GSSA at UH Mānoa

The Social Breakdown: SOC513 - Visual Sociology (Guest Edition) In a world with rapid changes to technology from the advent of photography to camera phones to social media and the Mark Zuckerberg’s “metaverse,” there has also been an emergence of other ways of revealing aspects of our world. One is Visual Sociology. Please join us for our conversation with...

PhD Candidate Morsaline Mojid has been awarded a $10,000 Soroptimist Founder Region Fellowship grant to support her dissertation research!!
Her dissertation title is currently "How Much do 'Protective Strategies' Protect Refugees? Studying the Situation of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh."
Soroptimist International's mission for empowerment supports women in their final research phases through this grant.

Founder Region Fellowship – Improving the lives of women and girls locally and globally by giving fellowships to women who will truly make a difference in the world Improving the lives of women and girls locally and globally by giving fellowships to women who will truly make a difference in the world

Invitation to Dialogue on Red Hill by the UHM Graduate Student Sociological Association

Co-authored by Jason Mark Alexander, Alena Shalaby, Clarice Handoko, Jake Atienza, Rachel Engel, Omar Bird, & Morsaline Mojid

In November 2021, Oʻahu communities were viscerally confronted with an increasingly critical threat to the island’s main source of freshwater. The U.S. Navy Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, located at Kapūkaki ridge directly above the Moanalua-Waimalu aquifer, leaked many thousands of gallons of fuel, directly poisoning families and the ecosystem in the Pearl City area. As concluded on 27 December 2021 by the Sierra Club, Honolulu Board of Water Supply, and Hawaiʻi Department of Health, the Red Hill facility is an imminent peril to life on Oʻahu.

The Navy has often neglected or avoided responsibility for fuel leaks from Red Hill over the past seventy years. The Red Hill crisis has exposed the false claims at the heart of the Navy's national security rhetoric. Certainly, fuel does not keep Hawaiʻi safer than fresh water. Rather, by opposing the State of Hawaiʻi's emergency order to defuel the tanks, the Navy demonstrates its willingness to sacrifice the people and environment of Oʻahu for its illusory pursuit of military supremacy. Complete contamination of the Moanalua-Waimalu aquifer would seriously upend living conditions in Oʻahu, resonating with ongoing gentrification, exclusive land leases, and rising sea levels that make it increasingly difficult to afford to live on the island.

In response, the Graduate Student Sociological Association (GSSA) urges everyone from all spheres of society to learn about and have conversations about the conflict over protecting Hawaiʻi’s local water sources from military-industrial polluters. We echo the collective demand of local and transnational organizations for the Department of Defense to permanently drain and shut down the polluting fuel tanks at Red Hill. We believe the Red Hill water crisis is not only an environmental issue that only environmental scientists can address. Rather, we as students of sociology want to highlight how this decades-long issue reiterates the discourses of military and state politics in perpetuating hegemonic power, affecting intersections of social inequalities in Hawaiʻi and beyond.



To find out more about ways you can engage with the Red Hill issue, you can visit https://www.redhillpledge.com/, which includes links and lists of the people and organizations involved in the developing social movement coalitions.

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To learn more about five parts of our sociological stance, please see the attached images for the full statement.

Congratulations to Joy Lacanienta and Ying Chen for being awarded Graduate Dean's Scholarships to help support their important research!
Joy's dissertation will examine the intersections and effects of chronic stressors and trauma on the well-being of mothers of color, who are also domestic violence (DV) survivors, as a result of interactions with the criminal justice system, either as complainants or defendants. Ying's thesis will be a qualitative study of Chinese women who practice permaculture in the 21st Century.

Check out PhD Alums Ellen Meiser and Penn Pantumsinchai talk about their recent viral article on The Social Breakdown Podcast!

Great article by Morsaline Mojid, Sociology PhD Candidate, on the importance of empathizing with refugees!

Empathising with refugees I was recently conversing with a friend living in Cox’s Bazar who was boiling with anger against the Rohingya refugees on their prolonged stay in the camps in Bangladesh.

Much congrats to our PhD alum, Hannah Liebreich, who recently accepted a Visiting Assistant Professorship at Furman University!

Check out this timely research on the impact of restrictive voting laws between 2000-2016, which is co-authored by UHM faculty Jennifer Darrah-Okike, UHM PhD candidate Nathalie Rita, and John Logan! https://scholars.org/contribution/additional-rigorous-evidence-voter?fbclid=IwAR05x0IfY4ADDEnZxe4Lr2Yao6okgF9aDgPOtkoSQCwu9SIBVrb78zCeoj8

Additional, Rigorous Evidence that Voter Identification Laws Suppress Voting The historic 2020 election has re-opened debates about election procedures. Newly implemented measures have encountered partisan legal challenges, and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud have reached a fever pitch. In the election’s wake, policymakers and scholars will likely face pressing ...

Congrats to Omar Miracle Bird, a UHM Sociology PhD Candidtae, who is the receiptent of a 2020-2021 Merit Based Award from the Graduate Student Association!

Congratulations to all of the Merit Based Awards Recipients! 🎊🎉 Be on the look out for future posts where we’ll feature some of the recipients.

Take a look at the new article by our PhD alums and Social Breakdown co-hosts, Penn and Ellen!

The Normalization of Violence in Commercial Kitchens Through Food Media - Ellen T. Meiser, Penn Pantumsinchai, 2021 The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are 2.53 million cooks and chefs in the United States. Of those, one in four reports experiencing physical v...