Black and Hispanic/Latino students' thoughts on their group's professional viability in STEM careers. In this paper, I use the 100th wave of the Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel to investigate whether having had a same-race/ethnicity STEM teacher in high school is related to Black and Hispanic/Latino respondents feeling more professionally viable in STEM occupations. My results suggest that Black and Hispanic/Latino respondents who had a same-race/ethnicity STEM teacher in high school are related to feeling both more welcomed in STEM occupations and that their group has reached the highest levels of success in these occupations.

The objective of my paper is to share preliminary data on the use of a culturally significant game, Loteria, in my research on food security in Merida, Mexico. Loteria is a traditional game of chance in Mexico that is widely played by Mexicans and Mexican- Americans. In my research I adapted the traditional game and used images and vocabulary related to food security, nutrition, and disasters. Loteria was used to triangulate my findings between interviews and participant observations. The goal of utilizing Loteria was to see if individuals enjoyed the activity and if the game generated new information. I played Loteria with the women at the community kitchen my research is based on. Approximately 15 women showed up and we played 4 rounds of the game. The game operated like a focus group. The deck of 54 cards with all the possible images contained my interview questions. As cards were picked up out of the deck, I would announce the word and the appropriate question. Preliminary findings indicate that topics that had not previously came up in individual interviews, came up during the activity.

This talk will describe The Love Yourself Foundation (LYF, founded 2018), a non-profit organization, based in Las Vegas, NV. LYF creates a bridge toward healing and self-love to mitigate individual and collective traumas. By incorporating the arts and social science perspectives, LYF creates a compassionate online and in-person experience through workshops, events, programs, and digital content that encourages the co-healing of individuals, their communities, and the planet. I created this organization inspired by my own process to overcome mental health issues and my concern about our planetary-wide ecological and social challenges. I drew from my sociological and environmental studies background (Sociology BA, Environmental Studies BA) to envision building a foundation that better connects humans with the environment using arts, therapeutic practices, and building community. LYF has started to conduct research to further validate our efforts and help us create more events, workshops, and programs. I will discuss LYF’s development and our effort to systematically review research and program evaluation surveys to further support our efforts.

California leads the way in minimum wage policy. From historic organizing of the Fight for $15 movement ten years ago to more recent successes by labor unions to pass a state-wide $20 minimum wage for fast food workers and $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers. However, California also leads the nation in a housing unaffordability crisis and high costs of living that vary by region. What does it take to make ends meet in our community? How do we evaluate the economic well-being of working people? And considering patterns in occupational segregation, how are workers of color and women faring in our community? These questions were brought to us by a local community organization in the East Bay of California that supports low-wage workers and equitable economic development policy. To address these questions we used data from the American Community Survey 2015-2019 to evaluate the economic well-being of workers in the East Bay by race/ethnicity, gender, and occupation. We used four methods including “near poverty” status, earning “low-wages” based on the labor market, experiencing housing cost-burden, and earning a “living wage” or (achieving self-sufficiency). We will describe each method, how we used them in our analysis, and the pros and cons of each method for conducting applied policy research on low-wage workers.

World-systems and world society theories are two of sociology’s most prominent theories on globalization. With one focused on global economics and the other on international organizations, little overlap exists between these two disparate literatures. Using the global obesity epidemic as an illustrative case, this study shows how these theories can be complimentary. The analysis uses two-way fixed effects regression to show that higher trade openness in developing nations is associated with higher obesity prevalence as predicted by world-systems theory. Results also show that receiving more health aid is associated with reduced obesity prevalence as predicted by world society theory. Finally, significant marginal effects show that health aid is somewhat effective at reducing obesity increases related to trade but does not fully mitigate the impact of trade on obesity. Focusing on the interactions of powerful economic actors and global governance norms, the study concludes that this partial effectiveness exists because world society’s global culture and powerful actors within the world system exhibit a system of mutual constraint: core nations and multinational firms can have an outsized impact in shaping discourse to constrain the impacts of global governance norms ensuring that they do not disrupt larger economic structures (such as trade). Simultaneously these powerful actors are limited to protecting world system structures while not impeding the diffusion of global norms (for example by arguing that obesity is not a legitimate governance issue).

How did the hierarchy of the world-system adapt to the impact of the 2008–09 global economic crisis? How did a country's position in the world-system influence their upward mobility during the crisis? This paper investigates the core/periphery hierarchy of the global trade network before and after the 2008–09 crisis. The central argument posits that the global trade network follows a core/periphery hierarchy in relation to the new international division of labor (NIDL) in the twenty-first century, and a country's placement within that hierarchy had a varying effect on its upward mobility following the 2008–09 crisis. Utilizing social network analysis of 191 countries engaged in global trade, I discovered that the core/periphery structure remained unchanged after the 2008–09 global financial crisis. However, many countries in intermediate positions experienced upward shifts. However, not all countries achieved upward mobility, indicating that only a few semi-peripheral and peripheral countries were better positioned to improve their status than most non-core countries.

The effects of foreign investment on the informal economy are a contentious issue among development scholars. Some argue that foreign investment fosters global integration and formal employment, while others contend that it facilitates a ‘race to the bottom’ effect and informalization of work. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between foreign investment and the informal economy is inconclusive. I suggest that this is because previous studies have overlooked the sector-specific effect of foreign investment. Using panel data of 76 countries between 2000 and 2018, this paper is the first to examine how Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in different sectors affects the informal economy and whether these effects are moderated by development status and the institutional quality of the recipient countries. Preliminary results reveal that: 1. primary-sector FDI has a net negative effect on the informal economy bur differs substantively between the Global North and Global South: primary-sector FDI reduces informal economy in the Global North but increases informal economy in the Global South. 2. secondary-sector FDI has a net positive effect on the informal economy, with the effect being notably larger in the Global South. 3. tertiary-sector FDI has a net negative effect on the informal economy across the Global North and Global South. 4. institutional quality does not moderate the sector-specific effect of FDI, except for primary-sector FDI, where it reduces the informal economy. These findings suggest that the persistence of informal economy can be better explained by the structure rather than the overall magnitude of foreign investment.

As communist regimes began their descent in 1989, Poland became the first country among the Warsaw Pact nations to initiate a freer election, following with economic policies associated with free-market democracy. The influence of particular economic paradigms on nation-state policymaking is a well-studied phenomenon in sociology, specifically in the context of significant social transformations. In this project, I address how and why a specific restructuring paradigm, a drastic policy dubbed “shock therapy”, became the mode of transforming Poland from a centrally planned economic system to a free-market system. Previous scholarship overemphasizes the inevitability of “shock therapy” as dictated by Western nations that held Poland’s economically stifling debt. In contrast, I take a historical-biographical approach, with an emphasis on the theory of relationality. Through this aforementioned approach, I examine how the presence of some and absence of other Polish economists during the initial transition in late 1989 set Poland on a particular economic path. Specifically, I address the role of economists who were openly active oppositionists in the years leading up to the fall of communism and the economists who were not involved in any official regime oppositionist activism. By utilizing historical analyses of the period and biographies of the most central oppositionists in charge after the June 1989 election, I hone in on how anti-regime activism among economists may have precluded their role in policymaking during the initial economic transformation. This project contributes to enhanced understanding of how policymakers’ biographies matter for policymaking.

This study is based on collaborative storytelling between a transwoman factory worker in the Global South and the author, a Bangladeshi graduate student in the U.S. Our goal is to reveal the lived experience of labor in a global factory in Bangladesh at the intersection of (trans)gender identity and social class. In doing so, we reveal the ways the global economy constructs and reproduces vulnerability, and how exclusion is embedded in the logic of global capitalism. We explore the following questions: How does a transwoman apparel worker in Bangladesh construct her lived experience on the factory floor? And what does her narrative reveal about the construction of gender, sexuality, and cisnormativity in the global apparel industry? Relying on methods of relational autoethnography, the authors engage in partnership and dialogic interaction, asking questions, analyzing stories, and co-authoring the narrative. This collaboration bridges disparate research topics on inequality, power, and social hierarchy in the workplace by investigating the nature of work in the global economy "from below", through compassionate interviewing and expressive storytelling. By challenging conventional approaches to workplace inequality, this study offers new insights into the relationship between inequality and social hierarchies in work organizations around the globe.

This paper highlights unionism in Pakistan including its struggles and successes that have helped shape the demands of female community health workers of Pakistan unionized under the National Program Health Association (NPHEA). The union, which represents female community health workers (Lady Health Workers or LHWs) employed by the state, has been largely successful in its demands of becoming regularized employees through sit-in protests that gained nationwide coverage. Despite being situated in a country wherein women are largely confined within the household, LHWs have been successful in reshaping gender norms and expectations through the work they do as community health workers and as union members of the NPHEA. Keywords: Lady Health Workers, unions, Pakistan

How does persistent and cumulative gender regulation produce economic insecurity? Trans people face markedly high levels of workplace discrimination, unemployment, and poverty, and therefore offer unique insight into this question. Prior research theorizes how trans workers get repositioned in a binary, patriarchal gender order, but we lack a conceptual model to explain the labor market experience of people who are systematically sanctioned as gender deviants. By analyzing work history interviews from 23 trans women of color based across the United States, this article argues that crossing gender boundaries is a racialized experience that can come with an economic cost. After transitioning, trans women of color face three forms of economic sanctioning: exclusion, a racially gendered glass ceiling, and constrained employment options within a segmented labor market. Thus, work organizations premised on a hierarchical classification scheme have the option, not only to reposition people on the basis of a classification change, but to deem them unassimilable.

The earnings and career penalties experienced by women with children are significant and well-documented. In-depth interviews with sixty-one expectant mothers identified two theoretically relevant precursors to these motherhood wage gaps. At the external level, women frequently experienced debilitating physical and emotional symptoms that made it challenging or even impossible to complete the requirements of their paid work. Most egregiously, symptoms were severe enough to warrant termination or (reluctant) employment exits. Pregnancy also caused several women to prioritize flexibility and to delay or forgo advancement opportunities. These “pregnancy penalties” mark the beginning of subsequent labor market ramifications. Additionally, patterns of thinking and behavior that develop during pregnancy—including the preparatory “invisible labor of pregnancy”—create or deepen gender divides within heterosexual couples. As expectant mothers solidify their roles as the “experts” of the child they’re carrying, they crystalize the primacy of the maternal role and the secondary “helper” status of fathers, potentially setting the stage for bearing primary responsibility over the ensuing years of parenting. Further, the process of actively encouraging shared knowledge and participation from their partners constitutes another task that requires time and effort. Taken together, the period of pregnancy inflicts its own version of a (not-quite) motherhood penalty on women as they grapple with physical and emotional symptoms and take on the lion’s share of unpaid planning responsibilities. The couple-level gender divisions that develop (or calcify) during this period translate to corresponding differences in the subsequent labor market behaviors of mothers as compared to fathers.

The "Shecession" (Alon, 2021) – the surge in women who have lost or left employment post-pandemic - has reignited discussions on women's career attainment. This longitudinal, qualitative study investigates the employment changes and career shifts of women in professional occupations during the COVID-19 era. While existing research emphasizes work-family conflict, this study focuses on how workplace discrimination may influence women’s decisions to leave their managerial roles or shift careers. It explores women's employment departures, job changes, and career shifts during COVID-19, examining the decision-making processes behind their work transitions, and how experiences with workplace discrimination may have impacted their employment decisions. Anchored in constructivist grounded theory, the study utilizes in-depth interviewing for a critical, intersectional analysis of women's career trajectories. Set within the context of the casino gaming industry - an extreme case study of workplace discrimination (Hoffman, 2023) and an industry significantly impacted by COVID economically - the research is comprised of fifty-five interviews with women in gaming management conducted in 2019 and approximately thirty follow-up interviews post-March 2020. The study aims to understand how pre-COVID experiences with workplace discrimination may influence women's employment decisions during the COVID-19 era and assesses the pandemic’s profound impact on the American labor market.

Semi-structured interviews conducted with Afro-Polish and other black Polish residents/citizens show that blackness and the racism that comes of it is bestowed upon them by others (mainly white Poles) in Poland but not necessarily by their own self interpretations. Although they acknowledge their African-ness and blackness, the subjects interviewed do not necessarily live their lives with a heightened sense of “blackness.” The subjects suggest that “blackness” and thereby “anti-blackness” is always there, but the oppression is not quite “front and center” depending on the person. These conversations, along with autoethnographic and ethnographic observations provide evidence for a theoretical framing on racial consciousness that address the multiple identities that People of African Descent (PAD) in Poland reconcile and contextualize in their daily lives. This theory in formation, inspired by Dubois’ double consciousness theory, is being theorized as a “Racial Consciousness Continuum.” Moreover, conversations on the connection and disconnection of African Diasporic communities in Poland has emerged in the research which will be beneficial to broaden conversations on African Diaspora Studies in the American academy.

For a city that is rarely included in public and academic discourse on urban racial and ethnic communities, Las Vegas has one of the oldest and most storied segregated Black communities in the West known as the Historic Westside. In 2018, the City of Las Vegas unveiled their redevelopment plans in the Historic Westside by officially adopting The HUNDRED Plan. As an acronym, HUNDRED stands for Historic Urban Neighborhood Design and REDevelopment. Though alarming to many current residents, the groundwork for this massive redevelopment plan was laid decades prior. The Historic Westside shares many similarities in its original development, growth, and urban decline to other iconic African American neighborhoods in the United States. Drawing on theories of neighborhood change and incorporating significant contributions from critical perspectives on Blackness, Black space, and Black geographic trauma, I show how Las Vegas offers important points of divergence and distinction from the gentrification process of other communities. As the Westside experienced unique transitions that increased the community’s vulnerability, the cumulative effects of a long history of geographic trauma are now colliding with the city’s efforts to remove, displace, and replace Black residents through a large-scale gentrification effort the city refers to as a “neighborhood rebirth.” I show how the Covid-19 global pandemic provided a “perfect storm” for city leaders to progress their gentrification efforts while residents were under strict quarantine orders at home. During Covid, the City of Las Vegas made real estate deals, rezoning decisions, and land purchases to curate their redevelopment plan.

In this autoethnography, the author uses a layered accounts approach to analyze her racialized sense of self after experiencing anti-Black everyday racism during a mundane shopping encounter with a white friend at a well-known home décor store. Drawing from W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Blackfolk (1903), the author uses the theory of double consciousness to provide a contemporary application of three key aspects of the theory--the Veil, twoness, and second sight—in relation to the emotions, feelings, and reflections that occur during and after experiencing everyday racism.

The Ethiopian Civil War of 2020-22 has been recorded as the most dramatic civil war of the 21st century. At the center of this national strife was a self-styled charismatic figure who was later bestowed the Nobel Prize for Peace. Within less than a year, the same emergent charismatic figure, who earned praise from different corners of the world, decided to traverse through a controversial route. He became a total warrior less committed to even the fundamental principles of military engagement. What causes this dramatic turn of events and personality? This paper will attempt to make sense of this enigmatic development by putting it within a broader social context and treating charisma not only as dramatic but, most importantly, as adaptive as well. In the Ethiopian socio-political setting, at first, the Charismatic-One presented himself as a man of peace committed to the principles of a democratic order along with materializing economic progress. Yet the charismatic figure couldn’t deliver on his promises. He thus had to switch political gears. War became the best option for both the purposes of removing challengers from the political space and as an instrument of public distraction from concern over enduring social problems. While attempting to sustain charisma this way, the outcome was ambiguous, mostly marked by wanton destruction of property and a considerable loss of life. Despite these destructive results, supporters of the Charismatic-One saw his actions as manifestations of the charismatic figure’s determination to protect the sacred nation from both internal and external enemies. This enigmatic process provides the intellectual opportunity to re-examine Max Weber’s theory of charisma and therewith expand our understanding of charisma in the light of considering the interplay between civil war and emergent charisma. Data for the study is drawn from multiple sources, including newspapers, videos, and informal and official statements made by multiple politically active actors.

Holistic public defense is a model that is more comprehensive than a conventional model of public defense representation. One important goal of holistic defense is to identify and address underlying extralegal social needs connected to the criminal charge rather than focusing solely on addressing the legal criminal charge for an individual. Using a collaborative approach, this model includes social workers and civil legal workers in a team approach along with a criminal defense attorney. Existing research on holistic defense models has demonstrated effectiveness in addressing individuals’ social legal needs potentially reducing recidivism and justice system costs. In this research, I provide outcome results of a pilot project using a holistic defense model employed in a rural area of Alaska. I outline similar evaluative models of holistic defense in other locations in the United States. The results support previous research that highlights the importance of addressing defendants’ unmet social service needs in reducing recidivism and costs while improving individual case outcomes. I discuss the policy implications of this research and provide recommendations to enhance future evaluations of a holistic defense model.

This paper discusses how to develop a new standard of policing for the 21st century that focuses law enforcement agents applying human rights policing to their everyday interactions with community members while conducting police work. I’ve been teaching classes to police officers in the United States on how to apply human rights policing to their jobs, a daunting task indeed. As a result, this paper relies on ethnographic research conducted with various police departments as well as experience developing and teaching the first Human Rights Policing Certificate of Completion Program offered in the United States. Law enforcement agents and criminal justice professionals learn to apply human rights to their everyday interactions with community members while conducting police work. The paper discusses how (1) understanding and interpretating of human rights, (2) applying –– what I call –– the three types of human rights police social interactions, (3) understanding the relationship between power and human rights, (4) learning about the sociological imagination and the sociological concept of verstehen, (5) using human agency to advance human rights policing, (6) understanding the relationship between story-telling and human rights, (7) learning from interviews human rights policing with community members, and drawing from examples of how other police officers have applied human rights to their jobs, (8) among other things, leads to police officers and criminal justice professionals applying human rights to their police interactions with the community. The paper ends with a discussion on the future of policing as we push towards an uncertain future.

The disproportionate punishment of minorities and people of color (POC) has been widely researched in sociology and criminology. The literature has shown that minorities face a higher level of discrimination compared to their white counterparts in the US justice system. A growing literature has also looked at immigration and the level of racism they face in the system. There is a current gap in the literature that fails to look at accents and how non-native speakers are treated in the US justice system. This article aims to bring attention to non-native speakers and foreign accents and how these factors may influence treatment at various stages in the justice system. How accents are perceived could have a significant impact on sentencing, judicial perceptions, police treatment, attorney treatment, and jury perceptions. We will begin by conducting a thorough literature review concerning race in the justice system, immigration status, and perception of accents in society. We will then address the gap in the literature and possible measurements and ways to research treatments in the court. Latinos, being the biggest minority in the US, should be a focus in future research.This piece concludes by creating alternatives that can help and fix the problems people face with non-native accents.

Wildfires in the state of Washington in 2020 have some curious statistics that warrant further investigation. First, among the eleven listed causes of fire (arson, children, debris burning, lightening, logging, miscellaneous, railroad, recreation, smoker, under investigation, and undetermined) on a document released by Washington Department of Natural Resources, arson and smoker are the only two causes that have a higher number of fires than that of 2019 as well as the average of the past ten years. Secondly, among the six regions in the state (Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, Olympic, South Puget Sound, and Pacific Cascade), the possibility to have responses (i.e. number of response divided by number of fires) is much higher in the agricultural/rural Northeast and Southeast. I intend to use content analysis (government documents and reports, newspapers, magazines, and so on) to examine the man-made natural disasters in that particular year, when the pandemic was still in full swing. The statistics of the damage caused by the pandemic in terms of human life and property seem to follow the same pattern of destruction by region. The implication of the research results from this study includes: policies and the administration of government finance that more effectively address the issue of wildfires.

History has shown the purpose and effectiveness of mandatory minimums has failed. A prime example is the California Three Strike law, designed to lower crime rates and improve public safety, which has not achieved its end of improving public safety and reducing recidivism, but rather has resulted in an adverse impact on society. This study will show how the law has negatively impacted prisoners (psychologically, emotionally, and physically) and their relationships with their families. It will also show the disproportionate application of the law in the disparity of sentencing to people of color (specifically African Americans), the overcrowding of our prisons, and the overall impact on society. Twenty years after the law’s enactment in 1994 its negative impacts are felt. The purpose of this research is to critically examine the Law and show a need for further reform. The Three Strikers interviewed in this study who are ex-prisoners sentenced under the law are exemplars of the 5,000 Three Strikes incarcerated, who are negatively impacted as well. These prisoners are directly impacted because they are still incarcerated because of the amount of time they must serve for their minimum before they are considered for parole. This is another impact of the law that needs revisiting and reformed so that these prisoners may be released from prison and restored to their families. However, these are not the prisoners I’m investigating, but ex-prisoners. These ex-prisoners were recruited using the snowball sampling through lawyers representing formerly incarcerated three strikers, as well as fliers posted in re-entry facilities. I interviewed both lawyers and ex-prisoners, audio-recorded using zoom for 1 hour. My participants were African American men, 50 years or older and incarcerated for 20 years or more. The results revealed ex-prisoners suffering both psychological and emotional trauma because of their long-term incarceration, negatively impacting their relationship with family, and reflecting a cause of overcrowded prisons.

Despite a growing body of literature in narrative studies there remain questions about the fundamental structure of narratives as well as their archetypical forms. We introduce Booker’s (2004) seven basic plots to narrative research and assess the utility of his conception of narrative structure and archetypes with interview data. We utilized qualitative data from 33 former methamphetamine users (19 males and 14 females) gathered at faith-based recovery facilities. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 48 with an average age of 32. Data was assessed via constant comparison and coded thematically in line with the seven plots described by Booker. We discuss the utility of Booker’s conception of narrative structure and seven archetypal plots and how they can be applied to better understand participant narratives. We found each of the seven archetypal plots were relied on by different participants to frame and bring meaning to their experiences using and producing methamphetamine. However, the context of the interviews facilitated the reliance on some archetypes such as “Overcoming the Monster” and “Rebirth” more than others. We suggest that Booker’s archetypal plots can be unmoored from their literary context and applied to understanding narratives of deviance and crime. We argue for the relevance of Booker’s seven basic plots within narrative research in the social sciences and discuss their utility for understanding identity and decision making generally.

According to statistics, a significant increase in the number of people living in the U.S. identifying as Hispanics can be observed: between 2010 and 2020, the number of self-reported Hispanics or Latinos rose from approximately 47.5 million to 54.8 million, that is, by 14.9 percent (U.S. Bureau of Census, n.d.). Constituting one of the largest racial minorities in the U.S., the Hispanic community has been heavily affected by substance abuse issues nationwide. According to a research review conducted by Eghaneyan et al. (2020), Hispanic participants in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported a 12% rate of lifetime drug use, while the rate for past-year drug use stood at 14%. Another study found that US-born Hispanics presented with a higher lifetime drug use rate when compared to Hispanic immigrants to the U.S., and both groups sought substance abuse treatment less frequently than non-Hispanic white drug users (Mancini et al., 2015). Concurrently, Guerrero et al. (2013) found that the rate of Hispanics abusing alcohol and other controlled substances was comparable to or even higher than among other races within the U.S. and that Latinos seek and have access to substance abuse treatment less frequently than White substance abusers. Among Latino groups, Cubans and Puerto Ricans were less likely to enter and complete substance abuse treatment when compared to Mexican Americans (Guerrero et al., 2012). When comparing Hispanic groups for their substance of choice, one comparative study (Chartier et al., 2015) established that Mexican Americans mostly used alcohol as their primary substance, while other Hispanic groups (e.g., Cubans, Puerto Ricans, etc.) reported a higher preference for other controlled substances.

Recently, the USFDA released over-the-counter access to Narcan, a nasal spray capable of reversing drug overdoses. This passage symbolizes the degree to which the opioid epidemic, a phenomenon exacerbated by the pharmaceutical industry beginning in the late 1990s, continues to be a social issue. Although it has been framed as an issue effecting white communities, it in fact is an issue that results in taking the lives of people with various socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Furthermore, the opioid epidemic has also resulted in a gender disparity, disproportionately affecting women over the decades. Data shows that 86% of opioid users score has having at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE), while almost half (46%) report four ACEs, suggesting a mental health vulnerability in the opioid using population. Of the literature I have researched so far, the provided data has not utilized former opiate users who are currently successful individuals with multiple years of sobriety. With this being the target population, my research will establish an ACE score for each research participant as a baseline to compare the trajectory of both drug use and sobriety achievement amongst former opiate users, for both women and men. In my thesis, I hope to highlight the successful areas of the recovery process for drug users and in turn contribute to applied sociological data in order to show that criminal justice programs such as diversion and other non-criminalizing legislation can lead to a successful future.

There was an anonymous, open-ended survey conducted with a sample size of 3 participants who all identified to be Latino men who had been previously incarcerated more than once. The participants were found through various outlets of outreach ranging from Project Rebound at CSULA to CORE at Pasadena City College. This research has sought to analyze the issues that may cause higher rates of recidivism as well as the effects of having those higher rates of recidivism. Throughout the research there were several themes that arose due to those higher rates of recidivism among Latino men. Those issues included trauma, vulnerability, isolation, scrutiny, and racism. The other contributing factors that were found to be relevant to this research were the effects of Latino culture and having a clean record. These different factors have all been found through my research that they contribute to higher rates of recidivism. Those factors also contribute to mental health issues, life chances, and even being able to reassimilate within society.

The LGBTQ+ population has historically faced significant challenges and trauma, with recent political climates increasing the risk of their lives, evident in the record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed in 2023. In light of this, the purpose of this research is to enhance our understanding of LGBTQ+ individuals and contribute to the pursuit of social justice, equality, and inclusivity. By utilizing the General Social Survey (2021) and existing literature, this study aims to address gaps the existing knowledge by analyzing and exploring the lived experiences within the LGBTQ+ community. Specifically, through a quantitative analysis, I am to investigate the sexual and racial identities of LGBTQ+ individuals and their experiences with discrimination. A survey is designed to gather information on participants' self-identified sexual orientations and racial backgrounds. Participants are asked to share their experiences with discrimination, encompassing various dimensions such as interpersonal, systemic, and institutional discrimination. The study aims to shed light on the unique challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly in relation to their sexual and racial identities. Additionally, it addresses the limitations of the GSS, which provides only four categorical selections for sexual identity (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual) and two gender identities, leaving out many nuances of sexualities and gender identities. To overcome this limitation, the survey is designed to gather information on how participants identify their sexuality and gender identity when not available in predefined options, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of the GSS data and other datasets that have continued to reproduce minimalistic measurements of both sexuality and gender.

Research on age and sexual minorities has tended to treat the community as either a monolithic group or a series of sub-groups that uniquely experienced a certain social phenomenon (E.g. gay men who lived through the HIV/AIDS crisis). However, this takes for granted the socially constructed nature of cohort lines and ignores the well-documented cross-cohort and cross-identity group connections common within the sexual minority community. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to provide a framework for how more nuanced understandings of sexual minority cohorts and communities can be achieved. Using the Generations study’s 191 narrative life history interviews with sexual minority men, women, and genderqueer individuals, I examine variations in how the HIV/AIDS crisis, and HIV/AIDS more generally, are discussed as a personal and/or community concern(s). Cohort lines emerge around experiences with HIV/AIDS – the crisis, treatment, and prevention cohorts. While the HIV/AIDS crisis is less frequently mentioned by women, genderqueer individuals, and younger cohorts, a fear of HIV persists for sexual minority men. For women and genderqueer individuals, there is a growing community concern, but less common personal concern, about sexually transmitted diseases and infections without bringing up HIV specifically. This research showcases that HIV remains a personal and community concern across cohorts of sexual minority men. Furthermore, more generally, cohort lines within the sexual minority community commonly emerge around events that impacted the community and the effects are not always limited to those who experienced them firsthand.

In recent years, many states and organizations have created new policies about the participation of transgender people in sports. These vary from more invasive testing to denial of access depending on the state, organization, and level of play. The policies are bolstered by public discourse that mainly frames transgender athletes as cheats or dangerous superhumans. Primarily, the efforts are focused on regulating transgender women from participating in women's sports by claiming an unfair or biological advantage for people assigned male at birth. Meanwhile, transgender men are being largely ignored in public discourse despite facing many of their own challenges. Given this wave of social control, this study will seek to understand the impact on transgender athletes in their own words by interviewing them about their experiences. It will seek to analyze what policies are working and which ones are harming more than helping as well as identify common themes amongst the transathletic participants. The results should help identify which policies should be repealed, edited, or improved for sports organizations while countering antitrans rhetoric that created many of the recent policies overregulating transgender athletes.

This paper explores queer joy, desire, and queer sociological methodologies in the study of professional women’s soccer. I found an invitation to develop a reflexive queer methodology in the famous quip from the recently retired, former star soccer player of the United States Women’s National Team Megan Rapinoe: “Go gays. You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s never been done before, ever. That’s science, right there.” In Cruising Utopia, Jose Muñoz writes: “there is the idea of hope, which is both a critical affect and a methodology.” I think that queer joy, too, can be a way of thinking and a critical methodology. That’s social science, right there. Queer joy desires to extend this into the future. First this requires a deep engagement with the field and a queer read of the game, what commentators sometimes call having your “head on a swivel.” The paper is composed of ethnographic vignettes, beginning with an exploration of Rapinoe’s remarkable and very queer career, then touching on key queer moments in soccer from the 2019 and 2023 World Cups, and ending with an analysis of a confiscated fan-made sign at one of the last games of the 2023 NWSL season, which read “May the Gayest Team Win.”

Trans for trans relationships (T4T) are a type of connection special to transgender individuals in the process of finding community and affirming one’s gender identity. This relationship type has drawn comparisons to men loving men (mlm) and women loving women (wlw), seen as gay or homosexual in nature. The origins of the term/acronym “T4T” originated from Craigslist personal ads, indicating a trans person seeking out another trans person (Awkward-Rich, Malatino 2022). This term has evolved with time, coming to describe more than “circuits of desire and attraction”, becoming a practice of “trans solidarity and mutual aid” (Capistrano 2022). Within this research, I aim to seek out what T4T relationships are, how T4T relations foster joy for the transgender individuals in said relationships, and why community amongst those who identify as transgender is crucial to the creation of this joy. Through a series of interviews as well as consulting previous literature on the subject of T4T relationships, I intend to begin the process of getting to the root of what makes T4T joy a reality for trans folks.

This paper draws on queer theory to argue for the disruption of taken-for-granted concepts as a method central to queer research and queer methods. Through discussion of an ongoing study of "queer safety" in lesbian and queer bars and pop-up events, I use "safety" as one of many potential conceptual case studies to suggest that, too often, researchers fail to describe, define, or critically consider the keywords they use. In studies of deviance and crime, for example, safety is often conflated with the criminal legal system and actions of the police. However, through a queer critique and conceptualization of safety, I find that assumptions that "public safety" is the responsibility of the state are not only incorrect but also ignore and delegitimize other forms of safety that rely on community care and abolitionist praxis. Ultimately, I argue that reproducing disciplinary concepts and failing to account for the language central to any study often reproduces systems of power and inequality, even when the research aims to be critical. Queer theory calls for disruption, and it is time that more scholars disrupt the reproduction of problematic narratives.

Fraternities seek to bring members together based on similar interests, goals, and or identities. Three common types of fraternities available to students are multicultural, professional, and social. I focus on men-only social fraternities operating at public universities in the United States. Historically, fraternities were created as a space for elite white men and have been in operation in the United States since the founding of the country (Syrett 2009). Modern iterations of fraternities became popularized in the mid-20th century when a growing number of upper-class straight white men sought to differentiate themselves from other students. Historically, the organizations were explicitly established on racialized (Ray 2019; Hughey 2010) gendered (Acker 1990; 2006) principles. I argue these processes of othering and exclusion that created them remain core parts of their practices today; however, in certain settings, these ideas are challenged. Specifically, this study examines a special case within the landscape of fraternities, a fraternity made for gay men based on a goal of inclusion. Similar to the formation of Black fraternities and other multicultural, or even religious fraternities, young gay men seeking the social benefits associated with fraternity membership but tired of facing forces of exclusion common in main stream fraternal organizations, established their own. This study using a combination of ethnography and interviews seeks to examine if a process of queering is taking place and how, if at all, it is challenging the White, upperclass, and heteronormative construction of these organizations.

It takes self-agency, confidence, and efficacy to carry oneself through a collegiate experience, but how does a poor intimate relational environment affect one’s academic success in college or their confidence reinforcement to perceive collegiate success? Further, in what ways does this affect one’s collegiate experience in regards to their higher educational journey? There have been many studies in accordance with the collegiate experience, however, there is dearth in regards to the phenomenon of how college students’ academic success and self-esteem are affected while having gone through, or currently going through, a relationship involving intimate partner violence (IPV). This is a qualitative research project that focuses on the question: How does intimate partner violence affect college student’s drive towards academic success and their self worth? Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. This research project analyzes the specific demographic of first generation college going women as this particular population is statistically affected from this social phenomenon.

Queer artists have always been central to the art world, and yet the experiences of queer artists have gone largely unresearched. Experiences in art education are typically centered on heteronormative, dominant narratives, even as queer identities become more visible amongst art students. In this study, I seek to understand how queer identity influences the experiences of art students who are currently working towards a university degree. Existing research explores the implications of including LGBTQ+ topics in K-12 education and highlights the experiences of queer artists before they begin university programs. Using narrative qualitative data, this pilot study focuses on the testimonies from conducting in-depth interviews with university art students and highlights their experiences within their academic program. The findings from this research show the intersections of queer identity and educational experiences and the strengths and challenges of their lived experience. The purpose of this narrative study is to understand and portray how queer art students create art that is not only affected by their queer identity but by the university programs that they are studying in.

A challenge in researching Native American societies is the long, long history of extractive practices by colonial academics in the past and present, with the intent of collecting data and transforming it for academic audiences. As an antithesis to this approach, I have examined the rules of engagement by tribal members to safeguard against unbalanced exchanges of knowledge. In my experience, direct and purposeful deviation from standardized, positivist methods contribute to the Indigenous methodological canon to support people and amplify their voices. One of many approaches I explore is researcher positionality, which informs building an honest and more equitable relationship with individuals and the larger community. In my presentation, I will share strategies and examples from my forthcoming case study article based on my four years of knowledge exchanges with Native folks who continue to live and thrive on Turtle Island.

The Latinx population is often treated as a homogenous group (Adames et al. 2020), erasing differences among Latinxs who experience disparate disadvantages. Ignoring these differences downplays the challenges Indigenous peoples face as one of the most disadvantaged groups in the world (United Nations 2013). Indigenous people confront higher poverty rates and discrimination in Latin America (Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe 2016) and face a more hostile reception in the United States than non-Indigenous Latinxs (Zabin 1993). This research accounts for the characteristics of Indigenous Latinxs (ILs) across time, the challenges they experience at a national level, and the recent increase in this population. The 2020 Census reveals Latinxs account for almost a third of the total American Indian identifying population, with IL identification growing 344.7% from the 2010 Decennial Census (Sánchez-Rivera et al. 2023). My research seeks to understand this change and the challenges ILs confront compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. It addresses the following questions: 1) What are the shared characteristics of ILs? 2) What challenges do ILs face that are different or similar from non-Indigenous Latinxs? 3) What explains the increase in IL identification? I employ mixed methods study to answer these questions. I examine those who identify as “Hispanic or Latino” and “American Indian or Alaska Native” in decennial censuses from 1980 to 2020 and the American Community Survey and conduct in-depth interviews with individuals who self-identify as Indigenous and Latinx.

In 2022, the University of the Fraser Valley’s Community Health and Social Innovation Hub entered into a research agreement with Old Massett Village Council of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. On behalf of the community, we located, accessed, and collected the records of Haida children who were sent to residential schools across Western Canada. A wide variety of local, provincial, and federal archives were accessed to determine which residential schools the survivors attended. Throughout the course of the project, it became clear that current colonial frameworks and policies have kept residential school records out of reach of most Indigenous communities and that we need legislative reform that prioritizes Indigenous communities’ sovereign rights to this information. Acknowledging and addressing how these colonial frameworks perpetuate discrimination and serve as barriers to Indigenous communities is a necessary step in the path towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. This presentation will provide an overview of the process of navigating the various structures which both enabled and disrupted this work. By combining our archival findings with oral interviews from community members and survivors of residential schools, we hope to work with the community to create a living archive that will continue to evolve and grow with the Haida Gwaii community.

This paper explores the interaction between social space and social permissiveness by looking at how Somali refugees in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya use their indigenous art of poetry-making to psychologically cope with life in a restricted and marginalized social space of protracted exile. Focusing on the work of contemporary Somali oral poets in the Dadaab camps, this exploration proceeds in three parts. First, it outlines the historical, political, and social context of the Somali exile in Kenya and investigates some of the psychosocial adversities its refugees face. These psychosocial adversities include the erosion of identity, the loss of hope, the feeling of exclusion from the international community, and what refugees refer to as buufis, or an ‘obsession’ with resettlement to a Western country. Second, the paper introduces the unique and central role that the art of poetry-making has occupied within indigenous Somali culture, acting as a means of administering justice, broadcasting current events, maintaining a historical archive, and, most relevant to this exploration, promoting psychosocial coping with adversity. The paper then presents an analysis of contemporary oral verse created by Dadaab refugee poets in light of psychosocial theories of trauma healing. It is suggested that, by combining a variety of poetic tools, these verses play a complex and multifaceted role in creating ‘binds that tie’ within the social space of protracted exile, acting as means of upholding cultural, collective, and personal identity amidst the feelings of isolation and exclusion.

This research-in-progress explores student performance in my undergraduate sociology statistics courses. The three course assessment types serve as the dependent variables (quiz, homework, and examination performance). Indicators of student characteristics and course characteristics are employed as the independent variables. The former include: cumulative GPA, number of units earned, major (sociology or not), and number of missed classes. The course characteristic variables are: modality (in-person or asynchronous online), compressed version (15-weeks or 5-weeks), and zero-cost text (free book or traditional text). Preliminary analyses of the existing dataset of five courses (n=148) indicate that cumulative GPA is the most consistent and strongest positive predictor of performance on the course assessments. Students who miss more classes in the in-person offerings perform worse on homework assignments and examinations (but not quizzes). Those enrolled in an asynchronous online version have lower homework scores. Sociology majors tend to score higher on the homework assignments and examinations, but there is variation across the five different classes. Finally, there is minimal variation in quiz performance across the various course characteristics. Four more classes will be incorporated into the analyses prior to the conference presentation (total n ~ 282). Student success implications surrounding modality and zero-cost texts will be drawn.

Background/Context: COVID-19 changed how students learn, the challenges they face both in and out of the classroom, and the ways they access and engage with higher education. COVID-19 also highlighted inequalities in higher education. In response, faculty have also had to change their pedagogical approaches. Purpose/Focus of Study: This presentation will share ideas to address some of the challenges that COVID-19 has brought to the community college classroom. The focus of these strategies and pedagogical changes are to create a more equitable and successful environment for all students. Research Design: The author adopted a reflexive practitioner approach to critically examine pedagogical practices and choices to sociological curriculum development at a medium sized, urban, Hispanic Serving community college. Changes were evaluated through final grade analysis and anecdotal evidence. The author used the concept of praxis. Findings: Removing the textbook cost, allowing assignment choices, providing supplemental success resources, and increasing the accessibility of materials suggests to have reduced barriers, decreased student anxiety, and increased student success. Conclusions: The pedagogical changes made suggest that students are more successful in courses.

During and post-pandemic, Universities experimented with a number of modalities including hyflex or The Hybrid Flexible (HyFlex) modality. Hyflex is a novel approach to instruction that gives students the flexibility of learning in multiple modes. In the Fall of 2021, and Spring of 2022, we evaluated the efficacy of hyflex across a range of majors. With HyFlex courses students were offered three choices of attendance: traditional face-to-face, synchronous online using Zoom, and asynchronous online using recorded lectures. In each class session, students had the freedom to participate and learn in any of the three ways, and students could vary the way they participated at any time. Statistical analyses revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in academic performance between HyFlex and non-HyFlex sections, suggesting hyflex can be useful. Students reported a preference for the HyFlex modality (ranking it as their top choice of modality), but some students expressed challenges with accountability. An added bonus was many students reported using the hyflex lecture recordings as a supplemental aid. While students felt mostly positive about HyFlex, several problems need to be solved for the HyFlex modality, including struggles technology. Overall, HyFlex offers a way to help students participate even when faced with challenges preventing them from attending traditional face-to-face classes.

California's Chancellor announced the goals of enrolling every 9th grade student in community college classes automatically. The expectation is that about 400,000 students can enroll if the proposal is approved. Some studies show that dual enrollment addresses issues of equity and access to postsecondary education. However, there are very few studies showing data about the impact of dual enrollment teaching, including work conditions. This research study investigates that. There are three main themes. First, the majority of faculty who participated support dual enrollment because it decreases equity issues. Second, faculty encounter many challenges teaching dual enrollment. Third, there are concerns about increasing equity issues for some students who are placed in dual enrollment classes. Many of them are enrolled without proper information, guidance, support, and full disclosure of the consequences of failing college classes.

Let us talk about sexual education. Sexual education has a long history in the United States, dating as far back as 1913. It has been both praised and criticized, with some people perceiving it as relevant, and others perceiving it as invaluable and corruptive. Despite the controversy surrounding sexual education, it persists today. There are two common forms of sexual education taught to adolescents; abstinence-only and comprehensive. Abstinence-only sex education programs encourage adolescents to avoid sexual activity, often until marriage, and do not provide information about safe sex. Comprehensive sexual education programs provide information about contraception, STIs, and pregnancy, in addition to consent, relationships, bodily autonomy, anatomy, puberty, and more. Many parents of adolescents worry that sexual education will encourage their children to become more sexually active, causing them to be against it. However, adolescents will explore their sexuality regardless of what their parents or schools are teaching them. What is more important is keeping them safe and well-informed. In this presentation, I am going to demonstrate the importance of comprehensive sex education for adolescents. My research questions are: How does comprehensive education increase an adolescent’s motivation to engage in safe and pleasurable sex practices and reduce their likelihood of teen pregnancy, contracting and spreading STIs, and having unwanted sex; and what are the consequences of abstinence-only sexual education? For my research project, I used a mixed-methods approach to strengthen the evidence-based argument in favor of comprehensive sexual education for adolescents. My methods include gathering previous research on the topic and conducting quantitative research through surveys. With the data I gather I will create a guide for an effective comprehensive sexual education curriculum for adolescents. First, I did background research on comprehensive sexual education. I focused on its effectiveness in keeping adolescents informed about sexuality, sexual health, and risky sexual behaviors. I did similar research on abstinence-only sexual education, to compare the two types of sex education. Further, I also gathered research on the history of sexual education in the U.S., adolescent’s perceptions of sexual education, and current state sexual education policies. After doing research, I created a survey to collect my own data. My survey is intended to answer my second research question; “What are the consequences of inadequate sexual education?” I was compelled to conduct these surveys after hearing a conversation between two friends [females] who complained about feeling unprepared for their first menstruation, their first relationship, and their first experience having sex. I wanted to know more, so I created a survey to gain insight into other young adult’s sexual education experiences. The survey is anonymous and contains questions to determine how many respondents received sexual education during adolescence, what they were taught, and if it prepared them for sexual milestones (i.e. puberty and sexual intercourse) if consent was included if it was heterosexist and misogynistic, and more. My research is still ongoing, and I am looking forward to sharing the results with fellow sociologists! Finally, I will apply my research by developing a pamphlet that school districts can use as a guide to effective comprehensive sexual education for adolescents. I will also include further reliable resources to educate parents, adolescents, and educators about the importance of comprehensive sexual education. The guide will be in the form of a brochure that I will hand out to other members at the roundtable session. References Abe, Barker, Chan, and Eucogo. 2016. “Culturally Responsive Adolescent Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention Program for Middle School Students in Hawai’i.” American Journal of Public Health 106:S110–S116. Algur, E., Wang, E., Friedman, H., and Deperthes, B. 2019. “A Systematic Global Review of Condom Availability Programs in High Schools.” Journal of Adolescent Health 64:292–304. Corcoran, J., Davies, S., Knight, C., Lanzi, R., Li, P., and Ladores, S. 2020. “Adolescents’ Perceptions of Sexual Health Education Programs: An Integrative Review.” Journal of Adolescence 84:96–112. American Social Health Association Records, 1905-2005. n.d. “American Social Hygiene Association History and a Forecast.” University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Social Welfare History Archives. Minneapolis, MN. Retrieved from https://www.lib.umn.edu/swha Cornblatt, Johannah. 2009. “A Brief History of Sex Ed in America.” Retrieved October 8, 2023 (https://www.newsweek.com/brief-history-sex-ed-america-81001). Gelfond, J., Dierschke, N., Lowe, D., and Plastin, K. 2016. “Preventing Pregnancy in High School Students: Observations From a 3-Year Longitudinal Quasi-Experimental Study.” American Journal of Public Health 106:S97–S102. Hall, W. J., Jones, B. L. H., Witkemper, K. D., Collins, T. L., and Rodgers, G. K. 2019. “State Policy on School-Based Sex Education: A Content Analysis Focused on Sexual Behaviors, Relationships, and Identities.” American Journal of Health Behavior 43(3):506–519. https://doi.org/10.5993/AJHB.43.3.6 Harris, Bryan. 2015. “The History of Sex Education.” Retrieved September 24, 2023 (https://sexedconference.com/the-history-of-sex-education/). Jaramillo, N., Buhi, E., Elder, J., and Corliss, H. 2017. “Associations Between Sex Education and Contraceptive Use Among Heterosexually Active, Adolescent Males in the United States.” Journal of Adolescent Health 60:534–540. Kirby, D. 2007. “Emerging Answers 2007: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases.” Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Kirby, D. and Laris, B. 2009. “Effective Curriculum-Based Sex and STD/HIV Education Programs for Adolescents.” Child Development Perspectives 3:21–29. Mendelson, Emily. 2023. “The State of Sex Education in the US in 2023. Retrieved October 3, 2023 (https://www.sexandpsychology.com/blog/2023/3/22/the-state-of-sexeducation-in-the-usa-in-2023/). Planned Parenthood. 2017. “History of Sex Education in the U.S. Retrieved October 15, 2023 (https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/da/67/da67fd5d-631d-438a-85e8a446d90fd1e3/20170209_sexed_d04_1.pdf). Santelli, J., Kantor, L., Grilo, S., Speizer, I., Lindberg, L., Heitel, J., and Ott, M. 2017. “Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage: An Updated Review of U.S. Policies and Programs and Their Impact.” Journal of Adolescent Health 61:273–280. Stanger-Hall, K. and Hall, D. 2011. “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S.” PLOS ONE, 6 (10): 1-11. Steinberg, L. 2015. “How to Improve the Health of American Adolescents.” Psychological Science 10 (6):711–715.

School shootings are a concern for many adults and students in schools today. They happen in all school settings from elementary schools to colleges. A report on school crime defined a school shooting as “all incidents in which a gun is brandished or fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims.” This same report found that from the 2000/2001 school year to the 2020/2021 school year, there were 783 reported school shootings in the United States (Irwin et al. 2022). Lockdown drills originally began in the 1970’s in Southern California and were meant for drive-by shootings and street-level crimes. When they gained recognition, they morphed into active shooter drills (Johnson et al. 2014). The research proposed here will look at how lockdown drills at elementary schools affect students’ and teachers’ perceptions of school shootings. I first recognize gaps in the literature pertaining to the initial implementation of lockdown drills as well as their effects. For instance, there is already very limited research that has been done on lockdown drills and school shootings. The research that has been conducted either takes a more psychological approach, focused on only one school district, had all-white participants, or had a very small sample size (Jonson 2020; Schildkraut 2020; Bonanno 2020). The proposed research aims to fill some of these gaps through a larger, diverse study that takes a more sociological approach to understanding how the implementation of lockdown drills in various American elementary schools affects students and teachers. I will take a mixed-methods approach by conducting mixed participation observations as well as semi-structured interviews with both students and teachers. I will use multistage cluster sampling to select classrooms in different schools in Colorado and therefore individual students and teachers in said classrooms. The mixed participation observation allows the researcher to create somewhat of a relationship with the students which will be very beneficial during interviews that take place after. The observation is necessary in order to identify behaviors and differences that students and teachers may not realize. This could reflect social class differences, racial differences, family history differences, etc. The interviews are necessary for the researcher to be able to uncover detailed perceptions of students and teachers. The interviews with the students will take place directly after the drill in order for them to remember as much information as possible. The teacher interviews will take place after school to avoid serious classroom disruption. The researcher will then begin to analyze the data after visiting multiple schools and classrooms. Using an emic focus, the researcher will analyze the data to hopefully have a better understanding of the influence of lockdown drills. As the researcher finds concepts through analysis, they will locate the instances in which they observed or heard those concepts being played out. The nature of semi-structured interviews allows the researcher to ask follow-up questions when they may be wondering if a certain person’s responses fit into a certain concept. There are some validity issues that the researcher should be aware of. Since observations and interviews are taking place, it will be difficult to reach a very large sample size. However, a benefit is that this research will have more diverse participants. Students often act different when a new adult is in a classroom. A lockdown drill is already a change in routine and adding a new, unfamiliar face into the classroom could affect student behavior. Gun violence in schools is something that is inherently sociological. Schools have different abilities to be able to protect their kids from school shootings. Not everyone is lucky enough to only hear about or experience shootings within the context of a lockdown drill. Finally, not everyone has a safe home to discuss the reason for lockdown drills. This proposed research will work toward improving the safety of students and staff in schools. References Bonanno, Rebecca, Susan McConnaughey, and Jenny Mincin. 2021. “Children’s Experiences with School Lockdown Drills: A Pilot Study.” Children and Schools 43(3):175-185 Irwin, Veronique, Ke Wang, Jisahan Cui, and Alexandra Thompson. 2022. “Report on Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2021.” Institute of Education Sciences 1-31 https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2022/2022092.pdf Johnson, Victoria A., Kevin R. Ronan, David M. Johnston, and Robin Peace. 2014. “Evaluations of Disaster Education Programs for Children: A Methodological Review.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 9:107-123 Jonson, Cheryl Lero, Melissa M. Moon, and Brooke Miller Gialopsos. 2020. “Are Students Scared or Prepared? Psychological Impacts of a Multi-Option Active Assailant Protocol Compared to Other Crisis/ Emergency Preparedness Practices.” Victims and Offenders 15(5): 639-662 Schildkraut, Jaclyn and Amanda B. Nickerson. 2020. “Ready to Respond: Effects of Lockdown Drills and Training on School Emergency Preparedness.” Victims and Offenders 15(5):619-638

Higher education literature has largely focused on studying the relationship between student financial status and educational outcomes (Dwyer et al. 2012, Quadlin and Rudel 2015, Goldrick-Rab et al. 2016). Literature looking at the financial implications of these various outcomes has also investigated differences in these patterns among black students and first-generation students (Scott et al. 2022, Furquim et al. 2017). This literature generally agrees that student reliance on loans to finance their education has stratifying effects as students move through their degree and that this reliance varies across race and class. Anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom describes the interaction between family finances and the higher education system as the student finance complex (2017). This study seeks to expand research on the student finance complex by introducing a sparsely studied moderating factor of degree attainment: academic performance. To study the extent of the relationship between academic performance and persistence, I will analyze institutional-level student financial aid data from the past 12 years at a west coast, liberal arts college. Students will be sorted into combinations of Pell-eligible, loan-recipient, and self-paying categories and multiple logistic regression analyses will be conducted to compare the odds of attrition among these categories of students upon earning substandard grades, or any GPA below 2.0. The dataset shows students' grades at the end of the semester, therefore we can identify individual persistence if there is data for the student the following semester– otherwise, they would have withdrawn from the institution following their 2.0 or lower GPA. But how exactly does GPA differentially impact persistence among low-income students compared to their non-low-income counterparts? Previous literature finds that legal financial penalties constrain class mobility among previously incarcerated people and is due to the compounding nature of incurring debt - payments reduce available income, while non-payments are subject to additional legal citations (Harris et al. 2010). Elizabeth Korver-Glenn describes the way that racial stereotypes constrain minority identities and coalesce across different stages in the housing market, similar to the social mobility constraints experienced by previously incarcerated folk (2018). I leverage this system of choice precarity in legal debt payments to highlight parallels with federal financial aid policy, specifically the satisfactory academic progress policy or SAP. According to the SAP policy, students must maintain a minimum GPA of at least 2.0, or else state and federal aid will be taken off of the student’s account (Federal Student Aid). Using Korver-Glenn’s concept of compounding inequalities, stressors of reliance on state and federal aid rapidly accumulate when low-income students fail to meet SAP requirements. Students who have relied on state/federal funds to finance their education now face late fees on their accounts, preventing their registration for the next term until all owing balances are paid off. After six months, students who are not enrolled at half-time status then trigger another federal financial policy and enter repayment on all federal or private loans (Federal Student Aid). Thus, the praxis that implicates academic performance in the larger student finance complex is made clear. Narratives of merit and deservingness in higher education make these systems durable. Institutional narratives of accepting or normalizing student’s unequal access to resources are referred to as tolerable suboptimization (Hamilton et al. 2021). By tolerating the lack of support for students, institutions fall back onto merit-based rationale for disparate resource access. In other words, when faced with disparities in access to resources, a common institutional narrative to justify unequal access is to turn toward metrics of deservingness. Merit-based practices have often been implicated in reifying pervasive inequality in education (Bloodhart 2020, Musto 2019, Ray 2022). By relying on merit-based resource allocation, education resources have become a site of unequal access– extending this perspective to merit-based financial resources (i.e. scholarships and grants that students do not have to pay back) then describes the resilience of class and race-based disparities in federal/state aid reliance: the merit-based monies are going to other students. Attitudes towards redistributive policy also reinforce the normalization of this lack of support for funding higher education because of enduring optimistic beliefs of upward mobility (Manza and Brooks 2021). In other words, the belief that upward class mobility is an achievable goal for all people stifles the need for redistributive policy; a perspective that complements institutional beliefs that scholarship ought to be reserved for the deserving. Carian and Johnson describe the agency myth as a way to provide young people with “a sense of self-efficacy, but prevented their imagining broader solutions for social change”, reflected in heightened prospects of upward mobility (2020). These narratives of meritocracy, positive prospects of upward mobility, and myths of agency underpin the student finance complex and eschew responsibility for low-income students strapped with debt. These narratives have made these students victims of their own financial actions and responsible for fixing them. References Bloodhart, Brittany et al. 2020 “Outperforming yet undervalued: Undergraduate women in STEM” PLoS ONE 15(6). Carian, Emily K., and Amy L. Johnson. 2022. “The Agency Myth: Persistence in Individual Explanations for Gender Inequality” Social Problems 69 123–142. Dwyer, Rachel E., Laura McCloud and Randy Hodson. 2012. “Debt and Graduation from American Universities” Social Forces 90(4) 1133–1155. Federal Student Aid. 2023. “Staying Eligible” U.S. Department of Education https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/eligibility/staying-eligible Federal Student Aid. 2023. “Complete Student Loan Exit Counseling – Still Have Questions About Exit Counseling?” U.S. Department of Education https://studentaid.gov/exit-counseling/ Furquim, Fernando et al. 2017. “Navigating the Financial Aid Process: Borrowing Outcomes among First-Generation and Non-First-Generation Students” Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science 671 69-91. Goldrick-Rab, Sara et al. 2016. “Reducing Income Inequality in Educational Attainment” American Journal of Sociology 121(6) 1762-1817. Hamilton, Laura T., Kelly Nielsen and Veronica Lerma. 2021. “Tolerable Suboptimization: Racial Consequences of Defunding Public Universities” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 7(4) 561–578. Harris, Alexes, Heather Evans and Katherine Beckett. 2010. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States” American Journal of Sociology 115(6) 1753-1799. Jackson, Brandon A. and John R. Reynolds. 2013. “The Price of Opportunity: Race, Student Loan Debt, and College Achievement” Sociological Inquiry 83(3) 335-368. Korver-Glenn, Elizabeth. 2018. “Compounding Inequalities: How Racial Stereotypes and Discrimination Accumulate across the Stages of Housing Exchange” American Sociological Review 83(4) 627–656. Manza, Jeff and Clem Brooks. 2021. “Mobility Optimism in an Age of Rising Inequality” 62(2) 343-368. Musto, Michaela. 2019. “Brilliant or Bad: The Gendered Social Construction of Exceptionalism in Early Adolescence” American Sociological Review 84(3) 369–393. Quadlin, Natasha Yurk and Daniel Rudel. 2015. “Responsibility or Liability? Student Loan Debt and Time Use in College” Social Forces 94(2) 589-614. Ray, Ranita. 2022. “School as a Hostile Institution: How Black and Immigrant Girls of Color Experience the Classroom” GENDER & SOCIETY 36(1) 88-111. Scott III, Robert H., Kenneth Mitchell and Joseph Patten. 2022. Review of Evolutionary Political Economy 3 515–538. Zaloom, Caitlin. 2019. “Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost” Princeton University Press.

The current normative mode of study is riddled with high levels of stress and alienation. Neoliberalist practices in academia include domination, ambition, aggression, competition, and winning. Like neoliberal views outside academia, those that exist within it encourage a short-term approach to the world in which the loss of one is justified by another’s gain. In order to succeed in neoliberal institutions of higher education, students must internalize and abide by these neoliberal norms. These forms of neoliberalism within college classrooms face more than sufficient critique, yet within the landscape of higher education these forms of being are accepted as common sense. The capitalist university is one for profit that deprioritizes learning. It is also a resilient, well-structured, and a tool of indoctrination. The university has profound impacts within the individuals internal understanding of their being and it corrodes collectivity. The current university detracts us from the joy of collaboration, and diverts us from learning about the power of the masses. The western knowledge that is found and taught in neoliberal institutions fails to recognize the way it is not immune to subjectivity, instead it’s often accepted as objective, universal. Higher education, including the neoliberal one we know today is neither culturally neutral nor fair. Colonial legacies are alive and well within our education system. There are ways to divert from these current modes on education in higher education institutions. Collectivism proves to be an adequate mode of instruction that decenters power, and it also serves as a liberatory practice to both educators and students. Institutionalized levels of individualism are deeply embedded in higher education, but I argue that collaborative, collectivist, and reciprocal learning modes are necessary to divert into new forms of being that are sustainable to all forms of life.

Andrea Gomez California State University Long Beach Pacific Sociological Conference Within the K-12 school system, there is a polarizing debate on whether or not sex education should be part of the school curriculum. Within the debate, what should be taught if there was a mandatory lesson on sexual health is most prevalent and dividing. Those who do not receive the proper education on sexual health tend to be at risk of life altering situations, as American Academy of Pediatrics state, the effects of not receiving adequate sexual education lessons/courses are, “Less use of condoms, leading to higher risk of STIs, including HIV. Less use of contraception, leading to higher risk of unplanned pregnancy” (ASA). Sexual education as a heteronormative practice becomes increasingly difficult for LGBTQ+ youth to understand the basics of sexual health, the information that ties along with their identity and sexuality. Understanding the young LGBTQ+ adults' opinions and perspectives of their sexual educational history from their k-12 experience, looking back on these memories, reflecting on its positive and negative effects it had on their current lives while growing up as well as including any suggestions on what could’ve been included to help or inform their sexual experience. Exploring the repercussions of lacking the information on topics such as gender identity, sexuality, and STD prevention with the focus on LGBTQ+ culture on LGBTQ+ youth. If the education system is not providing the educational requirements to improve the sexual health and identity for LGBTQ+ youth, then may want to know more about non-traditional ways that LGBTQ+ youth use to educate themselves. Media/Technology such as magazines, the internet, shows, movies etc. can be possible options of self-educational methods. Other nontraditional educational methods are learning from peers with similar experiences either online or in person. Risks could include misinformation, mental health issues, STDs, being victims of bullying, internalized homophobia, and/or other factors that aren't being taken into account without the procedure of having first-hand interview accounts. We can also assume there are benefits of finding community and having a space in which information can be spoken freely without the judgment or bigotry of others. Looking into the young LGBTQ+ adults perspective and experiences, if not learned in school, what alternative did they use (internet, media, peers, clubs, etc), if it was helpful or hurtful and if they preferred to have a more inclusive curriculum. How do LGBTQ+ young adults describe their sexual education experiences and the impact on their sexual journey?

The McNair Program, or the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, is a higher education program designed to prepare eligible participants for doctoral programs through research, academic assistance, and mentorship. Eligible participants are first-generation, low-income students or students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented within their higher education institution. TRIO programs, a federal outreach and student services program that McNair falls under, is in place to support disadvantaged students in the academic pipeline. McNair specifically is designed for students aiming for Ph.D. programs after receiving their bachelor’s degree. The McNair program was introduced to Cal Poly Pomona in 1999 with the aim to diversify faculty in higher education and admits about twenty-six students per year. During the academic year, McNair Scholars have the opportunity to conduct and present research, as well as attend graduate school preparation activities. Most scholarly journals aim their focus on a certain area of the academic pipeline, high school to entrance of postsecondary school. My study will focus on measuring the effectiveness of the McNair Program by examining scholar’s feelings and attitudes towards the program. Results from the study will expand further knowledge on how the program can better assist future cohorts in both their research and plans after their degree. Most of the literature pertaining to the topic of first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students is focused on their identity and how they navigate the world they reside in. Although important, the topic I am focusing on is whether a particular program is effective in fulfilling its issue of resources with the consideration of the scholars' experiences. My literature sources pertained to the experiences of first-generation and underrepresented students and support services in place for these students. I focused my literature review with these primary themes in mind for the benefit of understanding what has already happened and what is in place to better navigate my data collection and knowledge as the primary investigator. My literature review identifies four themes: Academic and Transitional Adjustment Support, Social Strains in First-generation Students, Underrepresentation of First-generation Students in College, and TRIO Program Support and its effects. To further my background, I have analyzed the federal statistical data on the McNair Program. These themes create the foundation of understanding the issue the McNair Scholars Program is trying to address. The program is to aid first generation, low-income students, and underrepresented students in undergraduate programs through promotion in social mobility by means of graduate school. Using a mixed methods approach, I will be gathering data from interviews and surveys from current scholars, past scholars, and graduated scholars. The quantitative portion of my data will be from previously conducted surveys collected by the McNair program. The qualitative portion of my data will be gathered from open-ended questions on the surveys and semi-structured in-depth interviews I will be conducting. When data is presented in the final report, participants and their data will be anonymous because parts of my data may contain personally identifiable information. However, pseudonyms will be used to prevent participants from being directly identified from their interviews. Data collected will be utilized in conferences and presentations in contribution with the McNair Scholars program. I anticipate seeing patterns in my obtained data given the participants similar backgrounds and times during the program. Presented outcomes will be described as spotlighting gaps in resources and a nod to the effect of life outside of their participation in the McNair program. I will also be highlighting what works efficiently in the program and what participants find supporting them the most through their academic journey. With this, results may also point to the effects of the program and life outside of the program. Going over whether life outside McNair had any effect on their experience in the program highlights the common experiences shared among first-generation and underrepresented students. A Diverse Community (n.d.) About Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly Pomona. Available from: https://www.cpp.edu/aboutcpp/why-cpp/diverse.shtml#:~:text=Our%20student%20body%20is%20roughly,Asian%20and%203%20percent%20Black. About the Program (n.d.) McNair Scholars program, Cal Poly Pomona. Available from: https://www.cpp.edu/mcnair/index.shtml. Anon. n.d. “TRIO.” Ope.Ed.Gov. Retrieved May 10, 2023 (https://ope.ed.gov/programs/trio/). Babineau K (2017) Closing the gap: An overview of the literature on college persistence and underrepresented populations. Cowen Institute, Cowen Institute. 1555 Poydras Street Suite 700; New Orleans, LA 70112. Tel: 504-274-3690; e-mail: CowenInfo@tulane.edu; Web site: http://www.coweninstitute.org. Available from: https://eric.ed.gov/?q=source%3A%22Cowen%2BInstitute%22&amp;id=ED593497. Barnes, S. (2015). McNair Scholars Program prepares students for the PhD program in materials research: Www.mcnair.aa.ufl.edu | www.facebook.com/UFMcNair. MRS Bulletin, 40(6), 470-472. doi:10.1557/mrs.2015.132 Barnett, W. Steven, and Clive R. Belfield. 2006. “Early Childhood Development and Social Mobility.” The Future of Children 16(2):73–98. doi: 10.1353/foc.2006.0011. Bravata, Dena M., Sharon A. Watts, Autumn L. Keefer, Divya K. Madhusudhan, Katie T. Taylor, Dani M. Clark, Ross S. Nelson, Kevin O. Cokley, and Heather K. Hagg. 2020. “Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: A Systematic Review.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 35(4):1252–75. doi: 10.1007/s11606-019-05364-1. Canning, Elizabeth A., Jennifer LaCosse, Kathryn M. Kroeper, and Mary C. Murphy. 2019. “Feeling Like an Imposter: The Effect of Perceived Classroom Competition on the Daily Psychological Experiences of First-Generation College Students.” Special Issue: Underrepresented Populations 11(5). doi: 1948550619882032. Cunninghame, Ian. 2017. “The Role of Higher Education in Facilitating Social Mobility.” International Studies in Widening Participation 4(1):74–85. Childs, Jonique R., Poynton, Timothy A., and Schuyler, Sophie W. 2021. “Promoting Success for First-Generation Students of Color: The Importance of Academic, Transitional Adjustment, and Mental Health Supports.” Journal of College Access 6(1). Coles, A. S. (1998). TRIO Achievers: The Promise of the Future. The Journal of Negro Education, 67(4), 432–443. https://doi.org/10.2307/2668142 Cowan Pitre, C., & Pitre, P. (2009). Increasing Underrepresented High School Students’ College Transitions and Achievements: TRIO Educational Opportunity Programs. NASSP Bulletin, 93(2), 96–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636509340691 Dika, Sandra, and Mark D’Amico. 2015. “Early experiences and integration in the persistence of first-generation college students in STEM and non-STEM majors.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21301 Facts and Figures at a Glance. n.d. 2002–05. “Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program:” Www2.Ed.Gov. (https://www2.ed.gov/programs/triomcnair/mcnair2004-05facts.pdf). Federal Trio Programs 50th anniversary fact sheet (n.d.) Federal TRIO Programs, United States Department of Education. Available from: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/trio50anniv-factsheet.pdf. Gittens, Cheryl Bailey. 2014. “The McNair Program as a Socializing Influence on Doctoral Degree Attainment.” PJE. Peabody Journal of Education 89(3):368–79. doi: 10.1080/0161956x.2014.913450. Haveman, Robert, and Timothy Smeeding. 2006. “The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility.” The Future of Children 16(2):125–50. doi: 10.1353/foc.2006.0015. Ives, J., & Castillo-Montoya, M. (2020). First-Generation College Students as Academic Learners: A Systematic Review. Review of Educational Research, 90(2), 139–178. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319899707 Jackson, A., Colson-Fearon, B., & Versey, H. S. (2022). Managing Intersectional Invisibility and Hypervisibility During the Transition to College Among First-Generation Women of Color. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 46(3), 354–371. https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843221106087 Longwell-Grice R, Adsitt NZ, Mullins K, et al. (2015) The first ones: Three studies on first-generation college students. NACADA Journal, National Academic Advising Association. NACADA Executive Office, Kansas State University, 2323 Anderson Avenue Suite 225, Manhattan, KS 66502-2912. Tel: 785-532-5717; Fax: 785-532-7732; e-mail: nacada@ksu.edu; Web site: http://www.nacada.ksu.edu. Available from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1135335. McElroy, E. J., & Armesto, M. (1998). TRIO and Upward Bound: History, Programs, and Issues-Past, Present, and Future. The Journal of Negro Education, 67(4), 373–380. https://doi.org/10.2307/2668137 Mulligan, Raymond A. 1952. “Social Mobility and Higher Education.” The Journal of Educational Sociology 25(8):476. doi: 10.2307/2263959. Muriel A. S. Grimmett, James R. Bliss, Diane M. Davis, and Louis Ray. 1998. “Assessing Federal TRIO McNair Program Participants’ Expectations and Satisfaction with Project Services: A Preliminary Study.” The Journal of Negro Education 67(4):404–15. doi: 10.2307/2668140. Pyne, Kimberly B., and Darris R. Means. 2013. “Underrepresented and in/Visible: A Hispanic First-Generation Student’s Narratives of College.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 6(3):186–98. doi: 10.1037/a0034115. Racial and ethnic diversity in the Federal Trio Programs (n.d.) National TRIO Clearinghouse, United States Department of Education. Available from: http://www.pellinstitute.org/downloads/trio_clearinghouse-Racial_and_Ethnic_Diversity_in_the_FTP.pdf. Renbarger, R. 2019. “Graduate school preparation from the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program: A systematic review. Higher Education Politics & Economics” 5(1), 33–53. https://doi.org/10.32674/hepe.v5i1.1139 Restad, Cristina. (2014) Beyond the McNair Program: A Comparative Study of McNair Scholars’ Understandings of the Impacts of Program Participation on their Graduate School Experiences. Portland State University, PDXScholar. Available from: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2900&amp;context=open_access_etds. Scripa, A. J., Lener, E. F., Gittens, C. B., &amp; Stovall, C. (2012). The McNair Scholars Program at Virginia Tech: A Unique Model of Librarian Mentoring. Virginia Libraries, 58(3), .DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/valib.v58i3.1224 Stuart, Mary. 2012. Social Mobility and Higher Education: The Life Experiences of First Generation Entrants in Higher Education. London, England: Trentham Books. Schuyler, Sophie W., Jonique R. Childs, and Timothy A. Poynton. 2021. “Promoting Success for First-Generation Students of Color: The Importance of Academic, Transitional Adjustment, and Mental Health Supports.” Journal of College Access 6(1). Stuart, Mary. 2012. Social Mobility and Higher Education: The Life Experiences of First Generation Entrants in Higher Education. London, England: Trentham Books. Thomas, E. P., Farrow, E. V., & Martinez, J. (1998). A TRIO Program’s Impact on Participant Graduation Rates: The Rutgers University Student Support Services Program and Its Network of Services. The Journal of Negro Education, 67(4), 389–403. https://doi.org/10.2307/2668139 Trio home page (n.d.) Home, US Department of Education (ED). Available from: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/index.html. Trio - ronald E. mcnair postbaccalaureate achievement program -- home page (n.d.) Home, US Department of Education (ED). Available from: https://www2.ed.gov/programs/triomcnair/index.html. Walsh J (2000) Unique and effective practices for trio student support services programs. ERIC, Institution of Education Sciences. Available from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED448793. Washington, M. M. (2021). The Influence of TRIO Student Support Services on First-Generation College Students: A Mixed Methods Study of Social Capital, Cultural Capital, and Self Efficacy (Order No. 28322362). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection; Publicly Available Content Database. (2550668259). http://proxy.library.cpp.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/influence-trio-student-support-services-on-first/docview/2550668259/se-2 Williams, Eric G. 2004. "Academic, Research, and Social Self-Efficacy among African American Pre -McNair Scholar Participants and African American Post-McNair Scholar Participants." Order No. 3147764 dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States -- Virginia http://proxy.library.cpp.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/academic-research-social-self-efficacy-among/docview/305105631/se-2.

Network marketing has become increasingly popular due to social media and the utilization of online platforms for recruitment. Many people are critical of network marketing because of its similarities to pyramid schemes, but there are also many people involved in network marketing who claim that they find financial success in these companies. This research examined online posts related to network marketing in order to gain insight into their recruitment methods, the impact of network marketing on current and previous members, as well as the role of women in network marketing. I observed online discussion posts on the social media platforms Reddit and Facebook. Twenty posts from Reddit were analyzed, as well as twenty posts from Facebook. Some posts on these pages include recruitment posts, stories of experiences in network marketing, and live videos from people who are involved in network marketing. Some stories described financial loss, emotional manipulation, and a loss of valuable time as a result of being in a network marketing company. Other posts claimed that involvement in network marketing leads to financial success and provides a flexible work schedule. The method utilized to gather data for this research was content analysis. I analyzed the ten most recent posts on four network marketing-related pages online. Two of the pages were on Reddit, and two pages were found on Facebook. Facebook is a commonly used website for people to sell network marketing products, and for recruiting others to join network marketing. Reddit is a discussion forum, in which people can discuss topics, including network marketing. The pages I examined on Reddit were r/antimlm and r/mlmrecovery. Posts on the forums ranged from recruitment posts to stories from past network marketing members, as well as critiques of network marketing. All of the 20 posts I analyzed from these forums were from the past 30 days. On Facebook, I examined the last 20 posts from two public groups called ‘MONAT MILLIONAIRES’ and ‘Mompreneur & Business Woman / Networking & Support’. Posts on these Facebook groups focused on recruitment and product selling and included discussion about the possible earnings from joining network marketing. To analyze the data from the post, I used Leonard Schatzman and Anselm L. Strauss’ method of coding the text into categories. Their method involves “discovering significant classes of things, persons and events and the properties which characterize them” (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973). This strategy is also known as grounded theory. Using this method, I created categories that reflected the common themes found in the Facebook and Reddit posts, as well as the comments. To find the common themes in the posts and comments, I summarized each individual post and created categories that reflected the issues discussed in the posts. Additionally, I centered my common themes around my research questions and focused on the impact of network marketing and issues of women’s involvement in network marketing. I gathered meaning from the processes presented by text data by identifying the properties of the data. Of the various properties I examined, some include the language utilized in the posts, whether or not it was a positive reflection of network marketing if the post was for recruitment, and if the post expressed concern for friends and family. By analyzing the language used in the posts to these forums and groups, as well as comments under the posts I gained a better understanding of the impact of involvement in network marketing on women, and how these topics are discussed online. Sources Schatzman, L., & Strauss, A. L. (1973). Strategy for Analyzing. In Field Research: Strategies for a Natural Sociology (pp. 108–127). Prentice-Hall.

Digital technologies such as smartphones and social networking applications have changed everyday life. In particular, the role of internet technologies in fashion and beauty culture presents an exciting model of the generation, documentation, and propagation of sociological phenomena. Previous research indicates that marginalized people create insulated communities to express themselves and speak freely (Steele 2018 and Steele 2021). For example, Black internet users speak out about texturism and racism, using digital media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok to display their “natural hair journeys” to promote products and knowledge for maintaining Afro-textured hair to other Black social media users interested in more Afrocentric aesthetics. Despite growing interest in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTS), few scholars have addressed the enactment of digital culture through the physical embodiment and fashioning of identity by women of color online. To fill this gap, this study draws from fashion studies, Black feminist sociology, and digital studies to examine how audiovisual social media platforms enable communication between young women of color to maintain agency over their aesthetic practices, empowering a group that historically has been marginalized or co-opted in broader fashion and beauty culture. Through a Black feminist digital sociological lens, this study builds on fashion studies to understand the enactment of digital culture among women of color through an online self-presentation analysis. Fashion studies "[integrates] history, theory, and practice" to examine designs and symbolic images that convey meaning (Buckley & Clark, 2012, p. 19). While many scholars highlight celebrities, designers, and extraordinary products, others study the practical, everyday fashions to delve into the cultural practices that produce personal aesthetics through clothing, accessories, make-up, and hairstyles. Studies of the daily, living art of fashion investigate the "constant remodeling of fashionable clothes over time by diverse social groups [that] run counter to the [mainstream]" (Buckley & Clark, 2012, p. 19). To extend fashion studies, we ask how women of color in Generation Z enact digital culture through their online self-representations to investigate how the “politics of representation” are enacted online. The politics of representation involve self-representation and mass media representations that offer an avenue for "everyday activism" that challenge the normalization of hegemonic stereotypes by "shifting the decision of who gets to occupy the public's visual field" (Caldeira, 2018, p. 25). For example, Lopez-Leon and Casanova (2023) argue that online platforms help emerging adults develop a "critical consciousness to resist dehumanizing narratives" and intersectional oppressions. However, their study is limited to the experiences of one gender-fluid, bisexual Latinx young person, so we expand to investigate how internet-mediated communication can facilitate the identity formation and consolidation of young adult women and femmes. A Black feminist sociology of fashion acknowledges that fashion has both a gendered and racist legacy. For example, tignon laws in colonial Louisiana required Black women to cover their hair, a symbol of ethnic pride, to devalue their beauty relative to white women. More contemporarily, luxury brands (often with prohibitively high prices) target women consumers and tend to choose thin, white, or light-skinned non-Black women to model their brand. This reality indicates that the digital culture of fashion is still shaped by white male hegemony due in part to the ways that the search engines, algorithms, and other technologies that sustain it are also primarily produced by and for white men (Noble 2018; Nakamura 2002). For these reasons, we focus on online internet enclave communities of young women of color and how they navigate mainstream, white-dominated fashion, beauty culture, and online discourse. This study’s Black feminist sociological framework encourages using a mixed methods approach. We begin with a digital ethnography of women of color content creators on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube who use these platforms to display their style and critique broader cultural norms around fashion, race, gender, and other identities. Through this digital ethnography, we will identify themes in the discourse that arise through the interaction between content creators and their online viewers regarding fashion and identity. This first analysis phase will provide a starting point to develop an interview and survey protocol for the second research phase. Revisiting the same online spaces we document during the digital ethnography, we will distribute the survey and call for interviewees to gather responses primarily from self-identified femmes or women of color between 18-25 years old based in the United States. Our qualitative inquiry will include providing an open-ended initial interview that we then summarize aloud to the participant to confirm their intentions. If the participant wishes, they may "interrupt," "correct," and "contradict" the researcher and their summary (James 2022, p. 209). This interview format is appropriate for this study because fashion can affect oneself emotionally and cognitively (Cavusoglu and Atik 2022). Thus, to incorporate a Black feminist ethic of caring, we will allow participants to revise their responses, facilitating a dialectical knowledge validation process that acknowledges how feelings, emotions, and mental states change (James, 2022,.p. 210). Ultimately, this study’s Black feminist sociological framework grounds an analysis of how internet-mediated interactions can affect self-perception and self-representation through aesthetic practices within digital intracultural niches. We expect image-based platforms of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to be prominent venues for fashion in the digital age because they allow individuals to moderate the extent to which their self-perception aligns with their self-representations. Based on the digital ethnography, we also anticipate that via digital embodiment, the intersectionality of gender, race, class, and age will result in multifaceted modes of fashion that young women and femmes of color will argue enable them to achieve visibility, empowerment, and a sense of communal belonging, based on interviews and survey findings. References Buckley, C., & Clark, H. 2012. Conceptualizing Fashion in Everyday Lives. Design Issues, 28(4), 18–28. JSTOR. Cavusoglu, Lena, and Deniz Atik. 2022. “Extending the Diversity Conversation: Fashion Consumption Experiences of Underrepresented and Underserved Women.” Journal of Consumer Affairs 57(1):387–417. doi: 10.1111/joca.12504. Caldeira, Sofia P., Sander De Ridder, & Sofie Van Bauwel. 2018. Exploring the Politics of Gender Representation on Instagram: Self-representations of Femininity. DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, 5(1), 23–42. JSTOR. doi: 10.11116/digest.5.1.2. James, Jennifer Elyse. 2022. “Black Feminist Epistemological Methodology: Bridging Theory and Methods to Research Health and Illness” Pp. 207- 216 in Black Feminist Sociology, edited by Z. Luna and W. N. Laster Pirtle. Routledge. Lopez-Leon, G., & Casanova, S. 2023. “Those are the Spaces Where I Feel Seen and Fully Understood”: Digital Counterspaces Fostering Community, Resistance, and Intersectional Identities Among Latinx LGBTQ+ Emerging Adults. Journal of Adolescent Research, doi: 10.1177/07435584231165993 Nakamura, L. 2002. Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Cybertypes-Race-Ethnicity-and-Identity-on-the-Internet/Nakamura/p/book/9780415938372 Noble, S. U. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. NYU Press. Steele, Catherine Knight. 2018. "Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online." Television & New Media. 19:2 Steele, Catherine Knight. 2021. Digital Black Feminism. New York, NY: New York University Press. Thomas, M. L. 2012. Sick/Beautiful/Freak: Nonmainstream Body Modification and the Social Construction of Deviance. SAGE Open, 2(4). https://journals-sagepub-com.libproxy.scu.edu/doi/full/10.1177/2158244012467787

**Topic Summary: Beyond Controllers: Unraveling Masculine Constructs in Video Games** This research scrutinizes the intricate relationship between masculinity and video games, investigating how players interpret and shape notions of masculinity in the gaming realm and its subsequent influence on real-world perceptions. Employing the Social Learning Theory and Catharsis Theory, the study aims to identify the theory that best explains how players engage with and internalize masculinity-related content in video games. “How do video game players interpret and construct ideas of masculinity within the games, and how do these interpretations influence their perceptions of masculinity in their own lives?” **Literature Review Introduction:** The research probes into how video game players interpret masculinity, examining its influence on real-world perceptions. By testing the Social Learning Theory and Catharsis Theory, the study explores Masculine Beliefs, Players' Perceptions, Male Body Image, and their impact on Toxicity and Prosocial Behaviors. This empirical approach contributes to both theoretical understanding and practical insights for the gaming industry and social psychology. **Concept I. Masculine Beliefs (Player Beliefs):** Studies indicate a correlation between violent games and support for traditional masculine norms. Utilizing the Masculine Role Norms Index-Revised, the study quantifies alignment with these norms. Social Learning Theory underscores mindful game design to shape perceptions of masculinity. **Concept II. Players' Perceptions:** Players actively contribute to gender norms within the gaming community. Research correlates chosen usernames, game genre preferences, and perceived masculinity. The study delves into "Perceived Gender Stereotypes in Violent Video Games," exploring its impact on players' perceptions. Social Learning Theory emerges as a more fitting explanation for how video games influence perceptions. **Concept III. Male Body Image:** The study addresses how virtual male bodies in games impact real-world perceptions. Research suggests that overly muscular avatars negatively affect body satisfaction. The study alters representations of male bodies in video games to measure their influence. Social Learning Theory provides a more accurate explanation of how video games influence male body image. **Concept IV. Toxicity and Prosocial Behaviors:** Toxicity in gaming refers to harmful actions, while prosocial behaviors contribute positively to the gaming atmosphere. Social Learning Theory posits that players may adopt behaviors based on observation. The complex relationship challenges Catharsis Theory, making Social Learning Theory a more accurate explanation. **Quantitative Research Design Overview:** For understanding masculinity in video games, a quantitative survey with correlational analysis was chosen. This method involves numerical data collection through a structured questionnaire to systematically analyze relationships. It explores connections related to masculinity in video games and players' lives. **Method Rationale:** Quantitative research precisely gathers data for statistical evaluation, fitting for the intricate dynamics of gender dynamics in digital environments. It provides a reliable means to explore how video game players perceive and construct masculinity. **Limitation Acknowledgment:** Acknowledging potential biases, particularly social desirability, the study aims to create a non-judgmental environment, ensuring participant anonymity. Addressing small sample size concerns, a stratified sampling approach ensures diversity across demographics for a larger, representative sample. **Upcoming Sections:** 1. **Quantitative Data Collection:** Explores survey questions, their selection, and steps taken for validity and reliability. 2. **Quantitative Hypotheses and Variables:** Defines variables and presents hypotheses, referencing the literature review. 3. **Quantitative Sampling Strategy:** Outlines the target population, sample, and sampling strategy justification. **Conclusion:** The chosen quantitative research design aligns with the study's objectives, offering a systematic approach to explore masculinity in video games. Stratified sampling enhances the study's precision and inclusivity, ensuring findings are applicable to the broader student population at Cal State East Bay. **Qualitative Research Design Overview:** This research employs in-depth, face-to-face interviews and approaching observation to explore the impact of video game characters on players' perceptions of masculinity. These methods, recommended by Keith Punch, are well-suited for understanding complex behaviors without predefined categories and fostering discussions on sensitive themes like gender and identity. **Approaches:** 1. **Unstructured Interviews:** Allow flexibility, essential for exploring varied ways video game characters influence masculinity perceptions. 2. **Approaching Observation:** Involves deciding what to observe based on research questions, ensuring focused data collection. **Interview Strategies:** Emphasizes the need for a long and intimate conversation, creating a safe space for discussing sensitive themes. To address limitations like potential bias and resource intensity, strategies include researcher reflexivity, confidentiality assurance, pilot interviews, member checking, data triangulation, and diverse sample selection. **Interview Guide:** Comprises around 20 qualitative questions designed to delve into concepts identified in the literature review. Organized logically for a conversational flow, starting with general inquiries and progressing to specific questions about video game characters and masculinity. Focuses on participants' personal experiences, beliefs, and attitudes related to masculinity in video games. **Interview Setup:** Planned in a quiet, private setting to ensure participant comfort. Audio recording, with consent, to capture responses accurately. Subsequent transcription of recorded interviews for analysis. **Participant Selection:** Targets regular video game players with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Uses purposive sampling to intentionally select individuals with a long history of gaming across genres. Recruitment through the CSEB gaming room, employing snowball sampling for participant referrals. **Qualitative Interview Guide Appendix:** Contains a comprehensive set of questions designed to spark deep discussions about the influence of video game characters on participants' views of masculinity. Sample questions explore identification with game characters, influence on perceptions of masculinity, changes in attitudes after exposure to hyper-masculine characters, and the role of multiplayer online games in reinforcing or challenging toxic masculinity behaviors. **Conclusion:** The chosen qualitative research design, incorporating in-depth interviews and approaching observation, offers a nuanced exploration of how video game characters shape perceptions of masculinity. With a thoughtful interview guide and diverse participant selection, the study aims to capture rich and varied perspectives on this complex interplay between video games and masculinity. Work Cited: Blackburn, G., Scharrer, E. (2019). "Video Game Playing and Beliefs about Masculinity Among Male and Female Emerging Adults." Sex Roles, 80(2), 310–324. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0934-4 Sylvia, Z., et al. (2014). "Virtual Ideals: The Effect of Video Game Play on Male Body Image." Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 183–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.04.029 Gabbiadini, A., Riva, P., Andrighetto, L., Volpato, C., & Bushman, B. J. (2016). "Acting like a Tough Guy: Violent-Sexist Video Games, Identification with Game Characters, Masculine Beliefs, & Empathy for Female Violence Victims." PLOS ONE, 11(4), e0152121. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152121 Mangalavite, A. M. (2012). "Perceptions of Masculinity and Femininity of Gamers Playing Violent and Non-Violent Video Games." Iten, G. H., Bopp, J. A., Steiner, C., Opwis, K., & Mekler, E. D. (2018). "Does a prosocial decision in video games lead to increased prosocial real-life behavior? The impact of reward and reasoning." Computers in Human Behavior, 89, 163-172. Murphy, C., & Zagal, J. P. (2011). "Prosocial games: Effects of prosocial-orientated video games on prosocial behavior." International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2011, 1-11. Happ, C., Melzer, A., & Steffgen, G. (2013). "Superman vs. BAD Man? The effects of empathy and game character in violent video games." Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(11), 774-778. Ellithorpe, M. E., Cruz, A. M., Velez, J. A., Ewoldsen, D. R., & Bogert, A. (2015). "The effect of prosocial and violent video games on prosocial and aggressive outcomes." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(2), 208-227."

Purpose of the Study/Research Question: This study will analyze the impacts of horror movie consumption and add qualitative and quantitative data to research surrounding fear-based media impacts on consumers perceptions of risk and fear in their everyday lives. Contribution: Scholars have shown that consuming media can provoke fear in the consumer (Callanan 2012; Kort-Butler & Hartshorn 2011; MacKendrick 2010). MacKendrick and Callanan both separately found that news media framing and consumption had a direct impact on consumer feelings of fear and anxiety (Callanan 2012; MacKendrick 2010). Similarly, Kort-Butler & Hartshorn found the same to be true even when media depicted fictional events (Kort-Butler & Hartshorn, 2011). Although sociologists have looked at how news media coverage of crime elevates perceptions of risk (Burchfield 2014; Kovanič 2020; Sternheimer 2018), little research has been done on the impact of horror movies, a genre that is built around fear. This research intends to test whether Kort-Butler & Hartshorn’s findings extend to other fear-and-risk-based media, specifically horror movies. Through a confidential interview, respondents will be asked to report what fear, risk, and horror mean to them, their watching habits especially related to horror movies, and levels of fear and risk they experience in response to the media as well as other media and everyday life. Then, in a survey, broader questions on the same topic will be administered to larger population. This research will not only be looking at fear and risk in direct relation to horror movies, but also how it is experienced in everyday life, and how these manifestations interact with and impact each other. This research will determine if the patterns observed by previous research on the topic of news media and crime shows is true for media of the horror genre, and how these patterns affect the everyday lives of respondents. Our understandings of these relationships are currently limited to the research that has been done on news media and perceived vulnerability to risk. If Kort-Butler & Hartshorn’s findings on entertainment-based fictional crime media are true for other kinds of fictional media, there are lasting personal and behavioral impacts from what we choose to consume (Kort-Butler & Hartshorn, 2011). The obvious place to continue this research is where media, fear, and risk have always met: the horror movie. Theory/Methods: Theory: Sociological investigation into anxiety and related emotions began with the theorizing of “risk” (Beck 1992; Freudenberg 1988) and was shortly followed by “fear” (Furedi 2002; Glassner 1999). Risk Society, written by Ulrich Beck in 1992, suggested that society would organize itself to self-protect (Beck, 1992). Therefore, the more “risk” appears present in society, the more drive there is to re-organize. In a similar school of thought, Barry Glassner’s 1999 book Culture of Fear argued that fear was something that could be produced by people in power to incite desirable reactionary behavior in society (Glassner, 1999). Since then, there has been a wealth of research into how these concepts have developed along with the industrialization and globalization of society and technology (Beck, 2006; Clarke & Short 1993; Sik 2020; Sternheimer, 2018). Additionally, Altheide (1997) suggested that the symbols and behaviors portrayed in media we watch effects the ways that we react to these same symbols and behaviors in real life. With the media holding such a ubiquitous space in modern life, it’s more important than ever to understand the messages that are being broadcast and the ways the consuming public reacts. Methods: A convenience sample will be employed to gather respondents. Then, with questions based on a symbolic interactionist approach, an interview is administered to examine if individual’s personal definitions and understandings of fear and media have a meaningful influence on their reactions to horror movies (Altheide, 1997). Between ten and twenty in-depth confidential interviews will be employed to gather information about personal understandings of fear and risk, behaviors, and motivations of watching horror films, as well as individual fears and anxieties. Making the interviews confidential is to ensure the most comfort and honesty in responses to the questions, although they are unlikely to contain any sensitive information considering the subject matter of the interview. The interview is made up of five base questions, four of which have sub questions that go further in depth into the topics covered. The interviews are semi-structured, and some questions may not be asked based on the direction of the responses being collected. The inclusion of so many is in the event that an interview is conducted with a respondent that doesn’t elaborate much without prompting. Respondents will be asked about their general media consumption habits as well as their consumption of horror movies to place their behaviors in a larger context. Additionally, to assess whether horror movies are the primary media by which respondent encounter horror, this questionnaire asks about other consumption habits. This is due to the reasoning that movies may not be the format in which a respondent interacts with horror the most frequently. Sub questions ask respondents to report their own fears, risks they take, reactions to horror movies, and definitions of the words “horror,” “risk,” and “fear”. These questions are intended to add greater context to respondent’s answers, as well as glean an understanding they have of the terms we are using in the conversation. These interviews will provide a qualitative framework for understanding an area of study that has previously primarily composed of quantitative work. After these interviews are completed, a survey will be designed and administered to a convenience sample of individuals aged 18-65 on the topic of their media consumption and following perceptions of risk and fear. This survey will add a specific quantitative dimension to the research and provide a larger context in which the qualitative data from the interviews can be situated. References Altheide, D. L. (1997). “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear.” The Sociological Quarterly, 38(4), 647–668. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121084 Beck, P. U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. SAGE. — (2006) Living in the world risk society, Economy and Society, 35:3, 329-345, DOI: 10.1080/03085140600844902 Burchfield, K., Sample, L. L., & Lytle, R. (2014). Public Interest in Sex Offenders: A Perpetual Panic? Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society, 15(3), 96-117. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/public-interest-sex-offenders-perpetual-panic/docview/2118213770/se-2 Callanan, V. J. (2012). Media Consumption, Perceptions of Crime Risk and Fear of Crime: Examining Race/Ethnic Differences. Sociological Perspectives, 55(1), 93–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2012.55.1.93 Clarke, L., & Short, J. F. (1993). Social Organization and Risk: Some Current Controversies. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 375–399. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2083393 Freudenburg, W. R. (1988). Perceived Risk, Real Risk: Social Science and the Art of Probabilistic Risk Assessment. Science, 242(4875), 44. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/perceived-risk-real-social-science-art/docview/213540425/se-2 Furedi, F. (2002). Culture of fear: Risk-Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation Revised Edition. A&C Black. Glassner, B. (2000). The culture of fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. Basic Books. Kort-Butler, L. A., & Hartshorn, K. J. S. (2011). WATCHING THE DETECTIVES: CRIME PROGRAMMING, FEAR OF CRIME, AND ATTITUDES ABOUT THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. The Sociological Quarterly, 52(1), 36–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23027459 Kovanič, M. (2020). Individual Experiences of Surveillance: Attitudes Towards Camera Surveillance in Slovakia*. Sociologicky Casopis, 56(3), 343-361. https://doi.org/10.13060/csr.2020.021 MacKendrick, N. A. (2010). Media Framing of Body Burdens: Precautionary Consumption and the Individualization of Risk. Sociological Inquiry, 80(1), 126-149. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2009.00319.x Sik, D. (2020). Towards a social theory of fear: A phenomenology of negative integration. European Journal of Social Theory, 23(4), 512–531. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1177/1368431019850074 Sternheimer, K. (2018). Connecting social problems and popular culture: Why Media is Not the Answer. Routledge

Purpose of the Study/Research Question: My study will explore how ideas about generative AI influence digital art culture for artists creating and sharing their work and for the audiences viewing these works. The main focus of analysis will be on participants’ opinions of and expressed value towards digital art as made by human artists, as well as the content generated from AI. I will analyze how those two perspectives may interact and influence one another. I am expecting to observe how audiences are similarly assessing the value of human made art versus AI generated images. Furthermore, I am expecting my research to contribute to the pre-existing anthropological discourse on technology and culture by providing an understanding of how digital artists value their own work in the face of new technologies. The purpose of my study is to explore how ideas about generative AI influence digital art culture for artists. Technology continues to grow and develop at a rapid pace. While AI technologies have existed for many years, only recently have they started to become a topic of public discourse. Especially for digital artist communities, the growing use of generative AI calls into question the validity of their work. Development in technology brings about a change in the ways that people and communities interact with each other. Generative AI serves as a catalyzing force in an understanding of how artists and audiences interact with one another. Analyzing their interactions will further contribute to the pre-existing anthropological discourse about artistic communities and the cultural authenticity of art. Art can be interpreted as “an integral part of the human condition” (Sütterlin et al. 2014, p. 3). Ingold believes that the relationship between social science and the making of art should not be “to describe the world, or to represent it, but to open up our perception to what is going on there so that we, in turn, can respond to it” (Ingold 2013). Yet, one of the predominant tensions regarding the culture of art is in the understanding of what constitutes authenticity, and where authenticity is a positive force compared to a negative one. When technology is incorporated into the process of creating or practicing or maintaining a process that existed before the technology was introduced to it, it can cause friction within the associated community. This may lead to a dichotomy of “artisanal versus industrial” (Paredes 2018, p. 143). Adherence to tradition in a rejection of technology, however, can negatively feed into stereotypes about people, as seen in the struggle with “identity politics” faced by indigenous Brazillians, as “even in this self-conciously anticolonial, postmodern politics, limiting stereotypes still persist.” (Conklin 1997, p.714). On the other hand, a strict definition of what is authentic allows for the artists to remain empowered in their knowledge and practice of their craft, especially within a “craft versus machine production” (Nicholas 2022, p. 37). When technology is applied to a workplace setting, it has the potential to catalyze or define interactions between coworkers, as well as an employee’s interaction with the work content itself. The job’s function, the technology in use, and the individuals who learn to use such equipment are all factors that contribute to the continued operation of the office, as well as of the greater industry (Forsythe 1993, Hovens 2023). Outside of the workplace, technology can define social discourse on a broader scale. The usage and access to such modern and developing technologies can shape one’s appearance and relation to their demographic identity, such as ‘Western’ technology changing ideas of indigenous identities (Conklin 1997). It can also become the discourse itself, such as its employment in artistic formats to become its own commentary piece: “artists have increasingly employed tools, methods, and aesthetics associated with scientific practice to produce forms of art” (Helmreich 2018, p. 98). Currently, many topics in relation to technology and society center around the internet and its impacts. The internet as a means of communication and self-expression can foster and connect people with communities with common interests, these interests often also based in the realm of technology (Akkaya 2014, de Roock 2020, Helgesen 2015). The internet not only provides greater accessibility to artistic works, but it can also serve as the inspirational tool for some art that wouldn’t be able to exist elsewhere (Lee 2020, Moore 2013). Anthropologists began to analyze technology and the relationships that exist between person and machine in the mid 1980’s. Their predominant concern centers around “conditions of coexistence and of reciprocal transformations of a technical system and ... the society in which it operates” (Lemonnier 1986 in Paredes 2018, p. 140). Despite the changing settings of these technology-person interactions across space and time, the core dynamic remains constant. The intersection between social science, art, and developing technologies is relevant because of both this idea of reciprocal transformation as well as the value of authenticity in a cultural context. Is there a point at which art is no longer valued due to the involvement of technology in its creation, or will it be understood as something new within the realm of art because of it? Introducing technology and AI into typically human-centric positions can elucidate the internal dynamics at play, bringing to light new benefits and drawbacks that may otherwise have gone unnoticed (White & Katsuno 2023). Furthermore, technology is already creating new subsects of creativity and artistic expression; shown in creations such as Google Translate parody videos — “music videos … created by replacing original lyrics of popular songs with … recursive translations between the original English lyrics and a range of foreign languages” (Lee 2020, p. 83). Beyond even the authenticity of art and technology, the ingenuity of a digitized version of a traditional mode of art can create new communities and have its own special appeal; such as vocal synthesizer software creating the cultural phenomenon of Hatsune Miku (Helgesen 2015). The ability for culture and art to shape one another allows for a positive transformative potential (Ingold 2011). Thus, the continued exploration and observation of how new art and technology either adhere or deviate from this relationship with community and culture remains valuable. Intended Contribution of the Research: The results from this study will benefit academic knowledge by furthering our understanding of how technology shapes cultural values of art and artistic pursuit. It will elucidate how artistic communities respond to new technology, as well as contributing to the existing literature on how human interactions can be shaped and catalyzed by machines. A Description of the Theory: Liu’s “Sociology of AI” provides an adequate starting point in the investigation of AI’s social impacts by separating the issue of AI into three separate sections of analysis: scientific, technological, and cultural. In this lattermost section, Liu credits the initial approaches on this topic to Sherry Turkle. Turkle’s book, Life on the Screen, analyzes adaptations of the self through online mediums. Similar to Erving Goffman’s approach regarding self as a performance, Turkle posits that the medium of an online setting adapts one’s relationship to reality and freedom of self—with the online setting often providing freedom of self in ways that a person could not achieve in real life: “Fifteen years ago, most computer users were limited to typing commands. Today they use off-the-shelf products to manipulate simulated desktops, draw with simulated paints and brushes, and fly simulated airplane cockpits” (Turkle 1997, p. 19). This sets the stage for understanding how digital mediums can shape the production of self, especially with how self relates to other people in an online setting, and broadly, how technology catalyzes these relationships of the self and of community. In “The Importance of Materials”, Stephanie Bunn regards art in a similar fashion to how Turkle approaches technology. Bunn establishes that the physicality of art, the assertion that “the use of the body, touch, the haptic system is fundamental to making” has the potential to invoke a closeness between artist and craft that is not necessarily captured through a simple anthropological analysis of an artist’s tools (Bunn 1999, p. 19). Bunn’s perspective supports the notion that while tools are important to an artist’s production, they may simply exist as a bridge between the individual and their medium, as well as the artist’s final product. This puts digital artists and AI artists on a similar level considering the similarity in their mediums and end products. Bunn’s analysis, however, only focuses on the very real and raw elements of craft, before these objects have been whittled down or refined into more ‘traditional’ crafting materials. While these elements of relation to craft may still be applicable to digital artists, it provides an inherent difference in relationship and physicality that the art is already somewhat composed through a lens of technological modes; how much creative freedom could a digital artist have when they’re forced to work within the confines of a highly mechanized and polished tool—a tool that they likely did not build or program themselves. Perhaps while the tools themselves don’t necessarily matter in the face of the final product, the meanings and values projected onto them, as well as the different implications of their use certainly do. Between these sources, it’s clearer to see that this social dynamic may be catalyzed by the production of objects, and the values projected onto these tools. This relationship with objects, relates to Clifford Geertz and thick description regarding objects and the meaning ascribed onto them. Thick description—how we ascribe various meanings to things across contexts—works well with understanding the relationship of art across different communities, times, and settings. What is the meaning ascribed to digital art in certain times or contexts versus that of a more physical medium, or of AI art? Similarly, Geertz’s article on deep play sheds some light on this in regards to a projection of self into craft and community. Even in the production of the Balinese cockfights, they’re understood as existing symbolically to the self and as an extension of the person—because of this, Geertz calls it art: “As any art form — for that, finally, is what we are dealing with — the cockfight renders ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their practical consequences removed” (Geertz 2005, p. 79). Thus, we can understand art as this performance and production of self regardless—or perhaps despite of—the materials and methods used. My study will aim to investigate how these understandings of self, community, and artistic production relate to digital and AI art and the interactions between the two. A Description of the Methods: The sample of this study will consist of three groups of participants: digital artists, AI artists, and commenters. The digital artist group will be composed of artists who post the works they make online. The AI artists group will be composed of people who post the works they make using generative AI online. I will ask about their art making processes, the time and effort that goes into their creations, as well as why they post their work online, and the general response they receive from their audiences. The commenters group will be composed of people who comment on either digital art posts or AI art posts. These commenters will be individuals who are asking for proof that the artist themself made their work and that the art was not AI generated. Some will be the people who comment on AI art posts, expressing doubt or skepticism; and some will be the people who comment on AI posts, expressing interest or enjoyment. For the purposes of this study, these participants are defined by their reactions to art posted online, located through the comments they leave under these posts. I will ask about the viewer’s experience in digital art, what sort of experience they seek when viewing or encountering these posts, and how that experience may or may not change based upon the methods of creation for the art. From conversations with all three of these prospective groups, I will contribute to the ongoing discourse regarding authenticity in culture as it pertains to artistic communities and generative AI. I will access my sample population through purposive sampling: locating these online posts and reaching out to the users who make the posts, or the users commenting on the posts. Additionally, I will employ convenience sampling to locate artists who may not be posting their works online, or who may not be sharing works in an online space. I will ensure that I am working with participants above the age of eighteen by asking potential participants what their birth date is. Similarly, I will inquire about potential participants’ country of residence, to ensure I am not gathering data on an international scale. For my purposive sampling method, initial contact will be made within the social media platform that the art was posted on (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.). For my convenience sampling method, initial contact will be made through email or texting. If participants agree to contribute to my research, I will provide them with my Linfield email so that further conversations can take place in a more formal setting. I will conduct one-on-one online interviews with the participants who agree to contribute to my work. Ideally, I will have between ten to fifteen participants in total. These interviews will likely run for 20-30 minutes. I will be asking participants pre-prepared questions from my questionnaire. I expect to have the conversation flow in whichever direction fits the tone and content of the interview. If an interviewee brings to light an aspect of my questions that I had not yet considered, I will allow my participants to continue to explore these potential avenues of conversation. The interviews will take place on Zoom, and I will employ Zoom’s transcript feature and audio recording feature to aid in data collection. I will also be taking typed notes, just in case Zoom’s transcript is inaccurate or ineffective. I will inform my participants that their contributions will be recorded, and that the recordings will only be accessed by me. I will inform participants that I may reach out to them again after the interview session should any follow-up meetings or questions become relevant to my research. I will ensure the participants’ confidentiality by using pseudonyms in my writing when referencing names or usernames. Considering the nature of online posts, it’s likely that the data I gather will contain some mention of findable art or comments. For both digital artists and AI artists, I will ask if they want to be anonymized, or if they want to remain identifiable as experts in their field. I will inquire about this at both the beginning and end of the session to ensure they are confident in their answer. For the commenters, I will only ask for a date of birth to ensure I am working with adults, and an email address so that I can be in further contact with them outside of the social media platform I located them on. I will not ask for any additional identifying information, such as legal names, and I will ensure our conversation will not include any identifying information. Participants will be informed of the usage of their information, as well as how it will be recorded, stored, and disposed of once my thesis is completed and turned in for a grade. I will inform participants of these conditions and will require a participant’s explicit consent for their continued contribution to my research. I will also provide a document containing my script for informed consent to further set my interviewees at ease, so should they want to reference the terms of informed consent at any time, they can. Participants are welcome to end the interview session at any point. I am not anticipating any problems to occur, but should such issues arise, I will provide a national distress hotline if participants experience severe distress (ie. 1-800-985-5990). References: Akkaya, A. (2014). Language, Discourse, and New Media: A Linguistic Anthropological Perspective. Language and Linguistics Compass, 8: 285-300. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1111/lnc3.12082 Bunn, S. (1999). The importance of materials. Journal of Museum Ethnography, (11), 15-28. Conklin, B. A. (1997). Body Paint, Feathers, and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian Activism. American Ethnologist, 24(4), 711–737. http://www.jstor.org/stable/646806 de Roock, Roberto Santiago. (2020). Digital selves, material bodies, and participant research tools: towards material semiotic video ethnography, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 23:2, 199-213, DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2019.1669926 Forsythe, D. E. (1993). The Construction of Work in Artificial Intelligence. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 18(4), 460–479. http://www.jstor.org/stable/690004 Geertz, C. (2005) “Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight” Daedalus; 134, 4; Research Library pg. 56 — — — . (1973) “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” In Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory, pg 302-305. Helgesen, E. (2015). Miku’s mask: Fictional encounters in children’s costume play. Childhood, 22(4), 536–550. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1177/0907568214554962 Helmreich, S. & Jones, C. A. (2018). Science/Art/Culture Through an Oceanic Lens. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 47:97-115. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1146/ annurev-anthro-102317-050147. Hovens, D. (2023). Breakdowns and assemblages: Including machine-actants in sociolinguistic ethnographies of blue-collar work environments. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 27, 3–23. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1111/josl.12565 Ingold, T. (2013). Making : anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge. — — —. (2021). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge. ​​Lee, C. (2020) Googlish as a resource for networked multilingualism. World Englishes.; 39: 79–93. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1111/weng.12448 Massengill, R. (2014). Writing sociology: A guide for senior theses. Moore, R. (2013). ‘My music, my freedom(?): the troubled pursuit of musical and intellectual independence on the Internet in Indonesia.’ Asian Journal of Communication, 23(4), 368–385. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1080/01292986.2013.804105 Nicholas, C. (2022), Frames Of Reference: Cloth, Community, and Knowledge Ideology in Morocco. Mus Anthropol, 45: 28-41. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1111/ muan.12241 Paredes, A. (2018). The problem of mechanization: Craft, machines, and ‘centering’ in a Japanese Mingei pottery village. Journal of Material Culture, 23(2), 133–150. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1177/1359183517725366 Sütterlin, C., Schiefenhövel, W., Lehmann, C., Forster, J., & Apfelauer, G. (2014). Art as behaviour — an ethological approach to visual and verbal art, music and architecture. Anthropologischer Anzeiger, 71(1/2), 3–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24252951 Turkle, S. (2011). Life on the Screen. Simon and Schuster. White, D. and Katsuno, H. (2023), Modelling emotion, perfecting heart: disassembling technologies of affect with an android bodhisattva in Japan. J R Anthropol Inst, 29: 103-123. https://doi-org.ezproxy.linfield.edu/10.1111/1467-9655.13813

Purpose of the Study/Research Question: The purpose of this study is to examine how intersections between ritual and play (“ritualized play”) manifest within the context of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Building on the work done by Shapiro in testing his theory of “ritualized play,” I hypothesize that this concept is applicable to a wider breadth of scenarios than that of highly symbolic public events. Dungeons & Dragons is a suitable framework for testing this new application of “ritualized play” as it contains characteristics of both ritual and play while existing in the private sphere, directly opposing the original situational context of the theory. This research tests the validity of Shapiro’s approach to the relationship of ritual and play not as foils of one another, but as partners in a dynamic relationship, which impacts long-held anthropological conceptions of the relationship between ritual and play. There are two outcomes of this study. The first should be further application of ritualized play in different cultural spaces than previously studied. The second should be a greater understanding of characteristics of ritual and play present in the structure of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, how individuals interact within the context of this space, and how participants interacting within a campaign form relationships with each other— including how these relationships may evolve over repeat interaction. If D&D exists as a true “ritualized play” space, then D&D players should experience a feeling of communitas (a traditional benefit of engagement in ritual) that strengthens their bonds with one another. Contribution: Ritual and play exist as foils to one another (Handelman, 1977). Where ritual has structure and “seriousness” (Durkheim, 1995[1912]; Van Gennep, 1960), play has looseness and “fun” (Caillois, 2001[1958]; Huizinga, 1955 [1938]; ). Shapiro takes this intersection one step further by arguing that ritual and play exist as “dynamic, processual experiences, which frequently merge when they are enacted together in highly symbolic public events… in this light, ritual and play do not necessarily differ as rigid, predefined, conceptual frames, but rather as experiences that unfold in different forms” (Shapiro, 2020, p.193). In contrast to the idea of ritual and play as “foils” to one another, Shapiro looks at the relationship between the two domains as dynamic, interactive, and more intertwined than previously thought. Shapiro calls this dynamic “ritualized play.” Using Shapiro’s concept, I argue that the idea of ritualized play is crucial when examining the realm of Dungeons & Dragons. D&D, a popular tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), contains parallel structures of both ritual and play, and those aspects intertwine in a way that is not mutually exclusive to either domain’s ideas or literature. Especially given that Shapiro’s ideas of a dynamic relationship are so new, this study applies Shapiro’s theory to a different ritualized play scenario—one that is secular and private— and examines potential byproducts of engagement in a dynamic ritualized play space. Durkheim views rituals as rigid structures through which “collective feelings and ideas” are created, experienced, and reaffirmed (Durkheim, 1995[1912], p. 429). While Durkheim was largely focused on religious rituals, the ritual process is likewise applicable to secular situations. An example of studying secular ritual comes in the form of Van Gennep’s Rites of Passage, which examines and attempts to quantify the process of rites of passage in secular settings. The result was the creation of a three-step framework: preliminal, liminal, and postliminal (Van Gennep, 1960). Turner addresses specifically the concept of liminality and broadens its ritual application beyond the scope of rites of passage. Turner states that “liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial…” (Turner, 1969, p. 95). Turner maintains that the idea of liminality can be applied to the entire ritual, arguing that all rituals are liminal in their entirety (Turner, 1969). Turner also establishes the idea of communitas, describing it by stating “is there any of us who has not known this moment when compatible people…obtain a flash of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems…could be resolved?” (Turner, 1982, p. 48). In other words, communitas is a feeling of mutual understanding and connection gained by engaging in a ritual process. The idea of communitas bears resemblance to Durkheim’s idea of “collective effervescence,” which he describes by stating, “The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation” (Durkheim, 1995[1912], p. 217). Thus, rituals exist as structured events, separate from other forms of social interaction designed to increase bonds between those who participate in them. While play is typically categorized as being looser in framework, it is not without its share of theorists attempting to define it. Huizinga theorizes that play can be broken down into 5 different characteristics: play is a voluntary action, different from “real” life, secluded and confined to specific contexts, tense and rule-bound, forming social groups characterized by “secrecy” and difference from non-play spaces (Huizinga, 1955[1938]). Caillois extends Huizinga’s research into the realm of games, citing games as a subfield of play and breaking them into four different categories: agôn (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation or role play), and ilinx (balance or vertigo) (Caillois, 2001[1958]). Carse also attempts to categorize games, instead using the framework of “finite” and “infinite” games, where finite games “are played for the purpose of winning, and infinite games for the purpose of continuing play…” (Carse, 1986, p. 3). It is evident that both ritual and play share overlapping characteristics. They both exist as spaces separate from “ordinary” life and form connections between those that participate. Handelman suggests that “ritual and play are shadow images of one another in the kinds of messages they transmit to the social order. They are analogous states of cognition and perception, whose messages are complementary for the resolution of the ongoing, immoral, deviant, domain of ordinary reality” (Handelman, 1977, p. 191). Shapiro takes this idea and argues instead that they operate together (ritualized play). This literature raises questions about studying manifestations of ritual and play characteristics in the same cultural space. My study examines these questions within the context of Dungeons & Dragons. Methods: Participants will be sought through mutual connections via convenience sampling and asked about participating in the project via email or phone conversation. Primary exclusion criteria include any vulnerable population. Secondary exclusion criteria for this study is determined by whether participants have experience playing Dungeons & Dragons, but not the level of experience of a player. For example, a person who has never played before would be excluded, but a person who has only engaged in one campaign would be included. Once participants agree to being involved in the project, contact with the individuals will be made. Contact with individuals will take place either in person or via Zoom. For in-person contact, interviews will take place either on Linfield University’s McMinnville campus (specifically in private/semi-private meeting spaces such as a coffee shop, empty classroom, residence hall lounge, dorm room, etc.) or in a semi-private meeting place off-campus in downtown McMinnville (library, coffee shop, etc.), subject to the comfortability of the participant. For contact via Zoom, all meetings will be held in a private location with only the researcher present (dorm room or empty classroom). Participant observation will occur in semi-private meeting places on Linfield University’s McMinnville campus or in semi-private meeting places off-campus in downtown McMinnville. The methods for this project are ethnographic interview and participant observation. These ethnographic interviews will be semi-structured in nature, likely run less than an hour in duration, and be recorded via audio recorder. Each interview will include questions from the following list: 1. Tell me a bit about yourself (name, age, etc.) 2. How long have you been playing Dungeons and Dragons? o How did you start playing? 3. How would you define/describe D&D to someone that has never played? 4. What do you get out of a game? Why do you play? 5. Do you do anything to prepare before a session? Is this preparation the same each time? 6. Walk me through your approach to a campaign: o How do you find the people you play with o What is your process of character creation? o What do you do while you’re playing a game? o What is your approach to solving problems encountered in game? 7. What is your relationship to the other players in the game? 8. Does your relationship with other players change over time? 9. Can you tell me about a particularly fun campaign/moment? Because these interviews are semi-structured, they may also include information offered by participants unrelated to the questions, and any follow-up questions that may arise from that process. At the start of each interview, participants will be asked to provide verbal informed consent to participate in the project, and verbal informed consent for the interview to be recorded. Confidentiality will be maintained by de-linking personal identifiers such as name, character name/alias, and any other information that may lead to the identification of the participant. This will be achieved by providing an alias for each participant and omitting other personal identifiers that may be gathered in the interview from the final project, all of which will be explained to the participant as part of the informed consent process. Participant observation involves the researcher engaging in the activities of the population studied. For this project, it will constitute observing and playing in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The researcher was invited to a campaign via mutual connection, and it meets weekly for 3-hour sessions. Over the course of the session, the researcher will be taking notes on any behaviors, actions, comments, etc. that may be of relevant use to the project. At the start of each session, participants will be asked to provide verbal informed consent to participate in the project, and verbal informed consent for notes to be taken regarding the session. Confidentiality will be maintained by de-linking personal identifiers such as name and any other information that may lead to the identification of the participant. This will be achieved by providing an alias for each participant and omitting other personal identifiers that may be gathered from the final thesis project, all of which will be explained to the participants as part of the informed consent process.

Abstract A large portion of the US population reports experiencing a substance use disorder (SUD) within the past year. For decades, the primary way that America has dealt with substance use has been through using punitive measures, or punishments, as opposed to treatment or rehabilitation. Whether it is for possession, intoxication, or sales of illicit substances, all aspects of substance use have been criminalized in all states at some point in time. This takes many forms, such as fines, incarceration, or loss of access to resources and opportunities. Through a series of 25 qualitative, semi-structured and exploratory interviews with two populations, people experiencing SUD’s and punitive measures, as well as people working within the SUD treatment field as healthcare professionals, I explore the impacts of these punitive measures and the influence they have on positive treatment and life outcomes. Results demonstrate that punitive measures are ineffective at promoting positive treatment outcomes for individuals experiencing SUD’s. Further, punitive measures tend to exacerbate many of the previously present factors that lead individuals to higher rates of and worsening SUDs, as well as creating entirely new factors that further worsen substance use. The interviews also show a connection between restorative and rehabilitative approaches and positive treatment outcomes in the form of abstinence or decreased substance use through harm reduction, employment, an increased sense of self and agency in life, and positive community engagement. This study indicates that future policies addressing SUDs should rethink punitive measures and pursue alternative, more restorative approaches. Introduction The topic of this paper is on individuals experiencing substance use disorders (SUDs) and their treatment/sobriety outcomes. The specific focus of this research is: how effective are punitive measures (punishments) at preventing relapse when imposed on people with SUDs? This research also explores the impacts these punitive measures have in the lives of the people they are imposed on outside of sobriety. When these punishments are imposed what are the impacts that they have in the individuals lives overall, and how are the punitive measures perceived by the individuals? Methodology This study is an inductive nomothetic study looking at the ways that specific punitive measures impact individuals and their individual outcomes with substance use and the achievement of sobriety using data and observations gathered through 25 semi-structured exploratory interviews. The immediate aim of this research was to measure the impacts of punitive punishments for relapse as either being positive or negative in the achievement of sobriety. This included if the individuals were able to achieve and maintain sobriety, as well as the number and severity of immediate setbacks endured to achieve this. The specific, immediate, and measurable objectives measured are: did people maintain sobriety? Did they view punitive measures overall as helping or hindering this? How many requirements did people have placed over them? How many punitive measures did they experience? How many times did they relapse? The longer aim of this research is examining the overall life outcomes of individuals with SUDs who have been involved in the legal system, or some other sobriety monitoring program, while having some form of sobriety requirement over them with a punishment imposed for relapse. This collection of data will be valuable in evaluating current practices used to promote sobriety and the effectiveness of such practices. This data is also useful in formulating possible practices to be used moving forward in order to gain a better understanding of compounding legal issues when dealing with substance use disorders. The findings discovered here could lead to more successful models of treatment for SUDs that involve less stigma, less life disruptions and periods of containment, as well as giving more agency and power over their lives to the individuals who deal with SUDs. Findings Were people more likely to achieve or maintain sobriety when punitive measures were applied to them? The goal of any treatment for any condition should always be to improve the original condition, and when it comes to SUDs and SUD treatments nothing is as relevant as sobriety. While there are several important factors and caveats to take into consideration when looking at this, the data overwhelmingly points towards no. This study strongly points towards punitive measures not being an effective or humane way of treating SUDs. Not only were the punitive measures not effective at encouraging or enforcing sobriety, but they brought on a number of other difficulties in individuals lives when they were instated. These ranged from physical and visible effects easily seen in peoples lives, to psychological, financial and esteem based impacts that are not as easily seen. While everyone that I interviewed who had a SUD in the past is currently sober, and some have been sober for many years, none of them contributed this to the punitive measures that were applied to them, and none of them got sober at the time those measures were applied. This shows a lack of connection between the punishment and the eventual achievement of sobriety. This connection is further weakened since all of the people with SUDs interviewed got sober significantly after the punishment was applied, sometimes many years afterwards. Several participants stated they were more likely to use substances, and at heightened levels, post punitive measures or incarceration. The interviews also showed a heavy connection between when punitive measures were enacted there was a closing off of opportunities for treatment, open communication around substance use, self efficacy and advocacy, harm reduction, and other methods of addressing SUDs that have been shown to be effective. Another theme that arose throughout the interviews with people experiencing SUD’s was the additional barriers that punitive measures put in their life and how this cut them off from necessary resources, such as treatment for mental health conditions or other chronic and sometimes terminal conditions.

Research Question: How do Gender Roles Affect the Criminal Sentencing of Homicide Offenders? Contributions Gender is a social system that encourages conformity to a set of behaviors and identities often assumed to be caused by and to reflect a person's perceived sex. In this system, men and women are perceived to be inherently opposite. Traits assigned to men include being strong, powerful, unemotional, aggressive and even violent. Women, in contrast, are expected to be nurturing, relational, submissive, emotional, and motherly. Traits including aggression and violence are perceived as inherently male acts. Hegemonic discourse suggests male violence should be expected and excused. Women are not permitted to act violently, and when they do, it disrupts expectations of gendered behavior (Chesler 1993). Gender theorists have suggested that when an individual does not adhere to the gender they are perceived to be, social sanctions are implemented to encourage them to behave appropriately. Gender permeates every aspect of society and every institution that makes up our society, including the US judicial system. Criminologists have suggested a strong influence of gender on the treatment of offenders at all levels of the criminal justice system (Wiest & Duffy, 2013). In my study, I will focus on homicide cases as the violent nature of the crime may exacerbate how gender norms affect the sentence of female vs male perpetrators. Previous studies have suggested that female perpetrators of homicide are given the harshest penalties when they sway from traditional gender roles. Female perpetrators who are seen by the court as respectable—married, sober, nonviolent, and sexually “decent”—are likely to receive less severe sentences than their nontraditional counterparts (Messing and Heeren, 2009). Streib (2007) found that of women on US death row, 50% had committed domestic homicide whereas the proportion of men on death row for domestic homicide was 12% across five states (Messing and Heeren, 2009). Although women are more likely to kill within intimate settings, Messing and Heeren (2009) state the disparity cannot be explained through this alone and suggest that there is a different entrance criterion to death row for men and women. Messing and Heeren (2009) found that females were more likely to face a capital trial when a knife or gun was used as a weapon while the choice of weapon did not affect males. Similarly, Wiest and Duffy (2013) found in their study that the method of killing affected female sentencing but did not affect male sentencing in an analysis of filicide cases. Theory and Methods I hypothesize that female perpetrators will receive harsher sentences for homicide cases compared to male perpetrators and that female sentences will be exacerbated when the weapon used is viewed as more violent, such as using a gun, knife, or fire. I am still exploring datasets, however, two datasets of interest are the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program: Supplementary Homicide Reports and the Cook Country Government Courts Sentencing Dataset. The dataset I will use of the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports was compiled by The Murder Accountability Project and includes 638,454 documented cases of homicide between 1980 – 2014. The dataset includes supplementary information on homicides reported to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program along with data from the Freedom of Information Act on more than 22,000 homicides that were not reported to the Justice Department. The Cook Country Government Sentencing Dataset includes 287,790 cases in Cook County where the judgment of guilty was found by the court. 3,328 of these cases have the categorization of “Homicide”. Variables of interest for my analysis include sentence length, victim/perpetrator relationship, weapon, perpetrator race, perpetrator age, victim race, victim age, perpetrator count, victim count, year, month, state, and city. I will be conducting a multivariate logistic regression for statistically significant predictors of sentencing length for female and male perpetrators of homicide. I will be conducting my analysis in R Studio, version R 4.3.2. References Messing, J., & Heeren, J. (2009). Domestic Homicide and the Death Penalty. Feminist Criminology, 4(2), 170–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085108327657 Chesler, P. (1993). A Woman’s Right to Self-Defense: The Case of Aileen Carol Wuornos. St. Johns Law Review, 66(4), 933–977. https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1799&context=lawreview Wiest, J., & Duffy, M. (2013). The impact of gender roles on verdicts and sentences in cases of filicide. Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law and Society, 26(3), 347–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/1478601X.2012.733873

Purpose of the Study/Research Question: This study will examine the interrelationship between true crime content creators and consumers of true crime media. Through this research, I will contribute an understanding of why true crime media interests the public and how digital vigilantes use websleuthing to capture their audience and collect information for their content. I will examine why consumers are interested in true crime media and if they use this consumption to cope with the fear of victimization and crime (Orth 2022; Vicary & Fraley 2010). Research questions include in this project are as follows: Is there a relationship between women’s consumption of true crime media and fear of victimization and crime? Is there a relationship between digital vigilantes and fear of victimization and crime? How do true crime content creators use websleuthing in order to report their findings to their audiences? How has websleuthing changed in the boom of true crime media and social media? How does Missing White Woman Syndrome affect coverage and consumption of missing peoples with differing demographics on TikTok and YouTube? What is the interrelationship between true crime content on social media and the public? Contribution: The true crime genre has been around for centuries and has been seen in books, television, etc. (Franks 2016). The Pew Research Center has concluded that women are almost twice as likely as men (44% vs. 23%) to regularly tune in to true crime podcasts (Naseer & St. Aubin 2023). There is a new wave of true crime on social media that has captured the interest of women that, in addition to podcasts, includes TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms that have dozens of creators who specialize in true crime media and can be described as digital vigilantes (Trottier 2016). According to Trottier (2016), “Digital vigilantism is a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity, and coordinate retaliation on mobile devices and social platforms” (54). Digital vigilantes engage in a concept known as websleuthing. This is when online individuals “engage in varying levels of amateur detective work including but not limited to searching for information, uploading documents, images and videos, commenting, debating, theorizing, analyzing, identifying suspects and attempting to engage with law enforcement and other organizations and individuals connected to the cases” (Yardley et al. 2016 p. 82). There is little to no research on the digital vigilantes who engage in websleuthing, the motives behind their work, and how they capture their mostly female audience. Media studies researchers have used cultivation theory to explain women’s interest in true crime media, as true crime media covers mostly female victims. These female consumers can relate to the victims’ stories and consume them, in part, to arm themselves with knowledge in case they find themselves in similar situations, thus they tune in to true crime media because of higher fear of crime and victimization (Morgan et al. 2015; Shah et al. 2020; Vicary & Zaikman 2017). In addition to explaining female consumption of true crime stories, cultivation theory can explain why digital vigilantes do their work to better prepare themselves for similar situations. The cultural criminology perspective could be used in conjunction with cultivation theory to better understand how websleuthing has evolved in recent years through technological advancement and social media, which “have enhanced opportunities not only for people to consume cases but to participate in collective investigations and create their own representations” of true crime (Yardley et al. 2016 p. 89). My research will combine cultivation theory and critical criminology to explain these phenomena. Trottier (2016) discusses the ways in which social media has amplified digital vigilantism and has caused harm by allowing for doxing, wrongful persecution and harassment online. However, digital vigilantes may see themselves as helping their communities and at times working with law enforcement in order to aid in investigations. Trottier (2016) focuses mainly on the ways that digital vigilante groups act in defiance of police, while my research will endeavor to understand digital vigilante groups that aim to aid in investigations and find justice in a legal manner. Trottier (2016) also studied digital vigilante groups found on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. My research will aim to understand the motives behind individual true crime content creator digital vigilantism on both TikTok and YouTube. There is important knowledge to be gained from my study. Individuality on social platforms such as TikTok and YouTube is important in the way that creators produce their content. Because creators have extensive freedom, they often create content that will engage the maximum amount of viewers; content that receives the most viewers is not always moral or truthful. True crime content creators wish to inform audiences how to be safe in a world that they imply is growing in violent crime against white women. The public believes that violent crime is getting worse, as they are being misled by the media. Theory: Through this research, I will draw upon both cultivation theory and critical criminology and the researchers who have used these theories to contribute to the sociological understanding of how media affects the public and how the public in turn affects media. The theory of ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ has been studied by many scholars in both media studies and criminology/criminal law, as can be commonly seen in true crime content and online news media (Sommers 2017). Missing White Woman Syndrome asserts that white women are consistently overrepresented in media coverage of missing persons over minority women and all men. This results in the perception that white women are more often the targets of violent crime. Consequently, the stories of missing persons who are not white women are pushed under the rug and forgotten about. These cases are not given the same resources as are missing white women, as they do not have the public’s attention and are missing the work of digital vigilantes who often pick up these cases on missing white women. Keeping this theory in mind, I will ask content creators questions about demographics of victims they seem to cover most often, as well as demographics of victims they see other creators most commonly covering. For consumers, I will ask questions about if they feel a certain demographic of people seem to be continually targeted in violent crime that they see from their true crime consumption. Methods: In my research project, I will conduct a series of in-depth interviews with 10-20 participants who run true crime TikTok and/or YouTube channels in order to grasp understanding of why women consume true crime media, how digital vigilantes use media to capture their audience, and how websleuthing has grown in the boom of true crime media. These individuals create content containing deep dives on true crime cases, using websleuthing (Yardley et al. 2018). I will also conduct approximately 20 interviews with women who frequently consume true crime media. Snowball sampling will be used to identify them. For consumers, I will conduct interviews with females, as prior research shows that women show more interest in true crime than men and that women have higher fear of crime and victimization than do men (The Pew Research Center 2023; Vicary and Fraley 2010). As for creators and internet vigilantes, gender is not relevant to my research. Interviews will likely last between 30-45 minutes. Meetings will be conducted via Zoom in order to make consumers and creators more available for research. The interviews will be transcribed. Names and other identifying factors will be omitted from data and replaced with numbers. While the specifics of each question may vary between interviews, as questions will be open ended and may be tweaked a bit before data collection begins, I have provided some sample questions in Appendix A and B. Recordings and transcriptions of the interviews will be kept on my personal laptop and converted to a password protected USB drive in order to keep information confidential. All creators/internet vigilantes will be contacted through social media and given a consent form prior to participation. Consumers of true crime media will be found through a snowball sampling method, by participants providing me with the information of an acquaintance/friend who also consumes true crime media. They will also be asked to offer their verbal consent prior to participation, letting them know that they may withdraw consent to participate at any time. Works Cited: Franks, R. (2016). True Crime: The Regular Reinvention of a Genre. Journal of AsiaPacific Pop Culture. 1(2) 239-254. https://doi.org/10.5325/jasiapacipopcult.1.2.0239 Morgan, M., Shanahan, J., & Signorielli, N. (2015). Yesterday's new cultivation, tomorrow. Mass Communication and Society, 18(5), 674–699. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2015.1072725 Naseer, S. & St. Aubin, C. (2023). True crime podcasts are popular in the U.S., particularly among women and those with less formal education. The Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/20/truecrime-podcasts-are-popular-in-the-us-particularly-among-women-and-those-withless-formal-education/ Orth, T. (2022). Half of Americans enjoy true crime, and more agree it helps solve cold cases. YouGov PLC. https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/43762-halfof-americans-enjoy-true-crime-yougov-poll?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fentertainment%2Farticles- reports%2F2022%2F09%2F14%2Fhalf-of-americans-enjoy-true-crime-yougovpoll Shah, Z., Chu, J., Ghani, U. Qiasar, S. and Hassan, Z. (2020). Media and Altruistic Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Fear of Victimization in Cultivation Theory Perspective. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 42, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101336 Sommers, Z. (2016). Missing White Woman Syndrome: An Empirical Analysis of Race and Gender Disparities in Online News Coverage of Missing Persons. The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 106(2), 277-314. https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7586&context=jclc Trottier, D. (2016). Digital Vigilantism as Weaponism of Visibility. Philos. Technol. 30(55), 55-72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-016-0216-4 Vicary, A. M., & Fraley, R. C. (2010). Captured by True Crime: Why Are Women Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder, and Serial Killers? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(1), 81-86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550609355486 Vicary, A., & Zaikman, Y. (2017). The CSI effect: An investigation into the relationship between watching crime shows and forensic knowledge. North American Journal of Psychology, 19(1), 51-64. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarlyjournals/csi-effect-investigation-into-relationship/docview/1874323504/se-2 Yardley, E., Lynes, A. G. T., Wilson, D., & Kelly, E. (2018). What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces. Crime, Media, Culture, 14(1), 81–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659016674045 Appendix Appendix A: Questions for True Crime Consumers “What started your interest in true crime media?” “Were there any cases or creators in particular that started your interest in the true crime genre? Please explain.” “Which creators do you gravitate towards when consuming true crime media and why?” “On which platforms do you get your true crime media? Why do you choose these platforms?” “How do you find new true crime programs?” “Do you feel consuming true crime media has an effect on your perceptions of crime in your community? If so, how?” “Do you feel consuming true crime media has an effect on your fear of crime? If so, how?” “How would you describe your perception of law enforcement and the criminal justice system?” “Do you feel your race and/or gender have anything to do with your likeliness of facing violent crime? If so, how?” “Have you ever felt a connection to a true crime case you have consumed on media? Please explain.” “What are the demographics of most people in the cases you see covered in the media?” Appendix B: Questions for True Crime Content Creators “What started your interest in true crime media?” “Were there any cases or creators in particular that started your interest in the true crime genre? Please explain.” “On which platforms do you post your true crime content? Why?” “Do you feel creating true crime media influences your perceptions of crime? If so, how?” “How do you find the information that you report in your content?” “Who is your target audience? Why?” “Do you communicate with law enforcement upon uncovering possibly crucial information? If so, how?” “How would you describe your perception of law enforcement and the criminal justice system?” “What do you feel your audience gets from your work?” “Do you ever come into contact with victims’ families? If so, how?” “How did you get into creating true crime content?” “Do you interact with your audience on a regular basis? How?” “Do you contact other creators about your/their findings? If so, how?” “When did you begin reporting true crime content?” “How does social media aid in your research?” “Which platforms do you frequent when researching cases? Why?” “Are there patterns in demographics that you see in true crime cases?” “How do you choose which cases to cover?”

Abstract Mass incarceration is a critical issue in the United States, and has a staggering impact on individuals, families, and communities. With over two million people in the nation's jails and prisons, the U.S. maintains the highest incarceration rate globally, revealing a 500% increase over the past four decades. Mass incarceration disproportionately affects marginalized populations, with rising rates of women's incarceration and stark racial disparities. A crucial facet of incarceration is reentry, yet there exists a lack of nationally sanctioned initiatives and accessible programs for individuals returning to their communities. Inadequate resources contribute to heightened recidivism rates. The importance of community support emerges as a key factor in an individual's ability to flourish post-incarceration, with positive networks decreasing the likelihood of reoffending. The primary question investigated in this ethnography is according to stakeholders in the reentry process, what is the role of community in a returning individual’s experience, and how do certain qualities in communities either support or undermine an individual’s ability to flourish upon reentry? The research explores the pivotal role of community in the reentry process for individuals with a felony conviction. Drawing from a collection of personal interviews, the dual nature of community is unraveled—it can act as both a supportive force and a hindrance to effective reintegration into society. Stakeholders such as lawyers, policymakers, reentry program facilitators, and more, some of whom were formerly incarcerated, are recognized as integral contributors to the reentry process. They emphasize the collaborative effort needed to alleviate the enduring stigma of a felony conviction. The ethnography identifies qualities within communities that positively contribute to a returning citizen's reintegration, such as support, encouragement, and economic opportunities. Conversely, certain communities reinforce negative behaviors and contribute to recidivism, serving as obstacles to individuals striving for positive change. Despite abundant research, there is a noticeable dearth of scholarly sources incorporating the perspectives and quotes of formerly incarcerated individuals and reentry stakeholders, such as program facilitators and lawyers. While many sources elucidate post-prison social, psychological, economic, and health circumstances, a knowledge gap exists regarding the transformation of identity and community connections after incarceration, often influenced by underlying community-rooted causes leading to imprisonment. The failure to address these root causes, notably poverty and systemic racism, perpetuates the United States' trend of "criminalizing mental health crises, vulnerabilities, and the educational experiences of people." Recognizing these dynamics is imperative for stakeholders to formulate policies and programs fostering positive community support during reentry, addressing systemic issues that impede success. This understanding holds the potential to diminish recidivism rates and facilitate successful reintegration into society. The crucial exploration of reshaping the criminal justice system and empowering communities to be self-sustainable hinges on amplifying the voices of formerly incarcerated individuals and their reentry collaborators. This ethnography employed a qualitative methodology, and unstructured and semi-structured interviews with nine subjects were conducted. Prior to each interview, a consent script was read, and consent for recording (for some interviews) was twice verified. The interviews, mostly held over Zoom or phone (with four in person), involved careful observation of body language, syntax, and tone, documented in field notes. Each interviewee has a pre-approved pseudonym. Subject recruitment faced initial challenges, necessitating outreach to over 60 entities nationwide, with snowball sampling proving most effective. A key interviewee, Victor, facilitated connections with national reentry stakeholders. Interviews, lasting approximately 45 minutes each, were recorded on the phone and later transcribed. Limited participant observation opportunities arose, the primary source of observation was at a public library offering legal counseling and services for formerly incarcerated individuals. The project aimed for inclusivity by interviewing diverse subjects, moving beyond the initial focus on Washington-native reentry organizations. The diverse interviews aimed to ensure a representative reflection of the broader community's experiences and perspectives. Numerous scholarly sources, such as similar studies, sociology journals, and newspaper articles, were consulted for an expansive literature review of the topic. Labels, such as "criminal" or "felon," play an intricate role within communities and heavily impact individuals reintegrating after incarceration. Analysis reveals a dual nature of these labels, serving as both divisive markers and foundations for supportive communities. On one hand, negative perceptions associated with labels create barriers to employment, housing, and social opportunities, contributing to dehumanization, alienation, and diminished self-worth. Stakeholder accounts emphasize the detrimental effects of societal biases and discriminatory practices based on these labels, hindering successful reentry and rehabilitation. The research emphasizes the dehumanizing and limiting effects of these labels, detailing how they influence judgments in various domains, such as employment and housing. Stakeholders underscore the importance of moving away from labeling to provide opportunities for reform and prevent cycles of failure. The study also explores the positive side of shared labels, demonstrating how individuals with similar experiences form supportive communities. These communities offer a non-judgmental space for members to share experiences, coping strategies, and mutual support. The shared identity becomes a powerful tool for empowerment, enabling collective efforts to challenge stereotypes, advocate for systemic change, and promote rehabilitation opportunities. Ultimately, the study recognizes the dual role of labels in communities, shedding light on the challenges and opportunities they present for individuals navigating the complex process of reentry. Various anthropological and sociological theories are applied to the exploration of prisoner reentry, focusing on the liminality concept as individuals transition from incarceration to community life. Liminality, a state of ambiguity and transformation, frames reentry as a rite of passage marked by shifts in roles and identities. Additionally, social theories like social disorganization and social control contribute to understanding community-individual dynamics during reentry. Social disorganization theory highlights how neighborhood characteristics impact reintegration, emphasizing the role of poverty, crime rates, and limited resources as challenges and consequences of incarceration. Social control theory explores societal mechanisms, such as the criminal label, regulating individual behavior and examines protective factors against recidivism, like family and community connections. These theories provide nuanced perspectives for researchers and stakeholders to analyze the complex dynamics of reentry, offering frameworks to comprehend the impact of community structures on individuals returning from incarceration. In scholarly research, they contribute to comprehensive models illuminating reentry processes, while in practical applications, they inform policymaking, intervention strategies, and community initiatives. Understanding how communities influence reentry enables tailored support systems, addresses system barriers, and cultivates spaces conducive to rehabilitation. Ultimately, the study underscores the crucial importance of community in the reentry process, recognizing its potential to either facilitate positive reintegration or act as a barrier to the ongoing journey of individuals seeking redemption. The dichotomy lies in the ways communities can either foster hope and belonging or contribute to isolation, low self-worth, and recidivism. Interview List Arthur - Phone and Email, 4/1/2023, 4/4/2023, and 4/12/2023 Clark - Zoom, 4/1/2023 Victor - Zoom, 4/18/2023 Selina - In-person, 4/22/2023 Pamela - In-person, 4/22/2023 Kara - In-person, 4/23/2023 Diana - In-person, 5/1/2023 Billy - Phone, 5/3/2023 Wally - Zoom, 5/5/2023   Bibliography Asencio, Emily K., and Peter J. Burke. 2011. “Does Incarceration Change the Criminal Identity? A Synthesis of Labeling and Identity Theory Perspectives on Identity Change.” Sociological Perspectives 54 (2): 163–82. https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2011.54.2.163. Cullen, Francis T, and Pamela Wilcox. 2010. Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. https://study.sagepub.com/system/files/Left_Realism_Criminology.pdf. Harvey Russell Bernard, and Clarence C Gravlee. 2015. Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. Lanham (Maryland) Etc.: Rowman & Littlefield. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ups/detail.action?docID=1734036. Mijs, Jonathan J. B. 2016. “The Missing Organizational Dimension of Prisoner Reentry: An Ethnography of the Road to Reentry at a Nonprofit Service Provider.” Sociological Forum 31 (2): 291–309. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24878726. Morenoff, Jeffrey D., and David J. Harding. 2014. “Incarceration, Prisoner Reentry, and Communities.” Annual Review of Sociology 40: 411–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43049542. NAACP. 2021. “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet | NAACP.” Naacp.org. NAACP. May 24, 2021. https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet. National Institute of Justice. 2014. “Recidivism.” National Institute of Justice. National Institute of Justice. 2014. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism. Nelson, Marta. 2011. “Reflections OnThe First Month Out: Reentry Then and Now.” Federal Sentencing Reporter 24 (1): 70–71. https://doi.org/10.1525/fsr.2011.24.1.70. Petersilia, Joan. n.d. “What Works in Prisoner Reentry? Reviewing and Questioning the Evidence References.” Federal Probation Journal 68 (2). https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/68_2_2_0.pdf. Sawyer, Wendy, and Peter Wagner. 2023. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023.” Www.prisonpolicy.org. Prison Policy Initiative. March 14, 2023. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html#datasection. The Sentencing Project. 2022. “Growth in Mass Incarceration.” The Sentencing Project. Research and Advocacy for Reform. 2022. https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/. Thoits, Peggy A. 2011. “Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52 (2): 145–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510395592. Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (1964): 4–20. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2022. “The Employment Situation - March 2022.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf. Visher, Christy A., and Jeremy Travis. 2011. “Life on the Outside.” The Prison Journal 91 (3): 102S119S. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885511415228. Zhang, Ryan, Swathi Srinivasan, Venus Nnadi, Adiah Price-Tucker, Amy Zhou, Andrew Charroux, Choetsow Tenzin, et al. 2019. “SUCCESSFUL REENTRY: A COMMUNITY-LEVEL ANALYSIS.” https://iop.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/sources/program/IOP_Policy_Program_2019_Reentry_Policy.pdf.

Teen dating violence is prevalent among middle school and high school-aged kids. About one-third of teen girls and one-fourth of teen boys report being a victim of physical abuse in their relationships (Hunt et al., 2022). Teen dating violence can be in several forms of abuse, such as physical abuse, mental abuse, or emotional abuse. Both victims and perpetrators of teen dating violence experience higher chances of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts or actions (Banyard & Cross, 2008). Research must examine the experiences of teens' daily consumption of popular media and the influence that may have on teen dating violence. The average teenager consumes popular media ten times a day (Martin et al., 2018). Popular media includes trending activities shared through movies/TV shows, music, and social media. Through semi-structured interviews, we discuss experiences with messages on popular media with undergraduates a liberal arts college and how that influenced their perceptions of teen dating violence.

Research Questions This study will examine the influence that parental political beliefs may have on students’ academic performance. We will address the following questions: How can the political beliefs of parents impact a students’ way of thinking and therefore ability to perform in school? Does the extremity of the parents’ political beliefs make a difference in the outcome of the child’s academic performance? Contributions/Significance of This Research This paper adds to the academic discourse on the impact parents can have on their children in an academic setting and fulfills the gap in research on the association between parental political beliefs and children’s academic performance. Discovering the impact of parental political belief will open several important avenues of inquiry related to educational outcomes of students. Theory/ Literature Review Decades of research have formed empirical links between social- contextual factors and student academic achievement, and this paper will seek to identify whether parental political values play a role in the academic achievement of their children (Lee and Shute 2010; Yamamoto and Holloway 2010; Taylor, Hinton, and Melvin 1995; Snodgrass 1991). Parental attitudes, behavior, and stylistic approaches to their child’s rearing and education have been extensively studied for how they impact educational outcomes (Pandey and Thapa 2017; Weakliem 2002). The paper will review existing literature and theories on various influences of children’s academic performance, educational influences on political views, and how these factors relate to parents’ political views impacting their children’s academic outcomes. Research dealing with several elements of parental involvement will also be examined and incorporated into the context of this study. Data and methods A survey was distributed to a random sample of UVU students as well as on the survey distribution website “Survey Circle,” which measured individuals academic performance and the political beliefs of their parents. Academic achievement is measured by students reporting their GPA, involvement in and out of the classroom, and time dedicated to schoolwork among other metrics. Students were also asked to report their parents’ political views and specific opinions on current political issues. The statistical program SPSS will be used to conduct a multiple regression analysis to examine the relationship between the independent variable (parents’ political beliefs) and dependent variable (students’ academic performance) to see if there is an association between the two. Recognizing that multiple factors influence academic outcomes, we use structural equation modeling to examine direct and indirect relationships among these variables. I hypothesize that students with parents who have strong political beliefs are more likely to be impacted in their academic performance than students with parents who do not have strong political beliefs. Summary This study that aims to investigate the influence of parental political beliefs on students' academic performance. The research questions focus on understanding how parents' political beliefs affect students' thinking and academic abilities, as well as whether the extremity of these beliefs plays a role in academic outcomes. Drawing on existing literature, the review explores the links between social-contextual factors, parental attitudes and behaviors, and educational outcomes. The study will employ statistical methods, including SPSS and structural equation modeling, to analyze the relationship between parental political beliefs and students' academic performance, with a hypothesis that strong parental political beliefs may impact academic outcomes. References Lee, Jihyun and Valerie J. Shute. 2010. “Personal and Social-Contextual Factors in K-12 Academic Performance: An Integrative Perspective on Student Learning.” American Psychological Association. 45(3):185-202. Pandey, Priyanka and Komilla Thapa. 2017. “Parental Influences In Academic Performance of School Going Students.” Indian Journal of Positive Psychology. 8(2):132-137. Snodgrass, Dawn M. 1991. “The Parent Connection.” Adolescence. 26(101):83-98. Taylor, Lorraine C., Ivora D. Hinton, and Melvin N. Wilson. 1995. “Parental Influences on Academic Performance in African-American Students.” Jourcal of Child and Family Studies. 4(3):293-302. Weakliem, David L. 2002. “The Effects of Education on Political Opinions: An International Study.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research. 14(2):141-157. Yamamoto, Y., and Susan D. Holloway. 2010. “Parental Expectations and Children's Academic Performance in Sociocultural Context.” Educational Psychology Review 22:189–214.

Oregon state’s unique topographical and ecological composition provides a unique reality for both its population and its socioeconomic structure. Oregon’s forests, totaling over 3.5 million acres across the state, are vital to the state’s cultural and economic identities, as they are inextricably linked to the very history of the state and its industries (ODF, 2023). As such, forest life- for better and worse- is of unique importance and prominence in the lives of all Oregonians. For many, the mere mention of annual forest fire season brings anxiety, trauma, and brutal memories of past disasters- especially in those who have experienced the heavy burns that remain in recent memory. While the uptick in these fire-related disasters continues to cause anxiety over the state’s disaster readiness, it remains important to analyze how resource disparity may effect some communities and individuals more than others. Previous research has found that wealthier (or higher economic class) individuals have more access to the resources to maintain preparedness, while those of lower socioeconomic status tend to lack the resources necessary to maintain full preparedness (Zamboni & Martin, 2020) (Cong & Feng, 2022). Further, due to an elevated level of income inequality, this provides a unique opportunity to analyze the differences in readiness per socioeconomic identity (Innes & Ordonez, 2022). As such, we seek to analyze and quantify the CHANS 2021 Survey Data to compare how different states of readiness, perceptions of disaster readiness, trust in government disaster relief, and financial resources effect disaster readiness through a comparison of surveyed populations. Further, we seek to utilize this data to better inform state authorities and disaster readiness organizations about the unique resource shortages, community needs, and possible strategies to overcome these challenges in future disaster planning. We project that we will find lower levels of disaster readiness, especially regarding resource attainment, in individuals of lower socioeconomic class. Works Cited Cong, Z., & Feng, G. (2022). Financial Preparedness for Emergencies: Age Patterns and Multilevel Vulnerabilities. Research on Aging, 44(3-4), 334-348. https://doi.org/10.1177/01640275211034471 Innis, T and Ordonez, J C. (2022, November 3). Wealth inequality in Oregon is extreme. Oregon Center for Public Policy. https://www.ocpp.org/2022/11/03/wealth-inequality-oregon-extreme/ Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF): About Oregon’s forests: Forest benefits: State of Oregon. (n.d.-a). https://www.oregon.gov/odf/forestbenefits/pages/aboutforests.aspx#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20forests%20cover%20over,Oregon%20and%20pines%20in%20Oregon. Zamboni LM, Martin EG. Association of US Households’ Disaster Preparedness With Socioeconomic Characteristics, Composition, and Region. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(4):e206881. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.6881

Research Question: How does researching and exploring the forgotten voices and historical intersectionalities of the LGBTQ+ movement shape the trajectory of the modern LGBTQ+ movement? Introduction: This paper will discuss the erasure of the voices and stories of people of color throughout the modern LGBTQ+ movement. Using critical race theory, I will examine how the historical and current erasure of LGBTQ+ voices of color in favor of a “more palatable” institution in America harms the rising LGBTQ+ youth and inclusion movement. Using this theory, I will analyze the social effect of this cultural erasure, looking at the quantifiable mental health effects on LGBTQ+ Latinx youth, and other ethnic minorities. To guide and focus this paper on the following sociology concepts/theories: The Matrix of Domination, Generational Differences, and Identity. The importance of this topic and why stronger efforts should be inserted in place to uncover these stories and bring racial inclusivity to the forefront of the LGBTQ+ movement is to ensure that LGBTQ+ teens can see adults like them in these identities to feel included and seen. Intended Contribution of Research: The purpose of this paper is to analyze collected data on how a sociological framework affects the LGBTQ+ movement. By analyzing the data in the context of historical intersectional discrimination and how the Matrix of Oppression affects the progression of the LGBTQ+ Movement and the mental health of intersectional minority youth. The impact of looking at this research in the context of the hidden stories from the early LGBTQ+ movement can highlight and explain why there is an increased risk within these overlapping sections and how implementing systems that highlight these key figures and create support systems for LGBTQ+ Youth greatly influences their mental health outcomes. Theories and Methods: The LGBTQ+ community is already at risk for mental health issues, utilizing Critical Race theory this paper examines the relationship between erasing LGBTQ+ voices of color in favor of a “more palatable” institution (in American Politics) and how that practice harms LGBTQ+ youth. Critical Race Theory acknowledges that ethnicity and race are embedded into our society's institutions and create racial inequalities. This framework is the most fitting for this paper topic because it highlights the institutionalism of racism. For ease of understanding, this paper is looking at the LGBTQ+ movement as a single institution. The LGBTQ movement, starting as the gay rights movement, is founded on the idea that homosexuality has to fit into the normal social rules for gay marriage to be included in the normal. This ideology discriminated against the gender non-conforming community, which at the time was perceived as composed mostly of people of color. Due to this institutionalized intersection of racism and transphobia, critical race theory is the most appropriate framework for this paper. The sources I used to quantify and examine the mental health effects on POC in the LBGTQ+ community from exclusion due to the aforementioned minority intersection. Data collections from the CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention School Health Profiles from 2018 and 2020 on the characteristics of “Health Programs Among Secondary Schools”. The full report comprised information collected from 44 states, 28 districts, one territory, and one tribe. Data from three states, California, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, were not included in this report, nor were data from three states that did not participate in 2020 Profiles, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s [CDC] Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System [YRBS] is mentioned by the Trevor Project as a validation and comparison point for the data collected. The Trevor Project’s “2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health” online survey platform was open between September 20 and December 31, 2021. A final analytic sample of 33,993 LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24 who lived in the United States completed a “secure online questionnaire that included a maximum of 143 questions”. “Questions on considering and attempting suicide in the past year were taken from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey to allow for comparisons to their nationally representative sample” (The Trevor Project, 2022). The CDC found 47% of LGB youth seriously considered suicide comparably to the Trevor projects 49% in the same age range. Please note that the CDC’s YRBS was focused on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual identities and did not include the gender and questioning umbrellas. Similarly, “The Trevor Project’s 2023 US National Survey on LGBTQ Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People” online survey platform was open between September 1 and December 12, 2022. A final analytic sample of 28,524 LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24 who lived in the United States completed a secure online questionnaire that included “a maximum of 158 questions”. As in the 2022 survey, questions on considering and attempting suicide were taken from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey to allow comparison. The CDC recorded that LGBQ+ young people seriously considering suicide was at 45% which was identical to The Trevor Project findings. Please note that both surveys addressed “lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, or another non-heterosexual identity (LGBQ+)” (The Trevor Project, 2023). References: Barnes, H., & Lane, B. (2015, August 7). Stonewall sparks boycott row after claims film 'whitewashes' gay struggle. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/07/stonewall-boycott-claims-roland-emmerich-film-gay-whitewash-sylvia-rivera-marsha-p-johnson BONO, S. (2019, March 26). The Death of Marsha P. Johnson and the Quest for Closure. Inside Edition. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://www.insideedition.com/the-death-of-marsha-p-johnson-and-the-quest-for-closure-51708 Cervini, E. (2020, June 30). Why We Owe Gay Marriage to an Early Trans Activist. Time. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://time.com/5858674/why-we-owe-gay-marriage-to-an-early-trans-activist/ Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (2nd ed.). Hyman. Emmerich, R. (Director). (2015). Stonewall (Trailer 1) [Film]. Centropolis Entertainment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGEJmPwB4yI Marsha Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and the history of Pride Month. (2021, June 7). Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved October 22, 2023, from https://www.si.edu/stories/marsha-johnson-sylvia-rivera-and-history-pride-month Only 17 States and DC Report LGBTQ-Inclusive Sex Ed Curricula in at Least Half of Schools, Despite Recent Increases. (2021, October 6). Child Trends. Retrieved November 29, 2023, from https://www.childtrends.org/blog/only-17-states-and-dc-report-lgbtq-inclusive-sex-ed-curricula-in-at-least-half-of-schools-despite-recent-increases Pimentel, J. (2021, September 29). Pronoun controversy sparks call for school board recall. Spectrum News. https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/orange-county/education/2021/09/29/a-los-al-teacher-asked-students-their-preferred-pronouns--now-parents-want-to-recall-the-school-board- Research Guides: LGBTQIA+ Studies: A Resource Guide: 1969: The Stonewall Uprising. (n.d.). Library of Congress Research Guides. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://guides.loc.gov/lgbtq-studies/stonewall-era Reyes, R. A. (2015, October 6). A Forgotten Latina Trailblazer: LGBT Activist Sylvia Rivera. NBC News. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/forgotten-latina-trailblazer-lgbt-activist-sylvia-rivera-n438586 Rothberg, E. (n.d.). Marsha P. Johnson. National Women's History Museum. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson Rothberg, E. (n.d.). Sylvia Rivera. National Women's History Museum. Retrieved October 21, 2023, from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sylvia-rivera Samaroo, A. (2017). Effects of an LGBTQ Identity and Support Systems on Mental Health: A Study of 4 Theories. Modern Psychological Studies, 22(2), 20-27. EBSCO. Retrieved Nov 29, 2023, from https://ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=130798573&site=ehost-live&scope=site School Health Profiles | DASH. (n.d.). CDC. Retrieved November 30, 2023, from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/profiles/index.htm The Trevor Project. (2022). 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/?section=Introduction#threatened-by-sexual-orientation The Trevor Project. (2023). 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2023/#conversion-therapy-by-race-ethnicity

Persistent disparities impede minority patients' access to kidney transplant waitlisting procedures (Alexander & Sehgal, 2001). A national study of transplant providers found that 10%−22% of transplant candidates were excluded due to inadequate social support. (Ladin, 2019) Research demonstrates that patients with lower health literacy face challenges in transplant listing. (Miller-Matero, 2016). This extends beyond functional literacy, encompassing communicative and critical skills for analyzing health information (Nutbeam, 2000). Social support and health literacy have been studied separately as barriers. For example, social support significantly influences chronic kidney disease (CKD) self-management, often surpassing the impact of functional health literacy (Chen et al., 2018). We propose a shift from viewing health literacy and social support as independent barriers to kidney transplants. We propose to integrate cultural health capital, rooted in Bourdieu's capital theories, to explore the link between social support and health literacy and waitlisting. Cultural health capital comprises specialized cultural skills, attitudes, and interactional styles valued and exchanged by patients and providers during clinical interactions (Shim, 2010). We hypothesize that minority individuals with higher health literacy levels and robust social and cultural health capital, will exhibit greater success in navigating the complexities of waitlisting. CKD patients (N=175) will complete a survey on their attempt to waitlist for Kidney Transplant. Measures include the Health Literacy Questionnaire (Osborne, 2013) and the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine Transplantation (Gordon, 2009). We will conduct statistical analyses, including linear regression and correlation analyses, to explore relationships within health literacy and social support domains. Demographic norms based on race, age, and gender will also be computed. Alexander, G. C., & Sehgal, A. R. (2001). Why hemodialysis patients fail to complete the transplantation process. American Journal of Kidney Diseases, 37, 321-328. doi:10.1053/ajkd.2001.21297 Chen, Y-C., Chang, L-C., Liu, C-Y., Ho, Y-F., Weng, S-C., & Tsai, T-I. (2018). The roles of social support and health literacy in self-management among patients with chronic kidney disease. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50(3), 265-75. Gordon, E., & Wolf, M. (2009). Health literacy skills of kidney transplant recipients. Progress in Transplantation, 19, 25-34. doi:10.7182/prtr.19.1.qnj8621040488u52. Ladin, K., Emerson, J., Berry, K., Butt, Z., Gordon, E. J., Daniels, N., Lavelle, T. A., & Hanto, D. W. (2019). Excluding patients from transplant due to social support: Results from a national survey of transplant providers. American Journal of Transplantation, 19(1), 193-203. doi:10.1111/ajt.14962 Miller-Matero, L. R., Bryce, K., Hyde-Nolan, M. E., et al. (2016). Health literacy status affects outcomes for patients referred for transplant. Psychosomatics, 57(5), 522–528) Nutbeam, D. (2000). Health literacy as a public health goal: a challenge for contemporary health education and communication strategies into the 21st century. Health Promotion International, 15(3), 259–67. Osborne, R. H., Batterham, R. W., Elsworth, G. R., Hawkins, M., & Buchbinder, R. (2013). The grounded psychometric development and initial validation of the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ). BMC Public Health, 13, 658. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-658. Shim, J. K. (2010). Cultural health capital: A theoretical approach to understanding health care interactions and the dynamics of unequal treatment. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51(1), 1-15. doi:10.1177/0022146509361185

Pacific Northwest coastlines are at risk of great subduction earthquakes from the Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ), which extends more than 1000 km from Cape Mendocino in California through Oregon and Washington to Vancouver Island, Canada (Clague, 1997). Cascadia coastlines and peoples face acute shaking, subsidence, and tsunami inundation from a CSZ event, landslide and erosion risks aggravated by climate-driven intensifying atmospheric rivers, changing storminess patterns and sea level rise, as well as crustal faulting in the Salish Sea (Olmeta Schult, 2023). Cascadia coastal communities also have rich and diverse cultural, social and governance histories, traditional and local ecological knowledge (TEK/LEK), and identities, values, and economies tied to their coastal locations and ecosystems. Existing research shows that effects of natural disasters are being felt most by marginalized groups (Benevolenza, DeRigne. 2019), and that many sociological factors affect individual’s perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes on risk and emergency preparedness. Housing and the process of marginalization are inextricably linked (Hernández, 2019), and those in multi-unit dwellings (indicative of low home equity) are less likely to have certain recommended emergency plans and supplies compared to those in single detached homes (indicative of higher home equity) (Murti, 2014). Furthermore, while research shows that those who have past experience with natural disasters (which are often those living in higher risk areas due to systemic housing marginalization) have increased likelihood of having an emergency supply kit, likelihood is again decreased among those in multi-unit housing or mobile homes (Hourney, 2008). The Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub (Cascadia CoPes hub) was formed in 2021 to help communities along the CSZ achieve resilience. It provides opportunities for undergraduate students who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color); Latinx; LGBTQ; first generation; and/or low-income, in all academic disciplines to participate in hazards and resilience research through the CHARTER (Cascadia Coastal Hazards and Resilience Training, Education and Research) Fellows Program. Previous fellows have developed a survey instrument and collected quantitative data on how individuals between the ages of 18-30 in the Pacific Northwest understand risks associated with the Cascadia Subduction Zone and perceive their own preparedness to the area’s naturally occurring disasters (such as tsunamis and earthquakes). Building on this data, along with the use of n=50 qualitative interviews, the poster I present will report on the differences of outlooks and behaviors towards emergency preparedness among individuals (18–30 year-olds) in different types of housing (such as single family homes, multiplex, apartments, etc). Taking that marginalized groups are most affected by natural disasters (those along the CSZ being at increased risk), and that housing plays a significant role in the health and equity marginalized communities, this inquiry will aim to better understand the relationship between housing type and emergency preparedness in the CSZ. Sources: Mia A. Benevolenza & LeaAnne DeRigne (2019) The impact of climate change and natural disasters on vulnerable populations: A systematic review of literature, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 29:2, 266-281, DOI: 10.1080/10911359.2018.1527739 Clague, J. J. (1997), Evidence for large earthquakes at the Cascadia Subduction Zone, Rev. Geophys., 35(4), 439–460, doi:10.1029/97RG00222. Hernández, D., & Swope, C. B. (2019). Housing as a Platform for Health and Equity: Evidence and Future Directions. American journal of public health, 109(10), 1363–1366. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305210 Horney, Jennifer, et al. “Factors Associated with Hurricane Preparedness: Results of a Pre-Hurricane Assessment.” Journal of Disaster Research, vol. 3, no. 2, Apr. 2008, pp. 143–49. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2008.p0143. Murti, M., Bayleyegn, T., Stanbury, M., Flanders, W., Yard, E., Nyaku, M., & Wolkin, A. (2014). Household Emergency Preparedness by Housing Type from a Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER), Michigan. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 8(1), 12-19. doi:10.1017/dmp.2013.111 Olmeta Schult, Felicia et al. (2023). Oregon Climate Assessment: Coastal Hazards. https://doi.org/10.25923/ppa8-3t70

There have been major changes in both China’s domestic politics and international position in the past ten years. While research shows that Americans had approximately neutral feelings about China through 2006, those feelings have become increasingly negative in the past decade (Page et al. 2008). Additionally, past research finds that U.S. respondents' views on China are partially dependent on China’s economic success and the respondent's education level (Kim et al. 2014; Page et al. 2008). My project will extend the quantitative research of public opinion on China into the first decade of Xi Jinping’s presidency. Besides Xi abolishing the presidential term limit, four main events in China may have affected U.S. residents’ opinions of China.: the Belt and Road Initiative, the South China Sea conflicts, the U.S.-China trade war during President Trump’s term, and the COVID-19 pandemic. My project focuses on one research question: Which demographic variables best predict U.S. residents' opinions on China? This question is important because as the demographics of the U.S. population change, foreign policymakers must predict how the public will support policies on China. Additionally, the most recent analysis of opinions on China was before 2013. Without updated literature on demographic variables and opinions of other countries, we cannot expect reactions to policies or measure changes over time. This project matters because we cannot answer whether public opinion influenced relations with China, whether policy reflects U.S. opinions of China, or if there is a way to predict U.S. opinions on China based on demographic factors. Without using the data to ask initial questions, we cannot further understand the complexities of U.S.-China policy and relations. This paper extends past research using Pew Research Center samples from 2013 to 2022, with over fifteen thousand respondents across ten years. Data for my dependent variable is from a question about favorable or unfavorable opinions on China. I will use several independent variables: political ideology, gender, age, education, income, and race. I will use R to analyze the data with logistic regression models. Based on previous research and Sociological teachings, I hypothesize that education will play a significant role in predicting opinion on China, alongside other independent variables. Data for this analysis comes from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project and spans from 2013 to 2022, with one nationally representative sample of United States adults per year (Pew Research Center 2013; Pew Research Center 2014; Pew Research Center 2015; Pew Research Center 2016; Pew Research Center 2017; Pew Research Center 2018; Pew Research Center 2019; Pew Research Center 2020; Pew Research Center 2021; Pew Research Center 2022). The Global Attitudes Project surveys a range of countries, but I will use data from the United States. Each year of data has at least 1,000 respondents and in addition to the questionnaire responses, demographic variables on political ideology, gender, and more were collected. I chose this dataset due to the high-quality sampling method and the range of years and variables available. Two different sampling methods were used, the first from 2013-20 and the second from 2021-22. The samples from 2013-19 were from the yearly spring Global Attitudes Survey. The 2020 Global Attitudes Survey was collected three times, but I chose the Summer Global Attitudes Survey for this project to allow time for opinions to change as COVID-19 affected the United States during the usual sampling period of March. REFERENCES Kim, Jibum, Faith Laken, and Tom W. Smith. 2014. “American Attitudes Toward Japan Page, Benjamin I., Julia Rabinovich, and David G. Tully. 2008. “How Americans Feel About Asian Countries and Why.” Journal of East Asian Studies. 8(1):29–59. Pew Research Center. 2013. “Global Attitudes Project Spring 2013.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/data set/spring-2013-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2014. “Global Attitudes and Trend Spring 2014.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ dataset/2014-spring-global-attitudes/. Pew Research Center. 2015. “Global Attitudes and Trends Spring 2015.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ dataset/spring-2015-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2016. “Global Attitudes and Trends Spring 2016.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewrsearch.org/global/ dataset/spring-2016-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2017. “Global Attitudes and Trends Spring 2017.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ dataset/spring-2017-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2018. “Global Attitudes and Trends Spring 2018.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ dataset/spring-2018-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2019. “Global Attitudes and Trends Spring 2019.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ dataset/spring-2019-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2020. “Global Attitudes and Trends Summer 2020.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ dataset/summer-2020-survey-data/. Pew Research Center. 2021. “American Trends Panel Wave 82.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/dataset/ american-trends-panel-wave-82/. Pew Research Center. 2022. “American Trends Panel Wave 105.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/dataset/ american-trends-panel-wave-105/.

Introduction This proposal aims to present a comprehensive analysis of factors related to household food security in Abbotsford, focusing on the economic, social, cultural, demographic, and environmental context, as well as local food systems and related food policies. The research endeavors to contribute to a deeper understanding of community food security and to identify the delivery of, and access to, food programs and services in Abbotsford. Through an environmental scan and an asset and gap analysis, the project seeks to provide insights into the multifaceted determinants of food insecurity and to inform the development of targeted interventions to address this pressing issue. Research Question The central research question guiding this proposal is: What are the key factors contributing to household food insecurity in Abbotsford, and how can an understanding of these factors inform the development of effective food security programs and policies in the community? Intended Contribution of Research The intended contribution of this research is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing household food security in Abbotsford, with a focus on the economic, social, cultural, demographic, and environmental determinants, as well as the local food system and related policies. By conducting an in-depth analysis of these factors, the research aims to inform the development of targeted interventions and policies to address food insecurity in the community. The findings of this research are expected to contribute to the evidence base for effective food security programs and policies, with the ultimate goal of improving food access and reducing food insecurity in Abbotsford. This report describes the results of an analysis of factors related to household food security in Abbotsford. Through an environmental scan and an asset and gap analysis, we have identified how the economic, social, cultural, demographic, and environmental context of Abbotsford, as well as local food system and related food policies, contributes to community food security. A multi-pronged approach was utilized to collect data for this project, grounded in a robust engagement process to understand the delivery of, and access to, food programs and services in Abbotsford. The specific activities we engaged in to achieve the objectives of the community scan and needs assessment included: (1) Data mining and review of internal and external reports; (2) scoping review of research literature to examine individual and communal experiences of food insecurity; (3) interviews with ten key program delivery stakeholders, determined in consultation with Archway Community Services’ Food Justice staff; and (4) participant-observation, including field notes from attending in-person and virtual community events. Data Mining We analyzed key wellness variables specific to Abbotsford’s food-insecure population through data mining of existing data sources. We identified key social, emotional, and physical wellness variables relevant to the needs of food-insecure households in Abbotsford by drawing on secondary data collected by the BC Centre for Disease Control, BC Housing, and Statistics Canada. Scoping Review We conducted a scoping review to examine how food security is defined and understood in populations as a means to synthesize research evidence on individual and communal experiences of food-insecure households. The principal aim of the review was to examine the extent, range, and scope of research on food-insecure households; summarize and synthesize these findings; and identify gaps in the existing literature on food insecurity. In total, 55 peer-reviewed articles, books, and reports were reviewed and synthesized. Service Delivery Interviews Ten interviews with key program delivery stakeholders were conducted in-person or virtually over the course of the project’s duration. Key program delivery stakeholders were determined in consultation with the Food Justice department at Archway Community Services and included representatives who provide a range of services for food-insecure residents in Abbotsford. Some examples include health care, recreation, community care, social care, housing, and transportation services. These interviews shed light on the perspective of those providing virtual or in-person programming and any unmet needs that were identified. In conclusion, this proposal sets the stage for a comprehensive analysis of household food security in Abbotsford, aiming to identify the multifaceted factors contributing to food insecurity and inform the development of effective interventions and policies. By employing a multi-pronged approach to data collection and analysis, this research seeks to make a meaningful contribution to the understanding and addressing of food insecurity in the community, with the ultimate goal of improving food access and promoting food security for all residents of Abbotsford. References (in progress) Adelson, N. (2005). The Embodiment of Inequity: Health Disparities in Aboriginal Canada. 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When it comes to active wildfire disasters, concern for life is at the forefront for many but pet owners are put in a unique position of not just having to worry about their own lives but also the lives of their beloved animals. The animal-human bond is a well-documented area for research in the Sociology and Psychology literature. Konecki (2008) found that, through repeated animal-human interaction, humans ascribe family status to their pets (90) and develop a mutual identity with them (92). In addition, Amiot and Bastian (2015) analyzed literature revealing that the animal-human bond can give insights into human behavior and decision-making (36). The bond between pets and their owners can influence living arrangements, family structures, and the making of life and death decisions during a natural disaster. Natural disasters in Oregon present many challenges for pet owners to find accommodation and safety both for themselves and their loving animals. During the 2020 Wildfires in Oregon, what fears did people have for their pets and what measures did they take to care for their safety and well-being? There has been research documenting the challenges that pets bring to disaster evacuations in the Pacific Northwest (McCool, Burchfield, and Williams 2006; Stasiewicz and Paveglio 2021) as well as research that documents that wildfire impacts pet owners (Paveglio, Kooistra, Hall, and Pickering 2016) but there is less research on what exactly people’s fears were for their animals and how they chose to act during the 2020 Wildfires in Oregon. The answers to these questions are important because they help inform us what support pet owners could require for future disasters to better care for both animals and the humans that care for them. In this poster, I will be using both qualitative and quantitative survey data from a non-random survey of Wild Fire and Smoke Preparedness in Oregon in 2020-2021 with N=500 respondents. I will also be relying on qualitative data from N=50 interviews with 18-30-year-olds on how they prepare for and think about their pet's safety and disaster preparedness. The interview data will come from a non-random sample of convenience in the state of Oregon. From both data sources, I am expecting to find out how the 2020 Wildfires in Oregon impacted pet owners and what strategies and practices were put in place to ensure animal and human safety. From this data, I will be able to make policy suggestions to help government officials better understand the true nature of this issue as well as develop new standards of protocol when dealing with pet owners during high-stress situations such as those that occur during natural disasters. Bibliography: Amiot, C. E., and Bastian, B. 2015. “Toward a psychology of human–animal relations”, Psychological Bulletin, 141(1): 6–47. doi:10.1037/a0038147. Konecki, K. T. 2008. “Touching and Gesture Exchange as an Element of Emotional Bond Construction. Application of Visual Sociology in the Research on Interaction between Humans and Animals.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(3). doi: 10.17169/fqs-9.3.1154. McCool, S.F. et al. 2006. “An event-based approach for examining the effects of wildland fire decisions on communities”, Environmental Management, 37(4): 437–450. doi:10.1007/s00267-005-0054-0. Paveglio, T.B. et al. 2016. “Understanding the effect of large wildfires on residents’ well-being: What factors influence wildfire impact?”, Forest Science, 62(1): 59–69. doi:10.5849/forsci.15-021. Stasiewicz, A.M. and Paveglio, T.B. 2021. “Preparing for wildfire evacuation and alternatives: Exploring influences on residents’ intended evacuation behaviors and mitigations”, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 58: 102177. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102177.

Research Context. In Canada, the representations of older adults in the media have significantly changed over the past century. With the population aging and older adults feeling unfairly treated based on their age (Revera, 2020), this systemic inequality must be brought to the forefront of our awareness. Public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, highlight the impacts that different spheres of our social systems can have on a population. The same week that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus disease outbreak a global pandemic, the Center for Disease Control Prevention (CDC) released COVID-19 public safety guidelines stating that the risk of complications from COVID-19 increases with age (CDC, 2020). As a vessel for mass media, the news media delivered this broadcast widely to the public, disseminating health and safety recommendations. Thus, the problem informing my study is the contributions news media makes toward ageism, how information is presented, and how some underlying messages can affect perceptions of older adults. A more thorough understating of how older adults were affected by media dissemination early in the pandemic can aid in ensuring society is better equipped to meet older adults’ current and future needs and work to improve the perceptions created. Literature Review. My research will contribute to the literature examining the representation of older adults in the news media, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the existing scholarship, according to Jen et al. (2021), ageism was frequently mentioned explicitly, and ageist bias was apparent in implicit posting patterns, such as a large majority of images portraying older adults in a less-than-capable light. There were descriptions and frequent uses of the term "elderly" and portrayals of older adults as "vulnerable." (Jen et al., 2021). Treating older adults as uniformly susceptible and vulnerable to the virus compromises older adults' autonomy, reinforces age stereotypes, ignores intra-group differences, and fails to ground interventions in individual capacities, risk levels, and needs (CDC, 2020). With the urgency to share information with the public, the spread of harmful misinformation negatively impacted older adults. Additionally, a study by Graham. (2022) reviewed multifaceted investigations on COVID-19 humour on social media, exploring the interplay of politics, morality, and ageism in the everyday context of digital culture. The paper highlighted how seemingly benign representations of older adults can be dangerous, marked by symbols of vulnerability and helplessness. Using a symbolic interactionist framework and conflict theory, their content analysis found that instrumental ageism was evident in how the memes infantilize older adults, deny their agency, and imply that confining older adults is an acceptable practice during the exceptional health security crisis. Social problems surface from fundamental faults in the structure of a society, as we saw through the global pandemic, and both reflect and reinforce inequalities. Theoretical Framework. My qualitative inquiry will be informed by a symbolic interactionist framework, suggesting that as media is released, people rely heavily on symbols and language used by the news media to reach a shared understanding of their interactions with COVID-19 and the ideas of older adults. These social problems arise when the media engages in socially problematic behaviours and projects ageist ideas. As a powerful social institution, news media has a great deal of influence over which forms of media are released, when it is released and what kind of media is available for consumption. A symbolic framework views social structures like news media as inherently unequal on power differentials related to issues like age. Methodology. My research question was investigated using a nomothetic approach, as it allowed this research to produce general statements that account for larger social patterns, which form the context of older adults' individual experiences and behaviours. I used two data collection methods in my research: a content analysis and an interview. In the content analysis, using quantitative and qualitative methods, I evaluated and collected insights by tracking the general category of ageism found in news media posts at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample was developed by searching keywords and phrases. Using this news media data, the digital content analysis examines the appearance of ageist representations of older adults through the COVID-19 pandemic. The semi-structured interview provided an in-depth understanding of the perceived representation of older adults in the media through the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative research was used for inductive reasoning and exploratory research. After collecting the images, I used both the whole and partial images for the content analysis, paying attention to facial expressions, activity, environment, symbols, tone, and lighting. I used open and focused coding and made memos using NVIVO software. Expected Contributions. This research is significant for demonstrating patterns of older adults being identified as vulnerable, experiencing social isolation and loneliness, and being projected as an invisible population, apparent in posting patterns connected to implicit and explicit forms of ageism. This research can produce knowledge to inform policy on discrimination against older people and produce empirical evidence that can be used by media organizations and users alike. These findings indicate that despite the platform, media portray the older adult population as frail, dependent and deprived at the biomedical level and in different aspects of life. Differences are seen in the increase in posting but are similar in their depictions of vulnerability and frailty. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct further research to understand better how older adults are represented in our evolving digital landscape. (Miller, E. A. 2021). It also sheds light on how not only is COVID-19 a severe disease that threatens people's lives, but through ageist representations, it also threatens older adults' autonomy and social and emotional well-being. References Brooke J, Jackson D. Older people and COVID-19: Isolation, risk and ageism. J Clin Nurs. 2020 Jul;29(13-14):2044-2046. doi: 10.1111/jocn.15274. Epub 2020 May 5. PMID: 32239784. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2020). What’s new. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/whats-new-all.html Dahlberg, L. (2020). Loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aging & Mental Health, 25(7), 1161–1164. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2021.1875195 Ehni, H. J., & Wahl, H. W. (2020). Six propositions against ageism in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of aging & social policy, 32(4-5), 515-525. Graham, M. E. (2022). “Remember this picture when you take more than you need:” Constructing morality through instrumental ageism in COVID-19 memes on social media—Journal of Aging Studies, 61, N. PAG. https://doi org.proxy.ufv.ca:2443/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101024 Jen, S., Jeong, M., Kang, H., & Riquino, M. (2021). Ageism in COVID-Related Newspaper Coverage: The First Month of a Pandemic. Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 76(9), 1904-1912. https://doi-org.proxy.ufv.ca:2442/10.1093/geronb/gbab102 Keefe, J., Andrew, M., Fancey, P. & Hall, M. (2006). Final Report: A Profile of Social Isolation in Canada. Submitted to the Chair of the F/P/T Working Group on Social Isolation. Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Chang, E. S., Kannoth, S., & Wang, S. Y. (2020). Ageism amplifies cost and prevalence of health conditions. The Gerontologist, 60(1), 174-181. Meisner, B. A. (2012). A meta-analysis of positive and negative age stereotype priming effects on behavior among older adults. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67(1), 13-17. Miller, E. A. (2021). Shining a spotlight: the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic for older adults. Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 33(4-5), 305-319. Perlman, D., & Peplau, L. A. (1981). Toward a social psychology of loneliness. In S. Duck & R. Gilmour (Eds.), Personal relationships in disorder (pp. 31–56). London: Academic Press. Previtali, F., Allen, L. D., & Varlamova, M. (2020). Not only virus spread: The diffusion of ageism during the outbreak of COVID-19. Journal of aging & social policy, 32(4-5), 506-514. Soto-Perez-de-Celis, E. (2020). Social media, ageism, and older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. EClinicalMedicine, 29. Weiss, R. S. (1973). Loneliness: The experience of emotional and social isolation. The MIT Press Wurm, S., Diehl, M., Kornadt, A. E., Westerhof, G. J., & Wahl, H. W. (2017). How do views on aging affect health outcomes in adulthood and late life? Explanations for an established connection. Developmental Review, 46, 27-43.

Lucy Boretto The social conditions for Oregonians in 2020 was harsh. Between the Covid-19 pandemic, nationwide protests calling for equal rights for Black Americans, and an intense presidential election, Oregonians were faced with the additional stress of the September wildfires that raged throughout the state affecting homes, quality of life and ultimately taking lives. The wildfires helped to bring on mental health problems for many Oregonians. The destruction of property caused by natural disasters in a community can result in immediate and long term mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The World Health Organization states that the overall pervasiveness of mental health problems after natural disasters is predicted to increase from 10-20% for mild/moderate challenges and increase from 2-3% to 3-4% for more critical mental health disorders (Agyapong et al. 2022:2-3). Existing literature (Agyapong 2022; Beames 2023) also suggests that individuals who survive multiple traumatic events also experience both long and short term mental disorders. Additionally, research on the 2019-2020 Black Summer Australian bushfires and Covid-19 pandemic indicated that depressive symptoms among respondents increased significantly during the bushfires (Hussain-Abdulah 2021:1). My research aims to understand the mental health effects of wildfire on Oregon residents since 2020. In 2021, the Adapting to Wildfire SES Undergraduate Fellowship collected data from a non-random survey (N=520) of individuals who went through the 2020 wildfires. Additional information about the mental health effects of wildfire will be gleaned from an interview schedule of 18-30 year olds. Both of these sources will allow me to explore how traumatic the 2020 wildfires were on the psyche of Oregonians. I will test to see if the trauma affected individuals differently. I will be controlling for gender, age, socio-economic class, highest level of schooling and rural vs urban Oregonians. Bibliography: Agyapong, Belinda, Ejemai Eboreime, Reham Shalaby, Hannah Pazderka, Gloria Obuobi-Donkor, Medard K. Adu, Wanying Mao, Folajinmi Oluwasina, Ernest Owusu, Andrew J. Greenshaw and Vincent I. O. Agyapong. 2022. "Mental Health Impacts of Wildfire, Flooding and COVID-19 on Fort McMurray School Board Staff and Other Employees: A Comparative Study." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(1):435. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010435. Agyapong, Belinda, Reham Shalaby, Ejemai Eboreime, Gloria Obuobi-Donkor, Ernest Owusu, Medard K. Adu, Wanying Mao, Folajinmi Oluwasina and Vincent I. O. Agyapong. 2022. "Cumulative Trauma from Multiple Natural Disasters Increases Mental Health Burden on Residents of Fort McMurray." European Journal of Psychotraumatology 13(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2022.2059999. Beames, Joanne R., Kit Huckvale, Hiroko Fujimoto, Kate Maston, Philip J. Batterham, Alison L. Calear, Andrew Mackinnon, Aliza Werner-Seidler and Helen Christensen. 2023. "The Impact of COVID-19 and Bushfires on the Mental Health of Australian Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study." Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health 17:2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-023-00583-1. Hussain-Abdulah, Arjmand, Elizabeth Seabrook, David Baker, Nikki Rickard. 2021. “Mental Health Consequences of Adversity in Australia: National Bushfires Associated With Increased Depressive Symptoms, While COVID-19 Pandemic Associated With Increased Symptoms of Anxiety.” Frontiers 12(1):1. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635158. Supervisor Professor Dwaine Plaza dplaza@oregonstate.edu

Prior research examining marijuana use as a stepping stone to harder drugs has revealed two seemingly contradictory findings. While most marijuana users do not use harder drugs, the likelihood of marijuana users using harder drugs is significantly greater than non-marijuana users. This prior work suggests that the link between marijuana use and hard drug use is multifaceted and not strictly psychopharmacological in nature. We draw off social structure social learning (SSSL) theory to offer a social psychological explanation for this link. With survey data from a sample of Southern California college students, we argue that using marijuana locates people in social structure where they are exposed to social learning processes that encourage hard drug use and subsequently lead to greater levels of hard drug use. Consistent with prior work, we found that most marijuana users do not use harder drugs (80%). However, while 20% of marijuana users did use harder drugs, only 1% of non-marijuana users used harder drugs. About 40% of this link between marijuana use and hard drug use was explained by five social learning processes specified by SSSL theory: positive definitions, neutralizing definitions, differential association, differential reinforcement, and imitation. We discuss the implications of our findings for the substance use and social learning theory literatures.

This article draws on interviews with active cannabis businesses to shed light on the intricacies of cannabis legalization in California. Specifically, it examines how the "legality" of cannabis is being constructed in the context of the market economy. While it is commonly assumed that legalization policies eliminate illicit market activities, the California case offers a remarkable example of how creating a legal framework inadvertently fosters the expansion of unauthorized practices. The analysis demonstrates that attaining legal status often becomes a privilege that many cannabis providers cannot afford. With most California cities opting to prohibit commercial cannabis activity or limit the number of licenses, market participants are compelled to compete for a restricted number of permits tied to specific locations, and those with fewer resources typically find themselves on the losing end. Cannabis providers who manage to secure licenses encounter further challenges such as excessive taxation, premium prices for standard business necessities, overregulation, and high compliance costs. These cumulative hurdles induce them to operate in a semi-legal way. The political establishment believes that lenient penalties for unlicensed operations encourage the growth of the black market and suggests adopting a more punitive approach. In contrast, this article contends that it is more important to address the root causes of the surge in illicit practices. Relying on punitive measures will enhance control over the most socially vulnerable groups and undermine the intended benefits of legalization for marginalized actors, all the while enabling corporate entities to exploit the advantages of a burgeoning market.

This research in progress examines the relationship between legalization and cannabis genetic bottlenecking. Significant knowledge gaps exist in the study of how and why cannabis genetics have changed over time. To fill these gaps, a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews will be conducted with self-identified cannabis breeders in California. Cannabis breeders - along with users, growers, processors, and dealers - form identifiable parts of an overarching institution often referred to as cannabis culture. Previous qualitative cannabis research has centered around users, growers, and dealers with few studies looking exclusively at cannabis breeders. Anticipated results include insights into cannabis breeding strategies and a shift to target high potency THC percentage, high yield in indoor cultivation settings, and low flowering times due to the economic pressures generated by various stages of the Drug War and legalization. These results may be meaningful in highlighting the role of legalization on declining genetic diversity in the worldwide cannabis market - and its impacts on the medicinal potential and therapeutic index of legal cannabis products. The goal is to present this research to inform policy and all cannabis culture stakeholders about legalization’s impacts on cannabis breeders, genetic biodiversity, and culture.

This presentation will contextualize the Institutionalism and myths of HSI and DEI programs and programing in Higher education. It will discuss issues and myths on HSI AND DEI Institutionalism in Higher Education. Also, it will reflect on the current happening on College Campus on the critical question of diversity and inclusion. In the potential findings of this presentation it will provide problem solving solutions that will benefit more people-of-color students, staff, and faculty and provide stronger HSI and DEI programs and programing in Higher education.

A Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) is defined by the percentage of Latinx students on a campus—more than 25% of Latinx students on a campus will trigger the designation. Few universities, however, are able to match the number of students with the number of Latinx faculty or administrators, making the gaps of student-to-faculty ratios abysmal, and the leadership absence clear. In this presentation, we explore how Latinx Students and Latinx Faculty and Staff at a HSI deal with the experiences of large Latinx student-to-faculty ratios at a Hispanic-Serving University.

How students perceive and engage their learning environments plays a critical role in their overall academic success. Previous research shows that Black students at public universities often feel marginalized and excluded from academic and cultural support. We provide a substantive review of the literature comparing the experiences of Black students at public PWIs and MSIs. The emergent research in this field challenges researchers to critically evaluate whether Black students experience MSI learning environments in similar ways to PWI campuses. We focus our inquiry on student enrollment and completion rates, student representation and a sense of belonging, equity gaps in High Impact Practices, and engagement with Black faculty. We compare theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and salient findings. As the demographics of colleges and universities continue to shift, the imperative to understand how students experience their learning environments intensifies. In particular, the need to remedy explicit and hidden challenges faced by Black students centralizes equity-based decision-making and practices within a university’s teaching and learning system. We highlight supports and impediments to academic success unique to PWIs and MSIs and supports and impediments shared across both learning environments. We produce recommendations that address the experiences of Black students at public colleges universities emphasizing strategies to construct culturally responsive learning environments.

Asian American higher education scholars note that Southeast Asian students continue to be underrepresented in higher education and are further marginalized as a result of the model minority myth; the idea that Asian Americans are overrepresented in higher education and will succeed in their academic endeavors (Museus et al., 2017). Bound by this myth, Southeast Asian students often lack the resources and social capital necessary for navigating higher education (Museus et al., 2017). The purpose of this study is to understand how Hmong American students create community and place on a university campus. I ask the following question: How do Hmong students draw upon sib hlub sib pab to create community on a university campus? To gain a deeper understanding, I draw upon Yang’s (2023) sib hlub sib pab (to love, to help) as a form of cultural capital and Yosso’s (2005) theory of community cultural wealth. This study aims to highlight the different ways that Hmong American students make sense of their culture and view their identities while being college students. While this paper may focus on Hmong American students, it also adds to the growing literature on how marginalized racial/ethnic students make sense of belonging and honor their heritage while on a college campus.

Chinese students with high-level educational backgrounds have enormous possibilities to experience peer pressure in their academic studies, especially about the academic performances and learning ability. How they understand and respond to such pressure are bound up with their self-perceptions, varying backgrounds, and different expectations for academic attainments. In the present research, the author examined 12 one-to-one interviews among Chinese students from different graduate programs. Qualitative data were transcribed and coded on NVIVO. The results show that most of the participants disavowed the malign effect of peer pressure on their academic studies but admitted its detrimental effect on their mental health. Most of them acknowledged peer pressure as the reification of their self-requirements and self-expectations. Generally, findings from the 12 Chinese college students show that they are constantly exposed to two types of peer pressure: (a) direct pressure brought by their peers with no intermediaries; (b) indirect pressure channeled through institutions (school and education system) and agent (parents). However, the perception of peer pressure might be intermittent, and their coping strategies vary. These participants held the propensity to unravel most of the negative feelings on their own, but they also listed close friends and partners in the relationship as their confidants to vent; how they choose whom to vent also interconnects with their understandings of peer pressure. Keywords: Peer Pressure, Academic Performance, Chinese Students, Coping Strategies.

Campus student veteran organizations have played a critical role in offering support and resources to student veterans. However, student veterans are not a monolithic group. As diversity among the student veteran population expands, campus student veteran organizations are tasked with striving for inclusivity and to present themselves as a space that can meet the needs of student veterans with different identities. Such inclusive spaces are particularly critical for student veterans from historically marginalized backgrounds such as women and LGBTQ student veterans. Drawing on content analysis and in-depth interviews, we focus on several key questions: What ways do campus student veteran organizations present themselves to the student veteran population through their website and social media content? Is this presentation inclusive of women and LGBTQ student veterans? How do women and LGBTQ student veterans perceive and experience student veteran organizations on their respective campuses? This research will highlight the unique needs of women and LGBTQ student veterans and provide insight into how campus student veteran organizations are providing support for these groups. The findings in this study will also inform best practices in creating a more welcoming environment for diverse student veterans in higher education.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, several controversies raged among scholars regarding the etiology and appropriate response to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). As intersectionality has increasingly become a theoretical focus, many of these debates have been recontextualized to include the concerns and experiences of diverse groups of victims and perpetrators. The current work reviews several major disagreements that remain regarding elements surrounding IPV as increasing amounts of research centers respondents who aren’t cis-hetero white couples: what is the role of gender as a determining factor of IPV (and how is this question complicated by the prevalence of intimate terrorism among LGBTQ+ couples)? What causes IPV (are feminist explanations obsolete and does the intergenerational transmission of violence explain as much as we once thought it did)? What is the ideal police response to IPV (and can we rely on policing as “the” response to IPV in the face of state-sanctioned violence against BIPOC)? Overall, reviewing these debates with a critical/intersectional lens can illuminate powerful directions for future research on this topic.

Prisons, as total institutions organized around the sex/gender binary prominent in larger society, are highly gendered institutions. Inmates’ experiences of prison, therefore, vary dramatically by gender identity due to both gendered pathways into prison and gendered pains of imprisonment experienced within prison. Building on the gendered pains of imprisonment literature and stress process and deprivation theories, we use the public-use 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI) to explore pathways into prison and pains of imprisonment among U.S. inmates across a diverse range of gender identities: cisgender women, cisgender men, transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals assigned male at birth, and transgender and gender diverse individuals (TGD) assigned female at birth. We further explore how these pathways into prison and pains of imprisonment are associated with severe psychological distress in prison. Results indicate clear differences in the experience of psychological distress in prison: TGD inmates, especially those assigned female at birth, report the highest levels of psychological distress in prison and the highest rates of history of mental health problems, followed by cisgender women. We also observe differences in pathways into prison stressors and pains of imprisonment across gender identity: for example, while cisgender men are less likely to receive in-person visits from their children than cisgender women, results from multivariable models indicate that in-person child visits reduce severe psychological distress in prison among cisgender men but not cisgender women, suggesting that, similar to pains of imprisonment, mediators of pains of imprisonment are also gendered.

Sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws have long been identified as sources of collateral consequences for registered citizens in the US. Less well known is that SORN laws are frequently modified, updated, or expanded retroactively. Very little attention has been paid to how sex offenders understand their position in the legal system, what effect the frequencies of legal changes have, or how they understand their future prospects in response to legislative churn. In this presentation, I draw on 106 in-depth interviews with sex offenders from Nevada. I identify four key themes. First, sex offenders understand legislative instability to be a constant process of disruption to their attempts to plan for a future. Second, sex offenders self-regulate on the basis of both current regulations and their belief that future ones are coming, which results in them meeting standards not contained in the law. Third, sex offenders assume that the law is changing underneath them without prior knowledge, which leads them to doubt that they know to what standards they are being held. Lastly, sex offenders attended specifically to legal changes that messaged to the community about their individual risk to the community, such as changes to the sex offender tier system. These were relied upon by registrants both internally and externally to justify their presence in social circumstances. Thus, changes to the legal system were understood as targeting their moral character as well as their ability to navigate social situations.

Intimate partner violence is a type of physical, sexual, financial, or emotional abuse that occurs in dyadic relationships. This study delves into the sociological consequences of intimate partner violence on future intimate partnerships. Focused on research conducted in the United States, I draw upon findings from sociological and psychological perspectives. Existing literature highlights weak attachment bonds as a significant risk factor for intimate partner violence, revealing the complex interplay between emotional connections and abusive behavior. There is information that delves into the abuse that individuals suffer from at the hands of their significant others. Women aren’t the only ones that suffer in such relationships. Men can get abused in their romantic relationships. Domestic violence affects men and women. What I know is that romantic relationships can take a toll on both men and women if they are brutal and cruel. It even affects their children if their children are exposed to it. The consequences of domestic violence can affect children into their behaviors and intimate relationships as they get into adulthood. This is a cycle of violence. The cycle is associated with the repeating of abusive behavior through generations or within the personal history of an individual. It suggests that individuals who have experience victimization beforehand may consciously or unconsciously enter another relationship that is abusive. My audience and readers should care about my research because it is information about circumstances that happen constantly to couples. It is a cause and effect type issue. It can affect people in their romantic lives. There are times people are never the same again either during or after leaving abusive relationships. The are other times that people get killed by their significant others in these kinds of relationships. Researchers should care about my topic because the impacts of domestic violence can affect subsequent intimate romantic relationships.

This paper utilizes Latinx Critical Theory, assets-based methodology, and a sociohistorical approach to investigate how college-going habitus is cultivated amongst Latinx immigrant families. I define a college-going habitus as an orientation toward the pursuit of higher education that can be constructed through a variety of histories and means. Leveraging data from 28 interviews with children of Latinx immigrants applying to college, I explore the role immigrant familial histories (immigrant legacies) play in college-going habitus construction and how they challenge traditional notions of familial involvement. I argue that an attention to immigrant legacies demonstrates the lifelong cultivation of higher education aspirations amongst children of immigrants and shows that we must look beyond familial educational histories when understanding how students craft their college trajectories. Furthermore, my paper presents an understanding of racialized habitus, that pays attention to both socioeconomic class but also how Latinx individuals develop orientations and dispositions within a racial hierarchy in the United States. My paper contributes to an expanded notion of what habitus is useful in preparation for higher education as well as how that habitus is cultivated over a student's life course through a variety of intergenerational learning strategies employed by parents, loved ones, and more.

Many Latino young adults enroll in community college with hopes of securing upward mobility and well-paid work. In 2019, 72% of California’s Latino college enrollment was in community colleges. Most of these students expect to transfer to four-year colleges and earn a bachelor's degree. However, after the expected two years, they largely do not transfer. Compared to other groups, Latinos are particularly affected by low transfer rates, with only 17% transferring within four years, compared to 30% of Whites and 38% of Asians. These statistics suggest delayed or abandoned mobility pathways for Latino students striving for social mobility through transfer and graduation from a four-year college. These delayed or abandoned mobility pathways have important implications for understanding the Latino transition to adulthood. In this study, I use interviews with 60 Latino community college students between the ages of 18-29 to explore how these young adults come to choose to attend community college and how they understand the role of college in their pathways toward social mobility and key markers of adulthood such as marriage, family formation, and full-time work. In my analysis, I focus on the ways in which the intersection of race, class, and gender shape how Latino young adults think of available mobility pathways, how they understand the community college pathway’s risks and benefits, and their ability to remain on the community college pathway in place of alternative pathways to adulthood.

For first-generation, low-income Latinx students, the transition from high school or community college to a four-year university is complicated, often hindered by the need for more social capital. Consequently, these students face limited exposure to academic extracurricular opportunities, and resources. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the experiences of a group of first-generation, low-income Latinx students and the support they received from their institution and faculty during their higher education journeys. From a unique perspective, the author will present the findings from in-depth interviews conducted in the Spring of 2023 with three first-generation low-income Latinx undergraduate students who participated in a faculty-student mentoring program at a four-year highly diverse public institution in Southern California. The mentorship program fosters and supports enhanced student learning through campus programs and activities promoting academic and personal development. Through this research, we will gain a holistic understanding of the educational and personal experiences of first-generation, low-income Latinx students. The results of this study will provide essential implications in understanding the role of faculty mentorship and why it is vital to comprehend the longitudinal impact on this group’s educational success.

As Pentecostalism has grown, research has focused on its broad adaptability and appeal to many communities through music. This study investigates music on a local level to understand what role jubilo and adoración music play within a Hispanic Pentecostal church service. The goal is to understand what effect music is having on the congregation at each moment of the service and how music is helping achieve the church's mission. I worked with a total of three churches one in Iowa, New York, and California to conduct my research. I gathered my data for this research through participant observation, interviews, informal conversations, and personal experiences. My findings reveal that commonalities in jubilo and adoración music across these three Hispanic churches support unity and social liberty. Social liberty allows members to express themselves freely emotionally and physically, often leading to spiritual liberty. Although jubilo and adoración manifest themselves differently, they have the same ultimate goal of spiritual liberty to prepare the listener for the Word of God. This study contributes to the fields of sociology and religion by showing the effects of jubilo and adoración music in the local context of a Hispanic Pentecostal service.

In depth explorations of LGBTQ attitudes among rural Americans are sparse and often rely upon sweeping stereotypes that cluster all perspectives into one broad statement such as “homophobia” in the country. As a result, little is known about the relationships between rurality and the stigmatization of LGBTQ people. In addition, though research demonstrates that men are less supportive of LGBTQ people than women are, these patterns are unclear among rural Americans. In the current study, data from a sample of U.S. adults aged 18-64 stratified by U.S. census categories of age, gender, race/ethnicity and census region collected from online panelists (N = 2,837, n = 498 rural Americans) are utilized to investigate the relationships rurality and attitudes toward lesbian women, gay men, bisexual women, bisexual men, trans women, trans men, non-binary people, queer women, and queer men through a test of Norm-Centered Stigma Theory with a focus on hetero-cis-normativity and intersecting experiences with social power (gender identity: cis women and cis men). Findings indicate that hetero-cis-normativity, rurality, and being a cisgender man are all significantly related to the stigmatization of LGBTQ people. Implications are provided.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, the legalization of same-sex marriage has remained a highly controversial issue in American society. While recognizing same-sex marriage has increased in recent years it still is highly controversial in which public opinion has a key role not only in the legal status of same-sex marriage but also in determining the immediate situation of same-sex families. Although many factors impact attitudes toward same-sex marriage, religion is seen as one of the most important. The present study operationalizes religion as a multidimensional construct. We simultaneously test the independent effects of four dimensions of religion (religiosity, spirituality, biblical literalism, and religious affiliation) on attitudes toward same-sex marriage. Using data from the 2018 General Social Survey the present study proposes running a regression analysis to see if support for same-sex marriage is significantly influenced by religiosity, spirituality, biblical literalism, and religious affiliation.

Despite Pope Francis’ pastoral approach to issues of sexual morality, the American Catholic Church has experienced increased religious polarization on especially with regards to gender and sexuality. While American Catholics continue to be increasingly liberal with regards to Church teachings on sexuality including homosexuality, studies have shown increasingly conservative attitudes by Catholic priests. This paper utilizes the 2020-2021 Survey of American Catholic Priesthood to comprehend how priests understand homosexual behavior to be sinful and whether men are who are gay should be allowed to be priests. However, due to Pope Francis’ pastoral “who am I to judge” approach, there is a “Francis Effects”: priests who approve of Pope Francis tend to be more supportive of same-sex behavior and gay men in the priesthood.

In the United States, suicide, domestic violence, homicide, and self-harm disproportionately affect homosexuals and transgender people. Their understanding of acceptable sexual practices are based on a heteronormative view of the world, creating deep feelings of shame for which many find it impossible to be honest with their closest friends and family. Feelings of resentment and distrust are difficult to overcome, especially when feeling alienated from one’s alleged support systems. Despite churches being primary opponents of lawful same-sex relationships, some churches have dissented from the traditional stance of excommunicating gays and lesbians to embracing them as spiritual leaders. In this pilot study, I created a narrative study discussing the lived experiences of clergy who identify as LGBT. With religion being such a major contributor to social change and action, presenting spaces that embrace this marginalized community show the progress made towards inclusivity in the Episcopal church. The participants began their careers before the church accepted LGBT to be ordained. The narrative discusses their journey navigating the politics of the Episcopal church, coming out, their contributions to advocating for LGBT rights, and their aspirations for future activism promoting inclusivity. Telling their story not only makes them relatable to LGBT people, but also invites the community to experience something that may be missing from their life, unconditional love.

There has been a lot of research done on students during and post-COVID (i.e., see Arribathi et. al., 2021). However, the research has not focused much on faculty. While faculty at all levels had to adjust quickly, community college faculty often have had to continue to adjust to post-pandemic expectations from administrators and students. While there has been research about faculty burnout from COVID, it has not focused on the American community college (see Pressley, 2021). In this presentation, I will share some policie sand challenges in the post-pandemic classroom that are continuing to contribute to community college burnout and strategies that have worked to address current faculty burnout.

With increased backlash and a surge in legislation against LGBTQ+ students, how can community colleges help this marginalized part of our student population feel confident that they indeed belong on our campuses? In reflecting on how my own college has endeavored to support LGBTQ+ students before, during, and after the pandemic, I show how community colleges are often left out of larger conversations on how to support LGBTQ+ students. By reflecting on challenges along the way, I argue that we can develop practices that create a more supportive environment for all community college students.

As things "return to normal" in a quasi-post-covid world, it turns out things don't return to normal at all. Social change, rather than being a slow and gradual process, happens in spurts, sparked by significant historical events. The last decade has seen significant and sudden changes, including the rise of social media, smart phones, political instability, economic crises, environmental challenges, a pandemic, and now the rapid onset of artificial intelligence. Taken together, these events mark a generational shift, one we are now seeing and will continue to see in teaching sociology. These factors come together at a community college, where diverse students and a mostly teaching faculty are confronting these changes and shaping a new educational reality.

The book Forbidden Intimacies stands out as an innovative work that challenges our conventional thinking about what kinds of intimacy should be forbidden and why. It offers a poignant account of everyday polygamy and what its regulation reveals about who is viewed as an “Other.” In the past thirty years, polygamy has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious practices that challenge seemingly central principles of family and justice. In Forbidden Intimacies, Dr. Melanie Heath comparatively investigates the regulation of polygamy in the United States, Canada, France, and Mayotte. Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic and archival sources, Dr. Heath uncovers the ways in which intimacies framed as "other" and "offensive" serve to define the very limits of Western tolerance. These regulation efforts, counterintuitively, allow the flourishing of polygamies on the ground. The case studies illustrate a continuum of justice, in which some groups, like white fundamentalist Mormons in the U.S., organize to fight against the prohibition of their families' existence, whereas African migrants in France face racialized discrimination in addition to rigid migration policies. The matrix of legal and social contexts, informed by gender, race, sexuality, and class, shapes the everyday experiences of these relationships. Dr. Heath uses the term "labyrinthine love" to conceptualize the complex ways individuals negotiate different kinds of relationships, ranging from romantic to coercive. What unites these families is the secrecy in which they must operate. As government intervention erodes their abilities to secure housing, welfare, work, and even protection from abuse, Dr. Heath exposes the huge variety of intimacies, and the power they hold to challenge heteronormative, Western ideals of love.

Andrea Gonzalez Mercado California State University Long Beach Pacific Sociological Conference Praying and Preying: How was Neoliberalism legitimized and naturalized? Introduction In the US today, the relationship between Televangelism and social/economic policies is often portrayed by mainstream media in a negative light, especially with evidence pointing to religious groups-such as televangelists scamming Americans out of $450 million dollars at the height of its presence (Zoll, 2006; Newkirk,2011). These multi-million dollar industries operate and accumulate wealth through the means that being a religious affiliation gives them. Televangelism, however, has by nature, a much broader reach than most affiliations. By using radio and telecommunications to preach Christianity and raise funds for their sector, not only do they have a longer ‘offering basket’ than most, but they also have the means to communicate and shape the cultural perspectives of their viewers. Seeing the growth of the “Moral Majority” and “New Christian Right” that was fostered in the late 70s going into the 80s, I couldn't help but to question if there was a link between the televangelist participating population and the latter. (Freure, 2021). This type of question also alludes to the broader problem examined in Max Weber’s classic work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Can you delineate a relationship between cultural factors and certain ecopolitical shifts? In his work, Weber traced a line between the rise of Lutheranism and, most importantly, Calvinism, on the one hand, and the rise of a capitalist culture centered on rational economic action and wealth-accumulation, on the other. In part inspired by this, in my proposed research I would like to answer the question of whether there was a correlation between the presence of televangelism and the rise of neoliberal economic policies in the United States. Moreover, if Televangelism had a role in the rise of neoliberalism: to what extent did these cultural movements legitimize and naturualize the beliefs and economic policy--as Weber argued regarding the unexpected effect of Calvinism on economic behavior? Or, was Televangelism intentional in its approach to economic policy? On the other hand, there are also counter questions that can be asked to measure to what extent the push for neoliberalism in the United States might have impacted the use and rhetoric within these cultural and religious groups. Justification In the last three decades, the total wealth held by the top 10% of American families has increased by $58.1 trillion dollars (CBO, n.d). Living in a United States that has well abandoned many of its welfare state commitments from the Keynesian era (Pehlan & Dawes, 2018) and pushes towards a further decentralized economy, being a lower middle-class daughter of immigrants, I can’t help but ask myself: if America, the country my parents immigrated to was supposed to be the promised land of opportunity, why are we like this? How does a society function under a certain mode and then change to another? As an aspiring sociologist, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing how different thinkers have approached our social and economic structure, whether it be Marx’s delineation of economic structure influencing our culture or Weber’s answer coming from the micro perspective. I’ve also looked into other Marxist scholars and adopted their vocabulary and framework that can explain state and cultural forces for the benefit and creation of capitalist ideology. This has led me to look at the way intervening institutions that were related to culture would affect policy and the nature of our capitalism. As referred to above, I’m a student with a strong inclination to theory and I desire to use my background to add a new avenue as a means to analyze our current relationship with our economy. Approach By using archival research and content analysis, I plan to define how the presence of Televangelist media can be measured and analyzed. In addition, I will examine whether Televangelism included economic policy suggestions in its rhetoric during the 1970 and 1980s. This will help me to see if the predominance of this kind of media and the type of content it preached had any relationship with a possible cultural shift that brought surges of neoliberal management of our economy. There are also content analysis measures that can be used to look into the presence and influence of government and economic institutions might have taken in the media catered to groups like “the Moral Majority” or the “New Christian right” to make the counterargument of institution meddling with culture instead.

Neoliberalism possesses distinct governance modalities, understood in terms of its discursive formations and incumbent ontological preoccupations, with the practice of statecraft. The centrality of how such components are illuminated in the perspective of public money has arrested scarce attention within existing sociological meditations but has, nonetheless, been a focal point of “critique” (understood in the Marxist tradition of critique) that is ascendant in both the canon of neoliberal thinking and the moralizing figures associated with the emergent epoch of ascendant neoliberalism in the late 1970s to early 1980s. In other words, in approaching the specific epoch of neoliberalism, one that is specific to the American experience, with particular reference to how public money is conceived, it is key that a measured account of neoliberalism, one with particular focus on meditative thinking and vocalizations characterizing public money, is merited in the order of appropriately characterizing the contours of discursive formations (Foucault 1972; Graham 2005; Lemke 2001) throughout hegemonic neoliberalism. Thus, the contribution of the present research project can be, more or less, approximated by the following research questions: what are the ways in which neoliberal thinkers and key figures in the ascendant American neoliberal epoch contend with public money and public money creation, and; how do these forms of inquiry with the specific instance of public money, more broadly, reveal a general contention with the place of the state? In a sense, this research project is descriptive, in that it puts the considerations of neoliberal thinking and analytical prose pertaining to the nature of monetary governance front-and-center, and explanatory, with respect to nesting this approach in the context of neoliberal insights regarding the role of the State in society. Collectively, then, this research project embarks on an ambitious contribution to the ever-seemingly growing breadth of thinking pertaining to neoliberalism but does so in a critical avenue that remains distinctly under-researched: the discursive evaluations concerning public money. There has already been a well-standing literature on neoliberalism (e.g. Biebricher 2018, Brown 2015, Harvey 2005) but such literature has yet to give proper considerations to the importance of money within the logic of neoliberal discourse (with notable, but scant, exceptions; e.g. Biebricher 2018, ch. 3; Feinig 2020, 2022). Thus, this research project aims to pursue a within-case historical study (Lange 2013, ch. 3) of the neoliberal epoch by applying the theoretical framework of critical legal and social scholarship on money (e.g. Desan 2016; Carillo 2020; Walsh 2018). In the context of the neoliberal tide, the discourse surrounding public money was appropriated and contextualized under teleological (or, goal-oriented) terms at the same time as it succumbed to distinct “moralization” (understood as attaching arguments based around moral character) campaigns. Though the distinct nature of either claims on public money may have different origins in terms of their proponents, the former being privileged in technocratic and policy-economist circles (e.g. Buchanan 2010; Volcker 1979, 1990) whereas the latter in political sentiments eschewed by politicians (e.g. the infamous remarks by President Ronald Reagan deriding social insurance and “welfare assistance”), either view derided and, as will be argued, amplified the obscuring of monetary politics from democratic pursuits that began under the New Deal (Feinig 2020, pp. 537–538). Neoliberalism, in other words, possessed unique modularities that, while at times may have come into conflict with one another and in conflict with antecedent forms of post-war governing, was nonetheless unified in the specific instances that issues of democratic monetary governance were challenged and, with it, the state’s regulatory intervention in social life heavily questioned, if not outright derided. Source References Biebricher, T. (2018). The Political Theory of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. Zone Books. Buchanan, J. M. (2010). The Constitutionalization of Money. Cato Journal, 30, 251–258. Carillo, R. (2020). Reflections: Challenging Monetary Sanctions in the Era of Racial Taxation. UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review, 4(1), 143–155. Desan, C. (2016). Money as a Legal institution. In D. Fox & W. Ernst (Eds.), Money in the Western Legal Tradition: Middle Ages to Bretton Woods (pp. 18–35). Oxford University Press. Feinig, J. (2020). Toward a moral economy of money? Money as a creature of democracy. Journal of Cultural Economy, 13(5), 531–547. Feinig, J. (2022). Moral Economies of Money: Politics and the Monetary Constitution of Society. Stanford University Press. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Pantheon Books. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. Graham, L. J. (2005) Discourse Analysis and the Critical Use of Foucault. In The Australian Association of Research in Education Annual Conference. Lange, M. (2013). Comparative-Historical Methods. SAGE. Lemke, T. (2001). ‘The birth of bio-politics’: Michel Foucault's lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society, 30(2), 190-207. Volcker, P. A. (1979). “Statement Before the Joint Economic Committee.” https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/451/item/8205. Volcker, P. A. (1990). The Role of Central Banks. In Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Central Banking Issues in Emerging Market Economies: A Symposium Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (pp. 1-8). Walsh, C. (2018). Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation, and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869-1973. UNC Press Books.

On March 18th, 2008, Barack Obama delivered a speech where he stated, “I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” It is in this moment, a moment preceded and succeeded by an American story historically written in panic and fear, when we were finally allowed to believe in a future with the possibility of transcending our divisions. If what is truly exceptional about America is we were the first country built around a constitutional democracy, then we must also acknowledge this very document was written on the core idea that not all men were created equal. We have become a country in which our very foundation has been laid on the backs of slaves. And it is in this reality where I propose the very struggle between segregation and violence is a result of our own moral illiteracy. The paradigm of our morality is that of a country which has been built off a war we have—and continue—to fight amongst ourselves. The American story is one of the segregations of the mind and soul, a country where our greatest fight—the Civil War—has never ended. It is in this reality, a philosophical reckoning with an unending Civil War where we must understand the history of America is one that “has paid the price of the ticket.” The price has become the reproduction of our own indifference and ignorance, from which racism has been able to become a cancerous tumor infecting the very soul of contemporary civilization. Here lies the paradox—what comes next? The answer is a vocabulary and commitment to a social contract built around radical nonviolence. Radical nonviolence is represented in the tradition of the Civil Rights movement, the Obama presidency, and the moral universe of voting. Through the building of coalitions, we see the enigma known as America— “an ignorance that is not only colossal but sacred.” The premise of our artificial indifferences—racism—has become endemic in the institutions and ideals of America and is the lie that allows our deep seeded willful ignorance to fester. Our future rests not in the faith that “the moral arc of our universe bends towards justice,” but through the premise of hope. The political virtue which holds the potential to bring humanity closer to a promised land. Hope is the radical nonviolence needed for moral passion to transcend political divides. In which, the common purpose we must pursue to make the American democratic experiment successful. The question of this research is intended to come to terms with the soul of the American democratic experiment. We have become a country that refuses to acknowledge our past indiscretions. To be an American in our modern society is to embrace collective amnesia about our country’s ugliest truths: slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil War, redlining districts, the war on drugs, and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is easier to praise ourselves as being the greatest country in the world, than to reckon with the same repeated mistakes. The work I have titled "The Obama Presidency and What Comes Next," will excavate the true meaning of American exceptionalism and lead the fight against historical amnesia. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2020. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem. Penguin, 2006. Baldwin, James. The fire next time. England: Penguin Books, 2017. Baldwin, James. Nothing personal. Boston: Beacon Press, 2021. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me: Notes on the First 150 Years in America. Spiegel & Grau, 2015. COATES, TA-NEHISI. We were eight years in power: An American tragedy. PENGUIN Books, 2019. B., Du Bois W E, Gates Henry Louis Jr, and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Dusk of dawn (the oxford W. E. B. Du Bois). New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. B., Du Bois William E. The souls of Black Folks. New York: Pocket Books, 2005. Eig, Jonathan. King: A life. London ; New York ; Sydney ; Toronto ; New Delhi: Simon et Schuster, 2023. “Foucault, Power and Governmentality.” Governmentality, 2012, pp. 19–53., https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203116937-6. Godrej, Farah. Freedom inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State. Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2022. Kendi, Ibram X. How to be an antiracist. New York: One World, 2023. Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, 2023. King, Martin Luther, Coretta Scott King, and Vincent Harding. Where do we go from here: Chaos or community? Boston: Beacon Press, 2010. Kumar, Aishwary. Is There Free Will, (lecture, California Polytechnic State University), Pomona, CA, Spring 2023. Sered, Danielle. Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair. The New Press, 2021. Simon, David. Whole. The Wire. HBO, June 2, 2002. Walicki, Andrzej. “Karl Marx as Philosopher of Freedom.” Critical Review, vol. 2, no. 4, 1988, pp. 10–58., https://doi.org/10.1080/08913818808459537. Williams, Michael Vinson. Medgar Evers: Mississippi martyr. Univ Of Arkansas Press, 2013. X., Malcolm, and Benjamin Karim. The end of white world supremacy: Four speeches. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2020. Kumar, Aishwary. American Institutions and Ideals, (lecture, California Polytechnic State University), Pomona, CA, Spring 2023. “Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.” Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention | The American Presidency Project, July 27, 2004. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/keynote-address-the-2004-democratic-national-convention. Obama, Barack. A promised land. United States: Random House, 2021. Announcement of presidential candidacy - american rhetoric. Accessed October 19, 2023. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobamacandidacyforpresident.htm. “Transcript: Barack Obama’s Acceptance Speech.” NPR, August 29, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94087570. “Transcript of Barack Obama’s Victory Speech.” NPR, November 5, 2008. https://www.npr.org/2008/11/05/96624326/transcript-of-barack-obamas-victory-speech. “Transcript: Barack Obama’s Speech on Race.” NPR, March 18, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88478467.

1. Research Question As a racial stereotype that dominates Western understandings of Asian Americans, the model minority myth portrays Asian American students as a submissive and hard-working group concentrated in the STEM field. The stereotype overgeneralizes individual experiences of choosing a college major and the diversity of experience among Asian Americans.1 Even though existing literature on this topic suggests two theories of deciding on a major for Asian American students: the individualistic student choice theory and parental influence theory, the literature overlooks the interplay between these factors. In addition, this literature reinforces the idea that Asians are submissive and lacking in agency and ignores the impact of gender in their analysis. Amidst the wave of anti-Asian hate that has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, education has been identified as a starting point for improving representation and agency for Asian females. It is important to consider why Asian students disproportionately participate in the STEM field when they are regarded as “model minorities.” This study emphasizes the gender aspect by drawing out participants’ understandings of their lives and the meanings of their major choice(s) for future career consideration. Given the stereotypes about the Asian and female Asian community, this study seeks to answer the following research questions: How do female Asian American college students choose their majors? How do they respond to racial and gender stereotypes when making these choices? This research aims to explore the variety of experiences of female Asian American students when they choose a major in college. Using data from fourteen in-depth interviews with Asian American female college students aged 18 to 21, this study explores personal motivation, family expectations, and institutional influences as Asian American female students negotiate and balance multiple factors that influence their major choice(s). While the existing literature mostly talks about conformity to the model minority myth, this study explains how students develop their unique strategies to take their agency when deciding on their college major(s), but there should also be more institutional resources to overcome this interconnected issue between race and gender. Thus, this research extends the scope of the existing literature to explore students’ agency while also examining the importance of institutional support. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Institutional Influences of the Model Minority Myth As a stereotype that has long dominated the racial framing and perceptions of Asian Americans, the model minority myth portrays the Asian American community as a high-achieving, hard-working, and homogenous group, rendering their individuality and diversity of experience invisible. In The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, Chou and Feagin (2016) explore this racial stigma. Drawing upon interview data, the authors summarize two different approaches Asian Americans take in response to the model minority myth: conformity and acts of resistance. To conform to the expectation of the model minority myth, some Asian Americans adopt strategies of assimilation, including rejecting their Asian identity to gain acceptance from white people. A contrasting approach is to resist such white-dominated racial frames through methods such as confrontation, construction of a counter-frame, self-definition, or self-valuation. Direct confrontational actions refer to overt resistance, either verbally or physically, to challenge discrimination, whereas students could also employ internal methods to construct positive self-valuation to maintain their dignity. These strategies may help Asian Americans bring about tangible social and political changes for themselves and others. However, the authors point out that such resistance has not yet created a powerful and collective counter-framing to the white racial frame of the model minority myth in most Asian American communities. The authors further reveal that the model minority myth is fundamentally linked to oppressive and damaging racialized viewpoints for not only Asian Americans but also other racial minorities. Beyond the fact that the model minority myth—even with the privilege it supposedly entails—imposes unrealistic expectations on Asian Americans, it is also employed to criticize other people of color who do not reach the same “model” standard, creating a boundary between Asian and non-Asian people of color. 2.2 Individual & Family Influences After exploring the institutional aspect, Robert Lowinger and Hyun-A Song (2017) examine two perspectives involving students’ major choice by using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002: the “parental influence theory” and the “individualistic student choice theory.” The authors argue that the personal motivations and interests of Asian American students are the primary driving forces behind their major selection. Lowinger and Song further state that Asian American students who are highly dependent on their parents tend to be more submissive and therefore are more likely to choose a major that meets the expectations of their parents. As such, the choice of major is more a family decision than an individual choice. They argue that in deciding on a major, instead of prioritizing the interests of their children, Asian American parents place more value upon professional degrees and prestigious careers of higher socioeconomic status, such as medicine and engineering, rather than arts or humanities degrees with a perceived lower social currency. 2.3 Intersectionality as a Theoretical Framework Kimberlé Crenshaw (2014) proposes the concept of “intersectionality”, the idea that race, gender, and socioeconomic class are interconnected rather than separated, thus creating multiple levels of social injustice for women of color. Under this framework of intersectionality, women experience overlapping underrepresentation and discrimination in different ways based on their identities. Intersectionality paves the way to deconstruct power inequalities because it is a way of “understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences.”Given these interplaying factors, Li further proposes a double-edged stereotype for female Asian American students struggling to manage negative stereotypes about females in STEM in relation to stereotypes of Asians being more naturally inclined to STEM. The existing sociological literature explores top-down influences from family or society on students but ignores their agency and the role of their gender. To address the hitherto neglected gender aspect, this section explores three interconnected factors at the individual, family, and institutional levels to review the circumstances and challenges that Asian American females face when choosing their major(s). 3. Methodology Interviewee recruitment took place from February 25, 2022, to April 10, 2023, at the University of California, Berkeley. I employed purposive sampling to target Asian American female college students and then posted a recruitment poster both online and on campus. As each university has different major requirements, I decided to choose the sampling frame only based on UC Berkeley to control for variables that might affect students’ major choice(s). The result of the recruitment process was a sample size of fourteen participants, including 11 females and 3 males, ranging from 18 to 21 years old. I incorporated Asian American male students to understand a broader picture of Asian American college students. To understand human behavior, it is crucial to incorporate social context and interactions. Since the model minority myth reflects racial relations between Asians and others, this racial structure is socially constructed rather than defined by biological differences in skin color. From this epistemological standpoint, I chose a qualitative methodology of in-depth interviews to explore people’s individual experiences and subjective perceptions of reality. During these face-to-face interviews, I gathered social cues such as their facial expressions and body language as a basis for analyzing the data. I also tried to emulate the feeling of a conversation in these interviews to ensure that all participants felt comfortable volunteering information. As a female Asian college student myself, my own identity and ethnicity made it more comfortable for interviewees to share their experiences. To transcribe the eight interviews, I drew upon Mergenthaler and Stinson’s (1992) principles for developing transcription rules: preserving the “morphologic naturalness of transcription,” or the exact reproduction of the interview. I used Zoom transcripts and then reviewed the original audio recordings for accuracy. To handle confidential and sensitive information, I anonymized the transcripts of the interviews to protect interviewees’ identities. I am aware of my ethical and professional obligations as a social science researcher to protect the information privacy of my participants. This research is approved by the Office for the Protection of Human Subjects (OPHS) at UC Berkeley and I completed the online Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) training. 4. Contribution of this Research Although existing stereotypes and frameworks surrounding Asian American students’ major choices tend to reduce their decisions to one-dimensional factors such as personal interest, family influence, and the impact of the model minority myth, this research has found that Asian American female students are able to balance different expectations and assert their agency in the process of deciding on a major. This study offers a critical race and gender analysis of Asian American female college students. Especially given the rise of stereotypes and hate crimes against the Asian American community, this study underscores that people should recognize the diverse experiences of Asian-American women rather than overgeneralize them. Meanwhile, it reveals that social or institutional expectations imposed upon a group can influence individuals’ behavior. Going forward, further research should be conducted on racial minority groups to explore the connections between a person, their family, and race relations in society. The patterns of exclusion that Asian Americans face also apply to many other communities of color, immigrant communities, and low-income communities. To improve the educational outcomes of Asian American female college students and other students of color, it is critical to understand the factors that influence their experience and implement more inclusive public policies in higher education. This includes promoting more institutional mentoring programs to allow college students to explore their racial, gender, and other potential identities such as sexual orientation. This discussion will enable us to incorporate more inclusion and racial justice into the public sphere. Bibliography Bergen N, Labonté R. “Everything Is Perfect, and We Have No Problems”: Detecting and Limiting Social Desirability Bias in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Health Research. 2020;30(5):783-792. doi:10.1177/1049732319889354 Castro, Athena R., and Christopher S. Collins. “Asian American Women in STEM in the Lab with ‘White Men Named John.’” Science Education 105, no. 1 (2020): 33–61. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21598. Chou, Rosalind S., and Joe R. Feagin. The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, 67-214. Paradigm Publishers, 2016. Collins, Hill Patricia. Introduction. In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory, 2. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. On Intersectionality: Selected Writings. The New Press, 2022. Esterberg, Kristin. Qualitative Methods in Social Research. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 13-16. University of Chicago Press, 2003. Li, Guofang, and Gulbahar H. Beckett. 2006. “Strangers” of the Academy: Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education, 50-55. Stylus Publishing. Lowinger, Robert, and Hyun-a Song. “Factors Associated with Asian American Students’ Choice of STEM Major.” Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice 54, no. 4 (2017): 415–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/19496591.2017.1345754. Mergenthaler, Erhard, and Charles Stinson. “Psychotherapy Transcription Standards.” Psychotherapy Research 2, no. 2 (1992): 129–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503309212331332904. Asian American Research Journal, Volume 3 2023 How Do You Decide Your Major(s)?: A Study of Asian American Female College Students’ Major Choice(s) Mills, Albert J., et al. “Coding: Open Coding.” Edited by Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2010, 156-57. SAGE Research Methods. doi: dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412957397.n55 Salaana, Johnny M. “An Introduction to Codes and Coding.” Essay. In The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers, 1–21. Sage, 2012.

Vice Ganda and Jake Zyrus, two famous queer celebrities in the Philippines, express their gender identity differently. Ganda presents as feminine whereas Zyrus presents as masculine. Therefore, by quantifying positive and negative tonal representations, this work explores the contrast between how feminine presenting genderfluid/non-binary people and trans-masculine people are represented in two major media outlets in the Philippines–the Rappler and Philippine Star. Within the context of gender presentation and gender studies, current analyses of queer and trans-Pinoys' experiences already examine how transgender people are represented in Philippine media. However, the current literature fails to adequately capture the representation of gender presentation from a quantitative methodological approach. Ganda represents bakla; baklas, as defined by Manalansan (2003), are feminine queer men (25). Baklas often see being bakla as a way of “coming out” without having to label it formally and playing with the binary. Zyrus represents tomboy identity; tomboys are a category reserved for masculinity, whether related to womanhood or not and is an identity in and of itself (Fajardo 2008: 405), similar to bakla. By understanding the cultural significance of being a tomboy and a bakla, there is context for how media representation might be affected due to this history. Furthermore, when discussing Pinoy celebrities in the Philippines, positive and negative tones have yet to be explored in depth. I conducted a content analysis of 73 articles over three critical years, in news sources the Philippine Star and the Rappler. My population and sample are articles that discuss Jake Zyrus, Charice Pempengco (Zyrus’ deadname), and Vice Ganda from 2013, 2017, and 2022. A deadname is a name that one used before transitioning but now is no longer used. Using content analysis, I quantitatively determined positive and negative messaging towards these two limelight figures, focusing on their coming-out and post-coming-out experiences as well as their celebrity reception. I discovered that Jake Zyrus’s controversies focus on gender and family, whereas Vice Ganda’s controversies revolve around typical celebrity drama. The content analysis reveals that both Ganda and Zyrus receive negative coverage regarding their sexualities; however, Zyrus received increasingly negative coverage over time, which corresponds with their presenting as more masculine. Overall, this study highlights the role media plays in framing the gender presentations of these two celebrities. Although not generalizable beyond this historical, political, and social context and timeframe, it does underscore the importance of paying attention to quantitative measurements of gender representation in popular media more broadly. Abad, Ysa. 2022. “Vice Ganda and Ion Perez ‘tie the Knot’ in Las Vegas.” RAPPLER, Rappler, 14 Feb. 2022, www.rappler.com/entertainment/celebrities/vice- ganda-ion-perez-married-las-vegas/. ABS-CBN News. 2017. “Look: Jake Zyrus Joins ‘little Big Star’ Mini-Reunion.” ABS. https://news.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/12/06/17/look-jake-zyrus-joins-little-big-star-mi ni-reunion. Adams, Jeffery, Eric J. Manalastas, Rommel Coquilla, Jed Montayre, and Stephen Neville. 2022. "Exploring Understandings of Sexuality Among “Gay” Migrant Filipinos Living in New Zealand." SAGE Open 12(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440221097391. Adel, Rosette. 2017. “Twitter: Vice is most followed Filipino, Maine most tweeted.” Philstar.com. Philstar.com. https://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2017/12/05/1765568 /twitter-vice-most-followed-filipino-maine-most-tweeted. Agting, Ira. 2014. “Charice Pempengco Sings for US Animated Film.” RAPPLER. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/49642-charice-pempengco-sings-us-animated-film. Barker-Plummer, Bernadette. 2013. "Fixing Gwen." Feminist Media Studies 13(4):710-724. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2012.679289. Benedicto, Bobby. 2008. The specter of Kabaklaan. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 14(2–3), 317–338. doi:10.5749/minnesota/9780816691074.003.0004. Casauay, Angela. 2013. “Rape Is No Joke, Gabriela Warns Vice Ganda.” RAPPLER, Rappler. www.rappler.com/nation/30206-gabriela-vice-ganda-rape/. Diaz, R. 2015. “The Limits of Bakla and Gay: Feminist Readings of My Husband’s Lover, Vice Ganda, and Charice Pempengco.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 40(3), 721–745. doi:10.1086/679526 Dumaual, Miguel. 2021. “He or She? Either, Vice Ganda Says, in Viral Explanation of Gender Identity.” ABS-CBN. ABS-CBN Corporation. https://news.abs-cbn.com/entertainment /07/02/21/he-or-she-either-vice-ganda-says-in-viral-explanation-of-gender-identity. Libretexts. 2021, February 20. 7.3A: Sociological Theories of Deviance. Social Sci LibreTexts. Libretexts https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Introduction_to_ Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/07%3A_Deviance_Social_Control_and_Crime/7.03%3A_Theories_of_Crime_and_Deviance/7.3A%3A_Sociological_Theories_of_Deviance#:~:text=Th e%20st udy%20of%20social%20deviance,social%20pressures%20to%20explain%20deviance. Fajardo, B. Kale. 2008. “TRANSPORTATION: Translating Filipino and Filipino American Tomboy Masculinities through Global Migration and Seafaring.” 14 (2-3): 403–424. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2007-039 Licsi, Ayie. 2022, June 2. “Vice Ganda Isn’t Offended When Called “Sir” or Ma’am’ but Reminds Others to Ask For Preferred Pronouns.” Philstar Life. Philstar.com. https://philstarlife.com/celebrity/616287-vice-ganda-on-preferred-pronouns-honorifics. Lo, Ricky. 2013, June 3. Charice: Yes, I’m Gay. Philstar.com. Philstar.com. https://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2013/06/03/949504/charice-yes-im-gay. Lo, R. 2017a, September 8. “Friends turned foes: Coco, vice on warpath?” Philstar.com. Philstar.com. https://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2017/07/06/1717047/ friends-turned-foes-coco-vice-warpath Lo, R. 2017b, December 10. Why Charice & Jake Have One Star Each on Walk of Fame. Philstar.com. Philstar.com. https://www.philstar.com/entertainmen t/2017/12/10/1767153/why-charice-jake-have-one-star-each-walk-fame Manalansan IV, Martin F. Global divas: Filipino gay men in the diaspora. Duke University Press, 2003. Nardo, Jun. 2017. “Jake Zyrus Bumuwelta, Ipinagmalaki Ang Pangit Na Mukha at Katawan.” Philstar.Com, Philstar.com. www.philstar.com/pang-masa/pang-movies/ 2017/11/02/1755127/jake-zyrus-bumuwelta-ipinagmalaki-ang-pangit-na-mukha-katawan. Pe-Pua, Rogelia, and Elizabeth A. Protacio-Marcelino. 2000. "Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology): A Legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez." 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The American Historical Review, Volume 110, Issue 5, Page 1509, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.110.5.1509 Solis, Lolit. 2017. “Matinding Problema Ni Charice at Ng Nanay, Datung Ang Pinagmulan.” Philstar.Com, Philstar.com.www.philstar.com/pang-masa/pang- movies/2017/08/28/1733755/matinding-problema-ni-charice-ng-nanay-datung-ang-pina mulan. Villano, Alexa. 2017. “Charice Changes Came to Jake Zyrus.” RAPPLER. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/173408-charice-changes-name-jake-zyrus.

Purpose & Significance In early 2000, the emergence of social media was a revolution, leading the world to endless transformation. Starting from playing a central role in shaping political debates and driving political changes in the Arab Spring (O’Donnell, 2011) to becoming a platform that “allowed the free speech that was not allowed by the government” (Bhuiyan, 2011, p.17). Fast forward to 2020, many studies suggested otherwise. Rather than encouraging democracy, research found that the growing demand for social media links to the overall decline in democracy (Lorenz-Spreen, Oswald, Lewandowsky & Hertwig, 2022). There is substantial concern over manipulation and mounting online disinformation that links to the decline of democracy (Sinpeng & Tapsell, 2021, p.4). The goal of this study is not to answer the question of whether or not social media is an appropriate tool to encourage democracy, but rather to assess the ‘health of democracy’ through people’s attitudes and opinions on social media. Thailand has been home to more military coup d’états in modern history than any other country. It is impossible to describe Thailand’s history and situation without leaving behind the military coup d’états narrative. However, unlike other countries’ military coups, Thai military coup d’états tend to be seen as temporal and non-violent. Due to these natures, the coups are rather seen as “an acceptable way to solve a political crisis” and “a public calling for the military to step in” (Chitty, 2019). Thus, what’s known as the ‘coup culture’ persists. However, the rise of the newly born progressive Future Forward party, now publicly known as the Move Forward Party, in 2018 shook the normalization of the ‘coup culture’ in Thailand. Thai people, especially the younger generation, have become more and more intolerant of the military overshadows Thai politics. The result of the Thai 2023 general election amplifies this message. In the past, Thai politics was presented as boring and uninteresting. The House representatives and Senators tend to agree with the military government to maintain power and respect in their careers. This is a way for the military government to keep civilians out of political affairs. However, the flame was sparked when the military opted out the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who won a landslide popular vote from the people in 2006 (​​Mérieau, 2019), the former Prime Minister Yinglak Shinawatra in 2014 (​​Mérieau, 2019), and recently disregarded the people’s Prime Minister despite winning the popular vote in the 2023 Thai general election by the majority Thais (2023). With the growing criticism towards the military government and its network, the monarchy, the study has seen more incarceration and censorship activities from the government. Since there were 61.21 million internet users in Thailand in January 2023 (Kemp, 2023), it is worth observing the ‘sensitive’ matter in the space where people feel more at ease to express themselves. To understand the relationship between social media and democracy well-being in Thailand after the 2023 election, it is essential to consider the impact of social media on political participation and democratic processes. Social media has been shown to influence political engagement and democratic outcomes in various contexts. For instance, research has demonstrated that social media can shape individual decisions about participating in protests and influence the logistics and success of political movements (Tüfekçi & Wilson, 2012). Furthermore, the role of social media in political campaigns and elections has been a subject of study, with research indicating that social media can impact voter turnout and political engagement (Opeibi, 2019; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Meanwhile, many studies also suggest that the growing demand for social media links to the overall decline in democracy (Lorenz-Spreen, Oswald, Lewandowsky & Hertwig, 2022). While there is a significant amount of research on Thai politics and democracy, only a few focus on analyzing democracy's well-being through social media. Therefore, this study aims to answer the question: What does social media reveal about the health of democracy in Thailand after the 2023 Thai general election? In answering the question, the study aims to use the content analysis method to analyze selected posts from X. The ‘health of democracy’ will be measured by six relevant elements that comprise a healthy democracy: energized civic participation, vibrant news and media, independent civil society, effective governing institutions, free and fair elections, and impartial rule of law and equal civil rights. ------------------------------------------------------- Participant Population & Sample The research’s population concerns “posts” from X, a social media previously known as Twitter, that are written in Thai and use at least one of the two hashtags—#เลือกตั้ง66 (#Election23) and #นายกคนที่30 (#The30thPrimeMinister)—between May 15 to May 31 of 2023. Despite various numbers of hashtags created during and after the 2023 Thai general election, the study only focuses on the two hashtags mentioned previously to remain as neutral as possible. The theme of the two selected hashtags is more likely to support users’ personal views upon the election and their preferred candidates. Among the research’s population, a total of 60 posts will be randomly selected for the content analysis. However, when selecting samples from the population pool, there are two significant biases that could potentially affect the result of the study. First, the algorithm bias must be considered. The X algorithm is a complex system that determines the ranking of posts visible to each user based on factors such as personal interest, location, recency, and virality (Singh, 2023). Thus, the study will create an entirely new account that has no tie to any political interest to prevent algorithm bias. Second, to minimize and mitigate the researcher’s personal biases when selecting samples, the study employs a systematic random sampling procedure. For each hashtag, the study will select every third post under the ‘Top’ section on X between May 15 and May 31. The process is repeated until there are only 60 posts left at the end. In other words, each hashtag randomly selects 30 posts. Irrelevant data such as advertisement posts or posts in English will be excluded at the beginning of the data-collecting process. ------------------------------------------------------- Potential for Harm Many scholars in the field suggest that to understand Thai politics, one must look at it through the political network. It is evident that the military government has worked intimately with the monarchy to develop a respectable heroic image (Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p.3). In a way, publicly criticizing the military or the monarchy is the quickest way to tell others that one stands against the ‘heroes.’ Nevertheless, with the decline in popularity of the monarchy and military as well as the growing demand for democracy, criticizing the two powerful institutions has become more common among Thai people, especially among the younger generation. Despite the transformation of social norms, legislation remains intact. According to Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, a Thai lèse-majesté law states that defaming, insulting, or threatening the monarch of Thailand is illegal and subject to incarceration. Therefore, the selected posts might be at risk of getting tracked down by police if their comments touch upon the criticism of the monarchy. However, the risk is comparatively small given that these are publicly available posts that have already been published for at least three months with no consequence. The study’s procedure to minimize risk will be further elaborated in sections ‘Anonymity & Confidentiality’ and ‘Data Storage, Protection and Destruction.’ ------------------------------------------------------- Anonymity & Confidentiality Although posts selected for this study are from public accounts and the users are expected to know their own risk when posting ‘sensitive’ matters online, the study still aims to minimize the users’ risk of getting tracked down by the police. To ensure the users’ anonymity and confidentiality, the study will employ a data collecting system to disassociate account usernames from the posts’ content as well as to avoid quoting direct quotes in Thai. This study will examine a total of 60 posts from the two selected hashtags. The data will be collected on two consecutive days, with each hashtag being examined for one whole day. The two Excel sheets will be created and saved in different places. The first sheet combines a list of the usernames of posts being selected to analyze, as well as their coded number. While this method minimizes the users’ risk by disassociating the direct link between the posts’ content and the usernames, it also allows researchers to track back the actual posts when needed. The second Excel sheet only collects general information such as the English translation of the posts, published date, and numbers of likes, reposts, comments, and traffic for the post. In this Excel sheet, the coded numbers substitute usernames, making no direct link between the posts’ content and the usernames. Meanwhile, the study’s decision not to display the posts in the original language also complicates the tracking down system on the authority’s end. In other words, in the final paper, all selected posts will be translated into English. ------------------------------------------------------- Data Storage, Protection and Destruction As mentioned in the ‘Anonymity & Confidentiality’ section, the data goes through a disassociation process and will be stored in a password-protected folder on a computer that only the researcher has access to. After the final analysis, the study will keep the data for the next six months at most, just in case there is a need to reinvestigate the data or an opportunity to expand the research. After six months, the first Excel sheet will be permanently deleted, while the second sheet will be privately kept for future research opportunities. The second sheet presents little to no risk to the users since the data has already been disassociated from the actual usernames as well as the original language.

This study documents the diverse experiences of Chinese parachute kids and explores the question of belongingness. Where do they feel they belong? What determined their sense of belongingness? And what does this belongingness mean to them? Chinese parachute kids are unaccompanied minors who study in the United States while their parents remain in China. Recent scholarships focusing on parachute kids' adaptation mainly centers around family relationships, academic outcomes, and psychological well-being (Xie, 2011; Zhou and Lee, 2004; Greenman, 2011; Portes, 2005; Haller, 2011; Stodolska, 2008), and it lacks contextual analysis of individual subjective experiences. Furthermore, most studies of Chinese parachute kids blend into the category of international students and 1.5- or second-generation Asian immigrants. The current scholarship on immigrant adaptation has ignored the large and growing population of people on the move. However, I argue that parachute kids represent a distinct group among transnational and global subjects in the new economy. Segmented assimilation helps us learn about the adaptation of the youth in the U.S., but one of its shortcomings is that it doesn’t count the mobile people who are still embedded in U.S. life such as the international students, the children of contract workers, and global businessmen and women. Understanding the experience of Chinese parachute kids is significant as it captures a unique immigrant group that is “mobile,” and it shows a micro picture of many contemporary macro phenomena, such as globalization and transnationalism. As parents are physically absent in the U.S., parachute kids experience what Coleman (1998) called "structural deficiency." As a result, Chinese parachute kids must establish social capital independently, as no social capital is available outside of school. The social and cultural capital framework suggests the structural changes in the life of parachute kids as they came to the U.S. Most of all, parachute children must navigate the universal “labor of growing up” with the absence of their parents, community, and social networks. Thus, a study of parachute children can also shed important light on life course development generally. Centering on belonging, this research utilized a qualitative method with open-ended semi-structured interviews to explore personal narratives while including a spectrum of experiences of the Chinese parachute kids. A total of nineteen interviews of former Chinese parachute kids were conducted over the course of one semester. All participants in this study were recruited through my personal social network, given my own experience of being a parachute child earlier in my life. This study has no field observations as the project focuses on the participants' past experiences and personal interpretations instead of behavioral and relationship patterns. As the primary investigator, I have known all participants for many years. I propose a typology of three orientations and argue that Chinese parachute kids’ orientation determines their sense of belonging and their approaches to embeddedness (integration, acquisition, hybridization) in the American educational system. The three orientations are the heritage, the instrumental, and the global. These show that the parachute kids' frame of reference is influenced by many factors such as expectations, past and present experiences, value propositions, family backgrounds, and available resources. This typology also shows that parachute kids are a diverse group where members within the group look at the world differently. Similarly, as Chinese parachute kids try to embed into the American education system, they often feel complex, ambiguous, and contradictory emotions. Ultimately, this study challenges the assimilationist framework and suggests that Chinese parachute kids are a “mobile” group that achieve their belonging in the U.S. through multiple pathways. References: Coleman, J.S. 1998. “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology, 94:95-120. Greenman, Emily. “Assimilation Choices among Immigrant Families: Does School Context Matter?” International Migration Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 2011, pp. 29–67. Haller, William, et al. “Dreams Fulfilled, Dreams Shattered: Determinants of Segmented Assimilation in the Second Generation.” Social Forces, vol. 89, no. 3, 2011, pp. 733–762. Portes, Alejandro, et al. “Segmented Assimilation on the Ground: The New Second Generation in Early Adulthood.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 28, no. 6, 2005, pp. 1000–1040 Stodolska, Monika. “Adaptation Problems among Adolescent Immigrants from Korea, Mexico and Poland.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, pp. 197–229 Xie, Yu, and Emily Greenman. “The Social Context of Assimilation: Testing Implications of Segmented Assimilation Theory.” Social Science Research, vol. 40, no. 3, 2011, pp. 965–984. Zhou, Min and Jennifer Lee (2004). The Making of Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity among Asian Zmerican Youth. In Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity, pp. 1–33. New York: Routledge.

This study examines how the sexual self connects to sexual behaviors. Sexual self refers to how you view yourself in a sexual manner. It is often used to predict a person's sexually deviant behavior, unwanted pregnancies, and STDs in teens. Similarly, sexual behaviors studies examine implications of deviant behaviors or first-time experiences. Even when these concepts are studied together, the scope tends to be too specific (as in only looking at one aspect of self) or too broad (as in viewing behaviors as a whole). The current research attempts to bridge this gap in both areas. In particular, what specific acts can be explained by the sexual self, and at what level? For this, the study will be based on two articles that can combine well to accomplish this goal: Deutsch's model of sexual self and Noorishad's study of sexual fantasies. Deutsch's model of sexual self has been modified and tested to work for both men and women in its application. Most importantly, it is a model that can be clustered into personality types. It takes the five original factors found in Buzwell and Rosenthal’s widely cited paper and updates the model to be clustered into five personality types. Studies of sexual self tend to look at one factor or multiple factors but do not attempt to model any person-centered result. While other models can be applied to other topics, they cannot be implemented in a way that the general public could easily comprehend. Deutsch is most acceptable to apply this way, so it is the version used. The specific factors used by Deutsch are also prevalent among other studies, so it is not an entirely new model without any backing. Accompanying this study is Noorishad's study on sexual behavior. Noorishad takes the influential sexual fantasy questionnaire, updates the questions, and applies it to fantasy, interest, and experience—most studies involving behavior tend to focus on the factor of the act instead of the act itself. A study focused on fantasy rather than behaviors gave the current research the correct perimeter to accomplish its goal. Noorishad's study is unique because the questions were designed to be inclusive and non-criminal for the current era (as the original study was created in the 80s). Since the current study combines the questionnaire from both the Deutsch and Noorishad studies (with permission), the secondary goal of this study is to replicate the findings. To this end, the current study is an online anonymous survey. It is distributed through flyers and social media advertisements. While the research is ongoing, the goal is to reach 100 participants before cluster analysis. First, to see if the previous research can be replicated, the two portions of the current study will be analyzed separately to replicated the findings of the original studies. While the goal is to have similar findings, they cannot be exact due to the difference in participant demographics and numbers and they should have similar enough results to remain significant. The second goal is to combine the results to find any significant correlation. Due to many outside factors that could not be adjusted, causation will be challenging to prove, but there is a strong case for correlation. The factors can be clustered into five personalities: naïve, unassured, competent, driven, and adventurous (Deutsch et al., 2014). The indexes of the sexual fantasy questionnaire will be clustered into four ranks based on prevalence: typical, common, uncommon, and rare (Noorishad et al., 2019). The primary goal of the current reach is to combine these two categories. For example, what common behaviors does a naïve person participate? Are the rare behaviors only found in an adventurous person? Are common behaviors so common that they can be found across all categories of people? Questions such as these are what the current research is trying to answer. By combining the questionnaires, the details of sexual behaviors and the broadness of sexual self can be answered. For instance, defining what sex is to the general population can better differentiate the more unusual behavior often found in other studies, particularly around the sexual self. Similarly, a broad but easy-to-understand definition of sexual self makes it much easier to understand its implications in sex and as a predictor for sexual behavior. If research only focuses on the outliers, it loses sight of what is common. Notably, it loses sight of where the line is at any given point in society. Whether or not the current study can answer the thesis or adequately contribute to it remains to be seen as it is still collecting data. References Buzwell, & Rosenthal, D. (1996). Constructing a sexual self: Adolescents' sexual self-perceptions and sexual risk-taking. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 6(4), 489–513. Deutsch, Hoffman, L., & Wilcox, B. L. (2014). Sexual Self-Concept: Testing a Hypothetical Model for Men and Women. The Journal of Sex Research, 51(8), 932–945. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2013.805315 Noorishad, Levaque, E., Byers, E. S., & Shaughnessy, K. (2019). More than one flavour: University students" specific sexual fantasies, interests, and experiences. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 28(2), 143–158. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjhs.2019-0024 Wilson. (2010). Measurement of Sex Fantasy. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 25(1), 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681990903550134

"The Great Decline in Higher Education" Introduction Puzzle We have seen a decline in the quality of higher education, where our education system has turned into a private industry– nothing more than a money making machine. Instead of having the primary goal of educating our youth in order to make them more prepared for a “real world” job, or being well functioning world citizens, we have turned it into a form of elitism that brings nothing to the table other than financial insecurities and a piece of paper with no guarantee for what our future will become. Our education system has turned into something focused on profit, rather than the people that are produced from it. At the same time, we are also then seeing an increase in women's participation in education. A newer desire of working women is taking the world by storm, causing women to now officially outnumber men attending college. Along with more women taking charge of their education, we are getting a spike in “feminists” preaching the life of a successful working woman. This concept, also known as neoliberal feminism, seems to be abrading the quality of higher education. Theoretical Research Question X = neoliberal feminism Y = eroding quality of higher education How is neoliberal feminism eroding the quality of higher education? Th Y: Low Quality Higher Education How is our Higher Education eroding? Privatisation The root of our problem with education in the United States, as claimed by Newfield in his analysis of the United States college system, is that “it [college] has been broken by too much private funding and service to private interests” (2016, pg. 13). Privatisation started increasing around the 1980’s, and higher education was not safe from this. The privatisation of education further created a cascading effect of terrible consequences that college students, and their families, must endure. Through privatisation, “...higher education's value is derived from how much it can be traded or exchanged within what are essentially transactional relationships between individuals and institutions.” (Tomlinson, 2018, pg. 713). College, or higher education, is now being viewed as a transaction rather than a place to learn or a place to grow as individuals. With this concept of university being a transaction, consequences will soon follow. Consequences of Privatisation Economic Pressure The first step in making students consumers is by having them focusing on money, not the education they are provided. For starters, this privatisation of our education is leading to massive financial burden that nobody knows how to deal with entirely. The drastic increase in tuition makes parents of the students rely on student loans, consequently making them in debt in order to put their child through college. The most common resort is to take out the maximum student loans available as well as “plus loans”, which is a loan provided by the university that can only be accessed by parents, due to their need for a more reliable re-payer. On top of extra loans being taken out under the parents’ names, extensive budgeting is needed to make ends meet, and there is of course the ultimate issue of determining what is the better financial investment for your family (Newfield, 2016, pg. 17). Is it better to not have your child attend college to avoid this crippling debt that will haunt you for years, or is it better to have your child [supposedly] struggle to find a job but without that financial burden of debt? Neither of these options are actually solutions, these are just the limited responses one can have when having the education system attacked by the neoliberal agenda [aka causing privatisation]. Transforming higher education into more of an overt public institution and public good would be a much better solution, but we are fearful of this, and the big man doesn't want this. Turning the education system into a private industry makes it a money-making machine that views all that enter it as “consumers” with incredibly little regard for the people in the system. At the end of the day, the goal for these private companies is one thing: profit. This economic pressure is becoming a massive challenge to not only the family, but to the students also. It is interfering with their goals and desires, causing them to only focus on what is financially beneficial in the long run. Each student should be able to learn who they are, what they're passionate about and their life's calling, but now “...this economic pressure is a driving force, and one partial response is to develop special abilities that will help keep her from being turned into an interchangeable part.” (Newfield, 2016, pg. 15) What was once a place of exploration and knowledge has now become a home of debt doom. This pressure of debt is causing students to view college as a place that simply hands out diplomas– so why not do it the easy way and get the easiest degree that is supposed to guarantee you a job right out of the gates? We have seen a drastic increase in students deciding their path purely based on their financials. Instead of going for their dreams in the arts, they are turning to business and finance degrees. Instead of doing something meaningful that fills them with passion, they would rather choose a path that has been claimed to provide financial stability– without insanely hard work, like you would endure in STEM. This will likely result in lack of life satisfaction and it really begs the question, what's the point? Why do we dismiss the concept of affordable, accessible public education? Limited Learning Another consequence of privatisation is what Newfield labelles as “limited learning”. Limited learning is the definition given to the issue that students no longer have full access to proper education. Newfield recognises that limited learning can stem from various factors, such as limited access to resources, but he does believe that an improved quality of learning can be accomplished by following a specific set of rules. Newfield refers to limited learning as “fast food learning”, hinting towards its lack of substance and its purpose being only for efficiency. Newfield claimed that “structural changes were moving students from the liberal arts and sciences, where students learned well, to market-oriented fields where they did not.” (2016, pg. 289) This change in attitude towards students' goals and directions is where the decline of education truly began. In his eyes, nothing erodes the quality of education like focusing on a job-related major rather than one rooted in education. As Newfield said, a good way for a student to lower their learning is to shift from an academic to a vocational major. “It turns out that these vocational majors offer limited learning, which is the main college source of post-1980s declines. The college crisis is not that college is offering bad academic subjects, but that college has added a lot of non-academic subjects. The best way to fix academia would be to let it be academic again.” (2016, pg. 298) The decline of our education is strongly linked to the increase of non-educational majors. The need for simply obtaining a degree has clouded students’ desires and work ethic, almost turning higher education into what people consider worthless or a “joke”. The solution to the problem of limited learning was quite simple on paper– applying yourself to your education more than you would originally. In short, he believed that students should take many demanding courses, they should be mentored by their faculty members, they should minimise non academic social commitments, minimise work for pay, and finally that students should major in a strong academic field like the liberal and sciences as rigour is of “fundamental importance.” (Newfield, 2016, pg. 293-4) Th X: Neoliberal Feminism What is Neoliberal Feminism? Goals Neoliberal feminism, like all branches of feminism, typically have a specific thing in mind that they are wanting to accomplish. Their goal is to achieve academic/workplace equality between men and women. This goal has been publicly mentioned in multiple “feminist” readings such as Lean In by Sandberg and Women Who Work by Ivanka Trump. As said by Rottenberg when critiquing Sandberg's writings, “Only when women finally internalise the revolution, triumph over their internal obstacles and actively lean in to their careers will they be poised to accomplish one of Lean In’s key feminist objectives: closing the ‘leadership ambition gap.’” (2014, pg. 425) The concept of the “leadership ambition gap” is quite frequently mentioned, and I would argue that it is the main focus of this new modern day [neoliberal] feminism. The “leadership ambition gap” is used in order to claim that women typically have less ambition to advance career wise– and this is why we don’t see many women in higher positions of power. Instead of mentioning systemic oppressions as they do in other forms of feminism, such as abolitionism feminism, they claim that this reality is because of ambition rather than inequities. After proudly shouting this term and claiming it to be fact, their mindset is that as more women start to make their way up the career and social ladder, their achievements [obtaining elite status] will then bring all women up collectively, which will then encourage even more women to reach for the same status. Women advancing will help other women in their regular lives, and will hopefully “inspire” them to advance also– to be the best version of themselves. In the eyes of a neoliberal feminist, the only thing hindering a woman in today's world is themselves, which in turn brings women down collectively. Neoliberalism and neoliberal feminism are, not so shockingly, related. Put very simply by Ylöstalo, neoliberal feminists “are feminist in the sense that they entail awareness of particular gender inequalities. They are neoliberal in the sense that they disavow social structures that produce this inequality and accept full responsibility for individual success and well-being.” (2022, pg. 1339). Neoliberalism focuses on the individual, and denies any kind of systemic influence on treatment. Another brilliant writer, Rottenberg, has more of an economic explanation, claiming that neoliberal feminism all comes back to capitalism because “these lean in groups are geared to encourage women to help play the corporate game more deftly” (2014, pg. 427). So, two different viewpoints of neoliberal feminism and the connections it has to neoliberalism, but both are quite valuable when trying to understand neoliberal feminism. Bottom line is that it always comes back to privatisation, capitalism, and ignoring the oppressive systems that are put in place to keep people at the top, at the top. What does NF focus on? Individuality First, you must focus on yourself and your goals. To succeed, you must be entirely committed and driven in your workplace. In other words, “...women must ‘plot a plan for success’ and if they are passionate, work hard and are committed to excellence, they will inevitably succeed.” (Rottenberg, 2018, pg. 5) If you commit, and if you have the passion and desire to succeed, you will do exactly that. From the neoliberal feminists perspective, if a woman were to have the aspiration to become CEO of a company, she would simply need to dedicate herself to her work, and this would then undoubtedly lead to her getting that position of CEO. Success does not come from working in a collective, but by being distinguished from the norm. This is quite a different narrative in comparison to other feminist agendas. In abolitionist feminism, it takes an intersectional and structural approach to analysing and dismantling the systems of oppression. “We work locally and internationally. We hold people accountable and believe that people can change. We believe in being radical and active. We reflect, learn, and adjust our practices. We react to injustice.” (Davis, Dent, Meiners & Richie, 2022, pg. 15) This branch of feminism acknowledges gender discrimination as well as other institutional discrimination instead of denying its existence and putting the blame on the victims of the system. Competition Once we have those goals in sight, then we must power through and put our game faces on as it is time for competition. Not competition with others, of course that wouldn't be said out loud, but competition with yourself. You compete with who you were yesterday– you compete with yourself for perfection (Mavin & Yusupova, 2023). There is always room for improvement, and you must always strive to be the very best you can be. You want to endlessly work on yourself in order to increase your worth (Rottenberg, 2018) because you never want to become of little value. In order to improve and increase one's value, you must work on yourself physically, economically and socially. You must go to the gym, hold yourself to a high aesthetic standard (be classy not trashy) and constantly strive for economic success. Every day you do this, you become better, and your success will then be inevitable. You are never good enough, you should never settle. Always work harder and harder until the day you are in the ground. Your body is never good enough, your position of power is never high enough. You always need to be better, and to be better you need to be rich, appealing, and socially powerful. While neoliberal feminism may push the idea of needing to have a bunch of exceeding qualities in order to deserve things in return, other feminist movements are more likely to believe that everyone is worth something, and that it is better to grow (not for worth but for self improvement) together instead of only doing this by yourself. The abolitionist movement is not a solo project (Davis, Dent, Meiners & Richie, 2022) and no matter a person's status, they’re welcome and viewed as equal. Encouragement Then it is time for the final stage that will impact women all over the globe. It is time to encourage other women to join you in your endeavours by encouraging them through marketing well crafted self-help books and sharing your own success stories. In the world of neoliberal feminism, shared experiences lead to empathy (Rottenberg, 2014) so having more women in high positions in the industry will then encourage other women to do the same. So, instead of actively helping women as you would in other branches of feminism, your success will then encourage others to also be successful. Let's take one of today's most influential Women in power. Taylor Swift. An extremely popular and talented artist, who is considered to be an extremely empowering woman that the younger generations look up to. While fans see a friend, I see a neoliberal feminist, a queen of capitalism, who somehow managed to feed off of teens' insecurities in order to make their way to the top of stardom. Taylor Swift claims to be an equality-preaching feminist, yet she absolutely loves playing into the capitalistic market, selling herself for an insane amount of money– convincing everyone that she is worth it because she is just one of them. A neoliberal feminist would say that Taylor Swift in her position encourages women to also climb the social ladder, but I would argue that she is selling a false narrative of “women can do anything” to impressionable people, which essentially does more harm than good. Consequences with Neoliberal Feminism Unrealistic Expectations Since this branch of feminism is more concerned with one's internal drive, rather than external factors, this ignorance towards the societal issues we have to deal with are consequently setting unrealistic expectations on women. We are expected to maintain the perfect work and family life balance, expected to go above and beyond whilst our average male peers are able to advance. To be the perfect woman, you must also be a family woman as well as a worker. You need to “lean in” to your work but also keep on top of everything else. Being a hardworking mother is no longer good enough. You must tend to your children, take care of your husband, make sure you and your physique are perfectly presentable (McRobbie, 2023) while still actively working on your career. There is no break for those with families, you are expected to do it all. Anything less is simply not good enough. These piles of responsibilities are physically and emotionally draining and near impossible. Dismissal of Social Issues Arguably one of the most notable issues of neoliberal feminism is its lack of acknowledgement towards the social issues women must have to endure. In fact, not only does it ignore it, but rather it claims that it does not exist. Since neoliberal feminism is majorly concerned with self responsibility, as there is no other issue in their eyes,“there is no longer any attempt to confront the tension between liberal individualism, equality, and those social pressures that potentially obstruct the realisation of ‘true’ equality.” (Zippel & Ferree, 2015, pg. 9) If there is no attempt to eradicate inequalities women are subject to, we won't see any improvements. There is countless evidence of sexism in the workplace, in academia, or even in everyday life yet neoliberal feminism is hellbent on disregarding this and placing the blame/responsibility on the women who are subject to it. This idea that the solution is that women need to “take control” of their lives and that's the only solution to modern day sexism (or lack of representation) is incredibly demeaning and ignorant of the thousands of women who have plenty of drive and ambition but are unable to achieve their goals due to the system that is against them. Classism and Racism Another consequence of this rather harmful approach of feminism is that it leads to classism and racism– intentionally or not. Neoliberal feminism, in its essence, is “a fledgling feminist strand led mostly by an urban, upper-middle-class, cosmopolitan elite.” (McRobbie, 2013, pg. 120) which completely disregards other communities of women that are in desperate need of feminism as they do not have everything handed to them in the same way as these upper class white women do. Not to mention that fact that, more often than not, these white women use women of minorities (mostly people of colour) as the care workers that keep their “balanced” life going (Rottenberg, 2018, pg. 7) which is basically just exploiting these other women to keep their status but then blaming them for the position they were put in. If you are not a rich white woman, then this feminism is not for you but rather it blames you whilst simultaneously keeping you down. Empirical Research Question X = leadership ambition gap Y = limited learning How are students' beliefs in women's individual responsibility to succeed affected by limited learning? Emp Y: Limited Learning Privatisation As mentioned in my theoretical, the privatisation of education has led to an increase in student loans and student debt. This increase in student loans and student debt has no doubt manifested itself into fears of being able to financially support oneself after graduation. To dive into peoples financial insecurities, I would like to look more into what people's fears are after graduation. I predict that there will be a lot of worries about socioeconomic standing, loan repayment as well as being able to have job security. With these three things to focus on and ask questions about, I believe that it will help paint the bigger picture regarding the issues of privatisation of education. Limited Learning When interviewing students, I also would like to do a deep dive into how limited learning manifests at Boise State University. As mentioned earlier, we know that limited learning is less rigorous learning that is encouraged through the promotion of vocational majors such as business and communications. To look further into this, I would like to explore students’ meaningful experiences and what classes that corresponds with here at Boise State. I would look into what classes challenge students more, what classes provide the most meaningful content and experiences, and if these classes were required for their major. I predict to see a lot of sociological classes being considered as meaningful, however I also predict that there will be a lot of students claiming to not voluntarily choose those classes once they are done with them. When also dissecting limited learning, I would like to look into the idea of their purpose of attending college. I would like to explore the purpose of attending college, the desire to “hurry up and finish the degree”, as well as what they predict that they will get out of college. I know that there is a narrative among students that they simply want to get the piece of paper that will secure their job and their future, and I think that by asking questions regarding their future goals as well as their purpose for attending will get to the heart of that. Emp X: Leadership Ambition Gap Individuality As there is a frequent preaching of individuality in neoliberal feminism, I would love to hear peoples opinions on scholarships and the necessity of it for marginalised communities. Neoliberal feminists, like most capitalists, believe that any noticeable gendered gap is due to there being a lack of ambition instead of lack of opportunities. To see how this idea manifests in students, I would like to ask questions regarding gender based scholarships as well as other kinds of funding for minorities. Asking questions along those lines will likely show us the presence of neoliberal feminism and ideologies taking over students as it will help us explore the idea of women needing to work harder in order to accomplish their goals and if they are in a position for “handouts”. Competition As mentioned in my theoretical section, there is a lot of internalised competition when it comes to neoliberal feminism, and I think we can really lean into the unrealistic expectations that are a natural consequence of this. I would like to investigate students’ insecurities, and compare that to their male peers. I will also ask questions regarding womens work ethic and their lack of social power. I would ask if women are still not as powerful as men due to their inability to improve themselves, as well as how women can succeed in male dominated fields, such as engineering. I think that asking these sorts of questions will really delve into these impossible standards women must endure, as well as this idea that women simply need to work harder in order to be viewed as the same as men. Encouragement As mentioned in my theoretical section, there is a concept that seeing some women succeed will then somehow help other women succeed. So, I want to look into how women help other women through success and if others view it the same way. I also mention Taylor Swift, and how people claim that she has helped a community of young women feel empowered by seeing someone like her up on the stage and in the public eye. Due to her relevance, as well as her rather obvious standing as a neoliberal feminist, I would like to ask students how they think celebrities such as Taylor swift have encouraged women to be more successful. Methods Methods that will be used for this study will be interview based. We will be collecting data from a random sample of Boise State students and using their answers to formulate our conclusion of how neoliberal feminism is impacting/ eroding the quality of our education. What are you personal viewpoints on feminism? What does it stand for, what is its goals, how are you impacted/ affected by it? What are your personal viewpoints on the patriarchy? What does it stand for, what is its goals, how are you impacted/ affected by it? What your impression of what college was meant to be? who/where did you get these ideas from ? What is your reasoning for obtaining higher education, what motivates you? What influenced you to join Boise State out of all the other colleges in the US, what are your current opinions of BSU? Do you think a woman/ a man have natural skills that influence their place in the workplace/ positions of power? What influence does your financial situation have on your academic aspirations? Conclusion I am going into this research project with an open, but slightly pessimistic, mind. I have experienced neoliberal feminism eroding our education first hand, so I expect that my interviews will show exactly that. Despite my pessimistic tendencies, a part of me hangs on to hope that what I find will knock my metaphorical socks off. Perhaps I find hope for our education system, or perhaps I have a newfound love for neoliberal feminism– though I do doubt it. At this point in time, there is only one more thing left to do, so, I shall make Newfield proud and learn. References Armstrong, E., Hamilton, L. (2013). Paying for the Party: how college maintains inequality. Harvard University Press. Davis, A., Dent, G., Meiners, E., & Richie, B., (2022) Abolitionism. Feminism. Now. Haymarket Books Dodge, A., Gilbert, M (2016) His Feminist Facade: The Neoliberal Co-option of the Feminist Movement, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 14(2), 332-365. Mavin, S., and Yusupova, M., (2023) ‘I'm Competitive with Myself’: A Study of Women Leaders Navigating Neoliberal Patriarchal Workplaces. Gender, Work & Organization, 30(3), 881–896. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12939. McRobbie, A. (2013) ‘Feminism, the family and the new “mediated” maternalism’, New Formations, 119-137. Newfield, C. (2016) The Great Mistake: How we wrecked public universities and how we can fix them, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rottenberg, C. (2014) The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism, Cultural Studies, 28(3), 418-437, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2013.857361 Rottenberg, C. (2018) Women who work: The limits of the neoliberal feminist paradigm, Gender, Work & Organization, 26(8), 1073-1082, https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12287 Tomlinson, M. (2018) Concepts of the value of higher education in a measured market, 711-725, DOI: 10.1007/s10734-017-0165-6 Woodall,T., Hiller, A,. & Resnick, S. (2014) Making sense of higher education: students as consumers and the value of the university experience, Studies in Higher Education, 39(1), 48-67, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2011.648373 Ylöstalo, H. (2022) Feminism at the Crossroads of Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism: Restructuring Women’s Labor in the Context of Family Leave Reform in Finland, Social Politics, 29(4), 1336–1359, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxac008 Zippel, K., Ferree, M. (2015) Gender Equality in the Age of Academic Capitalism, Social Politics, 1-24.

Since their founding, fraternities have been a pivotal part of American college institutions. With the purpose of philanthropy and promised brotherhood, one can easily view them as a beneficiary for college men seeking to find a healthy environment and community. However, research has shown there is an association between abuse, excessive drinking, sexual violence against women and that of fraternity membership (Seabrook & Giaccardi 2018). This behavior is consistent with characteristics of hegemonic masculinity demonstrated through assertiveness and competitiveness (McVittie, et al. 2017). Additionally, other masculine norms include anti-feminine behavior, heterosexual presentation, emotional control, and risk-taking behavior. Initiation into a fraternity is often where these traits are internalized the most (Seabrook & Giaccardi 2018). During the pledging season, the use of hazing contributes to the maintenance of toxic masculinity among members by forcing them to engage with violence, humiliation, and mental toughness (Cimino 2011). A popular motivation behind hazing procedures is to assert social dominance, which research suggests is the most problematic form of hazing (McCreary & Schutt 2019). Social dominance, along with assertiveness and competitiveness can be considered traditional male norms (Mahalik 2003). Heterosexual presentation is a significant factor in fraternity culture and a strong predictor in members' alcohol consumption. Men who join fraternities are more likely to prioritize these masculine values, either by socialization or selection into the group (Waterman, et al. 2020). Many of the rituals that occur during initiation consist of planned failure, where the individual is given tasks that are purposefully humiliating and impossible to succeed at. Therefore, Pledging falls under the theory that manhood is hard to earn and easy to lose (Vandello and Bosson 2013). Manhood, similar to pledging, is largely a performance for others–particularly for other men–that is validated by public demonstrations. In order to prove their dominance and inclusion within the group, men in fraternities will continue to engage in toxic behavior as this is how they retain their masculinity. The support of patriarchal peer groups also helps to justify abusive and violent actions in college-aged men (Godenzi 2001). This research takes an exploratory approach to address the question: how do fraternities sustain hegemonic masculinity? This pilot study examines the relationships individual fraternity men have with their own masculinities. It also examines the relationship between fraternities and the role they have in upholding hegemony. We conducted seven in depth interviews with active members of fraternities gathered using chain referral sampling as part of the pilot phase of this study. We analyzed the interview transcripts using open and focused coding(Glaser and Strauss 1987). The data revealed three main coding themes: masculinity, interpersonal relationships, and the fraternity process. This paper is part of a larger study of men, masculinities, and fraternity culture. Based on a thorough review of the literature and our research findings, we argue that as long as hazing, binge drinking, violence, and emotional suppression form pillars of fraternity membership, the existence of hegemonic masculinity will simultaneously be present. If the criteria of joining a fraternity celebrates certain masculine norms over others, men will continue to feel pressure to adhere to these standards inside and outside of fraternities. The construct of masculinity is constantly evolving, and we find that each interviewee has their own unique and complex relationship to it. Although the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee and freedom of association laws make it extremely hard for public universities to ban or reform fraternities, change at a national level is needed to create healthier relationships between men and their masculinities (Hechinger 2017). Works Cited Cimino, Aldo. 2011. “The Evolution of Hazing: Motivational Mechanisms and the Abuse of Newcomers.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 11(3–4):241–67. Godenzi, Alberto, Martin D. Schwartz, and Walter S. Dekeseredy. 2001. Critical Criminology 10(1):1–16. Hechinger, John. 2017. True Gentlemen: The Broken Pledge of America’s Fraternities. New York, NY: PublicAffairs. Mahalik, James R. et al. 2003. “Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory.” Psychology of Men &amp; Masculinity 4(1):3–25. McCready, Adam M. 2019. “Relationships between Collective Fraternity Chapter Masculine Norm Climates and the Alcohol Consumption of Fraternity Men.” Psychology of Men &amp; Masculinities 20(4):478–90. McCreary, Gentry R. and Joshua W. Schutts. 2019. “Why Hazing? Measuring the Motivational Mechanisms of Newcomer Induction in College Fraternities.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 19(3–4):343–65. McVittie, Chris, Julie Hepworth, and Karen Goodall . 2017. “Chapter 4 - Masculinities and Health: Whose Identities, Whose Constructions?” in The Psychology of Gender and Health: Conceptual and Applied Global Concerns. London: Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier. Seabrook, Rita C., L. Monique Ward, and Soraya Giaccardi. 2018. “Why Is Fraternity Membership Associated with Sexual Assault? Exploring the Roles of Conformity to Masculine Norms, Pressure to Uphold Masculinity, and Objectification of Women.” Psychology of Men &amp; Masculinity 19(1):3–13. Vandello, Joseph A., and Jennifer K. Bosson. 2013. “Hard Won and Easily Lost: A Review and Synthesis of Theory and Research on Precarious Manhood.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity 14(2):101–13. Waterman, Emily A., Rose Wesche, Chelom E. Leavitt, and Eva S. Lefkowitz. 2020. “Fraternity Membership, Traditional Masculinity Ideologies, and Impersonal Sex: Selection and Socialization Effects.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity 21(1):58–68.

Title: Portrait of an Artist as a Mad Woman: A Study of Women Writers’ Resistance to Patriarchal Social Constructions of Female Identity Research Question: How did 19th century anglophone female authors use their literary writing to develop a professional identity to overcome male-centric social roles of femininity? Sociological contribution: This topic is important to sociology because its analysis of stigmatized constructs of femininity and harmful stereotypes associated with women who deviate from socially prescribed femininity will reveal what is at the root of discrimination used against women today. We need not look very far to find contemporary examples of gender based discrimination. ‘Think of Nancy Pelosi in her electric-blue suit literally standing up to Donald Trump. “There is…something wrong with her ‘upstairs,’” Trump railed on Twitter in response. “She is a very sick person!”’ (Moore 2021). Women who step beyond the bounds of hegemonic femininity are easily written off as mentally unstable in order to eliminate the validity of their presence in the public sphere. This includes women from all walks of life, from politicians to actresses, ‘Think of Rose McGowan, whose resolve to hold Harvey Weinstein to account saw his lawyers discuss a plot to make her seem “increasingly unglued,” a memo revealed” (Moore 2021). This misogynistic discrimination will continue to dominate contemporary discourse unless we work to identify the pervasive harm these reigning patriarchal social constructs cause and question what it is about our society that has allowed the perpetuation of such clearly harmful norms. Theory & Literature Review: According to the thoughts of leading psychiatrists of the time, a woman who deviated from socially acceptable ideals of femininity in the nineteenth century was unnatural, and therefore, must be mad. For centuries, the world of medicine had maintained the idea that the female brain and behaviors were inextricably tied to her reproductive organs and the assumption that a woman’s purpose was solely found in her reproductive abilities. Therefore, a woman who rejected a life of submission and domesticity in favor of freely expressing her opinions, displaying an interest in anything beyond her domestic duties, or having aspirations beyond marriage and motherhood, must be suffering from insanity manifested by some abnormality of her reproductive organs (Moore 2021). It was not so very long ago that psychoanalysis and identity theorist, Erik Erikson endorsed the belief in intrinsic biological and psychological differences between sexes. “In his theory, the paradigmatic individual achieving a mature identity is male, whereas the female has a specialized role as child bearer. Her biological structure, her unique ‘inner space,’ is congruent with this role, and she seeks to fill and to protect this inner space rather than forge into outward accomplishments” (Gardiner 1981:350). According to Erikson, a woman’s role as designated child bearer is validated both biologically and psychologically, and a desire of a life beyond motherhood is simply not in the female nature. Mary Wollstonecraft, a brilliant eighteenth century writer and philosopher in her own right, who paved the way for modern feminist theories, firmly disagreed with these traditional patriarchal ideals of femininity and advocated for encouraging purposes beyond marriage and motherhood for women. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman highlights how women’s lack of a right to education ensured that they would remain contained within the domestic and private spheres of house and home. She stressed that women held the same intellectual capacity as men, yet because they were denied the opportunity to pursue an education, and thus their advancement towards female equality and emancipation, “the lack of education for women meant they did not have the means to engage in rational discourse and so it was continually propounded as exclusive to men” (Evans 2006:19). The education women received was not only insufficient in fostering their ability to participate in public and political discourse, but it was also a breach of their human rights according to Wollstonecraft, “the denial of education to women was tantamount to the denial of their [...] participation in the natural and civil rights of mankind” (Mellor 1993:33). Celebrated author and feminist theorist of the twentieth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman held similar beliefs to Wollstonecraft, urging the creation of a society in which women could develop their full human potential. Her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), protested the treatment developed by prominent American neurologist Silas Wier Mitchell for what was commonly referred to as female hysteria or neurasthenia. Dr. Mitchell prescribed his ‘rest-cure’ treatment for women afflicted with what were then considered to be bouts of excessive emotional and nervous fits, a manifestation of women’s weaker and inferior minds, which undoubtedly lacked rationality and the ability to control their emotions. His strict regime of prolonged isolated confinement, bed rest, and prohibition of any activity that required intellectual stimulation is just one example of the misogyny and gender bias that has plagued medical ideologies for centuries (Quawas 2006). Gilman and her fellow Women’s Rights activists believed that this so-called ‘hysteria’ was in actuality due to women’s “repressed anger and enforced passivity and inactivity. Women’s mental diseases, hysterias, anxieties, and perpetual invalidism were psychological enactments of the insubstantial and insignificant roles they were allowed to play in a male-dominated Victorian society, a world that literally rendered them invalid” (Quawas 2006:41). The descent of Gilman’s protagonist into insanity in The Yellow Wallpaper depicts the twisted sexual politics enforced on women, binding them to an existence that creeps along the edge of madness. “Madness becomes not only a form of rebellion but an intelligible and potentially healing response to conflicting social demands'' (Quawas 2006:47). For the protagonist, her withdrawal from the male-dominated world that represses her very existence is a rational method of self-preservation as well as an act of rebellion. In a way, her descent into madness is an ascent to self realization and consciousness. “Gilman indicates that the result of going mad may well be the emergence of a state of mind far saner than that understood by the normal world. For the narrator, madness becomes a kind of refuge for the self rather than the loss” (Quawas 2006:49). Therefore, it is through her ascent into madness that she is able to separate her true identity from the socially prescribed identity which she, consciously or unconsciously, assumes in traditional society, and arrive at an autonomous identity that is independent of the patriarchal feminine ideal. Women writers like Gilman and Wollstonecraft found ways in which to rebel against patriarchal society and reclaim authorship of their own female identities, rather than remain compliant to male expectations of the ideal woman. Scholar Judith Kegan Gardiner addresses the salience of female identity for women writers in particular. In her article, “On Female Identity and Writing by Women'' Gardiner writes that women writers “communicate a consciousness of their identity through paradoxes of sameness and difference–from other women, especially their mothers; from men; and from social injunctions for what women should be, including those inscribed in literary canon” (1981:354). Women’s writing functions to portray the injustices suffered by women in patriarchal societies, represents the author’s own self-awareness of her female identity, and allows her to address the misrepresentation of women in many male-authored texts. In her article, “Talking Back to Sociology: Distinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology,” Marjorie De Vault cites the research done by Dorothy Smith to suggest that patriarchy not only warps the way women are perceived, but also the way social services are available to them; “data on gender and mental illness, for example, not as real evidence of ‘real’ differences, but as pointers towards the management of gendered responses to stress through different social services” (1996:37). Methods: This paper will primarily use qualitative and content analysis of female authored literature, but will feature secondary sources in academic articles focused in sociology, literary analysis of feminist literature, and historical research. I will also look at critiques from prominent 19th century male intellectuals and writers to draw conclusions on the response that female writers received as a result of their participation in literary discourse. I will use these primary and secondary sources to interpret significance and patterns in ways in which 19th century women writers were able to develop a professional female identity. References: Ascarelli, Miriam. 2004. “A Feminist Connection: Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal Online 25(1):1-6. De Vault, Marjorie L. 1996. “Talking Back to Sociology: Distinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology.” Annual Review of Sociology 22(1):29-50. England, Paula. 1999. “Impact of Feminist Thought on Sociology.” Contemporary Sociology 28(3): 263-268. Evans, Rachel. 2006. “The Rationality and Femininity of Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 7(3):17-23. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. 1981. “On Female Identity and Writing by Women.” Critical Inquiry: Writing and Sexual Difference 8(2):347-361. Hawkins, Katharine. 2019. “Monsters in the Attic: Women’s Rage and the Gothic.” M/C Journal 22(1). Mellor, Anne K. 1993. Romanticism and Gender. London: Routledge. Moore, Kate. 2021. “Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry.” TIME History. Retrieved October 24, 2023. (https://time.com/6074783/psychiatry-history-women-mental-health/). Quawas, Rula. 2006. “A New Woman’s Journey Into Insanity: Descent and Return in The Yellow Wallpaper.” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association 1(105):35-53.

This study utilized approximately 10 hours of in-depth qualitative interviews with different generations of college-educated Black women to provide space for them to articulate how they perceive their own experiences with sexual and romantic relationships. Previous scholarship about the sexual and romantic lives of Black women tend to rely on quantitative data to relay the experiences of Black women, tend to focus on the perception of Black women instead of their experiences, and tend to consist on non-Black women revealing to us the experiences of Black women (Fry and Parker 2021; Moorman 2022; Otto, Kumar, and DiLillo 2022; Ross 2012; West 1995). Sociology has given less space and platform to Black women for them to describe their own experiences in their own words. In an attempt to bridge this research gap in a way that centers and amplifies the voices of Black women, the interviews I conducted were aimed to investigate the following question: What are the specific ways in which misogynoir influences the sexual and romantic experiences of Black women, and how do those experiences intersect with broader societal perceptions and stereotypes? This writing utilizes Moya Bailey’s (2021) term misogynoir, Kimberlee Crenshaw’s (1989) intersectionality theory, and Patricia Hill Collins’ (2008) analysis on Black feminist intellectuals to establish why making space for the voices of Black women is necessary and gives way to rich, nuanced understandings of the world. This writing also draws on Narrative Theory, Constitutive Theory of Discourse and Language, and Stereotype Threat Theory to lay a theoretical framework that highlights why it is crucial to listen to the narratives of Black women (Herman et al 2012; Jacobson 2022:22; Mehan, Nathanson and Skelly 1990:135; Foucault 2010; Steele and Aronson 1995; Swab 2022). The findings reveal how both historical and contemporary notions of misogynoir shape distinct sexual and romantic experiences for Black women. More specifically, misogynoir gives way to Black women having smaller dating pools and less chances of romantic commitment than Black men and non-Black women. We also find how misogynoir presents itself in the dating lives of Black women in two main ways: internal hypervigilance and external expectations. Misogynoir is encoded in the way that society looks at and thinks about Black women, and if we are to mitigate this, then we must listen to the nuanced ways in which this intersection of misogyny and Anti-Blackness presents itself. Bailey, Moya. 2021. Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance. New York: NYU Press. Collins, Patricia H. 2008. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 1st ed. Routledge. Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics." Feminist Legal Theory 1989(1):139-167. Foucault, Michael. 2010. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Vintage Books. Fry, Richard and Parker Kim. 2021. "Rising Share of U.S. Adults Are Living Without a Spouse or Partner.” https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-share-of- u-s-adults-are-living-without-a-spouse-or-partner/ Herman, David, James Phelan, Peter Rabinowitz, Brian Richardson and Robyn Warhol. 2012. Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Jacobson, Brynna. 2022. Geoengineering Discourse Confronting Climate Change: The Move from Margins to Mainstream in Science, News Media, and Politics. Lexington Books. Mehan, Hugh, Charles E. Nathanson and James M. Skelly. 1990. “Nuclear Discourse in the 1980s: The Unravelling Conventions of the Cold War.” Discourse & Society 1(2): 133- 165. Moorman, Jessica. 2022. "Unmarried Black Women’s Sexual Socialization: The Role of Dating, Motherhood, and Intimate Partner Violence Across Media Types." Sex Roles 87(5-6):289-305. Otto, Elizabeth, Shaina Kumar and David DiLillo. 2022. "Music's Impact on the Sexualization of Black Bodies: Examining Links Between Hip-Hop and Sexualization of Black Women." Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research 27(2):145-153. Ross, Jasmine. 2012. "Sexual Scripts and African American Women: Empirical Validation of Stephens and Phillips' (2003) Hip-Hop Sexual Scripting Model with African American College Women ." University of Houston. Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. 1995. Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811. Swab, Gabrielle, Golshan Javadian, Vishal Gupta and Charles Pierce. 2022. "Stereotype Threat Theory in Organizational Research: Constructive Analysis and Future Research Agenda." Group and Organization Management 47(3):530-570. West, Carolyn M. 1995. "Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel: Historical images of Black women and their implications for psychotherapy."Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training 32(3):458-466.

Introduction Restorative justice has emerged as a significant alternative to traditional punitive approaches in addressing criminal behavior and conflict resolution. This proposal aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the referral system and the practices of the restorative justice system employed by the Abbotsford Restorative Justice and Advocacy Association (ARJAA). The research question guiding this proposal is centered on understanding the case characteristics and the operational dynamics of the restorative justice system within ARJAA, with the ultimate goal of contributing to the enhancement of their referral system and program effectiveness. Research Question The central research question guiding this proposal is: What are the case characteristics and operational practices of the restorative justice system employed by ARJAA, and how can these findings inform the redesign of their referral system to enhance program effectiveness? Intended Contribution of Research The intended contribution of this research is to provide valuable insights into the current state of the referral system and the operational practices of the restorative justice system within ARJAA. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of case characteristics and engaging with key stakeholders, this research aims to offer actionable recommendations for the enhancement of ARJAA's referral system and program effectiveness. The findings of this research are expected to inform the organization's decision-making processes and contribute to the ongoing development and improvement of their restorative justice practices. Description of Theory and Methods The research employed a mixed-methods approach to gather and analyze data related to the referral system and the operational practices of the restorative justice system at ARJAA. The methods utilized in this study included quantitative analysis of ARJAA's case records from 2018 to 2022, as well as qualitative data collection through conversations with key stakeholders. Quantitative Analysis: The researchers utilized ARJAA's existing case records management (CRM) database to conduct a quantitative analysis of the organization's files over a five-year period. The analysis focused on identifying and examining case characteristics, patterns, and trends within the restorative justice system. It is important to note that the current structure of the CRM presented challenges in data extraction, leading to substantial restructuring by the researchers to optimize the use of the available data. One of the key recommendations arising from this project is to explore alternative options for a CRM database that can facilitate more effective utilization of the data. Qualitative Data Collection: In addition to the quantitative analysis, the research team engaged in conversations with key stakeholders involved in the restorative justice system at ARJAA. These stakeholders provided contextual insights that complemented the quantitative findings and offered valuable perspectives on the organization's referral system and potential areas for growth. The qualitative data collected from these conversations will be instrumental in informing the forthcoming redesign of the referral system and guiding the organization's future programming decisions. In conclusion, this proposal sets the stage for a rigorous examination of the referral system and restorative justice practices at ARJAA, with the aim of providing actionable recommendations for program enhancement. By combining quantitative analysis with qualitative insights from key stakeholders, this research seeks to make a meaningful contribution to the ongoing development and improvement of restorative justice initiatives within the organization. References: Beckman, Kara J., et al. “Reducing re-arrest through community-led, police-initiated restorative justice diversion tailored for Youth.” Crime & Delinquency, 2023, p. 001112872311585, https://doi. org/10.1177/00111287231158569. Bergseth, Kathleen J., and Jeffrey A. Bouffard. “The longterm impact of restorative justice programming for juvenile offenders.” Journal of Criminal Justice, vol. 35, no. 4, 2007, pp. 433–451, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jcrimjus.2007.05.006. Church, Abere Sawaqdeh, et al. “Community Service Outcomes in justice-involved youth: Comparing restorative community service to Standard Community Service.” Criminal Justice and Behavior, vol. 48, no. 9, 2021, pp. 1243– 1260, https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211008488. Dowd, Nancy E. Justice for Kids: Keeping Kids out of the Juvenile Justice System. New York University Press, 2016. Frampton, Mary Louise. “Finding Common Ground in Restorative Justice: Transforming Our Juvenile Justice Systems.” Social Justice Law Review, vol. 22, no. 2, 2018, https://doi.org/https://sjlr.law.ucdavis.edu/archives/vol22-no-2/JJLP-Vol22-Issue2-Frampton.pdf. Hobson, Jonathan, et al. “Restorative justice, youth violence, and policing: A review of the evidence.” Laws, vol. 11, no. 4, 2022, p. 62, https://doi.org/10.3390/laws11040062. Hodgson, Jodie. “Offending girls and restorative justice: A critical analysis.” Youth Justice, vol. 22, no. 2, 2020, pp. 166–188, https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420967751. Laundra, Kenneth, et al. “Transforming teens: Measuring the effects of restorative justice principles in a teen court setting.” Juvenile and Family Court Journal, vol. 64, no. 4, 2013, pp. 21–34, https://doi.org/10.1111/jfcj.12012. Payne, A. A., and Welch, K. (2018). The Effect of School Conditions on the Use of Restorative Justice in Schools. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 16(2), 224-240. Plecas, D., Klassen, C., Dow, M., Tatla, I., and Raible, C., “Reducing the Likelihood of Youth Becoming Gang Involved: A report prepared for the City of Abbotsford”, Community Health and Social Innovation Hub (CHASI), University of the Fraser Valley, 2023. Robinson, K., Plecas, D., Squires, C., and McLandress, K. “Pre-Charge Restorative justice and its Effect on Repeat and Adult Offenders”. Economic Development, Crime, and Policing: Global Perspectives (Garth den Heyer and Dilip Das, Eds.) CRC Press, 2014. Spacey, M, and N Thompson. “Beyond Individual Trauma: Towards a Multi-Faceted Trauma-Informed Restorative Approach to Youth Justice That Connects Individual Trauma With Family Reparation and Recognition of Bias and Discrimination.” British Journal of Community Justice, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 18–35, https://doi.org/https://doi. org/10.48411/vcqn-0794. Statistics Canada, “Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violation, police services in British Columbia”, Statistics Canada, 2023. Retrieved from: https://www150. statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510018401 Suzuki, Masahiro, and William R. Wood. “Co-option, coercion and compromise: Challenges of restorative justice in Victoria, Australia.” Contemporary Justice Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 274–292, https://doi.org/10.1080/1028258 0.2017.1311194. Umbreit M. and Peterson M.A., Restorative Justice and Dialogue: Impact, Opportunities, and Challenges in the Global Community, 36 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol’y 65 (2011), http://digitalcommons.law.wustl.edu/wujlp/vol36/iss1/5 Wilson, David, et al. Office of Justice Programs, 2017, Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Principles in Juvenile Justice: A MetaAnalysis. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ ojjdp/grants/250872.pdf Wood, William R., et al. “Restorative justice in youth and Adult Criminal Justice.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2022, https://doi. org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.658.

Topics Summary I hope to explore how same-sex couples navigate and distribute domestic responsibilities within their households, and how factors such as gender roles, relationship dynamics, and societal expectation play a role in this division of labor. Gender plays a significant role in the division of household roles and responsibilities. Traditionally, many societies have held specific expectations and norms about what tasks and responsibilities are associated with each gender. While these expectations have evolved over time, they continue to influence how household roles are divided. The mother cooks, cleans, nurtures and does more of the unpaid labor in a home, while the father fixes things, throws the garbage, is assertive and does more paid labor in a home (Vleuten). But for same-sex households, it is a different story as these same tasks need to be completed but can’t be divided on the basis of gender. Parental/household roles that are stereotypically divided by gender can no longer be traditionally divided by gender for same-sex parents, for the most part (Pollitt). Same-sex couples are not bound by the same traditional gender norms to the same extent as heterosexual couples. I propose to study the division of household labor, including chores and childcare, among same-sex parents. Research in this area is crucial not only to gain insight into the dynamics of same-sex couples but also to challenge/unravel the concept of traditional gender roles (Goldberg). General Question: How do same-sex parents divide household labor, including chores and childcare? Research Questions: What household chores is the more “masculine” partner in a same-sex relationship likely to perform? Is there an automatic assumption/inclination for each partner to perform certain tasks? In the same way there is one for heterosexual couples eg: woman cooks for man, man fixes things etc. What household chores is the more “feminine” partner in a same-sex relationship likely to perform? Is there a pressure to fulfill certain roles if one is more feminine or masculine than the other? What caregiver responsibilities is the more “masculine” partner in a same-sex relationship more likely to perform? Do household roles end up being more equally distributed since gender roles are not apparent? What caregiver responsibilities is the more “feminine” partner in a same-sex relationship more likely to perform? Literature Review My research proposal is to explore the division of household labor, including chores and childcare, among same-sex parents. Previous research has associated some factors to how same-sex couples distribute domestic responsibilities such as the “absence” of gender roles, skillset/ability, and time-availability all play a role into the division of labor. These concepts touch up on how societies have held specific expectations and norms about what tasks and responsibilities are associated with each gender. Research in this area is important not only to gain insight into the dynamics of same-sex couples but also to challenge/unravel the concept of traditional gender roles. “Absence” of Gender Roles Gender Roles in terms of a relationship refer to the societal and cultural expectations and norms that dictate the behavior, responsibilities, and roles that are typically associated with individuals based on their gender. Lesbian and gay couples by definition cannot establish sex-specific divisions of domestic tasks, at least not literally (Goldberg 2013). Same-sex relationships typically lack the traditional gender roles that exist in heterosexual relationships. In the study conducted by Bauer (2016), he researches the correlation between the lack of gender roles in same-sex couples and the equalness of the tasks being divided aimed to compare the distribution of housework in same-sex and different-sex partnerships. Bauer (2016) found that gay and lesbian partners apply a pattern characterized by higher levels of task sharing and lower levels of segregation. Because of the lack of having to conform to gender roles, same sex couples end up splitting domestic related tasks based on ability, not assumption (Bauer 2016). There’s no automatic assumption that one partner should take on a certain role based on their gender. Skillset/Ability Household tasks can vary in terms of the skills and abilities required to complete them. In a study conducted by Melanie Brewster (2015) she studied lesbian partnerships and their household labor divisions and what they found was that lesbain women often opted to abstain from traditional gendered divisions of chores in favor of other factors such as quality of task and ability. Partners may divide tasks based on who is better at a particular job. For instance, if one partner is more skilled at fixing things or doing home repairs, they may take on those responsibilities. In a study conducted by Oluwafemi Adeagbo (2016), they investigated how gay men ran their household in terms of the division of labor. What they found was that in gay couples, their areas of specializations were not based on traditional gender roles that are prominent in heterosexual relationships, they were rather based on the preferences and strength (abilities) of each partner (Adeagbo 2016). The skills/ability of each partner is one of the major factors when it comes to same-sex couples and their division of labor. Time-Availability The time-availability explanation describes the division of household labor as a function of the amount of time each member of the couple has available to spend in unpaid labor (domestic tasks) after paid labor (their job) is completed (Suzanne 2000). Although not something specific to same-sex couples, as different sex couples experience the same thing, it plays a much larger role in the division of labor for same sex couples. In a study conducted by Tornello and Sonnenberg (2015), it was found that spending more hours in paid employment compared with the partner was significantly associated with performing less household labor. Working more hours at a paid job, compared to their other partner, was associated with performing a smaller share of domestic tasks, which supports the time-availability factor. Another important finding was about how partners who reported working fewer hours in paid employment compared to their other partner, reported performing more of the household (Tornello and Sonnenberg 2015). It is clear that time availability in the context of work schedules, is an important influence on the housework division for same-sex couples. If one partner happens to be working more outside, that partner then has much less time to engage in unpaid labor (domestic tasks) in the home. Literature Review Summary Since same-sex couples are not necessarily following gender roles the same way different-sex couples do, other factors like skillset/ability and time availability come into play more. In same-sex couples, such prescriptions and expectations are arguably absent and there is no pre-fixed assignment of who is supposed or expected to do housework. It's important to recognize that each same-sex couple is unique, and the factors influencing their division of household tasks may vary based on their individual circumstances and preferences. However, same-sex couples often have the advantage of not being constrained by traditional gender roles, which can allow for more flexibility and negotiation. Within all of these studies, we see how these factors come into play for the division of labor within same-sex couples. My research will provide further insight on the factors mentioned earlier. With the help of the previous studies, I will place my focus on how the “absence” of gender roles, skillset/ability and time-availability have a direct relationship to same-sex couples and their division of labor of domestic tasks. Qualitative Research Design I will be using a semi-structured in-depth interview as the method to conduct my research. Semi-structured in-depth interviews are a qualitative research method commonly used in social sciences. They are characterized by a flexible and open-ended structure, allowing for a more natural and conversational flow compared to structured interviews (Punch 2014). With this flexibility, I anticipate to receive detailed and nuanced responses, offering richer data for analysis. With all this being said, semi-structured in-depth interviews do of course come with some limitations. The first being the possibility of the interview getting sidetracked due to the lack of structure. As the questions are open-ended, the responses can easily go in a direction that isn’t related to the research. What can be done to avoid this is to keep a separate checklist of the questions and concepts I want to make with my interviewee so that it can remain on topic and can redirect my interviewee if needed. Another limitation with semi-structured in-depth interviews has to do with my sample size. Since I will not be interviewing a large number of people, this means my results will lack a sense of generalizability. What I will do to reduce this limitation is interview people who are of diversity, that way when the data that is collected is able to be varied to some extent. Qualitative Data Collection I tend to hold four interviews that will last for at least an hour. The comfort of my participants is essential to the effectiveness of the results of my research so in order to ensure that they are comfortable, I will ease into the interview questions. This means I will not immediately begin with the core questions related to the interview, I will ask much more generic questions that eventually lead me to asking the much more valuable questions. What my questions will do is allow me to get a better understanding of the factors that contribute to the participants’ division of household labor with their partner. By emphasizing the questions on the basis of gender roles, time-availability, and ability, I will be able to get a deeper understanding on how these all influence the division of household labor within same-sex couples. Each of these interviews will be audio recorded by my cell phone. The participants' consent will of course be necessary. These interviews will be conducted in a public place that is fairly quiet but still welcoming like a coffee shop or even a library. All of the audios obtained from these interviews will then be transcribed with the use of Microsoft Word. Qualitative Sampling Strategy My population will consist of young adults ranging from ages 25-40, all with different backgrounds. I will interview young adults who are in same-sex relationships and live with their partner about their division of household labor with their partner. I will select the four participants by utilizing the non-probability sampling method from my quantitative data survey. I also intend to visit any local LGBT centers to see if I can find any more potential participants. The survey will be used in order to show the participants the types of characteristics that are being searched for in my study. Characteristics that I am looking for are gay or lesbian identifying person in a same-sex relationship who lives with their partner and has to deal with the division of household labor on a daily basis. In this survey of mine, I will also ask if they would be willing to participate in an interview in the future. Any people who are willing to do so will then go on a “potential candidate” list of mine where I will then decide who is a good fit for the study. This will of course be based on how they answer the survey. As I am interviewing four participants, I hope to select three of those participants to be gay relationships and the other three of those participants would be three people in lesbian relationships in order to ensure variability despite being a small sample size. Selecting participants from the survey will mean I am working with participants who meet all criteria necessary, allowing me to feel more confident and secure in my research. Works Cited: Bauer, G. (2016, January 27). Gender roles, comparative advantages and the life course: The Division of Domestic Labor in same-sex and different-sex couples. European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6223479/ Division of Labor among gay fathers. (n.d.-a). https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/sgd-sgd0000109.pdf “doing” and “undoing” gender: The ... - wiley online library. (n.d.-b). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jftr.12009 Lesbian women and household labor division: A systematic review of ... (n.d.-c). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10894160.2016.1142350 Suzanne M. Bianchi, “Maternal Employment and Time with Children: Dramatic Change or Surprising Continuity?” Demography 37(4) (2000): 401-14; Shelley Coverman, “Explaining Husbands’ Participation in Domestic Labor” The Sociological Quarterly 26 (1985): 81-97; Paula England and George Farkas, Households, Employment, and Gender: A Social, Economic and Demographic View, (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1986). Taylor & Francis Online. (n.d.-d). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/21528586.2015.1100097

How an employment-first strategy increases housing security for individuals with disabilities in Nevada and how it can be modeled in other states. Intro: People with disabilities face numerous obstacles in obtaining affordable and accessible housing in the United States. The recent housing shortages have only exasperated these challenges. Lack of inventory and high rents have made it nearly impossible for some low-income, disabled Americans to stay off the streets, yet as land and construction costs have increased as much as 60% in some places over the last decade, many federal affordable housing grants and programs have yet to see an increase in funding. In such an environment it is unfair and unsustainable to leave disabled people isolated in society and held down in a cycle of federal assistance and poverty. Lots of disabled people want to work integrated, full-paying jobs that will give them the income and independence to better maneuver the housing market and avoid discrimination, yet in most states, including Nevada, we don’t provide disabled people with the resources that are required to effectively connect them to these jobs and prevent discrimination from employers. Instead, as is portrayed in our current system, we tend to treat the disabled as broken members of society who cannot contribute, and we offer them a path to welfare instead of employment. The Employment First model will increase housing security for people with disabilities in Nevada, as well as any other state that adopts Employment First, by focusing resources directly towards ensuring a reliable source of income and ultimately greater independence for any disabled person who wants to work. Outline of focus and intended contribution of the research: Employment First: Assume that every person with a disability wants to be employed. - Colorado has been doing employment first for 5 years. - Nevada is trying to go employment first. Will benefit poor individuals with disabilities and wealthier individuals with disabilities: - Poor will be more likely to have untreated mental illness or trauma. They will also face more obstacles in employment first such as no access to transportation or internet connection. - This employment-first solution might not necessarily solve the housing shortage but given that disabled people face poverty at a much higher rate (and the more severe the disability the poorer you tend to be) we need to at least get them on a level playing field so everyone suffers the same. - Rich disabled people will benefit by becoming more independent so they will not always require people to take care of them. Independence: - Let people be self-sufficient. - People want jobs, let’s go with an employment-first solution. - We don’t want the disabled to continue to be trapped in a cycle of welfare where they will be discriminated against in housing. - Money will help with independence and obtaining housing. - It will empower disabled people to not be left out as a group that can’t work hard to provide for themselves. For some reason, this group is the one that must stay on welfare and be dependent. - We need to stop acting like disabled people are broken and can’t contribute to society. We must provide them with the support to become contributing members of society instead of isolating them. What is needed: - Work from home can be utilized for people with mobility disabilities. For example, customer service. - Rather than providing the disabled with a plan for getting on welfare, instead, give them a path to finding employment. Help connect them with jobs that will be a good fit. - Inform employers that discriminating against the disabled will not be financially beneficial. - We need to eliminate the subminimum wage (we did in Nevada). Stop focusing on eliminating discrimination in housing: Make sure employers don’t discriminate. - Housing providers discriminate against the poor (people who obtain Section 8 housing vouchers) because of the belief they are more likely to be drug addicts or have a disorder that would lead to them causing damage to an apartment, but that is not a foregone conclusion. - Instead of trying to eliminate discrimination we need to neutralize it. - It is hopeless to keep working to eliminate discrimination because legislation won’t get passed and housing providers will still find a way to discriminate. o A.B. 176, which would add a source of income as a protected class, failed to pass in Nevada. - Instead, we should do everything we can to help disabled people become independent by obtaining a reliable source of income. This way housing providers can’t discriminate based on source of income (in other words, go around disability discrimination laws). - Even if we can provide low-income disabled people with a house we still have to go back and give them a path to employment. - We need a system that can show employers the benefits of disabled workers, so they stop fighting so hard. o For example, people with autism could work the late shift in inventory because they can focus well on a single thing. - We need to put together all the variables that will get people in a house. Employment is one of those variables. Employment needs to come first to create independence and less chance of discrimination in housing. - Remember about the group that is left out: o There is always a group that is left out. If we focus only on employment first, then we will leave out the disabled people who are unable to work. o We will need a blended solution between housing first and employment first. - Talk about the individual benefits and the societal benefits. Sources: APSE. (2023, September 11). Employment first. Association of People Supporting Employment First. https://apse.org/legislative-advocacy/employment-first/ Autistic Self Advocacy Network. (n.d.). Employment first: What it is and why it matters. ASAN. https://autisticadvocacy.org/actioncenter/issues/employment/first/ Dirth, T. P., & Branscombe, N. R. (2019). Recognizing ableism: A social identity analysis of disabled people perceiving discrimination as illegitimate. Journal of Social Issues, 75(3), 786-813. Jarwala, A., & Singh, S. (2019). When disability is a" nuisance": How chronic nuisance ordinances push residents with disabilities out of their homes. Harv. CR-CLL Rev., 54, 875. Knudsen, B. (n.d.). Expanded protections for families with Housing Choice Vouchers. Poverty and Race Research Action Council. https://www.prrac.org/pdf/soi-voucher-data-brief.pdf Martel, A., Day, K., Jackson, M. A., & Kaushik, S. (2021). Beyond the pandemic: the role of the built environment in supporting people with disabilities work life. Archnet-IJAR: international journal of architectural research, 15(1), 98-112. Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau. (2023, September 26). AB176. AB176 Overview. https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/9867/Overview Oliver, S., Gosden-Kaye, E. Z., Winkler, D., & Douglas, J. M. (2022). The outcomes of individualized housing for people with disability and complex needs: a scoping review. Disability and Rehabilitation, 44(7), 1141-1155. Poremski, D., Latimer, E., Nisenbaum, R., Distasio, J., Braithwaite, E., & Stergiopoulos, V. (2016, February 14). Effects of housing first on employment and income of homeless individuals: Results of a randomized trial. Psychiatric Services. https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201500002 Schwemm, R. G. (2019). Source-of-income discrimination and the Fair Housing Act. Case W. Res. L. Rev., 70, 573. Tighe, J. R., Hatch, M., & Mead, J. (2017, April). How fair housing programs can be bolstered by laws ... - scholars. Scholars Strategy Network. https://scholars.org/sites/scholars/files/ssn-key-findings-tighe-hatch-and-mead-on-housing-programs-and-income-discrimination.pdf

Adapted from my 152-page senior thesis, this is a case study of Block 216—a mixed-use luxury development project in downtown Portland, OR that displaced the city’s largest and second oldest food cart pod, the Alder Pod, in summer 2019. The case study charts the history of mobile food in Portland, including the unique licensure that allows Portland’s food carts to flourish; the story of the Alder Pod and the eviction-relocation process which runs from summer 2019 to the present; the implications of Block 216 for Portland, including the macroeconomic and development context; recent trends in mobile food formalization, including the embourgeoisement and physical armoring of next-generation food cart pods and the exodus of food carts from the central city; the complicated role food carts play in gentrification and culinary gentrification; and policy recommendations for a more just and equitable Portland mobile food landscape. Methods include semi-structured stakeholder and expert interviews with actors including affected food cart owner-operators, NGO members, journalists, and city officials; a content analysis of the journalistic coverage; and standard secondary research from academic and journalistic sources, including quite a bit of secondhand Bourdieu and Marx. This research is important because it adds to the corpus of literature on Portland’s mobile food landscape—one of the most cutting-edge and dynamic in the country—including providing some much-needed follow-ups to the early 2010s photogenetic heyday found in popular and academic press. This research provides a very detailed chronological case study of one high-stakes, high-profile altercation between mobile food and urban boosters/developers that is transferrable to other metropoles, including a detailed look at the place of Trump-era Opportunity Zones in the long lineage of neoliberal supply-side economic policy directed at American cities. It also provides an urgently needed look at post-pandemic urban recovery and what that might mean for different stakeholders alongside best practices in how said recovery plans must interface with mobile food. Finally, as Portland’s food cart culture enters well into the 2020s, this research provides a look into the implications of a “formalized” mobile food landscape, namely gentrification and enclosure from the street. The references section stretches 32 pages double spaced due in part to a large number of news articles and public documents, but some of the key academic and print sources are: Agyeman et al. – “Is It Local ... or Authentic and Exotic? Ethnic Food Carts and Gastropolitan Habitus on Portland’s Eastside” Phillip Clay - Neighborhood Renewal: Middle-Class Resettlement and Incumbent Upgrading in American Neighborhoods Nevin Cohen – Feeding or Starving Gentrification: The Role of Food Policy Mike Davis – “Fortress LA” Zachery Hyde – Omnivorous Gentrification: Restaurant Reviews and Neighborhood Change in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great American Cities Regan Koch – Licensing, Popular Practices and Public Spaces: An Inquiry via the Geographies of Street Food Vending Matonte et al. – The Failure of Opportunity Zones in Oregon: Lifeless Place-Based Economic Development Implementation through a Policy Network Roy and Rodgers – Cartopia: Portland's Food Cart Revolution Karishma Shah – Calculating the Impacts of Food Gentrification in Portland, Oregon Timothy Weaver – “The False Promise of Opportunity Zones” Wester at al. – “Friends of the Green Loop: Food Cartology”

I want to understand the social ecology of Wallingford, Seattle, from its early 20th-century origins as a streetcar suburb to its present status as an increasingly gentrified neighborhood. This research investigates the interactions of how historical, economic, and social factors have shaped the neighborhood’s identity and dynamics over the decades, navigating the social ecology of Wallingford, starting from its origins in the early 1900s when the neighborhood was primarily populated by blue-collar workers tracing it to today as an increasingly gentrified neighborhood. Wallingford started as a streetcar suburb. It was more of a neighborhood that people would pass through than one they set their destination to. With the establishment of the University of Washington (UW) and its proximity to Wallingford, the area started to develop, which helped to urbanize the neighborhood increasingly (Steinbrueck & Nyberg 1975). Wallingford initially drew people in because of its transportation access, but this also helped move people out. Construction of the freeway, the growing use of the automobile, and suburban sprawl pushed people outside the neighborhood to the suburbs near Seattle (Veith 2005). The Wallingford community resisted its demise. With new social infrastructure and the Wallingford Community Council (WCC) development, they could maintain the neighborhood’s character. But, as Seattle has grown with the booming tech industry, Wallingford’s value has risen. The cost of living has increased, and more single-family houses are being torn down and replaced with million-dollar townhomes. Drawing upon Erikson’s (2017) concepts of the City and Village, Wallingford used to resemble an urban village. The walkability and amenities in such a dense place in the commercial district made it feel like an urban downtown. Still, the small population within the neighborhood felt more like a village with communal bonds based on shared space and a sense of intimacy and mutual knowing. This feeling of community and unity continued up until the early 2000s. Still, with the rise of technology in Seattle and its growing urbanizing environment within the neighborhood, it resembles more of a city in that it has become increasingly individualistic, and those living in the community are likely to be more irritable and alienated. Though it does not resemble all aspects of Erikson’s description of the city, it no longer represents the kindred nature of a village it once was. Further, drawing upon Clark’s (1979) four phases of gentrification, Wallingford is currently in phase three. Although Wallingford wasn’t a poor neighborhood when it started going through stage one, it still mimicked Clark’s first three phases. During its first phase, individuals move into a previously poor neighborhood, renovating houses without support from the government or large institutions. The second phase is when those attracted to the neighborhood because of the change start buying up real estate, and it starts gaining media attention. Phase three occurs as middle-class gentrifiers take on more prominent roles in the neighborhoods (i.e., committees and community boards). This is also the stage when developers become the preeminent renovators and builders. In 2015, Seattle proposed the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) with help from developers (McNichols 2018). The plan involves upzoning Wallingford and other single-family residences. Developers can build taller buildings and, in return, must pay for affordable housing. However, these taller buildings tend to come in the form of luxury townhomes, which raise concerns about affordability and displacement, and there is no specificity on what must be built first. Luxury townhomes have already begun developing within the neighborhood, yet affordable housing has yet to be indicated. To examine how Wallingford has progressed through the decades into its increasingly gentrified neighborhood, I will do a mixture of comparative historical research and ethnographic methodology. I will analyze historical documents to uncover what Wallingford was like during its early days (especially making a note of how it has changed over the past twenty years) and conduct in-depth interviews with community members in the neighborhood who have lived there for at least a decade and have experienced the changes firsthand. Further, I will add ethnographic observations in public spaces to observe what type of people are there (i.e. age, race, income), what they are doing, and how they interact with others. The Wallingford Community Council (WCC) has come to its defense on numerous occasions to keep its charm of a “small town” – or village. However, its focus has primarily been downzoning remaining zones to single-family use (Eliason 2018). Though the WCC has been very effective at lobbying upzones regarding affordable housing, the same cannot be said about luxury townhouses. Today’s developers differ significantly than the work of the developers in the 1970s when they wanted to buy homes to flip for those affiliated with UW, as there was a lot more pushback in the 70s. There are likely other factors involved, though it seems like the WCC is more concerned about people moving in who are of lower socioeconomic status rather than ruining the “characteristic” of the (manufactured) single-family neighborhood. I want to investigate the causes, consequences, and significance of gentrification within Wallingford. I will critically assess the intentions and effectiveness of the WCC in representing the interests of the community, questioning the inclusivity and democratic nature of its decision-making processes. Work Cited: Clay, P. (1979). Neighborhood Renewal: Middle-Class Resettlement and Incumbent Upgrading in American Neighborhoods. Lexington Books. Eliason, M. (2018). This is how you slow-walk into a housing shortage. Sightline Institute. https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/23/this-is-how-you-slow-walk-into-a-housing-shortage/ Erikson, K. (2017). The Sociologist’s Eye: Reflections on Social Life. Yale University Press. McNichols, J. (2018). Wallingford fought developers decades before it was hip. KUOW. https://kuow.org/stories/wallingford-fought-developers-decades-it-was-hip/ Steinbrueck, V., & Nyberg, F. (1975). Wallingford: An Inventory of Buildings and Urban Design Resources. Historic Wallingford. https://www.historicwallingford.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1976_WallingfordNeighborhoodInventory.pdf Veith, T. (2005). A Preliminary Sketch of Wallingford’s History. City of Seattle. https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Neighborhoods/HistoricPreservation/HistoricResourcesSurvey/context-wallingford.pdf

Ethnic Pride on TikTok: Digital communities of Women of color Reyna Rajkumar and Dr. Melissa Brown Santa Clara University Keywords: Feminist Theory, Ethnic Pride, Women of Color, TikTok, Challenges, Duets Since its release in 2016, TikTok has emerged as a dominant social media platform, particularly among adolescents and young adults. This platform is distinct from other social networking software due to its primary content format of short-form videos that last between 15 seconds to a maximum of three minutes, allowing for quick communication and information exchange. Additionally, the company’s deployment of application activity provides for an algorithm that curates a “for you page,” which presents users content attuned to their interests. This feature, alongside other key social media software functionality such as hashtags, comments, and following, leads to virtual communities that spawn digital practices such as challenges, which begin when one user prompts others to create videos performing a specific action or task. Challenges often revolve around various themes, from dance routines and lip-syncing to educational content and activism (Cervi & Divon, 2023). Despite growing academic interest in TikTok and its cyberculture, current understanding of the sociological implications of the platform is limited, particularly regarding, the expression of ethnic pride among women through participation in challenges. However, recent incidents suggest that women of color use the practice of TikTok challenges to form communities of support through internet-mediated dialogues about reclaiming cultural heritage and challenging stereotypes. For example, during the "Fox Eye" challenge, white users of TikTok instructed viewers to achieve the appearance of elongated, almond-shaped eyes while taking pictures through the use of makeup, hairstyles that lift the face, selfie angles, or stretch certain areas of one’s facial skin for (Zhao & Abidin, 2023). However, Asian Americans responded to these videos, primarily on TikTok, by sharing experiences with racism regarding eye shape, including bullying during childhood, and calling out how society deemed these features beautiful on white bodies. Other Asian Americans affirmed these users’ experiences in the comments of the videos. Thus, through their responses, Asian American women developed an online space to share experiences in ways that facilitated healing and ethnic pride. The discourse that emerged in relation to the “Fox Eye” challenge therefore inspires the question: In what ways do women of color, particularly those of Asian descent, leverage the affordances of TikTok to create an anti-racist cyberculture and facilitate digital enclaves of communities invested in cultivating ethnic pride? To answer this question, we focus on TikTok to examine the ways that Asian women and other women of color participate in the cybercultural practices of to TikTok to promote ethnic pride as form of women’s empowerment. We argue that given a history in which women of color have been diminished or excluded from the U.S. public sphere, TikTok affords them a means to communicate their opinions and attitudes in public. This use of TikTok as an outlet to share personal testimonies of racism and discrimination includes challenging both racialized and gendered stereotypes, norms, and biases (Matamoros-Fernández, 2023), thereby resisting white supremacy and patriarchy in western technoculture. To explore these dynamics, we specifically focus on TikTok videos that depict the outfit transition trend, which feature a user displayed in everyday clothing in the first scene, followed by a transition scene in which they conceal themselves by covering the lens of the camera, and then finally reappear on screen in another, typically more fancy and stylish outfit. While various groups on TikTok participate in the trend, for example showing themselves getting ready for a night out on the town, some women of color have adopted this practice to display themselves in their indigenous cultural clothing, thereby displaying ethnic pride. These content creators also often invite other women to duet their videos showing their cultural outfits, as viewers leave comments of praise and encouragement in the comments, instigating the formation of a digital community rooted in ethnic uplift. This study employs Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), an interdisciplinary analytical framework to examine internet-mediated phenomena, particularly in relation to the evolution of society and culture (Brock, 2016). We ground this digital sociological inquiry in critical race theory and women of color feminisms to address the formation of digital enclaves among ethnically marginalized women on TikTok. In alignment with CTDA, we take a multimodal approach to discourse, framing data collection by examining TikTok’s cyberculture through its technological features, specifically hashtags and duets, and its practices, specifically challenges and trends. To begin, we created a new TikTok account attached to a new gmail address so as to have a relatively neutral interaction with the platform’s algorithm. We then use its search function to explore hashtags including #challenge, #traditional, and #outfittransition, and collect posts by women of color participation in the outfit transition trend with ethnic wear. Through analysis of at least 50 videos that meet the selection criteria, we will identify themes in the self-presentation styles of each content creator, describing how they use setting, aesthetic, and other aspects of embodiment in line with TikTok’s features, such as music or filters. Additionally, we will document and analyze the ways viewers engage with these content creators through comments on these video posts. Ultimately, we aim to understand how women of color use TikTok to counter narratives of ethnic assimilation into western cultural aesthetic practices, but also create communities rooted in the intimacy of shared cultural background by creating counterpublic narratives in which they reclaim ethnic pride. In conducting this study, we first expect to find that women of color on TikTok who participate in the outfit transition trend and the users who respond though duets, promote ethnic pride, in a way that generates comments from similarly situated ethnic users, thereby building an online space that functions as communities of support for marginalized people. Second, we anticipate that ethnic cultural identity will be communicated not only through outfits, but also through audio content such as cultural music or personal testimonies about their cultural identities. Such findings will reveal the importance of TikTok as an online forum for ethnic communities, particularly for women who are often not afforded means of public expression offline. Thus, TikTok provides a space for individuals to resist and confront gendered racialization and stereotyping. Third, we expect to find that since TikTok’s unique affordances actively promote interaction and collaboration among users, a multimodal relationship emerges in the form of virtual communities that cultivate empowerment for women of color. Lastly, we expect to find that through open expression of their identity, women of color create digital spaces in which they challenge prevailing stereotypes, promote a sense of belonging and empowerment, and build networks of support that uplift and validate each other's experiences. References Cervi, Laura, and Tom Divon. “Playful Activism: Memetic Performances of Palestinian Resistance in TikTok #Challenges.” Social Media + Society, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 205630512311576, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157607. Zhao, Xinyu, and Crystal Abidin. “The “Fox Eye” Challenge Trend: Anti-Racism Work, Platform Affordances, and the Vernacular of Gesticular Activism on TikTok.” Social Media + Society, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 205630512311575, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157590. Brock, André. “Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis.” New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 3, 11 Nov. 2016, pp. 1012–1030, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816677532. Matamoros-Fernández, Ariadna. “Taking Humor Seriously on TikTok.” Social Media + Society, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 205630512311576, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157609.

Meghan Rustemeyer Seattle Pacific University mrustemeyer@spu.edu Research Question: Does one’s religious preference influence their attitudes toward government involvement in public institutions when it involves religious-related issues? Contributions: Previous research has found that attitudes toward government involvement in public institutions regarding religious issues vary across religions, particularly between Christian and non-Christin traditions (Layman 1997; Cohen and Liebman 1997; Dawidowicz 1966; Morrissey 1997; White and Gregorius 2019). In the United States, Christianity has historically had and continues to have privileges and influence over other religions, despite the Establishment Clause stating no religion shall be given unduly favor over another by the government (Braunstein, Fuist, and Willams 2019; Holt and Fischer 2002; McCasland 1947; White and Gregorius 2019). Other religions and non-religious people have been found to generally have negative attitudes towards government involvement in public institutions and are advocates for separation of church and state in part due to the favoritism Christianity has been given (White and Gregorius 2019; Dawidowicz 1966; Cohen and Liebman 1997; Holt and Fischer 2002). While research indicates non-Christian groups would likely have more negative attitudes, there is less evidence to strongly indicate to what extent Christians would be in favor or opposed to government involvement in public institutions in comparison to other religions and non-religious people. There is also little research to indicate if there is a significant difference between Protestant and Catholic attitudes on the matter and if so, then to what degree. Theory and Methods: I hypothesize that people who are Christian are more likely to approve of government involvement regarding religious-related issues in public institutions. Christianity enjoys certain benefits and favoritism from the United States government and therefore Christians would want to continue to benefit while other religions and non-religious people would be less likely to approve because they do not experience those benefits. However, there is discourse over attitudes toward government within Christianity (White and Gregorius 2019; Morrissey 1997; Wagoner and VanCuren 2021). I further hypothesize people who are Protestant are more likely to approve of government involvement regarding religious-related issues in public institutions compared to Catholics, Jews, other religions, and non-religious people. Using data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS), I will use regression analysis to compare Protestants to Catholics, Jews/other, and Nones regarding attitudes toward government actions regarding religion in public institutions. The 2021 General Social Survey uses an equal-probability multi-stage cluster sample of United States adults and then gathers the data through over-the-phone interviews and a web survey. The survey is nationally representative of 4032 United States adults. Among the large variety of topics covered in the survey, there are several questions that measure attitudes on government involvement regarding religious-related issues in public institutions including attitudes on the United Supreme Court rulings on the requirement of reading the Lord’s Prayer or Bible verses in public schools, whether or not the federal government should advocate Christian values, attitudes on whether or not the United States would be a better country if religion had less influence, and whether or not a person should be allowed to make a speech against churches and religion. Using regression analysis, I will also control for other sociodemographic characteristics such as gender. References Braunstein, Ruth, Todd N. Fuist, and Rhys H. Williams. 2019 “Religion and Progressive Politics in the United States.” Sociology Compass 13(2): doi: 10.1111/soc4.12656. Cohen, Steven M. and Charles S. Liebman. 1997. “American Jewish liberalism: Unraveling the strands.” Public Opinion Quarterly 61(3): 405-430. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. 1966. “Church and State." The American Jewish Year Book 67: 128–150. Holt, Michael and Claude S. Fischer. 2002. “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations.” American Sociological Review 67(2): 165–190. doi.org/10.2307/3088891. Layman, Geoffrey C. 1997. “Religion and political behavior in the United States: The impact of beliefs, affiliations, and commitment from 1980 to 1994.” Public Opinion Quarterly 61(2): 288-316. McCasland, Vernon. 1947. “Religion and Our American Government.” Journal of Bible and Religion 15(2): 67–68. Morrissey, Daniel J. 1997. “The Separation of Church and State: An American-Catholic Perspective.” Catholic University Law Review 47(1) Wagoner, Joseph A. and Serena VanCuren. 2021. “Religious orientations, prototypicality threat, and attitudes toward church–state separation.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 51(9): 927–945. doi-org.ezproxy.spu.edu/10.1111/jasp.12812 White, Manon H. and Fredrik Gregorius. 2019. “The Satanic Temple: Secularist Activism and Occulture in the American Political Landscape.” International Journal for the Study of New Religions 10(1): doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.38954.

One of the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is its role in the decline of performance levels for Black and Hispanic/Latino students in California (“California Test Scores Decline, Racial Disparities Remain,” 2022). Although racial segregation is now unconstitutional, research continues to demonstrate that, “Students of color and those in poverty tend to attend schools that have fewer resources than their affluent White peers, compounding and perpetuating other inequalities,” (Balingit 2022). When focusing on education discrepancies, research shows that not all schools were equally equipped to assist students in their transition to at-home, online learning (Meckler, 2022). Research has shown us that prior to COVID-19, an education gap had existed between White students and Black and Hispanic/Latino students because student populations that experience the achievement gap the most are a part of one or more of the following: low-income families, have a disability, racial and ethnic minority group, and English language learners (“What is the Achievement Gap and How Can it be Closed?,” 2016). Interviews were conducted and secondary research was collected to evaluate the personal experience and publications of COVID-19’s influence on students’ performance levels in California. The purpose of this paper is to find the correlation between prior racial disparities and COVID-19’s role in continuing to widen the achievement gap for Black and Hispanic/Latino students in California. The aim of this study is to educate the public on how COVID-19 served as a racial and socioeconomic barrier for low-income, Black and Hispanic/Latino students.

Since 2020, there has been an embrace of race as the primary identity to focus on when it comes to solving equity issues. This focus has allowed for there to be the creation of policies and research that can be more properly aimed at BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities that have been historically disenfranchised. This disenfranchisement came primarily from laws created to target BIPOC, barring them from owning houses where they want, beneficial loans, and even outside of America, putting the indigenous people of Mexico into the lowest rung based on the casta system. As a result, BIPOC -- specifically Black and Brown people, and immigrants -- have been forced into the lower class of America. These policies worked so well, that these groups being in the lower class and experiencing disparities because of it has become quite normalized. In fact, it feels out of place if we see a White person in the same situation as them since, based on systems, they should not be. Race and class have become inseparable. So, it makes sense that, to remedy the wrongs caused by policies that targeted BIPOC so that they would be in the low class of America, that race should again be the main focus. However, I believe that this course of action is misguided and too late. Instead, we should focus on class – the ultimate effect of the racist policies. This would truly begin to help dismantle the equity issues being experienced in America, and it is addressing these issues in a more proactive way; in the past, it was ok to discriminate by race, but now racism is much less overt and is masked by things like class. This is not to discredit or undermine the importance of race when solving equity issues. Without this focus, we would not be able to see the role that racism, prejudice, and discrimination play in the outcomes of the lives of BIPOC. However, having a more balanced, intersectional view as it comes to the role that class plays in outcomes for BIPOC is the new way to address harmful policies and to solve inequity. As such, my research question is “How can a heavier emphasis on class be used to address racial inequities?” I will be analyzing: (1) the history of racial policies in America and their connection to class, with reference to the casta of Mexico as well; (2) the history and purpose of affirmative action, as well as the recent rulings for affirmative action; (3) the White people who are outliers in regards to class; (4) classism in the Black community; (5) ways class can be used for affirmative action to help solve racial inequities; and (6) the benefits of helping solve class issues that encapsulate everyone, not limited to BIPOC. Included in my essay will be excerpts from the perspectives of lower income students at my university (spanning races), and their thoughts on having more emphasis on class. There will also be a focus on symbolic interactionism, intersectionality, and conflict theory as they relate to the topic. This is to prove that working with class and race, hand and hand, can aid in solving inequities experienced by BIPOC. Source References: - Anon. 2023. “Casta.” Wikipedia. Retrieved December 1, 2023 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta). - Intelexual Media. 2019. Intelexual Media. Retrieved December 1, 2023 (https://youtu.be/lfzUr4csDZg?si=RJX0jfTBrkB1IChJ). - Leonhardt, David. 2023. “Social Class Is Not about Only Race.” The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2023 (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/briefing/affirmative-action.html). - Sherri Kolade&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; September 26, 2021. 2021. “Classism among Black People Examined&nbsp; .” The Michigan Chronicle. Retrieved December 1, 2023 (https://michiganchronicle.com/2021/09/26/classism-among-black-people-examined/). - Sutherland, Paige and Meghna Chakrabarti. 2023. “Can Focusing on Class Instead of Race Solve Our Country’s Equity Issues?” On Point. Retrieved December 1, 2023 (https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/08/03/can-class-based-preferences-over-race-solve-our-countrys-equity-issues).

Research Question How do students perceive the social status of their peers and do these perceptions create boundaries between social groups? Intended Contribution This question is sociologically important because answering it may reveal the processes involved in how college students come to exclude or include others. My research looks at the case of Whitman College (Washington). From conversations with friends, current students, and alumni, it has been brought to my attention that while Whitman College advertises an inclusive community, many do not feel truly welcomed for different reasons. I have related to these sentiments, and I want to understand how this inclusion or exclusion works in terms of status (Ridgeway 2019). I feel this is important to understand because if young people are excluding each other, this exclusion might persist outside of the college setting. Interrupting this cycle by figuring out how people might be more open to connecting with others would be an important step in building a better world. In her book Seeing Others, Michèle Lamont (2023:15) writes, “As we work to achieve a more equitable society, we need to interrogate how we evaluate worth in ourselves and in others.” I am interested in how Whitman students see worth in themselves and in others and how these ideas might create boundaries between social groups on campus (Bloemraad 2022). We must grant each other compassion and work to truly see the humanity that lives in each of us, even when it is hard. Examining how Whitman students see or do not see worth in others and how they consequently treat each other could help to understand how we might create a more inclusive Whitman, more welcoming communities, and a more empathetic and gentler world. Theory Pierre Bourdieu’s (2002) theory of social capital is directly related to what I am interested in studying. Social capital refers to the privileges one is afforded due to who they have connections with . I am curious whether students at Whitman are indeed “trying so hard to increase their social capital!” I wonder if this effort to increase one's social capital is in turn making others feel excluded because students are deciding who is worthy of making intentional connections with and who is not. Also important to consider is the theory of symbolic boundaries: ‘Symbolic Boundaries’ are the lines that include and define some people, groups, and things while excluding others (Epstein 1992:232). These distinctions can be expressed through normative interdictions (taboos), cultural attitudes and practices, and patterns of likes and dislikes. They play an important role in the creation of inequality and the exercise of power. (Lamont et. al (2015:850) Relating to symbolic boundaries, Max Weber’s theory on status groups will be helpful to apply to my project. As summarized in Lamont et al. (2015), Weber describes people as discriminating towards others in an effort to curb competition for scarce resources: “In the process, they form status groups whose superiority is defined in relation to other groups… cultural understandings about status boundaries have a strong impact on people’s social position and access to resources” (Weber cited in Lamont et al. 850-851). Symbolic boundaries, status groups, and social capital will all be useful in understanding how Whitman students include or exclude others based on the meanings they assign to what they think makes a “worthy whittie” (a term casually used to refer to Whitman students and alumni). Methods I will randomly sample Whitman College students to collect data through semi-structured interviews. I will set up a table in the entryway to the library with a sign that says, “Is it cool to be cool?” and start talking to people who want to speak about their beliefs. This question is not my research question but it is related, and its purpose is to catch people’s attention. I would then ask if they would be interested in a follow up interview, and they can share their email with me for contacting them later. I will interview 10-15 people, given the relatively short time period that this project takes place. The topics I will be covering in interviews are sensitive subjects. I will be asking about moments when the interviewee has felt excluded or isolated at Whitman and such discussions can bring up triggering memories. I will be very intentional about how I approach these topics, and ensure that my interviewees are aware of the sensitive conversations to come before the interview starts. I will make it very clear that interviewees do not have to answer any question they do not feel comfortable answering and that we can end the interview at any time. Having supportive resources available after the interview for interviewees to access if they wish is something I will do as well. I will also be asking about when interviewees have included and welcomed others into their lives. These questions will be good to end the interview with so that interviewees leave on a positive note. With regards to data analytic technique, I will use NVivo to code my interview transcripts. I will use a mixture of deductive and inductive coding, starting out with some codes that I am expecting to find in the data, then discovering new codes to use as I revisit the data. References Bloemraad, Irene. 2022. “Claiming Membership: Boundaries, Positionality, US Citizenship, and What It Means to Be American.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45(6):1011–33. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2021.1986225. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. “The Forms of Capital.” Pp. 280–91 in Readings in Economic Sociology, edited by N. W. Biggart. Malden, MA, and Oxford, UK: Wiley. Lamont, Michèle. 2023. Seeing Others: How Recognition Works– and How It Can Heal a Divided World. New York, NY: One Signal Publishers/Atria. Lamont, Michèle, Sabrina Pendergrass, and Mark Pachucki. 2015. “Symbolic Boundaries.” Pp. 850–55 in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier: Amsterdam. Ridgeway L., Cecilia. 2019. Status: Why Is It Everywhere? Why Does It Matter? New York, NY: The Russell Sage Foundation.

Introduction Restorative justice has emerged as a significant alternative to traditional punitive approaches in addressing criminal behavior and conflict resolution. This proposal aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the referral system and the practices of the restorative justice system employed by the Abbotsford Restorative Justice and Advocacy Association (ARJAA). The research question guiding this proposal is centered on understanding the case characteristics and the operational dynamics of the restorative justice system within ARJAA, with the ultimate goal of contributing to the enhancement of their referral system and program effectiveness. Research Question The central research question guiding this proposal is: What are the case characteristics and operational practices of the restorative justice system employed by ARJAA, and how can these findings inform the redesign of their referral system to enhance program effectiveness? Intended Contribution of Research The intended contribution of this research is to provide valuable insights into the current state of the referral system and the operational practices of the restorative justice system within ARJAA. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of case characteristics and engaging with key stakeholders, this research aims to offer actionable recommendations for the enhancement of ARJAA's referral system and program effectiveness. The findings of this research are expected to inform the organization's decision-making processes and contribute to the ongoing development and improvement of their restorative justice practices. Description of Theory and Methods The research employed a mixed-methods approach to gather and analyze data related to the referral system and the operational practices of the restorative justice system at ARJAA. The methods utilized in this study included quantitative analysis of ARJAA's case records from 2018 to 2022, as well as qualitative data collection through conversations with key stakeholders. Quantitative Analysis: The researchers utilized ARJAA's existing case records management (CRM) database to conduct a quantitative analysis of the organization's files over a five-year period. The analysis focused on identifying and examining case characteristics, patterns, and trends within the restorative justice system. It is important to note that the current structure of the CRM presented challenges in data extraction, leading to substantial restructuring by the researchers to optimize the use of the available data. One of the key recommendations arising from this project is to explore alternative options for a CRM database that can facilitate more effective utilization of the data. Qualitative Data Collection: In addition to the quantitative analysis, the research team engaged in conversations with key stakeholders involved in the restorative justice system at ARJAA. These stakeholders provided contextual insights that complemented the quantitative findings and offered valuable perspectives on the organization's referral system and potential areas for growth. The qualitative data collected from these conversations will be instrumental in informing the forthcoming redesign of the referral system and guiding the organization's future programming decisions. In conclusion, this proposal sets the stage for a rigorous examination of the referral system and restorative justice practices at ARJAA, with the aim of providing actionable recommendations for program enhancement. By combining quantitative analysis with qualitative insights from key stakeholders, this research seeks to make a meaningful contribution to the ongoing development and improvement of restorative justice initiatives within the organization. References: Beckman, Kara J., et al. “Reducing re-arrest through community-led, police-initiated restorative justice diversion tailored for Youth.” Crime & Delinquency, 2023, p. 001112872311585, https://doi. org/10.1177/00111287231158569. Bergseth, Kathleen J., and Jeffrey A. Bouffard. “The longterm impact of restorative justice programming for juvenile offenders.” Journal of Criminal Justice, vol. 35, no. 4, 2007, pp. 433–451, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jcrimjus.2007.05.006. Church, Abere Sawaqdeh, et al. “Community Service Outcomes in justice-involved youth: Comparing restorative community service to Standard Community Service.” Criminal Justice and Behavior, vol. 48, no. 9, 2021, pp. 1243– 1260, https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211008488. Dowd, Nancy E. Justice for Kids: Keeping Kids out of the Juvenile Justice System. New York University Press, 2016. Frampton, Mary Louise. “Finding Common Ground in Restorative Justice: Transforming Our Juvenile Justice Systems.” Social Justice Law Review, vol. 22, no. 2, 2018, https://doi.org/https://sjlr.law.ucdavis.edu/archives/vol22-no-2/JJLP-Vol22-Issue2-Frampton.pdf. Hobson, Jonathan, et al. “Restorative justice, youth violence, and policing: A review of the evidence.” Laws, vol. 11, no. 4, 2022, p. 62, https://doi.org/10.3390/laws11040062. Hodgson, Jodie. “Offending girls and restorative justice: A critical analysis.” Youth Justice, vol. 22, no. 2, 2020, pp. 166–188, https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420967751. Laundra, Kenneth, et al. “Transforming teens: Measuring the effects of restorative justice principles in a teen court setting.” Juvenile and Family Court Journal, vol. 64, no. 4, 2013, pp. 21–34, https://doi.org/10.1111/jfcj.12012. Payne, A. A., and Welch, K. (2018). The Effect of School Conditions on the Use of Restorative Justice in Schools. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 16(2), 224-240. Plecas, D., Klassen, C., Dow, M., Tatla, I., and Raible, C., “Reducing the Likelihood of Youth Becoming Gang Involved: A report prepared for the City of Abbotsford”, Community Health and Social Innovation Hub (CHASI), University of the Fraser Valley, 2023. Robinson, K., Plecas, D., Squires, C., and McLandress, K. “Pre-Charge Restorative justice and its Effect on Repeat and Adult Offenders”. Economic Development, Crime, and Policing: Global Perspectives (Garth den Heyer and Dilip Das, Eds.) CRC Press, 2014. Spacey, M, and N Thompson. “Beyond Individual Trauma: Towards a Multi-Faceted Trauma-Informed Restorative Approach to Youth Justice That Connects Individual Trauma With Family Reparation and Recognition of Bias and Discrimination.” British Journal of Community Justice, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 18–35, https://doi.org/https://doi. org/10.48411/vcqn-0794. Statistics Canada, “Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violation, police services in British Columbia”, Statistics Canada, 2023. Retrieved from: https://www150. statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510018401 Suzuki, Masahiro, and William R. Wood. “Co-option, coercion and compromise: Challenges of restorative justice in Victoria, Australia.” Contemporary Justice Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 274–292, https://doi.org/10.1080/1028258 0.2017.1311194. Umbreit M. and Peterson M.A., Restorative Justice and Dialogue: Impact, Opportunities, and Challenges in the Global Community, 36 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol’y 65 (2011), http://digitalcommons.law.wustl.edu/wujlp/vol36/iss1/5 Wilson, David, et al. Office of Justice Programs, 2017, Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Principles in Juvenile Justice: A MetaAnalysis. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ ojjdp/grants/250872.pdf Wood, William R., et al. “Restorative justice in youth and Adult Criminal Justice.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2022, https://doi. org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.658.

Topics Summary I hope to explore how same-sex couples navigate and distribute domestic responsibilities within their households, and how factors such as gender roles, relationship dynamics, and societal expectation play a role in this division of labor. Gender plays a significant role in the division of household roles and responsibilities. Traditionally, many societies have held specific expectations and norms about what tasks and responsibilities are associated with each gender. While these expectations have evolved over time, they continue to influence how household roles are divided. The mother cooks, cleans, nurtures and does more of the unpaid labor in a home, while the father fixes things, throws the garbage, is assertive and does more paid labor in a home (Vleuten). But for same-sex households, it is a different story as these same tasks need to be completed but can’t be divided on the basis of gender. Parental/household roles that are stereotypically divided by gender can no longer be traditionally divided by gender for same-sex parents, for the most part (Pollitt). Same-sex couples are not bound by the same traditional gender norms to the same extent as heterosexual couples. I propose to study the division of household labor, including chores and childcare, among same-sex parents. Research in this area is crucial not only to gain insight into the dynamics of same-sex couples but also to challenge/unravel the concept of traditional gender roles (Goldberg). General Question: How do same-sex parents divide household labor, including chores and childcare? Research Questions: What household chores is the more “masculine” partner in a same-sex relationship likely to perform? Is there an automatic assumption/inclination for each partner to perform certain tasks? In the same way there is one for heterosexual couples eg: woman cooks for man, man fixes things etc. What household chores is the more “feminine” partner in a same-sex relationship likely to perform? Is there a pressure to fulfill certain roles if one is more feminine or masculine than the other? What caregiver responsibilities is the more “masculine” partner in a same-sex relationship more likely to perform? Do household roles end up being more equally distributed since gender roles are not apparent? What caregiver responsibilities is the more “feminine” partner in a same-sex relationship more likely to perform? Literature Review My research proposal is to explore the division of household labor, including chores and childcare, among same-sex parents. Previous research has associated some factors to how same-sex couples distribute domestic responsibilities such as the “absence” of gender roles, skillset/ability, and time-availability all play a role into the division of labor. These concepts touch up on how societies have held specific expectations and norms about what tasks and responsibilities are associated with each gender. Research in this area is important not only to gain insight into the dynamics of same-sex couples but also to challenge/unravel the concept of traditional gender roles. “Absence” of Gender Roles Gender Roles in terms of a relationship refer to the societal and cultural expectations and norms that dictate the behavior, responsibilities, and roles that are typically associated with individuals based on their gender. Lesbian and gay couples by definition cannot establish sex-specific divisions of domestic tasks, at least not literally (Goldberg 2013). Same-sex relationships typically lack the traditional gender roles that exist in heterosexual relationships. In the study conducted by Bauer (2016), he researches the correlation between the lack of gender roles in same-sex couples and the equalness of the tasks being divided aimed to compare the distribution of housework in same-sex and different-sex partnerships. Bauer (2016) found that gay and lesbian partners apply a pattern characterized by higher levels of task sharing and lower levels of segregation. Because of the lack of having to conform to gender roles, same sex couples end up splitting domestic related tasks based on ability, not assumption (Bauer 2016). There’s no automatic assumption that one partner should take on a certain role based on their gender. Skillset/Ability Household tasks can vary in terms of the skills and abilities required to complete them. In a study conducted by Melanie Brewster (2015) she studied lesbian partnerships and their household labor divisions and what they found was that lesbain women often opted to abstain from traditional gendered divisions of chores in favor of other factors such as quality of task and ability. Partners may divide tasks based on who is better at a particular job. For instance, if one partner is more skilled at fixing things or doing home repairs, they may take on those responsibilities. In a study conducted by Oluwafemi Adeagbo (2016), they investigated how gay men ran their household in terms of the division of labor. What they found was that in gay couples, their areas of specializations were not based on traditional gender roles that are prominent in heterosexual relationships, they were rather based on the preferences and strength (abilities) of each partner (Adeagbo 2016). The skills/ability of each partner is one of the major factors when it comes to same-sex couples and their division of labor. Time-Availability The time-availability explanation describes the division of household labor as a function of the amount of time each member of the couple has available to spend in unpaid labor (domestic tasks) after paid labor (their job) is completed (Suzanne 2000). Although not something specific to same-sex couples, as different sex couples experience the same thing, it plays a much larger role in the division of labor for same sex couples. In a study conducted by Tornello and Sonnenberg (2015), it was found that spending more hours in paid employment compared with the partner was significantly associated with performing less household labor. Working more hours at a paid job, compared to their other partner, was associated with performing a smaller share of domestic tasks, which supports the time-availability factor. Another important finding was about how partners who reported working fewer hours in paid employment compared to their other partner, reported performing more of the household (Tornello and Sonnenberg 2015). It is clear that time availability in the context of work schedules, is an important influence on the housework division for same-sex couples. If one partner happens to be working more outside, that partner then has much less time to engage in unpaid labor (domestic tasks) in the home. Literature Review Summary Since same-sex couples are not necessarily following gender roles the same way different-sex couples do, other factors like skillset/ability and time availability come into play more. In same-sex couples, such prescriptions and expectations are arguably absent and there is no pre-fixed assignment of who is supposed or expected to do housework. It's important to recognize that each same-sex couple is unique, and the factors influencing their division of household tasks may vary based on their individual circumstances and preferences. However, same-sex couples often have the advantage of not being constrained by traditional gender roles, which can allow for more flexibility and negotiation. Within all of these studies, we see how these factors come into play for the division of labor within same-sex couples. My research will provide further insight on the factors mentioned earlier. With the help of the previous studies, I will place my focus on how the “absence” of gender roles, skillset/ability and time-availability have a direct relationship to same-sex couples and their division of labor of domestic tasks. Qualitative Research Design I will be using a semi-structured in-depth interview as the method to conduct my research. Semi-structured in-depth interviews are a qualitative research method commonly used in social sciences. They are characterized by a flexible and open-ended structure, allowing for a more natural and conversational flow compared to structured interviews (Punch 2014). With this flexibility, I anticipate to receive detailed and nuanced responses, offering richer data for analysis. With all this being said, semi-structured in-depth interviews do of course come with some limitations. The first being the possibility of the interview getting sidetracked due to the lack of structure. As the questions are open-ended, the responses can easily go in a direction that isn’t related to the research. What can be done to avoid this is to keep a separate checklist of the questions and concepts I want to make with my interviewee so that it can remain on topic and can redirect my interviewee if needed. Another limitation with semi-structured in-depth interviews has to do with my sample size. Since I will not be interviewing a large number of people, this means my results will lack a sense of generalizability. What I will do to reduce this limitation is interview people who are of diversity, that way when the data that is collected is able to be varied to some extent. Qualitative Data Collection I tend to hold four interviews that will last for at least an hour. The comfort of my participants is essential to the effectiveness of the results of my research so in order to ensure that they are comfortable, I will ease into the interview questions. This means I will not immediately begin with the core questions related to the interview, I will ask much more generic questions that eventually lead me to asking the much more valuable questions. What my questions will do is allow me to get a better understanding of the factors that contribute to the participants’ division of household labor with their partner. By emphasizing the questions on the basis of gender roles, time-availability, and ability, I will be able to get a deeper understanding on how these all influence the division of household labor within same-sex couples. Each of these interviews will be audio recorded by my cell phone. The participants' consent will of course be necessary. These interviews will be conducted in a public place that is fairly quiet but still welcoming like a coffee shop or even a library. All of the audios obtained from these interviews will then be transcribed with the use of Microsoft Word. Qualitative Sampling Strategy My population will consist of young adults ranging from ages 25-40, all with different backgrounds. I will interview young adults who are in same-sex relationships and live with their partner about their division of household labor with their partner. I will select the four participants by utilizing the non-probability sampling method from my quantitative data survey. I also intend to visit any local LGBT centers to see if I can find any more potential participants. The survey will be used in order to show the participants the types of characteristics that are being searched for in my study. Characteristics that I am looking for are gay or lesbian identifying person in a same-sex relationship who lives with their partner and has to deal with the division of household labor on a daily basis. In this survey of mine, I will also ask if they would be willing to participate in an interview in the future. Any people who are willing to do so will then go on a “potential candidate” list of mine where I will then decide who is a good fit for the study. This will of course be based on how they answer the survey. As I am interviewing four participants, I hope to select three of those participants to be gay relationships and the other three of those participants would be three people in lesbian relationships in order to ensure variability despite being a small sample size. Selecting participants from the survey will mean I am working with participants who meet all criteria necessary, allowing me to feel more confident and secure in my research. Works Cited: Bauer, G. (2016, January 27). Gender roles, comparative advantages and the life course: The Division of Domestic Labor in same-sex and different-sex couples. European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6223479/ Division of Labor among gay fathers. (n.d.-a). https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/sgd-sgd0000109.pdf “doing” and “undoing” gender: The ... - wiley online library. (n.d.-b). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jftr.12009 Lesbian women and household labor division: A systematic review of ... (n.d.-c). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10894160.2016.1142350 Suzanne M. Bianchi, “Maternal Employment and Time with Children: Dramatic Change or Surprising Continuity?” Demography 37(4) (2000): 401-14; Shelley Coverman, “Explaining Husbands’ Participation in Domestic Labor” The Sociological Quarterly 26 (1985): 81-97; Paula England and George Farkas, Households, Employment, and Gender: A Social, Economic and Demographic View, (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1986). Taylor & Francis Online. (n.d.-d). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/21528586.2015.1100097

How an employment-first strategy increases housing security for individuals with disabilities in Nevada and how it can be modeled in other states. Intro: People with disabilities face numerous obstacles in obtaining affordable and accessible housing in the United States. The recent housing shortages have only exasperated these challenges. Lack of inventory and high rents have made it nearly impossible for some low-income, disabled Americans to stay off the streets, yet as land and construction costs have increased as much as 60% in some places over the last decade, many federal affordable housing grants and programs have yet to see an increase in funding. In such an environment it is unfair and unsustainable to leave disabled people isolated in society and held down in a cycle of federal assistance and poverty. Lots of disabled people want to work integrated, full-paying jobs that will give them the income and independence to better maneuver the housing market and avoid discrimination, yet in most states, including Nevada, we don’t provide disabled people with the resources that are required to effectively connect them to these jobs and prevent discrimination from employers. Instead, as is portrayed in our current system, we tend to treat the disabled as broken members of society who cannot contribute, and we offer them a path to welfare instead of employment. The Employment First model will increase housing security for people with disabilities in Nevada, as well as any other state that adopts Employment First, by focusing resources directly towards ensuring a reliable source of income and ultimately greater independence for any disabled person who wants to work. Outline of focus and intended contribution of the research: Employment First: Assume that every person with a disability wants to be employed. - Colorado has been doing employment first for 5 years. - Nevada is trying to go employment first. Will benefit poor individuals with disabilities and wealthier individuals with disabilities: - Poor will be more likely to have untreated mental illness or trauma. They will also face more obstacles in employment first such as no access to transportation or internet connection. - This employment-first solution might not necessarily solve the housing shortage but given that disabled people face poverty at a much higher rate (and the more severe the disability the poorer you tend to be) we need to at least get them on a level playing field so everyone suffers the same. - Rich disabled people will benefit by becoming more independent so they will not always require people to take care of them. Independence: - Let people be self-sufficient. - People want jobs, let’s go with an employment-first solution. - We don’t want the disabled to continue to be trapped in a cycle of welfare where they will be discriminated against in housing. - Money will help with independence and obtaining housing. - It will empower disabled people to not be left out as a group that can’t work hard to provide for themselves. For some reason, this group is the one that must stay on welfare and be dependent. - We need to stop acting like disabled people are broken and can’t contribute to society. We must provide them with the support to become contributing members of society instead of isolating them. What is needed: - Work from home can be utilized for people with mobility disabilities. For example, customer service. - Rather than providing the disabled with a plan for getting on welfare, instead, give them a path to finding employment. Help connect them with jobs that will be a good fit. - Inform employers that discriminating against the disabled will not be financially beneficial. - We need to eliminate the subminimum wage (we did in Nevada). Stop focusing on eliminating discrimination in housing: Make sure employers don’t discriminate. - Housing providers discriminate against the poor (people who obtain Section 8 housing vouchers) because of the belief they are more likely to be drug addicts or have a disorder that would lead to them causing damage to an apartment, but that is not a foregone conclusion. - Instead of trying to eliminate discrimination we need to neutralize it. - It is hopeless to keep working to eliminate discrimination because legislation won’t get passed and housing providers will still find a way to discriminate. o A.B. 176, which would add a source of income as a protected class, failed to pass in Nevada. - Instead, we should do everything we can to help disabled people become independent by obtaining a reliable source of income. This way housing providers can’t discriminate based on source of income (in other words, go around disability discrimination laws). - Even if we can provide low-income disabled people with a house we still have to go back and give them a path to employment. - We need a system that can show employers the benefits of disabled workers, so they stop fighting so hard. o For example, people with autism could work the late shift in inventory because they can focus well on a single thing. - We need to put together all the variables that will get people in a house. Employment is one of those variables. Employment needs to come first to create independence and less chance of discrimination in housing. - Remember about the group that is left out: o There is always a group that is left out. If we focus only on employment first, then we will leave out the disabled people who are unable to work. o We will need a blended solution between housing first and employment first. - Talk about the individual benefits and the societal benefits. Sources: APSE. (2023, September 11). Employment first. Association of People Supporting Employment First. https://apse.org/legislative-advocacy/employment-first/ Autistic Self Advocacy Network. (n.d.). Employment first: What it is and why it matters. ASAN. https://autisticadvocacy.org/actioncenter/issues/employment/first/ Dirth, T. P., & Branscombe, N. R. (2019). Recognizing ableism: A social identity analysis of disabled people perceiving discrimination as illegitimate. Journal of Social Issues, 75(3), 786-813. Jarwala, A., & Singh, S. (2019). When disability is a" nuisance": How chronic nuisance ordinances push residents with disabilities out of their homes. Harv. CR-CLL Rev., 54, 875. Knudsen, B. (n.d.). Expanded protections for families with Housing Choice Vouchers. Poverty and Race Research Action Council. https://www.prrac.org/pdf/soi-voucher-data-brief.pdf Martel, A., Day, K., Jackson, M. A., & Kaushik, S. (2021). Beyond the pandemic: the role of the built environment in supporting people with disabilities work life. Archnet-IJAR: international journal of architectural research, 15(1), 98-112. Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau. (2023, September 26). AB176. AB176 Overview. https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/9867/Overview Oliver, S., Gosden-Kaye, E. Z., Winkler, D., & Douglas, J. M. (2022). The outcomes of individualized housing for people with disability and complex needs: a scoping review. Disability and Rehabilitation, 44(7), 1141-1155. Poremski, D., Latimer, E., Nisenbaum, R., Distasio, J., Braithwaite, E., & Stergiopoulos, V. (2016, February 14). Effects of housing first on employment and income of homeless individuals: Results of a randomized trial. Psychiatric Services. https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201500002 Schwemm, R. G. (2019). Source-of-income discrimination and the Fair Housing Act. Case W. Res. L. Rev., 70, 573. Tighe, J. R., Hatch, M., & Mead, J. (2017, April). How fair housing programs can be bolstered by laws ... - scholars. Scholars Strategy Network. https://scholars.org/sites/scholars/files/ssn-key-findings-tighe-hatch-and-mead-on-housing-programs-and-income-discrimination.pdf

Adapted from my 152-page senior thesis, this is a case study of Block 216—a mixed-use luxury development project in downtown Portland, OR that displaced the city’s largest and second oldest food cart pod, the Alder Pod, in summer 2019. The case study charts the history of mobile food in Portland, including the unique licensure that allows Portland’s food carts to flourish; the story of the Alder Pod and the eviction-relocation process which runs from summer 2019 to the present; the implications of Block 216 for Portland, including the macroeconomic and development context; recent trends in mobile food formalization, including the embourgeoisement and physical armoring of next-generation food cart pods and the exodus of food carts from the central city; the complicated role food carts play in gentrification and culinary gentrification; and policy recommendations for a more just and equitable Portland mobile food landscape. Methods include semi-structured stakeholder and expert interviews with actors including affected food cart owner-operators, NGO members, journalists, and city officials; a content analysis of the journalistic coverage; and standard secondary research from academic and journalistic sources, including quite a bit of secondhand Bourdieu and Marx. This research is important because it adds to the corpus of literature on Portland’s mobile food landscape—one of the most cutting-edge and dynamic in the country—including providing some much-needed follow-ups to the early 2010s photogenetic heyday found in popular and academic press. This research provides a very detailed chronological case study of one high-stakes, high-profile altercation between mobile food and urban boosters/developers that is transferrable to other metropoles, including a detailed look at the place of Trump-era Opportunity Zones in the long lineage of neoliberal supply-side economic policy directed at American cities. It also provides an urgently needed look at post-pandemic urban recovery and what that might mean for different stakeholders alongside best practices in how said recovery plans must interface with mobile food. Finally, as Portland’s food cart culture enters well into the 2020s, this research provides a look into the implications of a “formalized” mobile food landscape, namely gentrification and enclosure from the street. The references section stretches 32 pages double spaced due in part to a large number of news articles and public documents, but some of the key academic and print sources are: Agyeman et al. – “Is It Local ... or Authentic and Exotic? Ethnic Food Carts and Gastropolitan Habitus on Portland’s Eastside” Phillip Clay - Neighborhood Renewal: Middle-Class Resettlement and Incumbent Upgrading in American Neighborhoods Nevin Cohen – Feeding or Starving Gentrification: The Role of Food Policy Mike Davis – “Fortress LA” Zachery Hyde – Omnivorous Gentrification: Restaurant Reviews and Neighborhood Change in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great American Cities Regan Koch – Licensing, Popular Practices and Public Spaces: An Inquiry via the Geographies of Street Food Vending Matonte et al. – The Failure of Opportunity Zones in Oregon: Lifeless Place-Based Economic Development Implementation through a Policy Network Roy and Rodgers – Cartopia: Portland's Food Cart Revolution Karishma Shah – Calculating the Impacts of Food Gentrification in Portland, Oregon Timothy Weaver – “The False Promise of Opportunity Zones” Wester at al. – “Friends of the Green Loop: Food Cartology”

I want to understand the social ecology of Wallingford, Seattle, from its early 20th-century origins as a streetcar suburb to its present status as an increasingly gentrified neighborhood. This research investigates the interactions of how historical, economic, and social factors have shaped the neighborhood’s identity and dynamics over the decades, navigating the social ecology of Wallingford, starting from its origins in the early 1900s when the neighborhood was primarily populated by blue-collar workers tracing it to today as an increasingly gentrified neighborhood. Wallingford started as a streetcar suburb. It was more of a neighborhood that people would pass through than one they set their destination to. With the establishment of the University of Washington (UW) and its proximity to Wallingford, the area started to develop, which helped to urbanize the neighborhood increasingly (Steinbrueck & Nyberg 1975). Wallingford initially drew people in because of its transportation access, but this also helped move people out. Construction of the freeway, the growing use of the automobile, and suburban sprawl pushed people outside the neighborhood to the suburbs near Seattle (Veith 2005). The Wallingford community resisted its demise. With new social infrastructure and the Wallingford Community Council (WCC) development, they could maintain the neighborhood’s character. But, as Seattle has grown with the booming tech industry, Wallingford’s value has risen. The cost of living has increased, and more single-family houses are being torn down and replaced with million-dollar townhomes. Drawing upon Erikson’s (2017) concepts of the City and Village, Wallingford used to resemble an urban village. The walkability and amenities in such a dense place in the commercial district made it feel like an urban downtown. Still, the small population within the neighborhood felt more like a village with communal bonds based on shared space and a sense of intimacy and mutual knowing. This feeling of community and unity continued up until the early 2000s. Still, with the rise of technology in Seattle and its growing urbanizing environment within the neighborhood, it resembles more of a city in that it has become increasingly individualistic, and those living in the community are likely to be more irritable and alienated. Though it does not resemble all aspects of Erikson’s description of the city, it no longer represents the kindred nature of a village it once was. Further, drawing upon Clark’s (1979) four phases of gentrification, Wallingford is currently in phase three. Although Wallingford wasn’t a poor neighborhood when it started going through stage one, it still mimicked Clark’s first three phases. During its first phase, individuals move into a previously poor neighborhood, renovating houses without support from the government or large institutions. The second phase is when those attracted to the neighborhood because of the change start buying up real estate, and it starts gaining media attention. Phase three occurs as middle-class gentrifiers take on more prominent roles in the neighborhoods (i.e., committees and community boards). This is also the stage when developers become the preeminent renovators and builders. In 2015, Seattle proposed the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) with help from developers (McNichols 2018). The plan involves upzoning Wallingford and other single-family residences. Developers can build taller buildings and, in return, must pay for affordable housing. However, these taller buildings tend to come in the form of luxury townhomes, which raise concerns about affordability and displacement, and there is no specificity on what must be built first. Luxury townhomes have already begun developing within the neighborhood, yet affordable housing has yet to be indicated. To examine how Wallingford has progressed through the decades into its increasingly gentrified neighborhood, I will do a mixture of comparative historical research and ethnographic methodology. I will analyze historical documents to uncover what Wallingford was like during its early days (especially making a note of how it has changed over the past twenty years) and conduct in-depth interviews with community members in the neighborhood who have lived there for at least a decade and have experienced the changes firsthand. Further, I will add ethnographic observations in public spaces to observe what type of people are there (i.e. age, race, income), what they are doing, and how they interact with others. The Wallingford Community Council (WCC) has come to its defense on numerous occasions to keep its charm of a “small town” – or village. However, its focus has primarily been downzoning remaining zones to single-family use (Eliason 2018). Though the WCC has been very effective at lobbying upzones regarding affordable housing, the same cannot be said about luxury townhouses. Today’s developers differ significantly than the work of the developers in the 1970s when they wanted to buy homes to flip for those affiliated with UW, as there was a lot more pushback in the 70s. There are likely other factors involved, though it seems like the WCC is more concerned about people moving in who are of lower socioeconomic status rather than ruining the “characteristic” of the (manufactured) single-family neighborhood. I want to investigate the causes, consequences, and significance of gentrification within Wallingford. I will critically assess the intentions and effectiveness of the WCC in representing the interests of the community, questioning the inclusivity and democratic nature of its decision-making processes. Work Cited: Clay, P. (1979). Neighborhood Renewal: Middle-Class Resettlement and Incumbent Upgrading in American Neighborhoods. Lexington Books. Eliason, M. (2018). This is how you slow-walk into a housing shortage. Sightline Institute. https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/23/this-is-how-you-slow-walk-into-a-housing-shortage/ Erikson, K. (2017). The Sociologist’s Eye: Reflections on Social Life. Yale University Press. McNichols, J. (2018). Wallingford fought developers decades before it was hip. KUOW. https://kuow.org/stories/wallingford-fought-developers-decades-it-was-hip/ Steinbrueck, V., & Nyberg, F. (1975). Wallingford: An Inventory of Buildings and Urban Design Resources. Historic Wallingford. https://www.historicwallingford.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1976_WallingfordNeighborhoodInventory.pdf Veith, T. (2005). A Preliminary Sketch of Wallingford’s History. City of Seattle. https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Neighborhoods/HistoricPreservation/HistoricResourcesSurvey/context-wallingford.pdf

Ethnic Pride on TikTok: Digital communities of Women of color Reyna Rajkumar and Dr. Melissa Brown Santa Clara University Keywords: Feminist Theory, Ethnic Pride, Women of Color, TikTok, Challenges, Duets Since its release in 2016, TikTok has emerged as a dominant social media platform, particularly among adolescents and young adults. This platform is distinct from other social networking software due to its primary content format of short-form videos that last between 15 seconds to a maximum of three minutes, allowing for quick communication and information exchange. Additionally, the company’s deployment of application activity provides for an algorithm that curates a “for you page,” which presents users content attuned to their interests. This feature, alongside other key social media software functionality such as hashtags, comments, and following, leads to virtual communities that spawn digital practices such as challenges, which begin when one user prompts others to create videos performing a specific action or task. Challenges often revolve around various themes, from dance routines and lip-syncing to educational content and activism (Cervi & Divon, 2023). Despite growing academic interest in TikTok and its cyberculture, current understanding of the sociological implications of the platform is limited, particularly regarding, the expression of ethnic pride among women through participation in challenges. However, recent incidents suggest that women of color use the practice of TikTok challenges to form communities of support through internet-mediated dialogues about reclaiming cultural heritage and challenging stereotypes. For example, during the "Fox Eye" challenge, white users of TikTok instructed viewers to achieve the appearance of elongated, almond-shaped eyes while taking pictures through the use of makeup, hairstyles that lift the face, selfie angles, or stretch certain areas of one’s facial skin for (Zhao & Abidin, 2023). However, Asian Americans responded to these videos, primarily on TikTok, by sharing experiences with racism regarding eye shape, including bullying during childhood, and calling out how society deemed these features beautiful on white bodies. Other Asian Americans affirmed these users’ experiences in the comments of the videos. Thus, through their responses, Asian American women developed an online space to share experiences in ways that facilitated healing and ethnic pride. The discourse that emerged in relation to the “Fox Eye” challenge therefore inspires the question: In what ways do women of color, particularly those of Asian descent, leverage the affordances of TikTok to create an anti-racist cyberculture and facilitate digital enclaves of communities invested in cultivating ethnic pride? To answer this question, we focus on TikTok to examine the ways that Asian women and other women of color participate in the cybercultural practices of to TikTok to promote ethnic pride as form of women’s empowerment. We argue that given a history in which women of color have been diminished or excluded from the U.S. public sphere, TikTok affords them a means to communicate their opinions and attitudes in public. This use of TikTok as an outlet to share personal testimonies of racism and discrimination includes challenging both racialized and gendered stereotypes, norms, and biases (Matamoros-Fernández, 2023), thereby resisting white supremacy and patriarchy in western technoculture. To explore these dynamics, we specifically focus on TikTok videos that depict the outfit transition trend, which feature a user displayed in everyday clothing in the first scene, followed by a transition scene in which they conceal themselves by covering the lens of the camera, and then finally reappear on screen in another, typically more fancy and stylish outfit. While various groups on TikTok participate in the trend, for example showing themselves getting ready for a night out on the town, some women of color have adopted this practice to display themselves in their indigenous cultural clothing, thereby displaying ethnic pride. These content creators also often invite other women to duet their videos showing their cultural outfits, as viewers leave comments of praise and encouragement in the comments, instigating the formation of a digital community rooted in ethnic uplift. This study employs Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), an interdisciplinary analytical framework to examine internet-mediated phenomena, particularly in relation to the evolution of society and culture (Brock, 2016). We ground this digital sociological inquiry in critical race theory and women of color feminisms to address the formation of digital enclaves among ethnically marginalized women on TikTok. In alignment with CTDA, we take a multimodal approach to discourse, framing data collection by examining TikTok’s cyberculture through its technological features, specifically hashtags and duets, and its practices, specifically challenges and trends. To begin, we created a new TikTok account attached to a new gmail address so as to have a relatively neutral interaction with the platform’s algorithm. We then use its search function to explore hashtags including #challenge, #traditional, and #outfittransition, and collect posts by women of color participation in the outfit transition trend with ethnic wear. Through analysis of at least 50 videos that meet the selection criteria, we will identify themes in the self-presentation styles of each content creator, describing how they use setting, aesthetic, and other aspects of embodiment in line with TikTok’s features, such as music or filters. Additionally, we will document and analyze the ways viewers engage with these content creators through comments on these video posts. Ultimately, we aim to understand how women of color use TikTok to counter narratives of ethnic assimilation into western cultural aesthetic practices, but also create communities rooted in the intimacy of shared cultural background by creating counterpublic narratives in which they reclaim ethnic pride. In conducting this study, we first expect to find that women of color on TikTok who participate in the outfit transition trend and the users who respond though duets, promote ethnic pride, in a way that generates comments from similarly situated ethnic users, thereby building an online space that functions as communities of support for marginalized people. Second, we anticipate that ethnic cultural identity will be communicated not only through outfits, but also through audio content such as cultural music or personal testimonies about their cultural identities. Such findings will reveal the importance of TikTok as an online forum for ethnic communities, particularly for women who are often not afforded means of public expression offline. Thus, TikTok provides a space for individuals to resist and confront gendered racialization and stereotyping. Third, we expect to find that since TikTok’s unique affordances actively promote interaction and collaboration among users, a multimodal relationship emerges in the form of virtual communities that cultivate empowerment for women of color. Lastly, we expect to find that through open expression of their identity, women of color create digital spaces in which they challenge prevailing stereotypes, promote a sense of belonging and empowerment, and build networks of support that uplift and validate each other's experiences. References Cervi, Laura, and Tom Divon. “Playful Activism: Memetic Performances of Palestinian Resistance in TikTok #Challenges.” Social Media + Society, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 205630512311576, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157607. Zhao, Xinyu, and Crystal Abidin. “The “Fox Eye” Challenge Trend: Anti-Racism Work, Platform Affordances, and the Vernacular of Gesticular Activism on TikTok.” Social Media + Society, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 205630512311575, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157590. Brock, André. “Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis.” New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 3, 11 Nov. 2016, pp. 1012–1030, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816677532. Matamoros-Fernández, Ariadna. “Taking Humor Seriously on TikTok.” Social Media + Society, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. 205630512311576, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157609.

Meghan Rustemeyer Seattle Pacific University mrustemeyer@spu.edu Research Question: Does one’s religious preference influence their attitudes toward government involvement in public institutions when it involves religious-related issues? Contributions: Previous research has found that attitudes toward government involvement in public institutions regarding religious issues vary across religions, particularly between Christian and non-Christin traditions (Layman 1997; Cohen and Liebman 1997; Dawidowicz 1966; Morrissey 1997; White and Gregorius 2019). In the United States, Christianity has historically had and continues to have privileges and influence over other religions, despite the Establishment Clause stating no religion shall be given unduly favor over another by the government (Braunstein, Fuist, and Willams 2019; Holt and Fischer 2002; McCasland 1947; White and Gregorius 2019). Other religions and non-religious people have been found to generally have negative attitudes towards government involvement in public institutions and are advocates for separation of church and state in part due to the favoritism Christianity has been given (White and Gregorius 2019; Dawidowicz 1966; Cohen and Liebman 1997; Holt and Fischer 2002). While research indicates non-Christian groups would likely have more negative attitudes, there is less evidence to strongly indicate to what extent Christians would be in favor or opposed to government involvement in public institutions in comparison to other religions and non-religious people. There is also little research to indicate if there is a significant difference between Protestant and Catholic attitudes on the matter and if so, then to what degree. Theory and Methods: I hypothesize that people who are Christian are more likely to approve of government involvement regarding religious-related issues in public institutions. Christianity enjoys certain benefits and favoritism from the United States government and therefore Christians would want to continue to benefit while other religions and non-religious people would be less likely to approve because they do not experience those benefits. However, there is discourse over attitudes toward government within Christianity (White and Gregorius 2019; Morrissey 1997; Wagoner and VanCuren 2021). I further hypothesize people who are Protestant are more likely to approve of government involvement regarding religious-related issues in public institutions compared to Catholics, Jews, other religions, and non-religious people. Using data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS), I will use regression analysis to compare Protestants to Catholics, Jews/other, and Nones regarding attitudes toward government actions regarding religion in public institutions. The 2021 General Social Survey uses an equal-probability multi-stage cluster sample of United States adults and then gathers the data through over-the-phone interviews and a web survey. The survey is nationally representative of 4032 United States adults. Among the large variety of topics covered in the survey, there are several questions that measure attitudes on government involvement regarding religious-related issues in public institutions including attitudes on the United Supreme Court rulings on the requirement of reading the Lord’s Prayer or Bible verses in public schools, whether or not the federal government should advocate Christian values, attitudes on whether or not the United States would be a better country if religion had less influence, and whether or not a person should be allowed to make a speech against churches and religion. Using regression analysis, I will also control for other sociodemographic characteristics such as gender. References Braunstein, Ruth, Todd N. Fuist, and Rhys H. Williams. 2019 “Religion and Progressive Politics in the United States.” Sociology Compass 13(2): doi: 10.1111/soc4.12656. Cohen, Steven M. and Charles S. Liebman. 1997. “American Jewish liberalism: Unraveling the strands.” Public Opinion Quarterly 61(3): 405-430. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. 1966. “Church and State." The American Jewish Year Book 67: 128–150. Holt, Michael and Claude S. Fischer. 2002. “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations.” American Sociological Review 67(2): 165–190. doi.org/10.2307/3088891. Layman, Geoffrey C. 1997. “Religion and political behavior in the United States: The impact of beliefs, affiliations, and commitment from 1980 to 1994.” Public Opinion Quarterly 61(2): 288-316. McCasland, Vernon. 1947. “Religion and Our American Government.” Journal of Bible and Religion 15(2): 67–68. Morrissey, Daniel J. 1997. “The Separation of Church and State: An American-Catholic Perspective.” Catholic University Law Review 47(1) Wagoner, Joseph A. and Serena VanCuren. 2021. “Religious orientations, prototypicality threat, and attitudes toward church–state separation.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 51(9): 927–945. doi-org.ezproxy.spu.edu/10.1111/jasp.12812 White, Manon H. and Fredrik Gregorius. 2019. “The Satanic Temple: Secularist Activism and Occulture in the American Political Landscape.” International Journal for the Study of New Religions 10(1): doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.38954.

One of the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is its role in the decline of performance levels for Black and Hispanic/Latino students in California (“California Test Scores Decline, Racial Disparities Remain,” 2022). Although racial segregation is now unconstitutional, research continues to demonstrate that, “Students of color and those in poverty tend to attend schools that have fewer resources than their affluent White peers, compounding and perpetuating other inequalities,” (Balingit 2022). When focusing on education discrepancies, research shows that not all schools were equally equipped to assist students in their transition to at-home, online learning (Meckler, 2022). Research has shown us that prior to COVID-19, an education gap had existed between White students and Black and Hispanic/Latino students because student populations that experience the achievement gap the most are a part of one or more of the following: low-income families, have a disability, racial and ethnic minority group, and English language learners (“What is the Achievement Gap and How Can it be Closed?,” 2016). Interviews were conducted and secondary research was collected to evaluate the personal experience and publications of COVID-19’s influence on students’ performance levels in California. The purpose of this paper is to find the correlation between prior racial disparities and COVID-19’s role in continuing to widen the achievement gap for Black and Hispanic/Latino students in California. The aim of this study is to educate the public on how COVID-19 served as a racial and socioeconomic barrier for low-income, Black and Hispanic/Latino students.