The Justice Project
Project Overview:
Any society is riddled with injustice, including our own. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves on these injustices so that we can address them and hopefully change as a nation for the better. That was the goal of the justice project -- to educate ourselves on a few of the many injustices we face in our modern world. We started off by learning about the philosophies of justice (primarily Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, and John Rawl’s theory of Justice as Fairness), then moved on to apply this knowledge to environmental ethics. Within the idea of environmental ethics, we explored the exploitation of natural resources and the complexity of the oil and gas industry in the southwest. We focused specifically on the region of Greater Chaco, an area around the four corners, which gave insight into how relevant this is to our lives, as it happens right in our backyards. We also looked into environmental racism and the injustice of the justice system in our country by watching the documentaries True Justice and Beyond Standing Rock, respectively. After building background knowledge, we applied what we had learned to 2 justice monologues. These showcased how we had each applied this knowledge to our own lives and experiences. These monologues acted as a warm up for the final justice project, which was a collaborative effort to learn about and create a product around an issue of injustice of our choice.
Justice Monologue #1:
Justice Monologue #2:
Final Project - The Injustice of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2 Spirits Across the US:
FEEL FREE TO ACCESS THE QR CODE ABOVE TO GIVE OUR PODCAST A LISTEN!
Project Defense and Reflection:
DEFENSE
What did you end up doing for your final product?
I worked with my peers Naima and Sailor to create a podcast on the injustice of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2 Spirits across the US. During the first week of this project, we met as a group to create a schedule and work goals, as well as come up with our final product. Our original idea was to create a sticker, stamp, or postcard of some sort. We also played around with the idea of creating a portfolio of work from the four of us (including Bella at the time), but decided that we didn’t want to spread ourselves too thin. In the end, we decided that our end goal was to reach out to a local organization that works against this issue and help them in some way, whether that be fundraising, raising awareness, etc. During the first few days of week 1 we focused on research and building background knowledge so that we could speak to organizations with a solid knowledge base. Naima and I tried to call the director of SASO a couple of times, but they did not answer so Naima sent them an email. We never heard back from them, and decided that pursuing an organization to work with was not going to be as fruitful as we wished it to be.
Week two was a little stressful because of this change in direction, as well as the fact that one of our teammates was unable to come into school for a couple weeks because of personal matters, so we were down a person. Despite this, we persevered and spent the first day or two trying to figure out what we were going to do, and felt the deadline looming. Eventually, we decided on a podcast and spent our time researching podcast creation sites. We discovered Soundtrap at Sara's direction and spent a good chunk of time exploring its features and abilities. We made a couple practice tracks, and then transferred our focus to creating a script for the podcast.
The script required a lot of refinement. We ended up highlighting things from our notes that we thought we needed to include, and then based our discussion around that. Originally, we had it set up as if two of us (Naima and Sailor) were experts on the issue and the other (me) was the host/interviewer. We decided that we all wanted to speak on the issue, so we changed it to more of a conversation/discussion format. We spent time over the weekend refining and changing the script, and ended up spending most of Saturday doing practice recordings/drafts of the final podcast. On Monday, we dedicated our time to editing and fine tuning the recording. I signed up for Soundcloud, downloaded the podcast there, and then created a QR code, which we then sent to the Quill for it to be displayed in the school newspaper and well as in the weekly school newsletter.
I think I played a large role in making sure communication was clear for my group throughout the project - when Bella had to be out of school, I made sure she was kept in the loops and checked in to see if she needed anything from us. See email below. We also had a group text exchange where we kept each other informed.
For a compilation of the work we completed during the two weeks for this project, see the linked document below. Note that we did not indicate specifically who did what, but that it was an even distribution of work.
Compilation of Work Document -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sDFQRmUZvtciqq_-K-TyWuvVjh28gdDMdzMSCk8yiC0/edit
Email sent to Bella -
What did you end up doing for your final product?
I worked with my peers Naima and Sailor to create a podcast on the injustice of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2 Spirits across the US. During the first week of this project, we met as a group to create a schedule and work goals, as well as come up with our final product. Our original idea was to create a sticker, stamp, or postcard of some sort. We also played around with the idea of creating a portfolio of work from the four of us (including Bella at the time), but decided that we didn’t want to spread ourselves too thin. In the end, we decided that our end goal was to reach out to a local organization that works against this issue and help them in some way, whether that be fundraising, raising awareness, etc. During the first few days of week 1 we focused on research and building background knowledge so that we could speak to organizations with a solid knowledge base. Naima and I tried to call the director of SASO a couple of times, but they did not answer so Naima sent them an email. We never heard back from them, and decided that pursuing an organization to work with was not going to be as fruitful as we wished it to be.
Week two was a little stressful because of this change in direction, as well as the fact that one of our teammates was unable to come into school for a couple weeks because of personal matters, so we were down a person. Despite this, we persevered and spent the first day or two trying to figure out what we were going to do, and felt the deadline looming. Eventually, we decided on a podcast and spent our time researching podcast creation sites. We discovered Soundtrap at Sara's direction and spent a good chunk of time exploring its features and abilities. We made a couple practice tracks, and then transferred our focus to creating a script for the podcast.
The script required a lot of refinement. We ended up highlighting things from our notes that we thought we needed to include, and then based our discussion around that. Originally, we had it set up as if two of us (Naima and Sailor) were experts on the issue and the other (me) was the host/interviewer. We decided that we all wanted to speak on the issue, so we changed it to more of a conversation/discussion format. We spent time over the weekend refining and changing the script, and ended up spending most of Saturday doing practice recordings/drafts of the final podcast. On Monday, we dedicated our time to editing and fine tuning the recording. I signed up for Soundcloud, downloaded the podcast there, and then created a QR code, which we then sent to the Quill for it to be displayed in the school newspaper and well as in the weekly school newsletter.
I think I played a large role in making sure communication was clear for my group throughout the project - when Bella had to be out of school, I made sure she was kept in the loops and checked in to see if she needed anything from us. See email below. We also had a group text exchange where we kept each other informed.
For a compilation of the work we completed during the two weeks for this project, see the linked document below. Note that we did not indicate specifically who did what, but that it was an even distribution of work.
Compilation of Work Document -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sDFQRmUZvtciqq_-K-TyWuvVjh28gdDMdzMSCk8yiC0/edit
Email sent to Bella -
How did you final product reflect your personal philosophy of justice?
During the lead-up for this project, one of the philosophies of justice that stood out the most to me was the idea of the Veil of Ignorance. Basically, this idea states that you should look at any situation in life without the bias of your personal situation - imagine that you could be placed in any circumstance possible and you don’t know what that will be. I think that it should be a universal expectation that everyone strives to take every possible circumstance into consideration when they make judgments about the world. To me, this also means having empathy and understanding for the complexity of everybody’s lives/situations. This applies to our project because it is an issue that affects such a small group of people; in order to make a change in this issue, as a nation we need to look at it through the veil of ignorance so that we can have empathy, compassion, and the motivation to address it.
Why was your project a just way to address your issue of injustice? How did it bring about more justice or if you were trying to raise awareness, why were the ideas/arguments/messages you were expressing through your work/writing/art more in line with justice than other ideas?
Throughout this project, I had an inner struggle around if I was justified to speak on this issue as a young, privileged, white female. I felt like I was crossing an unspoken boundary, as if because I did not have personal experience with members of my family or friends going missing or being murdered I did not have the right to speak up about it. So, I don’t know if a podcast made by three white girls in a predominantly white town (though we do have a large indigenous population) is a “just way to address” the issue of the injustice of MMIWG2S. That is something I am still exploring and reflecting on. I do know, however, that it is extremely important to bring this problem to light in our community. Does our intention of bringing awareness justify our act? In the end, I think we will bring significantly more awareness to this issue because we will put it in our high school newspaper, The Quill, as well as the weekly school newsletter that goes out to families, students, and community members. Hopefully people in our community will listen to the podcast and it will inspire them to seek out more information on MMIW, and perhaps engage with organizations that are undeniably justified in their fight for this issue.
Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull of your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? Explain!
Given that we spent the entirety of the first week of this project researching this issue and becoming familiar with the statistics, policies, specific cases, etc., I would say that I definitely did sufficient background research to succeed in creating a professional podcast. I went into the project knowing what the issue was, but not knowing the specifics and feeling connected to it. After doing extensive research and learning more about individual cases, I feel an emotional connection to the issue that was lacking before. In the end, I think that was really the goal of the project - to gain an emotional connection to an issue in order to have motivation to address it.
During the lead-up for this project, one of the philosophies of justice that stood out the most to me was the idea of the Veil of Ignorance. Basically, this idea states that you should look at any situation in life without the bias of your personal situation - imagine that you could be placed in any circumstance possible and you don’t know what that will be. I think that it should be a universal expectation that everyone strives to take every possible circumstance into consideration when they make judgments about the world. To me, this also means having empathy and understanding for the complexity of everybody’s lives/situations. This applies to our project because it is an issue that affects such a small group of people; in order to make a change in this issue, as a nation we need to look at it through the veil of ignorance so that we can have empathy, compassion, and the motivation to address it.
Why was your project a just way to address your issue of injustice? How did it bring about more justice or if you were trying to raise awareness, why were the ideas/arguments/messages you were expressing through your work/writing/art more in line with justice than other ideas?
Throughout this project, I had an inner struggle around if I was justified to speak on this issue as a young, privileged, white female. I felt like I was crossing an unspoken boundary, as if because I did not have personal experience with members of my family or friends going missing or being murdered I did not have the right to speak up about it. So, I don’t know if a podcast made by three white girls in a predominantly white town (though we do have a large indigenous population) is a “just way to address” the issue of the injustice of MMIWG2S. That is something I am still exploring and reflecting on. I do know, however, that it is extremely important to bring this problem to light in our community. Does our intention of bringing awareness justify our act? In the end, I think we will bring significantly more awareness to this issue because we will put it in our high school newspaper, The Quill, as well as the weekly school newsletter that goes out to families, students, and community members. Hopefully people in our community will listen to the podcast and it will inspire them to seek out more information on MMIW, and perhaps engage with organizations that are undeniably justified in their fight for this issue.
Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull of your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? Explain!
Given that we spent the entirety of the first week of this project researching this issue and becoming familiar with the statistics, policies, specific cases, etc., I would say that I definitely did sufficient background research to succeed in creating a professional podcast. I went into the project knowing what the issue was, but not knowing the specifics and feeling connected to it. After doing extensive research and learning more about individual cases, I feel an emotional connection to the issue that was lacking before. In the end, I think that was really the goal of the project - to gain an emotional connection to an issue in order to have motivation to address it.
REFLECTION
In what ways were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your project proposal? What contributed to your successes and failures? What obstacles did you face?
At the beginning of this project, our main goals were to…
- raise awareness for ourselves and our community - show how important this issue is!
- find unique questions to ask
- find unique ways to help and contribute. Our voices matter!
- support what people are already doing in our community/state
- “success” could come from provoking questions and emotions in our community about the rights and resources of indigenous women and collaborating with indigenous women on their needs
- our main goal is to learn more about this issue!
I think we hit the mark on most of these, especially the ones that targeted furthering our personal understanding of the issue. I think that the key to creating societal change or addressing a major injustice in our society is to acknowledge and learn more about it yourself; if we start to solve a problem as informed individuals we quickly become an informed group that has the knowledge and ability to create change, together. Something that contributed to the success in this area was the extensive individual research we did during the project. In some group projects, I have observed that often one person does all of the research and then someone else will tackle a different part of the project, but we did a great job of ensuring that all of us were well informed from the start. One goal I do not think we met was “supporting people/organizations that are already working on this issue”. The fact that we were unable to connect with organizations easily over email definitely contributed to this failure. We tried to overcome this by going the extra step to call those organizations, but that did not work either. In retrospect, we could have put more effort into calling more groups/places/people and not getting as focused on getting in touch with just a few specific ones.
To what extent did you SHOW UP for this project? How engaged/committed/involved were you in the work? How much did you strive to create beautiful work worth doing? To what extent were you accountable to yourself and others if relevant?
I believe that I put a lot of effort into this project. I took an interest in something to a passion for something through my engagement and creation of beautiful work. I am really proud of our final product, especially given the fact that we lost a team member along the way and changed direction halfway through the project. There were a couple days where I got off track and distracted, but I managed to reel it in and finish strong. Another example of me “showing up” for this project was the fact that creating a podcast was way out of my comfort zone. Allowing myself that opportunity to be challenged and grow in the context of this project shows that I wanted to put a lot of effort into creating it/showing up for it. I was lucky enough to work with my two best friends on this project, and because we know each other so well we were able to have a wonderful balance of keeping ourselves accountable, and not being afraid to hold each other accountable. This guaranteed that we had an equal distribution of work, and everyone pulled their weight.
What TWO key lessons did you learn from this project that you can apply to senior project?
1. If you want to work with organizations, plan ahead.
Because we only had two weeks of work time for this project, it turned out to be unrealistic to work closely with an organization. Part of this is that it can sometimes take days for an organization to respond, and in that time waiting for an answer you might waste valuable time. So, during my senior project, if I want to work with an organization I will plan in communication time and make sure I don’t rely on a fast response.
2. Research, research, research!
You can never do enough research on a subject, especially one that you are passionate about. Do not be afraid to spend a little extra time getting to know the details of a topic, but also make sure you leave time for a really cool action project. Balance is important, but the more research, the better the action project (in my opinion).
In what ways were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your project proposal? What contributed to your successes and failures? What obstacles did you face?
At the beginning of this project, our main goals were to…
- raise awareness for ourselves and our community - show how important this issue is!
- find unique questions to ask
- find unique ways to help and contribute. Our voices matter!
- support what people are already doing in our community/state
- “success” could come from provoking questions and emotions in our community about the rights and resources of indigenous women and collaborating with indigenous women on their needs
- our main goal is to learn more about this issue!
I think we hit the mark on most of these, especially the ones that targeted furthering our personal understanding of the issue. I think that the key to creating societal change or addressing a major injustice in our society is to acknowledge and learn more about it yourself; if we start to solve a problem as informed individuals we quickly become an informed group that has the knowledge and ability to create change, together. Something that contributed to the success in this area was the extensive individual research we did during the project. In some group projects, I have observed that often one person does all of the research and then someone else will tackle a different part of the project, but we did a great job of ensuring that all of us were well informed from the start. One goal I do not think we met was “supporting people/organizations that are already working on this issue”. The fact that we were unable to connect with organizations easily over email definitely contributed to this failure. We tried to overcome this by going the extra step to call those organizations, but that did not work either. In retrospect, we could have put more effort into calling more groups/places/people and not getting as focused on getting in touch with just a few specific ones.
To what extent did you SHOW UP for this project? How engaged/committed/involved were you in the work? How much did you strive to create beautiful work worth doing? To what extent were you accountable to yourself and others if relevant?
I believe that I put a lot of effort into this project. I took an interest in something to a passion for something through my engagement and creation of beautiful work. I am really proud of our final product, especially given the fact that we lost a team member along the way and changed direction halfway through the project. There were a couple days where I got off track and distracted, but I managed to reel it in and finish strong. Another example of me “showing up” for this project was the fact that creating a podcast was way out of my comfort zone. Allowing myself that opportunity to be challenged and grow in the context of this project shows that I wanted to put a lot of effort into creating it/showing up for it. I was lucky enough to work with my two best friends on this project, and because we know each other so well we were able to have a wonderful balance of keeping ourselves accountable, and not being afraid to hold each other accountable. This guaranteed that we had an equal distribution of work, and everyone pulled their weight.
What TWO key lessons did you learn from this project that you can apply to senior project?
1. If you want to work with organizations, plan ahead.
Because we only had two weeks of work time for this project, it turned out to be unrealistic to work closely with an organization. Part of this is that it can sometimes take days for an organization to respond, and in that time waiting for an answer you might waste valuable time. So, during my senior project, if I want to work with an organization I will plan in communication time and make sure I don’t rely on a fast response.
2. Research, research, research!
You can never do enough research on a subject, especially one that you are passionate about. Do not be afraid to spend a little extra time getting to know the details of a topic, but also make sure you leave time for a really cool action project. Balance is important, but the more research, the better the action project (in my opinion).