Interdisciplinary – Page 12 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

Southwest Detroit Community Court Program

The Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center (SWDCJC) works to increase the safety and fairness of the area they serve by increasing public trust in the justice system, reducing crime, and meeting the needs of the people. They achieve this by offering restorative alternatives to traditional justice system processes like fines and incarceration. Rather, SWDCJC offers programs that educate and provide opportunities for community service. Through the community court program, SWDCJC has decreased incarceration and money owed for misdemeanor crimes, overall increasing the wellbeing in the zip codes served. They are looking to expand their impact by adding programs dedicated to stopping human trafficking as well.

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Southwest Detroit Community Court Program: The Clean Slate Bill

On October 12th, 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a series of bills into law, the most significant and popular of these being the “Clean Slate Bill”. “For too long, criminal charges have created barriers to employment, barriers to housing and others for hundreds of thousands of Michiganders. These bipartisan bills are going to be a game-changer,” Whitmer said. This bill will affect hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents who have criminal records and traffic violations with the first aspects of the bill going into effect on April 10th, 2021. The Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center (SWDCJC) is passionate about criminal justice reform and fair access to the justice system. The nonprofit’s mission statement states, “The mission of the Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center is to increase public trust in the justice system, assist in the reduction of crime, improve the quality of life and meet the needs of the community.” SWDCJC’s focus is four zip code areas in Detroit and the organization’s CEO and my research mentor LaNeice Jones has been committed to promoting education and criminal reform for over a year. The organization has hosted several events to help prevent offenses and reform those who already have offenses. Specifically, this research project was made to find best practices to spread the word about the Clean Slate Bill to help expunge the records of thousands of individuals. We are increasing awareness of this bill by synthesizing information to distribute to the community, collecting statistics for grant writing, and hosting an “Ask the Judge” event to educate the greater community about the ins and outs of this bill. Our ultimate goal is to help people expunge their records so they can have a greater opportunity to apply to better jobs and participate in services that are restricted to people with criminal records. Increasing access to job opportunities by expunging records will help fuel diversity of thought and region to many different career paths, and give people a second chance who desperately deserve one.

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Women’s Wave: Participation and Success by Candidates in Congressional Elections, 2014 to 2020

American political icons such as “ËœThe Squad’ have gained prominence and established themselves as important female figures in modern government. The significance in their emergence reflects a larger movement in gender equality, diversity, and representation. In the past three congressional elections, more women, LGBTQ individuals, and people of color have taken office than ever before in US history. As more social justice movements take place, it is important to determine the contribution of these entities to Congressional success. This study sought to confirm or negate the hypothesis that the 2017 Women’s March increased political activism in American women leading to a rise in the number of women running and eventually winning seats in office. In examining the roles of activism and protest participation this project focused on the 2014, 2016, and 2018 elections. A large portion of this study was conducted by utilizing campaign websites and non-partisan political information sources to create profiles of every candidate who ran. These profiles particularly focused on previous political experience, LGBTQ identity, and activist involvement and were all reported in a database on Google Sheets. Additional details such as the district a candidate was running for, political party, year of birth, campaign funds raised, and voting results were also recorded. Furthermore, this data was utilized to conduct a statistical analysis on Stata to observe the correlation between Women’s March involvement and campaign success. Conclusions and database construction are ongoing. This data is planned to be used in future articles and, eventually, a book. This research will prove to be valuable in understanding the intersection of many groups, including politicians, nonpartisan groups, and activist organizations. It may encourage or discourage more activist participation by current and potential congressional candidates, specifically those who identify as women.

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Women’s Wave

Women’s Wave A lot has changed in recent years. Grassroots protests have existed for a while, but with the addition of the internet and technology, it hasn’t been the same since the Occupy movement. Politicians have run their campaigns in support of these movements, against these movements, and as a piece of these movements. What we don’t know is what effect grassroots action has on the elections. The research analysis pieces together candidate information from the 2018 elections such as; age, gender, party, prior office, and sexual orientation. Most importantly the data contains any activist history (including the type of activism) and whether or not they won. Analysis from this research is expected to find one very important relation between political candidate’s involvement in women’s activism or activism in general, and their success in an election year widely regarded as “the year of the woman.” This research can be used in the future to help predict the outcomes of elections and aid activists’ efforts to effect change. This is part of a growing amount of research as politics begins to consume a larger portion of our lives.

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Progressive Policy in Architecture

The power structures within architecture firms have remained stagnant and do not fulfill the potentials of the architects within. The overall perspective within the industry is that these institutions need to work towards a progressive format of power. The research in this project intends to change the power structures of these firms based upon the successes in leadership structures of other industries, as well as their progressive policy implementations. This study looks at the measures of productivity, diversity, and other factors of industry progression in the fields of architecture and other institutions such as government structures, law firms, and business corporations. The power structures of these other industries are compared to the power structure of architecture to find and develop the policies needed to push architecture firms forward in the realm of leadership structures. We hope to find that through the means of governmental legislation, architecture firms will be able to incorporate more progressive means into their power structures. This legislation should implement the necessity of progressive policies that contain standards developed through this research.

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Leading Design in Architecture

“Leadership through Architecture” led by Taubman professor Irene Hwang can be described as an interdisciplinary and independent project that works on redirecting architectural education in combating outdated practices and perspectives that impact design within different realms of architecture. My role in this project is to develop an understanding of how the built environment can impact community living and opportunity. This educational foundation further allows me to create an inventory of a series of interviews that reflect the diverse interpretations residents have of their environments.

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Reviving Growth Keynesianism

The Reviving Growth Keynesianism Project is a podcast and blog meant to start a conversation about Keynesian economics. Keynesianism is an economic theory that is generally associated with John Maynard Keynes, an economist from the 1930s. His ideas became popularized during the Great Depression. Keynesianism is the idea that the economy cannot grow if there is not demand for the products being sold. It argues that economic equality is important to the growth and stability of an economy. Keynesianism was the widely accepted form of economic thought until the 1970s. Currently, many economic solutions being floated such as Universal Basic Income draw on Keynesian ideas.

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MODS (Military Occupation Data Set)

My research project, the Military Occupation Data Set, or MODS for short, involves analysis of various military conflicts over the last 200 years to determine whether or not the conflict involved an occupation and whether or not the occupation was a success. This research could help the world by shining a light on the risks of military occupations and the frequency in which they fail, hopefully leading to aggressive countries pursuing occupations less in the future. Thus far I have researched 2 conflicts, one of which I have completed research for. The conflict I have completed work on was a war between China and Tibet in the early 20th century. I had to read through multiple books and papers on the war to find and confirm information regarding the conflict. Then I proceeded to put the information I found into codebooks for the project that took in details about the war. I found that the Chinese occupation ended in failure due to the 1911 revolution that ended the Qing dynasty. These findings will add to the data set and lead to a general conclusion on how often military occupations lead to failure, which strategies lead to the best outcomes, and what costs countries incur when taking on an occupation.

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War & Military Occupations Data Set

On the heels of a disastrous series of conflicts in the Middle East that was and is wildly unpopular, Americans and the world have come to be wary of military occupations of foreign countries. Thus, there is an increased need for research to understand why some occupations succeed while others fail, as knowing this will help avoid needless and endless wars in foreign countries. By gathering primary and secondary sources of conflicts that may or may not have included a military occupation from 1815 to the present, a clearer picture of the factors that make a military occupation successful can be identified. An analysis of these conflicts reveal that every occupier has motivations in starting a military occupation. The success and failure of military occupations largely depend on this goal, with higher goals generating more costs for the occupier as domestic and international opposition mounts. Therefore, this contributes to a growing sentiment that getting involved militarily in other states should be a last resort, and every effort should be made to solve conflicts non-militarily.

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