Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

American discomfort with death has hindered important end of life conversations within families. The groundwork for this discomfort can be attributed to a variety of influences common in American life. This thesis investigates the influence of religion, media portrayal, and healthcare on the perception of death in the United States and offers death mindfulness as a means for the average American to become more comfortable with death.

This paper analyzes the economic, legal, and social aspects of the legal cannabis industry in the United States. These analyses include the history, current status, and future of all three components, all with an emphasis on reforming the existing systems in place in order to achieve the most beneficial cannabis industry possible. Many reformative legal implications are made, stressing the importance of decriminalizing cannabis, releasing nonviolent and cannabis-related criminals from prison, and expunging their criminal records. The paper places a heavy emphasis on the importance of designing the legal system to be fair and equal across all racial and ethnic groups, given that people of color have been hit the hardest in terms of cannabis-related issues. Economic components such as tax design and access to proper financial institutions are also included, as well as the social implications that have both gone into and are a product of the long-standing war on drugs. While there is no comprehensive solution for how to fix every aspect of the industry, this paper highlights key aspects to be aware of in the design stages of potential federal legalization.

The United States healthcare system does not perform as well as other countries including Germany and England, despite spending the most money on healthcare. It is well-established that there have been attempts at reform in the U.S. healthcare system multiple times in the past. This research paper describes the health care systems in the U.S., Germany, and England to analyze the strengths to create practical healthcare reform ideas for the U.S. This was done by describing each of the country's health care systems in detail, including the history of each country's health care system, the quality of care, the access to care, and the funding of the health care system. Based on this analysis of these health care systems, recommendations for health care reform are provided for the U.S. with revisions to the Affordable Care Act.

This project offers an argument that isolates several major forces that it contends pose a critical threat to the endurance of modern American democracy. It evaluates modern and classic political philosophy to identify the prerequisites for a stable democracy, identifying and defining voter education and participation as necessary contributors to civic engagement. It provides a socio-legal framework for evaluating four phenomena that have shifted in their impact on politics over the past 20 years: the roles of money and media in politics, as well as disenfranchisement by gerrymandering and by felon voting restrictions. It demonstrates how each has a new and worsening impact on voter education and/or participation, thus threatening the continued existence of modern American democracy.

Disinformation has long been a tactic used by the Russian government to achieve its goals. Today, Vladimir Putin aims to achieve several things: weaken the United States’ strength on the world stage, relieve Western sanctions on himself and his inner circle, and reassert dominant influence over Russia’s near abroad (the Baltics, Ukraine, etc.). This research analyzed disinformation in English, Spanish, and Russian; noting the dominant narratives and geopolitical goals Russia hoped to achieve by destabilizing democracy in each country/region.

The United States and China have entered a geopolitical competition for power and influence unseen since the Cold War. By examining the nature of this contest through the lens of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and Graham Allison's Thucydides' Trap theory, it is possible to analyze the nature of this relationship, and make predictions as to where it may lead.