August 2, 2021
Hello everyone! I am back to write my final blog post *tears.* Where do I even start? Being a part of the WAGSFP team has been nothing short of an amazing experience. The other students in the program were all super sweet and I loved hearing and learning about their different research experiences and processes. My personal journey with the URSA lab has taught me so much, both in and out of research. While I learned how to do qualitative coding and analysis, my lab also constantly had deep discussions and dialogues surrounding topics such as violence against women, victims’ rights, and toxic masculinity. Although these dialogues were often disheartening and intense, they have reminded me just how important it is to continue educating myself on these topics. For as long as I can, I will continue to advocate for women and take up the space I deserve.
During my time on the URSA team, I worked mainly on the university press releases which totaled to around 2,400 articles. I sorted the schools into public or private and then coded the “specialty schools” (HBCU, Religious, Ivy League, and Non Coed.). After coding, I found it interesting to see how differently each religious university responded to sexual assault on campus. In some cases, the universities would claim that assault and harassment training was simply for female students. One university even avoided speaking about consent, since they claimed students on their campus were not having sex. Some of the articles I read honestly blew my mind. It was crazy seeing how universities have still not come to an agreement on who should be getting trained and why. I hope to continue working with this lab and doing research in this field throughout my undergraduate career at Michigan. Thank you to those of you who have been reading the WAGSFP blog post – I wish you nothing but happiness and health.
Empowered women empower women… always and forever.
Thank you for this great opportunity,
Leilani Fonseca
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/ursa/media-team-2021-summer-research-lab/
