The GC Academic Conference
 

In this thead, please present any major papers you wrote while either an undergrad or grad student.

These should be big papers, things that you totally freaked out on writing about when assigned, from 10 page papers that were only a small percentage of your grade, to term papers that were all of your grade, to a master's thesis, or even a dissertation (my hats off to you).

Tell us what class the paper was for, what the assignment was, and a brief synopsis of the paper/research/findings, and if you got a good grade or not...

I'll go ahead and start off with one paper I wrote in the Spring of 2005


Class written for: Sociology 495 - Senior Capstone Seminar (final required sociology class for majors)

Assignment: Write a 15 - 20 page original research paper (yeah, we had to do our own research) that examines some intersection of Race, Class, or Gender (2 of 3). Research must be qualitative in nature (ie no surveys only interviews, content analysis, or field observations). Assignment was given on first day of class, and was due by the end of the scheduled time block for the final.

What I did: I chose to do a content analysis of Fraternity and Sorority magazines from two historically black GLO's and two historically white GLO's to see if there was any difference in the messages the magazines gave out on the basis of race or gender.

I chose to do a content analysis, basically an in-depth examination of some sort of media, for the messages sent out. I chose to do this to on GLO magazines b/c I'm a Greek junkie, and it was easy to find my intersection of differences and have it be readily apparent what it was. I chose to do the magazine thing rather than interviews because with the exception of rituals, magazines are pretty much the only universal message sent out by our organizations to every, or nearly every, single member. So the magazines have a lot of power in explaining and giving examples of what it means to be a member of an organization, and the what expectations of being a good member are.

I ended up finding in my small sample that for most of the things that looked at the white organizations were more similar to each other and the black organizations were more similar to each other.

For the white organizations, much more was made about building undergraduate members up, creating social capital and cultivating personal growth. This was demonstrated through many references of wanting to be number the best GLO, or the biggest, or celebrating leadership or academic success of undergraduate members. There was also more of a focus on the social aspects of being a member. Friendship was mentioned a lot more in the white magazines.

The black GLO's were much more focused on doing things in the community and enhancing others experiences. The community service (and I really mean service, not philanthropy) was far more heavily emphasized.

The difference in representation of friendship between members was very interesting, and this is not to say that friendship is not an important part of the black greek experience, but while the white magazines often used sister/brotherhood and friendship interchangably, the black magazines I looked at did not.

The organizations also differed a lot in the way alumni were represented, which I thought probably had a lot to do with what alumni then think is appropriate behavior when they reach that point. For the white organizations it was mostly social events, with any sort of fund-raising being returned to support the undergraduate chapters, while for black GLO's it was a greater continuation of the acts that undergraduate chapters did. Often the alumni chapter and undergraduate chapter of a black GLO would combine to work on a project together. The white alumni events just hosted social events, and rarely any fundraiser not supporting the chapter.

One quote I found in the black sorority magazine said something to the effect of "Graduation marks the end of the white greek experience, but not for black greeks-it's just the beginning" or something there abouts.

In regard to race, the white organizations for the most part never brought it up, while the Black GLO's were very keen to what they meant to the African American community and the development of their members as successful black men and women. This I found interesting b/c I though that the white magazines might have tried to make an effort at showcasing their diversity, but neither did.

Finally, the one thing that did not split along racial lines was that of gender representation/roles. Here both fraternities were more similar to each other, and both sororities were more similar to each other.

The fraternities mainly showed women in supportive roles of wives, mothers and sisters, each making references to the undeniable support that helped the men (sort of the behind every good man is a supportive wife mantra). The sororities on the other hand were very aware and outspoken on their roles as modern independent women, the importance of female friendship and the like.


In the end, it is obviously not enough to just look at single issues from four groups, and I stated that it would be important to expand the data sources to see if these sorts of trends would hold up.

I ended up getting about a 96% or so on this paper from one of my favorite professors (by the by she was a Tri-delt).

I am late as hell, but Beta, your paper sounds like the hotness. Congrats.

Props to Jocelyn on the Shakespeare paper....I did a few in my day. :)