Amina Dunn is a senior majoring in Sociology and Theater Studies. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on campus political engagement under Dr. Irene Browne.
After two years at Emory, I noticed that political discussions between individuals with differing opinions were rare. I, myself, was having most of my political conversations within my friend group and, even then, I felt I was the one who was instigating most of the discussions. When I saw political demonstrations on campus, usually something very big had happened on campus to motivate students to act: “Trump” and “Build a Wall” were chalked all over campus, DACA was potentially going to be rescinded, Black Lives Matter art was washed off of Asbury Circle by the university, or Milo Yiannapolous was invited to speak on campus. Each of these incidents led to short-lived protests on campus; but generally, campus was and continues to be a peaceful place. At the tail-end of my sophomore year, I had an idea. I wanted to create a documentary project examining how students across the country perceived the world. I wanted to understand how an individual’s perception of the world was shaped by their ability to navigate their lives. Simply, I wanted to know how identity shapes a college students perspective of political ideas. I was told by a professor that my idea was too big, not academic enough, and the time commitment was extremely large. She was right. So, I dropped the documentary idea and the project eventually transformed.
My honors thesis focuses on political engagement on college campuses. Through a sociological lens, I am examining how and when students decide to participate in political conversations or become active in social and political protests. Further, I am examining how identity influences whether or not certain individuals decide to become politically active while they are in college. I used two approaches to investigate my topic, a secondary data set and in-depth interviews with twenty-one Emory undergraduate students. Through these means, I hoped that I would be able to not only understand campus political dynamics across the nation, but also how students form their own narratives regarding political conversation.
This project has not progressed without any hurdles. Initially, I had hoped that it would be easy to gather all of my materials: email some people to get my data, find a way to pay students to compensate for the time in interviews, and analyze my data over the course of a few months. But, if anything, throughout this process I have learned that doing a research project means that there are going to be multiple walls you are going to hit. It took the entirety of my Fall semester to gain my IRB approval and obtain my data set, and I had to fight tooth and nail for both. Fortunately, I was able to earn a URP grant, so I was able to pay my participants. But, due to the scheduling of interviews and the delay in obtaining my data, my time for analyzing my data and writing my paper was heavily reduced.
Despite the obstacles, my project is on its way to completion. I have analyzed my data and have found through several different dimensions that identity does truly affect how individuals negotiate their social spaces. Not only this, but I have found, in multiple discussions, that students do have a lot of thoughts about politics on campus. However, bipartisan dialogues infrequently occur on campus because students do not have many spaces or much time to talk to people who are not in their immediate vicinity. Further, some students do not always know how to start ideological conversations with people that do not think like them. But, some of the students with whom I spoke did have some ideas concerning the lack of diverse political dialogues that I will be excited to discuss in my final paper.
This project has been one of my most fulfilling experiences as a student at Emory. It is really amazing to have the opportunity to take one of your creative ideas and have it come into fruition in just a few short months. I hope that my project furthers the sociological conversation about the dynamics of identity at collegiate institutions and helps people gain a perspective on politics in academic spaces.
Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Independent Research Grants.
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