Repairing Activist-Academic Relationships: Defining Methods to Improve Reciprocity and Movement Building in Degrowth

The degrowth movement, advocating for an eco-socialist restructuring of world economies, has failed to find a political foothold in American politics. This is despite growing support in Europe and positive, yet limited, reception in Canada. Previous literature diagnoses the American degrowth movement with confused and ineffective rhetoric, inhospitable intramovement politics, and too little scholarly support. In this article, I argue differently. I focus on the relationships between academics and activists within American degrowth, understanding academic-activist relationships to be historically extractive but also generative and didactic. Using semistructured interviews with academics and activists, and discourse analysis of the press coverage of degrowth, I define the state of academic-activist relationships as severely underdeveloped and uncooperative. Finally, I find that significant reforms to higher education’s opacity, exclusivity, and extractive productivity, and that encouraging activists to proactively center their narratives in the movement, may improve the lax reciprocity and slow movement building of American degrowth

Cognitive and Social Vulnerabilities: Adolescents’ Pragmatic Inferences of Leniency in Response to Minimization

The current study expands upon Luke and Alceste’s (2020) experiments to explore the effects of minimization via pragmatic implication on adolescents compared to adults in the context of police interrogations. Adolescent and adult participants read a police report and were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions (control, minimization, direct promise, and honesty) to gauge how differing perceived implications of leniency in interrogation tactics impact one’s perceptions of suspect outcomes. Drawing on empirical research on the social and cognitive vulnerabilities of minors (e.g., Bettens & Normile, 2023; Kassin & McNall, 1991; Kostelnik et al., 2006), I hypothesized that adolescents would be more likely to pragmatically infer leniency than adults. The results demonstrated that adolescents had higher expectations of leniency both in cases where the suspect confessed or denied their involvement, as well as lower perceived severity of the crime compared to adults. Regardless of age, participants who were presented with direct promise and honesty theme conditions endorsed more conditional leniency inferences than those in the moral minimization and control conditions. These results demonstrate that adolescents are not only vulnerable to inferring leniency via pragmatic implication, but also particularly susceptible to inferring direct promises from honesty-themed rhetoric

A Feasibility Study of Creating a Model for a Dance Outreach Program in Chesterfield County Public Schools

Exposure to dance at a young age has many proven benefits for children and their communities, including healthier brain development, deeper cultural understandings, and higher rates of supporting the arts in the future. Unfortunately, most dance education options are costly, greatly limiting which families have access to the opportunity to allow their children to experience training in dance. Dance outreach programs, which focus on introducing dance to communities and children that may otherwise never have access to dance education, are one way the arts community is working to dismantle this elitism. Partnering with public schools is the most common way for dance outreach programs to reach children, yet many localities across the country do not have sustained dance outreach programs in their public-school systems. Chesterfield County in Virginia is one such locality, despite being surrounded by a thriving dance scene. This thesis analyzes and compares the models of different dance outreach programs currently finding success in other localities, including Richmond Ballet’s Minds in Motion and Kids Dance Outreach in Indianapolis. After considering the specific needs of Chesterfield County Public Schools, a dance outreach program model, that could be feasibly and sustainably incorporated into elementary schools in Chesterfield County, is presented

Shoule Québec Rename Its Language? A Diachronic Analysis of Québécois French

Canadian French has evolved away from metropolitan French in vocabulary, accent, slang, and even grammar structures since it was colonized in the 16th century. In analyzing the development of the Québécois language, this thesis aims to provide insights as to whether renaming Canadian French that is spoken in the province of Québec to Québécois would better represent the culture and people who use the language. This thesis includes an analysis of the history of Québec from its colonization by France, the legislation in place to protect the languages of French and Québécois, and an analysis of some of the linguistic and cultural differences between metropolitan France and Québec. This research was completed using a variety of sources, from research papers to government documents, to provide insights into how far Québécois French has strayed from metropolitan French. The aim of this paper is not to debate whether Québécois is different from metropolitan French. This is a known fact. Instead, it aims to answer the question of whether the language is different enough to warrant consideration to rename the language

Voluntary intermittent access to combined alcohol and nicotine in mice—consumption and withdrawal effects

The prevalence of alcohol and nicotine use is widely known, though the co-abuse of the two is often understudied. Studies have shown that nicotine dependence and daily nicotine consumption increase with higher levels of alcohol consumption1. Nicotine use has been shown to decrease the subjective effects of alcohol and increase alcohol craving. Previous studies using the intermittent access (IA) paradigm in C57BL/6J (B6) mice have shown that B6 mice readily increase or escalate consumption of alcohol in this paradigm. Still, there is little information on alcohol and nicotine co-consumption and withdrawal using the IA paradigm. The goal of this study was to investigate the use of the IA paradigm for nicotine consumption, preference, and withdrawal, both alone and in combination with alcohol. It was hypothesized that the combination of alcohol and nicotine would lead to increased consumption and worsened withdrawal outcomes. This experiment used B6 mice (n=32, 16 females, 16 males) that were given intermittent 24-hour access to the experimental bottles over 4 weeks. There were 4 experimental groups: water (control), alcohol only (5% v/v), nicotine only (30 μg/mL), and alcohol and nicotine (5% v/v and 30 μg/mL). The concentrations of alcohol and nicotine were held consistent throughout the 4 weeks. Consumption and preference data were analyzed via a series of 2 (sex: male vs. female) x 4 (week) mixed factor ANOVAs. Open Field Test (OFT) was used to examine anxiety-like withdrawal behavior approximately 6 hours after the removal of the experimental bottles following the 4 weeks. Results showed a significantly higher consumption of and preference ratio for the combination of alcohol+nicotine compared to nicotine alone in both male and female mice. The OFT showed that female mice in the nicotine-only group spent significantly more time freezing compared to either group that received alcohol, which could be indicative of anxiety-like withdrawal behaviors. Studies such as this one that examine the co-consumption of two commonly abused drugs are crucial in improving our understanding of substance dependence as well as withdrawal

Examining How Internally and Externally Motivated Individuals Choose When, How, and Why to Confront Racial Prejudice

Experiencing racism is associated with negative outcomes, including obesity and poor mental health (Berger & Sarnyai, 2015). Therefore, exploring strategies like interpersonal confrontation, which has been shown to reduce prejudice, is essential (Czopp et al., 2006; Paluck & Green, 2009). We examined what more internally (affected by personal values) and externally motivated (affected by social reward) people consider when deciding when confronting racism. White participants (n = 270) viewed hypothetical scenarios with a racist remark or non-racist remark. They decided whether to confront these scenarios and indicated their motivations, reasonings, and methods. Results showed that more internally and externally motivated individuals perceived and confronted prejudice when it was present, but those higher in external motivations also perceived prejudice and confronted in nonprejudiced situations. Additionally, more internally motivated individuals considered personal responsibility (personal obligation to confront) and agency (the ability to confront) when they chose and failed to confront racism, and they considered prejudice malleability (viewing prejudice as minimizable through confrontation) when confronting racism. Alternatively, more externally motivated individuals considered social reward (social benefit for confrontation) and prejudice malleability in both decisions, and they considered agency when they failed to confront racism. Higher levels of both motivations were linked to greater perceived effectiveness of activism and confrontation strategies, with different correlations possibly reflecting unique evaluation factors. Overall, this study helped us learn about when, how, and why people choose to confront racism based upon the source of their motivation

Relationship Between Past and Present Physical Activity on the Self-Reported Well-Being of College-Aged Students with and without ADD/ADHD

This study explores the relationship between past and present physical activity for college students with and without ADD/ADHD on their self-reported perceptions of well-being