Elon students had an opportunity to share their research with peers and faculty members April 9 during the 11th annual Student Undergraduate Research Forum (SURF). Details...
More than 100 students presented posters, PowerPoint presentations and experiments representing a variety of academic disciplines, ranging from science and math to performing arts and literature. In addition to introducing students to scholarly research work, SURF gives students the opportunity to have their findings presented at national conferences and published in academic journals.
Math major Bob Davis gave a PowerPoint presentation about the Euler and Nagel lines of homothetic triangles. Davis worked with faculty mentors Richard Haworth and Bill Barbee to find a way to construct these triangles, which lie in the same plane and have corresponding sides that are parallel, at any point on their Euler and Nagel lines.
Shannon Marsteller used the plight of the Kurdish people to examine the spread of human rights violations throughout the world. Along with faculty mentor Laura Roselle, Marsteller found numerous examples of human rights violations against the Kurds, who aren’t recognized as an official nation and do not have representation in the world’s political organizations. She found Kurds in Turkey and Iraq are often forced to make choices between their traditional way of life and accepting the social norms of another culture to avoid reprisals. She also disputed the theory advanced by some analysts that suggests the Kurdish situation should be allowed to “play itself out,” which she says would result in the extermination of the Kurds.
Katie Beaver and faculty member David Copeland initiated a comparative study of two newspapers, the Chicago Defender and the Chicago Tribune, during the turbulent year of 1920. Beaver analyzed each paper’s coverage of several important events during the year, including the presidential election between Harding and Cox, labor disputes in West Virginia coal mines and prohibition. The Defender, a newspaper that served the black community, used its editorial page to express opinions on major issues of the times, while the Tribune, Chicago’s larger, more conservative paper, did not editorialize on these issues. Beaver also discovered that the Defender’s influence did not spill over into the city’s white community, and the Tribune rarely mentioned race in any of its news accounts.
Students in assistant professor Jessica Gisclair’s Media Law and Ethics course prepared a mock trial that presented a clash between a law regulating child pornography and a journalist’s investigative rights. The hypothetical Supreme Court case came alive as student attorneys presented their cases and answered pointed questions from the judges.
The defense argued to the Supreme Court that as a freelance journalist, Larimer should be protected under the First Amendment, as he was doing research on the Internet for a possible story. The prosecution maintained that the First Amendment was not designed to allow journalists (or anyone else, for that matter) to break the law.
“Each time an image is viewed, another child is injured,” said prosecutor Erin Cooper.
After the attorneys made their arguments, the two judges announced their decision. Justice Nick Rust said that the societal harm involved in child pornography outweighs the reporter’s right to research. Fellow justice Kristin Simonetti agreed.
“Journalists don’t have the right to violate laws to get research,” she said. “It’s the law, and he violated it.”
Many students presented their work during a poster session Wednesday afternoon in the Koury Center concourse, held in conjunction with a special College Coffee. Students, faculty mentors moderators and invited guests will enjoy a banquet Wednesday evening to close out the day.
For more information about the SURF program, visit the link below: