Writen by: Jyrell Wynn, Staff Writer

Graduate students congregated to share their in-depth research last week with interested members of the VSU campus and community.

The seventh annual Graduate Student Research and Scholarship Symposium was held in the University Center from 4 to 6 p.m. on April 17th to celebrate the work of graduate students on a diverse range of subjects.

The event gave these students a platform to present their findings on various topics of their choosing and inform listeners of their research.

Dr. Thomas Aiello, a faculty mentor of the Department of History, guided graduate Benjamin Vieth on his subject of Kinderlou, which was a convict farm turned into a residential neighborhood. Convict leasing was a tool to control labor in the South and caused numerous African-Americans to return to unpaid labor. False arrests, kidnapping, torture and other nefarious allegations were part of a legal system filled with corrupted law officials in Georgia.

Graduate student Sandra Masci, Industrial Organization and Psychology major, examined the legacy of sexual harassment and discrimination among females in the U.S. military, concluding that females faced more discrimination, sexual harassment and negative effects than men in the military today.

Sarah Chambers, a graduate getting her masters in social work, researched the effect of music on communicating and relaxing clients with Alzheimers disease. She found that music improved communication among clients with a greater range of vocabulary and the relaxation level was easy.

“It was mainly hymns,” said Chambers. “We do the national anthem and patriotic songs. It was mainly hymns because these ladies are in their 70s and 80s so they know those good old songs.”