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- All Subjects: Communication
- Language: English
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Undergraduate Student Government Downtown (USGD) is the student advocacy organization on Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus. Its primary purpose is to appoint representatives, known as senators, to represent students in a specific ASU college and meet with university officials to discuss student needs. Senators compartmentalize their roles in various ways and do not always adhere to the expectations of their role outside of USGD meetings. This research study sought to examine how members of USGD compartmentalized their roles as student leaders. It also sought to examine the degree of separation senators placed between what they view to be their authentic selves versus the self-aspects they associate exclusively with USGD duties. The research determined compartmentalization of roles differed between levels of authority within USGD. Senators who had no other roles within the organization found it easy to remove themselves from the role after their USGD duties were completed for the day. Senior members of the organization, those who held higher positions of authority within the organization, found it less likely for them to separate their personalities from their roles. It also examined USGD’s continued use of highly structured meetings via the use of Robert’s Rules of Order. While they can provide structure in large group settings, when overused these rules cause the organization to suffer from a lack of information exchange and the ability to freely engage in debate. Robert’s Rules of Order act as a gatekeeper, making meeting language inaccessible to student constituents which leads to low amounts of constituent engagement.
ContributorsFishkind, Annaleez Gomez (Author) / Maday, Renee (Thesis director) / Gneiting, Gary (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Watts College of Public Service & Community Solut (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
"Bow to the Queen" is an investigation of the presence of classism within the American renaissance faire subculture and the way it impacts communication between community members. While "rennie" subculture has been the subject of many ethnographies in the past, this thesis uses quantitative data to first identify the state of classism and then analyze any effects or correlations it maintains with communication. The literature review shows that unlike past studies, "Bow to the Queen" does not compare members of the renaissance faire community to outsiders, but rather defines the complex social structure and uses it to compare different subgroups of "rennies" to each other. After composing and releasing a survey designed to discreetly measure community members' communication patterns and attitudes toward fellow participants, 100 surveys were collected from current renaissance faire employees from 29 different festivals around the United States. Questions primarily inquired about the relationships between members of the community who stay local to one festival versus those who travel the festival circuit full-time. While results did not prove a definitive nor direct relationship between the presence of classism and increased or decreased communication, they did show that the prevalence of prejudice between social echelons is a far more nuanced construct than was first considered. Ultimately, the significance of this study comes down to the way it demonstrates a fair and thorough treatment of fringe subcultures that are often looked at superficially by the academic community, and by doing so help prevent the pathologization of such cultures in the future.
ContributorsDaugherty, Hayleigh (Author) / Bates, Denise (Thesis director) / Thomas, David (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12