Student Research on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Five Class of 2023 members completed senior honors theses that included diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging elements. 
 
Katrina Hale
Offense or Defense: Leadership of the NBA and NFL in Response to Athlete Activism 
My thesis examines how the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, two major U.S. professional sports leagues, differ dramatically in their response to instances of athlete activism. Through the examination of two cases – Colin Kaepernick kneeling in 2016 and the Milwaukee Bucks walkout of 2020 – I demonstrate how the culture of the sports and the leagues, as well as the leadership and power structures of each organization, contributed to these differences.

Sophia Hartman
Care or Compliance? An Examination of Sexual Violence and Institutional Responses at Two Crisis Points
My thesis considers the changes to age-of-consent laws in the United States during the Progressive Era and the current response to sexual violence on college campuses as two crisis points in which prevention efforts institutionalize norms of violence and hierarchical values of persons’ autonomy. It then turns to theories of care work to consider an alternative framework for violence prevention.

Josie Holland
Out-of-Time and Out-of-Place: Queer Horizons of Popular Culture
My project is an exploration of the semi-utopic queer-community building in and around a work of popular culture, the HBO series "Our Flag Means Death" (OFMD). In examining OFMD, I use a Fictional Relativity Theory, a cultural production framework that looks at the ways a text organizes time and space to reveal something about the work’s ideology. My thesis also asserts that works of popular culture, especially those that spark a utopian impulse, perform leadership through inspiration.

Emma Kennedy
Effect of Youth Sports Participation on Health Outcomes for Immigrants in the United States
My study investigates the relationship between youth sports participation and health outcomes for immigrants. Given the theory behind the relationship between physical activity level, sense of community, and health, I test whether immigrants are impacted by youth sports participation on a higher level than non-immigrants. Using secondary survey data with Stata as my analysis software tool, I measure the correlations between immigrant status, sports participation and indicators of health conditions, including BMI and chronic illness.

Sofie Martinez
Gender-Based Violence and All Its Erasure
My intersectional case study analysis was designed to determine organizations’ and administrations’ most prominent characteristics that may lead to gender-based violence. By looking at the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, feminicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and patterns of sexual assault on college campuses, my project aims to construct an indexing system to rank any organization on its structure and its conductivity to gender-based violence.