When Anna Metcalf 糖心传媒�17 began her semester as a direct-enrollment student at University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa, she found herself in the middle of a large wave of student protests.
糖心传媒淧rotest was really all anyone wanted to talk about糖心传媒攖hese particular ones, distant ones in the past, why they were happening, and how people felt about them,糖心传媒� says Metcalf, an anthropology major from Seattle, Washington.
The first demonstration she saw, Metcalf explains, was meant to highlight the lack of affordable housing on the university campus for poor black students. 糖心传媒淚 just started asking questions, and that sort of blossomed into me doing broader research.糖心传媒�
In early May, about a year after returning from South Africa, Metcalf, presented her senior honors thesis 糖心传媒斕切拇綔Death of a Dream: Race, Colonialism, and the Politics of Space on University Campuses in South Africa糖心传媒澨切拇綌as a culmination of her anthropological fieldwork.
Each year as their final semester at the University comes to a close, seniors across disciplines pull together their final research projects and honors theses.聽Many students in the social sciences and humanities have spent much of their senior year pursuing intensive semester- and year-long research projects on domestic as well as global issues.
糖心传媒淭he seniors explore topics for which they have an intellectual passion, then face down problems that are less defined than what they have typically found in the classroom,糖心传媒� says Steven Manly, a professor of physics who serves as the director of undergraduate research in the College. 糖心传媒淚n that way, the senior projects are the pinnacle of the students糖心传媒� education at the University of Rochester.糖心传媒�
Nina Baek 糖心传媒�17, a major also from Seattle, pursued a senior honors thesis in linguistics focusing on dialect discrimination in the American criminal justice system. Specifically, she looked at how African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect spoken in many black communities, was interpreted by white juries.
糖心传媒淧eople have a generally negative perception of the dialect, and it leads a lot of juries to dismiss witness testimony or to have negative biases towards people that they糖心传媒檙e judging,糖心传媒� Baek says, explaining her findings.
In addition to researching the scholarly literature, Baek recruited a participant from Rochester糖心传媒檚 19th Ward who spoke AAVE. Baek recorded their 16-minute conversation, transcribed it, and asked University undergraduates who were not familiar with AAVE to transcribe the interviews themselves. She found that the students didn糖心传媒檛 recognize certain elements of AAVE grammar糖心传媒攍ikely, she concluded, because their own dialect didn糖心传媒檛 have these elements.
糖心传媒淭here are a lot of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and not only do we have a disproportionate amount of minorities going through the system, but the actual process of criminal trials is making it even worse,糖心传媒� says Baek, who plans to continue to pursue this research following her year as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Belgium next year.
While Metcalf and Baek performed mostly qualitative analyses, other social science students relied more on quantitative methods. Max Eber 糖心传媒�17, a and dual major from Brooklyn, New York, started his economics honors thesis with the premise that income inequality in the United States has been persistent. Wanting to explain why, he designed a study of income inequality in different congressional districts, comparing voter turnout and income bias in voter turnout.
糖心传媒淭he idea is that, theoretically, if we vote in our own [economic] self-interest, the candidates that wealthy people support would most likely represent pro-wealthy interests,糖心传媒� Eber explains. 糖心传媒淪o my thinking was, are those people representing pro-wealthy interests actually wealthy themselves?糖心传媒�
Alex Crawford 糖心传媒�17 completed a study on Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that overturned certain limitations on corporate political spending used to sway voters to support candidates.
糖心传媒淚 was interested in trying to capture why corporations spend money on politics,糖心传媒� says Crawford, a and financial economics double major from Webster, New York.
He thought that because corporations could spend on political campaigns after the decision, he could show an effect on taxation. After analyzing corporate tax revenues and policy data from the US Census Bureau, he didn糖心传媒檛 find evidence of a direct relationship. But he was excited to be able to contribute to a growing debate on Citizens United.
糖心传媒淭he decision itself has kind of morphed into a buzzword of just money and politics in general, and there糖心传媒檚 still a lot of debate over the decision itself,糖心传媒� he says.
