Huston-Tillotson University
The second and third Huston-Tillotson (HT) Research Days 2007-08 and this student research publication (2nd and 3rd editions) continue the University’s reinvigoration of its historical legacy of empirical investigation that was begun with the Inaugural Huston-Tillotson Research Day 2006 and its accompanying Inaugural Huston-Tillotson University Research Journal. These current articles, as did those in the previous edition, continue to exemplify HT’s historical distinction for promoting scientific inquiry and research. These student researchers go beyond discovery and extend social commentary and poignant recommendations for the improvement of humanity based on their research findings. These thought provoking works challenged society in terms of its obligation to: children at risk for mental disorder (Alvarez); adolescent males who are susceptible to delinquency (Blackmon); abused teens and young women (Hernandez); the mentally ill (Garza); the homeless (Ormsby); future generations (Speed and Tavernier); martyrs from its past (Morris); the environment (Northcote); education (Zea-Hernandez); and thealth (Rancier and Brinkley).Social, health (Rancier and Brinkley), educational (Zea-Hernandez), and environmental (Northcote) justice issues permeate this research, contrary to the egocentric stereotype of these student authors’ generation. Speed and Tavernier’s soul searching analysis of their own generation (’80s Babies) within a social, psychological, historical, and political paradigm challenged whether Baby Boomer parents have shown the next generation the way of social consciousness, suggesting that cohort differences may be more a function of 'miseducation' than gaps. Morris rounds this journal out with the Birmingham Bombing retrospective’s tragic loss of life for one generation so that the next could live, placing the worldview of the ’60s cohort squarely within a context that subsequent generations can understand, just as the desegregation movement has culminated in the oxymoronic election of Obama. Themes throughout are consistent with his call for a reinvigoration of the spirit of hopefulness and social justice. Yes we can.
