UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Rhetorical Contingency and Affirmative Action: The Paths to Diversity in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke(2010) Carr, Martha Kelly; Parry-Giles, Trevor S.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision addressing the constitutionality of university affirmative action policies. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. concluded that universities could consider race as a factor to achieve the goal of a diverse student body. This study situates Bakke within its broader rhetorical environment of public discourses about race, law, and education, examining the selection process by which Powell found “diversity” to be the most justifiable answer to the question of affirmative action's permissibility. Using materials retrieved from Powell's archives at Washington and Lee University, including memoranda, personal notes, and draft opinions, the project makes three interrelated arguments. First, this study asserts that the Supreme Court is a rhetorical institution, dependent upon rhetoric for its inventional needs and its credibility while simultaneously cloaking its reliance on rhetorical invention in a rhetoric of formalistic inevitability. As such, it attends to how the legal invention process, explicated by classical rhetorical theorists and manifest in contemporary legal practice, enhances understanding of Powell's decision. Second, the project examines how Powell pulled from far-reaching rhetorical and ideological environments for his “diversity” rationale. Here, the study traces public discourses about race and examines Bakke's legal briefs, outlining the appeals to multiculturalism, colorblindness, race consciousness, and individualism that comprised Powell's inventional warehouse. A critical scrutiny of Powell's opinion-writing process reveals an inventional program guided by an ideological negotiation of these competing and compelling rhetorics of race and education in the United States. Third, this project argues that Powell's opinion-writing process is a corporate, rather than individual, process. Examining the negotiations between Powell, his law clerks, and fellow justices further illuminates the rhetorical nature of the Court, as well as the ideological influences upon individual Court opinions. The study concludes by explicating how Bakke reflects the ways that the Supreme Court works as part of a broader rhetorical culture, constructing its decisions from the materials of public arguments and the architecture of jurisprudential norms. Finally, the study explores the ideological circulation of Powell's decision: divorcing the goal of diversity from the justification of past discrimination.Item How Did You Get In? Attributions of Preferential Selection In College Admissions(2006-12-15) Bates, Archie Lee; Klein, Katherine J.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Minorities are often suspected beneficiaries (e.g., Heilman, 1994) of affirmative action--that is, they are individuals who attribute or perceive that others attribute their selection for a job or admission to a school, in part, to preference given to race or gender status. Experimental research has shown that suspected beneficiaries experience negative self-evaluations, yet little research has focused on performance outcomes. I draw upon attribution theory (e.g., Kelly, 1972) and stereotype threat theory (C. M. Steele & Aronson, 1995) to extend the literature by examining the emotions and academic performance of freshmen college students who are suspected beneficiaries. I hypothesize that racial minorities are more likely than are Whites, and women are more likely than are men, to be suspected beneficiaries of racial and gender preference, respectively. These attributions lead to decreased academic self-efficacy and increased evaluation apprehension and anxiety, which ultimately decrease academic performance. Additionally, I pose research questions to explore factors that mitigate the effect of attributions on these outcomes. I use structural equation modeling to test my hypotheses. The results suggest that racial minorities and women are more likely than Whites and men, respectively, to be suspected beneficiaries. Further, attributions of racial and gender preference lead to the hypothesized negative outcomes. I find that past academic performance moderates the relation between attributions of gender preference and anxiety, such that students who scored higher on the SAT and (perceive that others) attribute their admission to gender preference experience more anxiety than do students who scored lower on the SAT and (perceive that others) attribute their admission to gender preference. Additionally, social support moderates the relation between attributions of racial preference and evaluation apprehension, such that students who receive high levels of social support and (perceive that others) attribute their admission to racial preference experience less evaluation apprehension than do students who receive low levels of social support and (perceive that others) attribute their admission to racial preference. Overall, the results support the perception that uncertainty in the selection process can lead to attributions of preferential selection and harmful consequences for racial minorities and women.