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Since the shootings at Kent State University (KSU) in 1970, students and activists have held commemorative ceremonies to mark that event. The university ignored that past and decided to build a gym annex covering part of the land on which the National Guard had maneuvered in 1970. Led by the May 4th Coalition, activists sought to persuade the university to change the building's location. The student concern was the preservation of what they viewed as “sacred” ground which would be buried underneath the annex. At the 1977 annual commemoration speakers raised the annex issue and the newly formed May 4th Coalition ultimately occupied the site of the planned building with a tent city. That occupation was forcefully removed, and the university did build the facility where planned. The physical and spatial aspects of the commemoration of the Kent State shootings did, over time, lead the university to take on the responsibility to memorialize that conflict. This paper focuses on two interrelated issues: (1) the efforts of the May 4th Coalition and residents of Tent City to block or move the gym annex and (2) the refusal of KSU for years to recognize the broad significance of the events of May 1970 and their attempt to ignore or bury it.

Research has shown that for young adults, marital attitudes (e.g., desire, importance, and expectation) are associated with relationship quality. However, how this association plays out for young adults of color is less known. Additionally, the influence of skin tone perception on the relationship between marital attitudes and relationship quality remains understudied. To explore these associations, the authors examined African American and Latinx young adults (N = 57, M_age = 20.71 years, SD = 1.28; 75.4% female) attending a Midwestern university. Exploratory results indicated that marital expectations were positively associated with relationship quality in that young adults who expected to marry one day, reported greater relationship satisfaction, commitment, and intimacy in their current relationships. Additionally, skin tone perception moderated the association between marital attitudes and relationship quality in two ways (i.e., between expectations and satisfaction and between importance and intimacy). Collectively, findings suggest that differing levels of marital attitudes and skin tone perception contributes to young adults’ perceptions of relationship quality. Considering these psychological factors of attitudes, skin tone perception, and relationship quality, together with systemic racial/ethnic discrimination, the authors discuss future research and practice considerations.

This chapter provides a genealogy of the Gladue–Ipeelee principle of special consideration of Indigenous circumstances at sentencing. The principle is codified in the 1996 statutory requirement that “all available sanctions other than imprisonment … should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders” (s. 718.2e of the Criminal Code of Canada). Using the Foucaultian genealogy method to produce a “history of the present,” this chapter eschews normative questions of how s. 718.2e has “failed” to reduce Indigenous over-incarceration to instead focus on how practices of “special consideration” reproduce settler-state paternalism. This chapter addresses three key components of the Gladue–Ipeelee principle: the collection of circumstances information, the characterization of those circumstances, and finally their consideration at sentencing. Part one focuses on questions of legitimacy and authority and explicates how authority and responsibility to produce Indigenous circumstances knowledge was transferred from the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) to Indigenous Courtworker organizations in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Part two identifies how authority shapes problematization by examining the characterization of Indigenous circumstances in the two eras, finding that present-day Gladue reports articulate an Indigenous history and critique of colonialism as the root cause of Indigenous criminalization, whereas DIA reports prior to 1970 generally characterized this criminalization as a “failure to assimilate.” Part three focuses on the structural reproduction of power relations by exploring historical continuities in judicial and executive-branch consideration of Indigenous circumstances, suggesting that the Gladue–Ipeelee principle reinscribes a colonial “mercy” framework of diminished responsibility. The author discusses how the principle operates in the shadow of Indigenous over-incarceration as a form of state “recognition” and a technique of governance to encourage Indigenous participation in the settler justice system and suggests that the Gladue–Ipeelee principle produces a governing effect that reinforces settler-state authority by recirculating colonial practices and discourses of settler superiority.

Purpose – It is often difficult to assign blame to youthful violent offenders, and journalists may be uncertain how to determine the moral culpability of performers of horrific crimes such as school shootings.

Methodology/approach – In order to examine journalists’ assignation of moral responsibility for school shooting events, this article examines the sequencing dynamic (i.e., the order in which elements of news reportage appear) present in article lead sections from 112 New York Times articles about nine rampage school shootings occurring in the United States between 1997 and 2001.

Findings – Analysis revealed that journalists initially tended to select sequences that more clearly assigned blame. Over time journalists tended to rely on details that highlighted the contextual elements, rhetorically reducing the moral responsibility of the perpetrators. School shootings may ultimately be remembered as horrible events, but the youthful nature of the offenders and other contexts of the events will tend to mitigate the shooters’ moral culpability.

Originality/value of chapter – This study is the first to apply Cerulo's (1998) concept of sequencing to glean information about the moral decision-making process involved in the production of news content about school shootings.

This chapter analyzes the semiotic construction of US claims to sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Building on semiotic theories in sociology and theories within critical Indigenous and settler colonial studies, it presents an interpretive analysis of state, military, and academic discursive strategies. The US empire-state attempts to construct colonial narratives of race and sovereignty that rehistoricize the history of Hawaiians and other Indigenous peoples. In order to make claims to sovereignty, settler-colonists construct narratives that build upon false claims to superiority, advancement, and discovery. Colonial resignification is a process by which signs and symbols of Indigenous communities are conscripted into the myths of empire that maintain such sovereign claims. Yet, for this reason, colonial resignification can be undone through reclaiming such signs and symbols from their use within colonial metanarratives. In this case, efforts toward decolonial resignification enacted alternative metanarratives of peoples' relationships to place. This “flip side” of the synecdoche is a process that unravels the ties that bind layered myths by providing new answers to questions that underpin settler colonial sovereignty.

Alternative education settings (AES; i.e., self-contained alternative schools, therapeutic day treatment and residential schools, and juvenile corrections schools) serve youth with complicated and often serious academic and behavioral needs. The use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) and practices with Best Available Evidence are necessary to increase the likelihood of long-term success for these youth. In this chapter, we define three primary categories of AES and review what we know about the characteristics of youth in these schools. Next, we discuss the current emphasis on identifying and implementing EBPs with regard to both academic interventions (i.e., reading and mathematics) and interventions addressing student behavior. In particular, we consider implementation in AES, where there are often high percentages of youth requiring special education services and who have a significant need for EBPs to succeed academically, behaviorally, and in their transition to adulthood. We focus our discussion on: (a) examining approaches to identifying EBPs; (b) providing a brief review of EBPs and Best Available Evidence in the areas of mathematics, reading, and interventions addressing student behavior for youth in AES; (c) delineating key implementation challenges in AES; and (d) providing recommendations for how to facilitate the use of EBPs in AES.

The growth of organized labor during the latter part of the nineteenth century triggered an organizational impulse on the part of employers across the country. Although some employers’ associations began as “negotiatory” bodies engaged in collective bargaining, the vast majority of them shifted toward a more “belligerent” approach. Academic scholarship has generally focused on the belligerents at the national level. Recently, some scholars have begun to study organized employers at the community level, but they continue to feature the more typical staunchly anti-union associations. This study of Columbus, Ohio's master printers’ association reveals a different pattern of local labor relations during the years between 1887 and 1960 – an association that had generally smooth bargaining relationships with craft unions. Columbus’ conservative and sheltered economy enabled the longstanding cooperative shared printing craft culture to thrive. But changes in Columbus’ economy, shifts in larger patterns of industrial relations, the hard-line influence of the national employers’ association, and technological changes altered the context of local labor relations. The result was that, by 1960, the Columbus association sought the upper hand in labor relations by becoming a more traditional and belligerent employers’ association. This story of “latecomers” adds to our understanding of organized employer behavior under different historical periods and circumstances.