Instructor: Prof. Jay Aronson (aronson@andrew.cmu.edu)
Are you interested in crime and policing? Are you curious about public safety and security on college campuses? Have you heard calls for the abolition of police since the murder of George Floyd in 2020? This research experience will give you the opportunity to explore these issues in depth through research on the origins and evolution of Carnegie Mellon University’s Police Department. This work will be carried out under the guidance of Prof. Jay Aronson and university archivists. It will run throughout the summer with required in-person meetings clustered in the first four weeks of the course. After that, we can discuss remote participation for the rest of the summer for students who want that option. Students may need to schedule in–person visits to the archive outside of class time. The student research team will: review existing scholarly literature on policing and campus policing around the country; explore historical material in the university’s archives; gather publicly available material like newspaper articles, crime bulletins, annual crime reports, and university policies; and evaluate mechanisms for gathering public input on interactions with CMU PD. Participants will gain valuable skills conducting and managing historical research in libraries and physical archives, online, and in public spaces and learn a great deal about policing and public safety in the United States.
Note on this experience: This course is likely to be very different from other experiences you’ve had at Carnegie Mellon. You will learn first-hand what it is like to conduct historical research on a contentious, policy-relevant topic using primary sources that you will play a part in finding, organizing, and analyzing. You will have the opportunity to work directly in the university’s archives with the support of our archivists. This is an experience that most historians don’t get until they are in graduate school. This privilege comes with responsibility. You will participate in a collective accountability group that is designed to ensure that you are all keeping up with work assigned to you and that your peers are doing the same. The goal of this group is to be mutually supportive and to stay aware of the accomplishments and challenges of everyone in the group. I will be guiding you over the course of the summer, and will check in with you all on a regularly scheduled basis, but I definitely won’t be monitoring you on a daily basis.
The sensitivity of the subject matter: Policing and campus safety involves sensitive subject matter and you will potentially be finding and reading reports about traumatic or violent events that involve people’s personally identifying information. Please feel free to reach out to me if there are issues that you’d prefer not to be over-exposed to, and also be aware that you have an ethical responsibility not to share details of events that have occurred on campus that are not already part of the public record. We will discuss both issues during the first week of the research experience.
Your grade will be based in large measure on your commitment to taking this experience and the work we are doing seriously. You are required to put in 108 hours of total effort into this project (including class time, reading time, and all research time) in order to fulfill the requirements of a 9-unit course (9 hours/week over 12 weeks).
The specific components of your grade are:
The research goals for the summer are to:
The deliverables for the summer are:
Learning Objectives: First and foremost, I hope this experience enables you to gain an appreciation for the joys, challenges, frustrations, and work of doing policy-relevant historical research! That said, there are specific things I hope you learn, including:
Early decisions that need to be made are:
What kinds of material do we actually want to collect and begin to analyze?
Scheduled meetings as of 5-13-2022
Monday May 16: Meet in 246-A Baker Hall from 2:00-3:20pm for personal introductions and a welcome to the research experience and the topics we’ll be covering
Wednesday May 18: Meet in IDEATE Studio B (106-C Hunt Library, located on the first floor across from the stairwell) from 2:00-3:20pm for an introduction to the CMU archive and the archivists who run it
Monday May 23: Meet in 246-A Baker Hall from 2:00-3:20pm to discuss logistics, course infrastructure, and accountability groups
Wednesday May 25: Meet in 246-A Baker Hall from 2:00-3:20pm to present summaries of second-week readings and to discuss other issues determined by the group
Monday May 30: NO CLASS (Memorial Day)
Wednesday June 1: Meet in 246-A Baker Hall from 2:00-3:20pm to set preliminary milestones based on what we know about how long tasks will take.
Monday June 6: I cannot meet this day, but you are welcome to get together either in person in 246-A Baker Hall or remotely if you prefer.
Wednesday June 8: Meet in IDEATE Studio B from 2:00-3:20 with the archives staff to plan for the rest of the semester, including revision of milestones. Discussion of check-ins for rest of the semester.
PLEASE SCHEDULE INDIVIDUAL CHECK-INS WITH ME AT SOME POINT BETWEEN Wednesday June 8-Friday June 10, ensuring that your activity logs are complete, up-to-date and available for review.
Wednesday June 15: Group meeting at 2pm with me (TBD whether it’s via Zoom or in person)
Wednesday June 22: Group meeting at 2pm with me (TBD Zoom or in person)
Wednesday June 29: Group meeting at 2pm with me (TBD Zoom or in person)
No scheduled meetings the week of July 4-8
Wednesday July 13: Group meeting at 2pm with me (TBD Zoom or in person)
PLEASE SCHEDULE INDIVIDUAL CHECK-INS WITH ME AT SOME POINT BETWEEN Wednesday July 14-Friday July 16, ensuring that your activity logs are complete, up-to-date and available for review.
Wednesday July 20: Group meeting at 2pm with me (TBD Zoom or in person)
Wednesday July 27: Group meeting at 2pm with me (TBD Zoom or in person)
Monday August 1: Meet 2-3:20pm with me to discuss favorite things you’ve collected, big questions you have, and future directions for research (TBD Zoom or in person)
Wednesday August 3: Meet 2-3:20pm with me to discuss favorite things you’ve collected, big questions you have, and future directions for research (TBD Zoom or in person)—this is the last official meeting of the class.
PLEASE SCHEDULE FINAL INDIVIDUAL CHECK-INS WITH ME AT SOME POINT BETWEEN Wednesday August 3-Friday August 5
I will not be available the week of August 8, so you should use that time to wrap up the project and complete:
I will review this material and your deliverables during early in the week of August 15 and will provide you with collective and individual feedback and grades at that time.
Reading to be completed by Friday May 21:
Second-week readings to be divided up amongst group and presented on Wednesday May 25: