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Katelinn King
Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate

Abstract: The Covid-19 vaccine has been mandated for healthcare workers across the country. The rise of the mandate has caused questions as to whether or not healthcare workers should be required to get a vaccine that is still so new. Nurses have an obligation to their patients to be a role model in the healthcare setting and to cause no harm. On the other hand, some nurses are hesitant to get the vaccine for various reasons, including not enough information related to long term effects. This research will be evaluating the Nurse Code of Ethics in relation to reasons why they should get the Covid-19 vaccine. This research will also include statistics showing how some healthcare workers perceive the vaccine. 

Katelinn King is a third-year student at Kent State Trumbull. She is completing a major in nursing. After she graduates, she plans to work on an ICU unit. She would like to further her education in the future to become a nurse anesthetist. She enjoys reading, painting, and hiking during her free time.

Morgan Casper
Ohio's Military Involvement in the Civil War

Abstract: "Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." - Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War was the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil. An estimated 620,000 people died during this war. Ohio was one of the leading states to provide military power to the Union during this time. The state also played an essential part in keeping Confederates from pushing farther North through the Kentucky and Ohio border during the Morgan Raids. My research looks at the vital role the city of Cincinnati and surrounding areas played socially, economically, and militarily to bring a swifter end to the Civil War. This research paper takes an individualist approach to Civil War history by focusing on Ohio’s involvement rather than focusing on the Civil War as a whole. Therefore, adding important information to the collective such as the involvement of squirrel hunters in defending Cincinnati and how Ohio’s military leadership strengthened the Union’s hold of northern states. 

Morgan Casper is a senior History major at Kent State Stark. After graduating, she plans to work towards her dream of becoming a Watchlist or Intelligence Analyst in an effort to combat domestic terrorism. Morgan enjoys trips to Amish Country, listening to the FBI Retired Case File Review podcast by Jerri Williams, writing historical fiction, and watching comedies in her spare time.

Moira Armstrong
"We've Had a Pandemic Before": AIDS, COVID-19, and Queerphobia in the United Kingdom 

Abstract: This presentation will examine how the policies adopted in the United Kingdom during the crisis years of AIDS, which applied to England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, did not consider the concerns of queer people. Specifically, through close readings of legislation passed by parliament, publications from the National Health Service, and oral histories from the Queer Britain museum’s Queer Pandemic collection, it will explore how the UK government ignored the importance of nightlife and sex to queer community and relationship building, queer people’s chosen families, and queer people’s need for easy access to non-discriminatory healthcare, because of the queerphobic Conservative Party’s primacy in politics. It will also detail how these policies, which were presented as reasonable responses to the AIDS crisis, helped to normalize governmental queerphobia and its codification in official policy, directly leading to the UK government’s adoption of similarly queerphobic policies and rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Moira Armstrong is a senior at 5X���� with a double major in English and history and four minors, including LGBTQ Studies. They are also the research assistant for the Queer Pandemic oral history project. After graduation, they plan to attend graduate school in gender and sexuality studies. 

Eric Harmon
Income Inequality: Ending Mexico's Wealth Gap

Abstract: Following the Mexican Revolution, the Constitution of 1917 became widely regarded as a progressive mandate to advance human rights, health care, education, and land reform. Despite these measures many years ago, Mexico still faces a large financial gap between society’s wealthiest individuals and society’s working class. Today, Mexico’s wealthiest ten percent of individuals own forty three percent of the income in Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexico’s ten percent of the poorest individuals in Mexico only own two percent of the income in Mexico. Mexico’s income inequality has had a turbulent expansion, resulting in an unreliable boom-bust economy in Mexico. By enacting further progressive political and economic reforms, Mexico can close the unfair financial gap that exists between the wealthy and the poor. My power point presentation will review Mexico’s problematic economy and propose a variety of policy solutions to close Mexico’s unjust gap of income inequality. 

Eric Harmon is a senior student at Kent State Stark. Eric is majoring in political science and plans to graduate in the Spring of 2022. During his four years of college, Eric served on Uhrichsville City Council from 2018-2021, where he became the youngest elected official in Ohio at age 18. Eric is also employed on a full-time basis, working as an insurance broker for the Milestone Company. Following graduation, Eric plans to continue his employment as an insurance broker and hopes to further his political aspirations.

Emma Bezek
Special Needs and the Landscapes that Support Them

Abstract: The world that we live in seems to be a world made for “fully functioning” individuals. There was little effort until the Americans with Disabilities Act in the 1950s to make any accommodations for individuals that fell into any category other than “typical”. After the ADA was passed, however, there has been a growing push to make the world we live in a little more “universal” every day, so that the exceptional individuals among us might enjoy a full and happy life too. Considering these adaptations from a geographical standpoint, from swing-sets to buildings, these changes directly affect the landscape around us. These changes are often ignored by the public but represent the difference between inclusion and isolation for others. This video project looks at the geographical adaptations made for these exceptional individuals to the contemporary landscapes around Northeast Ohio, close to our 5X���� at Stark.

Emma Bezek is a second-year student majoring in Special Education with a concentration in Deaf Education. She has a heart to help exceptional individuals recognize the gifts they have and provide them with the opportunities to share these gifts with others. She is hoping to enter directly into teaching when she graduates. When she is not busy with school, she loves spending time with family, staying active, or pursuing creative outlets such as music or writing. 

Thomas Meyers
Mai Lai Massacre

Abstract: The work I am submitting was my final project for my Fall 2021 history class. My project was focused on the events of the Mai Lai Massacre that took place in 1968 during the Vietnam War. The research has been neatly organized into an informational slideshow utilizing PowerPoint. The presentation begins with a short background description of Charlie Company, an army battalion deployed in Vietnam, who was responsible for the acts. My first point is illustrated as the events leading up to the massacre followed by my second point which was the events of the massacre. My second point is very intimately explained along with my third point of the events following the massacre and the subsequential government ignorance. Throughout the presentation, I include pictures of important figures from the battalion and others related to the event. The presentation is approximately 14 slides in length and has a respective title slide along with a slide for my citations. 

Thomas Meyers is a second-year student majoring in business management with a minor in history. After he graduates, he currently plans to work his way up the chain in FedEx as he is currently employed by FedEx Ground. When he is not working on his studies or working his part-time job, he enjoys spending quality time with friends and family.  

Evan Dukeman
From Presidential to Caesarism: The Demise of the American Presidency

Abstract: It is argued that one of the most important elements to any form of democracy or any type of republic is representation. However, pursuing ultimate representation could lead to the destruction of the rights and freedoms of your people, perhaps even lead to the end of your country. The French destroyed their own revolution through continuous expansion of democratic government and by committing sheer terror on those that were deemed undemocratic. This ended with the country gaining a new monarch (Napoleon), America is going down a similar path. Since the progressives began implementing their ideas and designs into the American Republic, we have gone down a dark path that according to history usually ends badly. This started with the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but since the rise of FDR, every subsequent president up to Biden has promoted and championed their ideas to varying degrees. America was meant to be a constitutional republic backed by an aristocracy. Since the start of the union the Federalist Party and their leader Alexander Hamilton feared that a populist president leading the majority would destroy the nation, bringing terror and ruin to all within. Their fears were not unfounded as Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson both sought populist approval and were aggressive in policies of the majority rather than trying to remain neutral and stoic like Washington. 

With the rise of presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden we have seen the unprecedented power of American populism. Riots, cancel culture, mass shootings, growth of militias, and outright hatred for one’s fellow countrymen. All three of these leaders have promoted such attitudes and actions. With the advent of social media these presidents and their fellow politicians have the power to disseminate their ideas quickly and widely without filter to a large audience and stoke that audience into a furor before anyone else has a moment to react. This should be no surprise to those who study history and philosophy. As there have been many groups and great thinkers that warned of such a thing. Two important thinkers were Oswald Spengler of Germany. In the aftermath of World War 1, he wrote the Decline of the West in 1918. A book explaining his view of history. Rejecting the Whig philosophy of history, where history is seen as a line from beginning to end with the end being progress. Spengler instead believed each culture or country has its own unique history that acts more like a living organism. One that is born, grows, reaches its peak, declines, and then finally dies. Many over the years in various nations have written on the same subject and adding their own ideas to it. But the last influential and important figure for America was a man by the name of Amaury de Riencourt. A French aristocrat who loved America and the English language. He wrote in 1957 The Coming Caesars, where he argued that the seeds in all of America life had been planted for a populist to take control of the nation and declare themselves dictator for life just like what had happened in Rome. A dictator that is chosen by the tyranny of the majority. 

I will be filling the gap with my thesis. Written over a half century later, I will be studying and analyzing the current state of America’s presidency and the culture and social attitudes surrounding it. Are the Caesars here or will they be soon? Perhaps America could break free from Spengler’s view of History. But this is of the utmost importance for us, as America is the most powerful nation in the world and in history. One that has influence on every inch of the globe and who at the moment could really replace us? I doubt many would want to see Communist China or Putin’s Russia replace America as leader of the world. The threat of the downfall of America and the rise of a Caesar is even worse knowing that we now possess nuclear weapons, it is possible the cycle could end with us but not for the benefit of humanity. 

Evan Michael Dukeman is a History Major and Senor at 5X���� with a strong interest in the cultural and political aspects of civilizations from the past to the present. He has been on the Dean’s List for several semesters and enjoys studying and discovering a multitude of ideologies and philosophies that exist in the world. Especially, the ones that do not get that much attention. He hopes to one day teach on a university level and to perhaps work in a think tank or the National Archives.