Sustitución de la Constitución Sentencia C-141 de 2010

As a way to begin consideration and discussion of social issues and introduce students to an organization that works towards social justice, we read the memoir Picking Cotton as a class. This book deals with a college co-ed who was raped in the 1990s and went on to select the man she thought was her assailant out of a lineup, a man who was subsequently convicted and served 11 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA technology. Making connections between what we read and learn about and the world in which we live is always significant in order for learning to be meaningful. At the onset of our semester together, there were several high-profile cases in the news that surrounded sexual assault on college campuses: Heisman winning

quarterback from Florida State University was being investigated for sexual assault and all activities in fraternities at University of Virginia had been suspended under an accusation that a female student had been sexually assaulted during a party in one of the houses. Both

investigations proved to be very muddy, with questionable evidence, conflicting eyewitness testimony, and ultimately he said/she said scenarios. Nevertheless, the real world situations students were seeing nightly on their televisions and reading about in the newspapers and on social media were closely related to the events in the book. In fact, the Florida State University

story involved a white female making an accusation of sexual assault against a black male. Naturally, in a diverse classroom such as ours, this sparked some intense debate.

There were many issues related to social justice addressed during our discussions, so this book laid excellent groundwork for our first, low-stakes research project. As a class, we decided on five topics that most students seemed interested in learning more about as a result of those discussions: eyewitness testimony (reliability and fallibility), DNA evidence, campus sexual assault, female-on-male rape, and the Innocence Project (a nonprofit organization that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted).

Students learned very basic research skills, worked collaboratively to divide the information they discovered into four or five main ideas that could be presented to the class to educate fellow students on the issues, and delivered a panel presentation, after which they facilitated a classwide Q&A. This was not part of my plan when I set out to have my students read the book; in fact, beyond the book being quite fascinating to me personally, I really only committed to teaching it because it was part of my institution’s college-wide book club, and I am a supporter of that initiative. The discussions were quite informal, and the follow-up

collaborative research project and panel presentation really developed organically. As we discussed the issues raised in the book, there was clearly so much more my students wanted to know. There seemed to be a drive to know how this kind of injustice could have happened, to understand why in some ways it doesn’t seem to have stopped happening, and to know what could be/is being done about it. As you can imagine, the fact that they were asking these types of questions was very encouraging for me, since it wouldn’t be long before I was asking them to exercise the same kind of critical thinking about a cause or issue of their own choosing.

The organically inspired, collaborative research project was an exercise rooted in feminist pedagogy. I let my students decide what it was they wanted to know more about, provided

guidance on how to go about getting the highest quality information and how best to share it, and they shared their newly acquired knowledge with all of us. This was really the first step in

developing their sense of agency and self-efficacy.

Since the book was a part of the college-wide book club, the college invited the co- authors, rape-survivor Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and the exonerated Ronald Cotton, to speak to students at two separate campus events. I attended the event with several students, and we were all quite moved by the experience. As we listened to Mr. Cotton’s retelling of his journey, there was a collective sense of gratitude for those who had acted on his behalf, who had worked to right the wrong he experienced.

4.8.4 Researching Other Social Movements: A Collaborative Timeline Project

We moved from Picking Cotton into the topic of social movements. We began by

discussing various definitions of social movements. I presented students with approximately five definitions, and then I asked them to brainstorm to create a list of components to include in our own definition. Our group brainstorming session generated the following list of things that should be considered in the class definition of a social movement:

 Large group

 Organized

 Common idea/similar goals

 Local/state/national/international impact

 Action/activity

 Efforts toward change (awareness, education, increased funds, policy)

 Leader

 Influence

 Challenges to power

 Social class

 Moral superiority  Logic  Liberty  Equality/resolve inequities  Freedom  People

After creating a list of items, we collaboratively constructed a working definition of a social movement: A social movement is the efforts of a group or individuals with shared interest to address an existing problem or inequity through organized efforts or action that may result in change.

Then I introduced the Social Movement Timeline project, where we studied history of other movements before choosing causes and issues for the remainder of the semester work we would do. This project helped students further formulate their own views on social issues, which they cared about or found interesting, as well as introducing them to a wide variety of causes and issues (financial, political, social, environmental, medical). This was a low-stakes, somewhat traditional composition assignment, one that counted only for a participation grade. It was an assignment with a digital component – an entry point into composing for new media.

Students were then presented with a list of approximately 50 social movements from the 20th _{and 21}st _{century in the United States and asked to choose one to research further. Following} are the instructions the students were given:

Instructions: For this assignment, you will choose one of the following social

movements (only one movement per student); research its history; and write a one-page summary of the history, goals, major players, and accomplishments of the movement. This must be in your own words. Only one quote is allowed per page, and it must be short and attributed to the author. You will be required to locate an image that reflects the movement, save the image to your iPad, and plot your movement on a class-wide

timeline. You must make research notes on the chosen movement in your journal, but the one-page summary will need to be typed and submitted both in-class and electronically.

See Appendix D for the list of social movements that were presented to students as options for research.

In addition to being required to write a 1-2 page summary of the movement, students were asked to plot their movement on a digital timeline using the web-based program Dipity. Students were sent an invitation to join the collaborative timeline and plotted their work on the timeline independently. The finished mini-research project was a series of 25 movements plotted on the timeline.

As part of the project, I provided 10 books, which I had checked out from the campus library and already deemed valuable for historical information on social movements (see

Appendix D for the Reference list). The list of 50 social movements was pulled from Wikipedia, which I allowed them to also use for general background information gathering. I did not, however, allow them to use any information about the movement that was not also confirmed in a second source, an activity which proved valuable in also teaching students about evaluating sources and how to complete basic citations in MLA from a book.

Figure 16: 20th _{and 21}st _{Century Social Movements Timeline on Dipity}

You can view the interactive timeline at http://www.dipity.com/lgoodling/20th-and-21st- Century-Social-Movements-in-the-U-S/.

Figure 17: Women’s Rights Entry on 20th _{and 21}st _{Century Social Movements Timeline}

Each entry on the timeline expands to a brief summary of important dates, ideas, individuals, and accomplishments of the particular movement. Some students uploaded images and links to informational websites, while others plotted the movement on a map and others uploaded educational videos on their chosen movement.

The value of this assignment was that it got students thinking about social activists who had come before them and the types of issues they tackled and what kinds of success they had discovered. I really wanted my students thinking about activism as a key part of our nation’s history. Additionally, through researching various movements, students were asked to identify key players in the movements, and they were able to make connections between the young people/college student activists engaged on many of the issues and themselves. Tracing social movements from trigger/catalyst events to the passage (or defeat) of related legislation was

useful for them to see the power in social action. We had rich discussions about strange bedfellows and coalition building, what makes a message persuasive, and why change is necessary in order for a society to improve. We talked about freedom and civil liberties and whether or not it is possible to achieve something like a “common good” at all.

Finally, as students embarked on their own movement of sorts, the historical research of prior social movements helped to contextualize their work as change agents. They were able to see themselves as players in a movement that might be plotted on the timeline of today or twenty years from now.

I asked them to make their entry on the timeline rich multimodally. Students were asked to select a still image that reflected the movement as well as a mini-documentary that

summarized and educated others on the movement. These exercises served to help develop their analytical lens, which would serve the upcoming assignments that would rely heavily on visual rhetoric skills. While it was more than a month before the digital advocacy video would be assigned, this exercise also exposed students to PSAs (public service announcements) and activist and advocacy videos, so being assigned creation of one later would end up being less intimidating.

Figure 18: Marriage Equality Entry on 20th _{and 21}st _{Century Social Movements Timeline on Dipity}