And So the Pendulum Swings: Senior Student Affairs Officers Balancing Implementation of Federal Campus Safety Mandates at Small Colleges

Issues of campus safety are being addressed on campuses nationwide because of the requirements set forth by the Clery Act, Title IX, and the Campus Sexual Assault Violence Elimination Act. The purpose of this qualitative study was to deeply understand experiences of senior student affairs officers (SSAO) at small colleges and universities who have implemented federal campus safety mandates. Their experiences, offered insight into how SSAOs used these experiences to inform their own professional growth, and contribute to the student affairs profession. I utilized a qualitative phenomenological approach and conducted multiple semi-structured interviews with three SSAOs at small colleges and universities. I also conducted document analysis of organizational charts, institutional policies, websites, and program information. The research philosophy underlying my research included elements from both feminist and constructivist paradigms

Explaining Student Loan Default Rates Across U.S. Universities

The question being asked in this research paper is what explains student loan default rates across the three types of United States universities. The three types of universities are non-profit, for-profit, and public. This paper uses regression analysis to regress several explanatory variables on the dependent variable, which is the default rate. The explanatory variables used are the median SAT scores for incoming freshman, admission percentage, the average net price to attend a university for students, percentage of the student body who is black, percentage of the student body who is taking all online classes, non-profit universities, and for-profit universities. The public universities variable is used as the base level group. The most important finding from this research is that high default rates do not rest on the university, but the type of students the university caters to

Referal Practices/Policies of Public School Officials and Juvenile Probation to Juvenile Court Schools

Statistically, the majority of students in court community school programs are of low income and/or minority status. When compared to the general school population, the number of these referred low income and/or minority students is disproportionately high. Since these numbers do not coincide with numbers of the general school population, the referral practices and procedures need to be examined. Policies and procedures that determine the population in CCS programs are adhered to and implemented by specific agencies and individuals who make recommendations for placement. Interviews with individuals involved in the referral process have shown that schools have comparable data when minority and low income students are placed in CCS programs and that gang affiliation plays a major role in the findings

Reading the Real Biblioteca del Escorial: Dangerous Books, Readers, and Populations

From the Washington University Senior Honors Thesis Abstracts (WUSHTA), Volume 5, Spring 2013. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research / Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; E. Holly Tasker, Editor; Kristin Sobotka, Undergraduate Research Coordinator. Mentor: Stephanie L. Kir

Bodies and Books in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Bodies and Books in the Early Modern Hispanic World studies books – cuerpos de libros – and human bodies in parallel to yield new insights into both book culture and the struggles to construct identity as legible on the body. I take metaphors of books as bodies seriously, amid the elevated stakes of the early modern Hispanic world’s preoccupations with genealogy, legitimacy, and blood purity. I suggest that books were conceptualized as bodies in the early modern Hispanic world and that this was significant in part because wishful thinking of the period treated human bodies as books that ought to be legible, reliable markers of identity. This project deliberately close reads both literary and documentary, verse and prose, manuscript and print, canonical and lesser-known texts for what they reveal about books and bodies – namely, where the understanding and treatment of them was intertwined, and where it diverged. Because the equation of books and bodies was so pervasive yet broken, I study its uses and abuses from both sides: books as bodies and bodies as books. The trajectory of this project arcs from cuerpos de libros to human bodies. First, I articulate the conceptual and practical connections between books and human bodies through analysis of the multifarious comparisons found in early modern literature, poetic theory, writing manuals, and moralistic works. Next, I turn to the theory and practice of libraries as sites where books and bodies interact, focusing on the Biblioteca Colombina, gathered by Columbus’s son Hernando Colón, and the Escorial library, founded by Philip II. To examine issues of cultural patrimony, materiality, access, and the value of books and bodies, I follow the saga of Arabic manuscripts captured from Morocco in 1612, incorporated into the Escorial, and digitally repatriated in 2013. Finally, I turn to body writing, the converse of books as bodies. Centered on the convent-fleeing conquistador Catalina/Antonio de Erauso and the mixed-race surgeon and ex-slave Elena/o de Céspedes, my third section discusses the foibles of reading and writing ambiguous bodies and how concepts of racial and religious difference invoked culturally-specific ideas of gender