The Ethical Dilemmas Behind the 2008 Global Financial Crisis

This interdisciplinary paper focuses on the unethical decisions of business professionals that led to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008. The paper addresses the importance of ethical practice in business and provides an overview of how unethical choices by financial industry leaders and practitioners greatly contributed to the GFC and the economic distress that followed. The regulatory legislation enacted by the US Congress in the immediate aftermath validates the extent to which unethical choices negatively impacted and destabilized the global economic environment. Conclusively, it is appropriate to reason that human choices can be better guided by certain rules and laws to help prevent the deregulation which helped cultivate the opportunity for unethical choices

CONSTRUCTING A CULTURAL BRIDGE: THE COMPOSITIONAL APPROACH AND INTERNATIONAL IMPACT OF ALBERT MANGELSDORFF’S NOW JAZZ RAMWONG

In the period following World War II, countries such as Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand were under constant intellectual bombardment from global superpowers vying for political influence. West Germany, a newly established ally of Western democracy, was a small part of a global effort to spread this democracy to Asia. Working alongside Joachim-Ernst Berendt and the Goethe Institute, the jazz trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff arranged an album which sought to merge both Western European and Asian music. The album, Now Jazz Ramwong (1964), and accompanying fifty-concert tour helped pioneer a lasting cultural connection between Western Europe and Asia. The methodology behind Now Jazz Ramwong was the repurposing of folk music from numerous Asian countries in the German jazz style, a style that Mangelsdorff himself was pivotal in establishing. In order to examine how the different aspects of Mangelsdorff’s arrangements contributed to the success of the album, this project primarily focused on transcription and musical analysis of each arrangement. The results of this study illustrated that the most significant facet of each arrangement to Mangelsdorff was the melody and its preservation within a jazz arrangement. Other factors such as harmony, rhythm, and form all serve to accentuate the melody and featured varied methods showing influence from both traditional Western jazz as well as Asian modal folk music. These compositional findings along with context provided by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Wes Funderburk, and others helped explain how and why this tour was successful with Asian audiences. The album, Now Jazz Ramwong (1964), and accompanying fifty-concert tour helped pioneer a lasting cultural connection between Western Europe and Asia. The methodology behind Now Jazz Ramwong was the repurposing of folk music from numerous Asian countries in the German jazz style, a style that Mangelsdorff himself was pivotal in establishing. In order to examine how the different aspects of Mangelsdorff’s arrangements contributed to the success of the album, this project primarily utilized transcription and theoretical analysis of each arrangement. The album was transcribed and studied with a focus on origin and cultural impact of the melody, as well as the inspiration and approach to harmonic, rhythmic, and formal features. The results of this study illustrated that the most significant facet of each arrangement to Mangelsdorff was the melody and its preservation within a jazz arrangement. Other factors such as harmony, rhythm, and form all serve to accentuate the melody and featured varied methods showing influence from both traditional Western jazz as well as Asian modal folk music. These compositional findings along with context provided by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Wes Funderburk, and others helped explain how and why this tour was successful with Asian audiences. Additionally, a large number of these countries would welcome Mangelsdorff and his quintet back again for future performances, solidifying a connection to Western Germany and Europe as a whole. Mangelsdorff would continue this type of folk jazz composition well into the late twentieth century, connecting cultures around the world through the flexibility of jazz and forging a path for a new global genre of music

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF POVERTY AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN WEST VIRGINIA

OLS and 2SLS regressions and cross-sectional county data are used to examine the major determinants of poverty and income inequality in rural counties of West Virginia. The empirical findings confirm the possibility of simultaneity between poverty and income inequality. Poverty is the main determinant of increased levels of income inequality.Food Security and Poverty,

Environmental Enrichment: A Potential Treatment for PTSD and Alcohol Abuse

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will affect approximately eight out of every hundred individuals at some point in their lifetime. One major issue accompanying PTSD is alcohol abuse—estimated rates of alcohol abuse in persons with PTSD vary from 30-75 percent. Environmental enrichment (EE) has been shown to decrease voluntary alcohol consumption as well as decrease anxiety levels post-stress. As such, EE could be a potential treatment mechanism for co-morbid PTSD and alcohol abuse. Our independent research into the effectiveness of EE at attenuating post-stress alcohol consumption in male Sprague Dawley rats validates this idea. Rats were stressed and then given intermittent access to 20% ethanol via the 2-bottle-choice drinking paradigm for three weeks. Rats in EE consumed significantly less ethanol, relative to controls. Anecdotal evidence from survivors of trauma suggests that such findings could be translated into the human populations with PTSD, such as through travel, religion, and other forms of meaning making. Further, environmental enrichment surpasses other treatments as it seeks to “care for the whole person”—the Jesuit value of cura personalis—by attending to both their mind and body. This paper will discuss the explicit effects of PTSD, the specifics of our independent research, and the detailed implications of our results for the human population. As a caring and compassionate society, we have the responsibility to conduct further research to help to expand our knowledge of symptoms and vulnerabilities associated with PTSD and alcohol dependence, to harness valuable and effective treatment mechanisms

Exile: The Implications of Separation From Language During Genocide

This essay examines the function of language during a time of genocide as displayed in Imre Kertesz\u27s novel Fatelessness, the story of a young Hungarian\u27s experiences in Auschwitz. Language provides the tool for fate\u27s imposition, here the imposition of an identity, a history, and a future upon an individual that does not necessarily cohere with the experience of the individual. Since language provides the mechanism for the unwinding of fate, a fate ultimately hostile to victims of genocide, the old language (the native language of the victim, whether it be French, Yiddish, Hungarian, etc.) becomes an inadequate vehicle of communication—but one with no alternative. Thus, with few ways to communicate, survivors have no choice but to succumb to using the old languages hostile to themselves. Declaring language utterly incapable or, conversely, completely without fault, represents a gross oversimplification of language\u27s more subtle intersection with society. This essay contextualizes these ideas, focusing on the concept of the subsumed authentic narrative, with Fatelessness as an example of such a narrative, and the subsequent importance of authentic narratives in light of the fact that the Holocaust shapes the normative standard for genocide

Understanding Group Cohesion and Self-Advocacy in Student Leaders

The purpose of this study is to understand what compels student leaders to advocate for others or for themselves in groups. The data will be gathered through surveys and personal reflections. The study will better our understanding of motivations for advocacy, and reveal empowerment strategies for self-advocacy