Monthly Archives: October 2011

Students Generally Accepting of Muslims, but Knowledgeable? Not So Much

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I grew up in Indiana. I loved my childhood, and I love my hometown then and now, but I certainly realize that it is a pretty homogeneous community. I believe that Indiana does offer more diversity (in the interest of full disclosure, this is NOT scientifically or statistically proven) over other towns of its size because of places like IUP and Indiana Regional Medical Center, which tend to draw individuals from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

I also appreciate that the university truly values diversity and has a dynamic and active Office of International Education that does extensive outreach throughout the year, including International Education Week (October 10-14 this year). I’ll be talking more about the week, which includes a naturalization ceremony, a first for IUP, in a future blog.

But with diversity comes challenges. The tragedy of September 11, 2001, changed the way that we look at the world (that’s not news to anyone) and placed the Islamic culture and religion in the spotlight in ways that it had never been before.

Parveen AliThat’s why I felt that the results of a study by Parveen Ali, an assistant professor in IUP’s Department of Developmental Studies, on “Perception of Islam and Muslims among College Students” would be both interesting and important to reporters.

The good news? Dr. Ali found that most students have an overall satisfactory attitude toward Muslims and Islam.

The not so good news? Most students have a misperception about where the majority of Muslims live, and some still associate Muslim with “terrorist.”

Any guesses about what was top-of-mind for students when they were asked for reactions to the word “Muslim”?

Forty-four percent responded with “normal people.” Twenty-one percent responded with “terrorist”; forty-four percent with “Arabs.” (They could choose more than one answer.)

And clearly, IUP students need to bone up on their geography. Eighty-four percent of surveyed students believed that the region where most Muslims lived is the Middle East.

Wrong answer.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of all of the world’s countries (15.6 percent), and Asia and the Pacific have 61.9 percent of the Muslim population, compared to 20.1 percent in the Middle East.

There is an increasing presence of Muslims on U.S. college campuses. That’s just a fact, Dr. Ali says.

That said, what’s the take away from this study?

“It is crucial to create awareness about Islam in college campuses in order to prevent discrimination, intolerance, false myths, and prejudice toward its believers.”

Well said.

Eating Less in the Presence of Men

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thesalt-banner-4622.gifOver morning coffee, NPR listeners recently learned about eating habits that were discovered right here in Indiana, Pennsylvania. You can see the full story in The Salt, NPR’s food blog, which describes research by two former students and two faculty members. It suggests the gender of your dining company can influence what you eat.

Molly Allen-O’Donnell ’04, M’06, Marci Cottingham M’09, Kay Snyder, and Tom Nowak of the IUP Sociology Department collaborated on “Impact of Group Composition and Gender on Meals Purchased by College Students,” which was published in September in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

The research shows that men and women both eat less when in the presence of men. Read or listen to NPR’s coverage. UPDATE: ABC News also has covered the issue and has cited the research done by Allen-O’Donnell, Cottingham, Snyder, and Nowak.

Nowak and Snyder retired in the summer. Currently, Allen-O’Donnell, whose bachelor’s degree is in Nutrition, is a social worker at Helpmates, Inc., in Ridgway, Pa. Cottingham is a graduate student at the University of Akron.

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear about Greek Life

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A sorority rides in the Homecoming parade October 1, 2011There are certain words that come to mind when you say “fraternity” or “sorority.”

You know them. I know them.

Parties. Wild behavior. Animal House.

However, if you’re not aware of this by now, I need to tell you this: you really CAN’T believe all that you see on television and the movies about university students.

Let me suggest some other words, and these are ones that I can absolutely prove to be fact about IUP’s Greek organizations:

  • Community service
  • National philanthrophy
  • Networking
  • Study hours
  • Academic standards
  • And this past week, pomps and pickup–garbage pickup, that is

While you were on your way home to dry out after this year’s wonderful (albeit wet!) Homecoming parade, after enjoying the amazing floats built by members of IUP’s fraternities and sororities, some three hundred fraternity and sorority members were busy VOLUNTEERING to clean up the Indiana Borough streets. Not quite the Homecoming “party” most expect of our Greeks.

Betsy Sarneso, assistant director for Student Life, oversees Greek life on campus. It’s a big job–there are about eight hundred students at IUP in one of thirty social sororities or fraternities. She coordinated the cleanup, among many, many other projects and programs.

“Every Greek organization is required to do service or contribute to a philanthropy, local or national, and sometimes they do both,” she explained. The Homecoming cleanup is just an extra.

Often, these students get excited about projects and move forward to DO THEM without notifying her office, so we don’t always get the word out. I can’t really fault them for that–the commitment to a good cause isn’t, for them, about getting credit or being in the newspaper. That’s kind of a refreshing thing in a world where it’s too often about people doing things for the recognition.

For example, we just learned of a project happening today and Wednesday–the annual “Rocking the Grove” fund-raising event, sponsored by the Panhellenic Association. Members of the Greek community will be in rocking chairs in the Oak Grove today from 4:30 to 11:30 p.m. and from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wednesday. Funds raised go to the Alice Paul House, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence and their children here in Indiana County.

Then, on Friday and Saturday of this week, sororities and fraternities will be doing a food drive at the Fourth Street Bi-Lo for the Indiana County Community Kitchen. This event, done in conjunction with the Office of Service Learning, will involve students from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. both days.

The Community Kitchen, the recent beneficiary of a special fund-raising event sponsored by the Bridge Corps, works to fight hunger in Indiana County. Since its creation in 1994, the Community Kitchen has served more than 150,000 meals. They get no government or state funding–it all comes from donations.

For some fraternities and sororities, this is a “been there, done that” kind of thing, as they’ve already done food drives for the community. We just don’t always hear about it.

In addition to rocking, members of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority are part of a breast cancer awareness event, Bras for a Cause, organized by the Indiana Business and Professional Women’s Club. (This project I know about…I was a celebrity bartender last year, complete with pink sweater, scarf, and hair!) The decorated bras are on display in front of Stapleton Library until tomorrow, so come out and vote for your favorite (that’s how the project raises money). All proceeds go to Birdie’s Closet at Indiana Regional Medical Center, a place for women diagnosed with cancer.

And those are things being done just THIS WEEK by our fraternity and sororities THAT WE KNOW ABOUT. I am certain there are many more things that we’ll never hear about, and that will never make the news.

However, the recipients of the funds raised or service offered will know.

Maybe that’s all that matters.

Rape-Myth Attitudes Are Still about Gender, IUP Criminologists Find

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I keep coming back to the IUP Criminology Department for feature stories and experts.

First of all, these professors are so accessible. They are busy teachers and researchers, but they are willing to talk with me and to talk with the media when reporters have questions about current issues in criminology.

Second, the work they do is just plain interesting. They ask questions that I might never have thought to ask, and these studies almost always have relevance to reporters and writers.

Jennifer RobertsCriminology professor Jennifer Roberts (who recently was promoted to the rank of professor–congratulations, Dr. Roberts!) did research with one of her doctoral students, Laura King, to try and determine if hometown types have an impact on how people think about rape. She surveyed a sample of IUP undergraduate and graduate students for her study.

You’d think that urbanites, who probably have more exposure to news about crimes like sexual assault, would have a different opinion about these crimes than people from small towns, where the crime rate is lower and there are fewer media reports on sexual assault.

Not so, they found. It’s not about the hometown, but it is about gender. Men were still more likely to accept rape myths than women.

Dr. Roberts and Ms. King’s “Traditional Gender Role and Rape Myth Acceptance: From the Countryside to the Big City” was published in the 2011 Women and Criminal Justice Journal, showing that hometowns have little to do with the acceptance of “rape myths.” Rape myths are stereotypical beliefs about rape.

Dr. Roberts and Ms. King explain that rape myths traditionally blame the victim, excuse the perpetrator, and minimize the severity of the attack based on a number of situational and background characteristics.

Okay. Interesting, but it begs the question: Why does this study matter to the media (which means you and me)?

Here’s why: Accepting these myths influences how survivors are treated AND contributes to the underreporting of this crime, Dr. Roberts says.

That’s the big headline for this story.

But there is some good news in this research to add to the headline. The overall rape myth acceptance within the pool of students she surveyed was lower than in similar studies conducted decades ago.

There is still much more to be done, Dr. Roberts stresses. Unfortunately, the acceptance of rape myth is still prevalent enough to warrant additional attention through things such as educational programs focusing on myths about rape and dating violence.