Dissertation presentation

To: The George Mason University Community

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the following dissertation defense:

Tanya Boucicaut
Writing and Rhetoric
Advisor: Dr. Isidore K Dorpenyo

Let's Chill And Protest: Reclaiming Leisure and Identity for HBCU Students During Greekfest 1989

Thursday, December 05, 2024
11:00 AM - 01:00 PM (ET)
George Mason University
Online Location, Room https://gmu.zoom.us/j/92064699528?pwd=jbXT9k64dky2hBdMnbDZjQKQvUza0L.1

During Labor Day weekend in 1989, over 100,000 Historically Black College and University (HBCU) students and others gathered in Virginia Beach to celebrate summer's end as a tradition since 1980. What began as a tradition among Black college students for recreational leisure ended in violence. With limited scholarly cohesive resources documenting the aftermath of the 1989 Greekfest, this mixed-method dissertation uses Black archival research, qualitative content analysis, and critical discourse analysis to collect and analyze over 3,000 archival data photos of student newspaper articles and editorials, local newspaper articles and editorials, national newspaper articles and editorials, memos, press releases, business receipts, proposal materials, overview/history documents, and commission reports. This dissertation seeks to amplify and center the voices of HBCU students in the Tidewater region of Virginia by exploring students’ public writing as a means of illuminating the complex and nuanced relationship between politics, tourism, race, and violence through a backdrop of Hip Hop music and celebration. It aims to succinctly and cohesively chronicle this event that had the rap group Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” as the soundtrack and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing as its trailer. 

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The main hypothesis is that the gaps in the public and personal perceptions of the aforementioned college students and their treatment before, during, and after Greekfest were influenced by systemic and systematic racial structures that were by design and not phenomenological. These gaps are influenced by longstanding economic, social, contexts that impacted public treatment and policy responses and enforcement toward Black college students and communities during festive events, with this event being emblematic. Due to the nature of this study, critical race theory (CRT) is most aligned with the dissertation’s data, with a nod to standpoint theory, to acknowledge my positionality as a Black millennial woman scholar from Virginia Beach. This dissertation desires to create a connection that fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue that can improve understanding of Black college students' leisure activities and celebratory practices reflecting their positionalities, values, and political consciousness.