Notre Dame Research Workshop on Riots and Protest at the Midwest Sociological Society Conference

On April 19-21, 2000, several members of the research team attended the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society in Chicago. Four papers reporting research done by undergraduate members of the workshop were presented to rave reviews:

"Frame Development and Alignment: Birmingham, Alabama, 1968," by Matt Baggetta.
"The Societal and Institutional Causes of School Riots in the Late 1960s," by Beth Kirvida and Francisco Sanchez.
"The Contribution of Policing to Racial Rioting in the 1960s," by Kim Berg and Tony Perez.
"The Benefits of Grassroots, Peaceful, and Youth-Led Initiatives in Curbing Violence," by Colleen Quinlan.
(In addition, Prof. Myers presented a paper with graduate student Beth Caniglia based on data generated by the Research Team: "Media Bias in the Coverage of Racial Riots: National versus Local Media Outlets.")

Some of the comments from the discussants and reviewers of these papers include:
"That was the best undergraduate paper I have ever read, and if it were a graduate student paper, it would be one of the very best graduate papers I'd ever read."
(Said to one of our presenters): "So where are you in your Ph.D. program?" Answer: "I'm a junior." The person who just asked the question proceeded to nearly have her eyeballs pop out of her head.
"She's an undergraduate? Really? You're not joking?!"
"That was one of the best papers at this conference in over 20 years!"
"I never could have written a paper like that when I was an undergraduate--I couldn't have understood a paper like that when I was an undergraduate."
"I wish the graduate students in our program could produce work of this quality."

Congratulations to all six student authors and thanks to everyone who has supported their work. We especially wish to thank the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts which provided financial support for these research projects.
Please see our Research Output page for more information about these projects.