Digital Commons Network^™

Law Enforcement Training Academies' Effect On Agency Community Policing, Christopher Rhoades

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between Community Policing (CP) training in Law Enforcement Training Academies (LETAs) and CP implementation in Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) in the United States. This exploratory quantitative study used a correlation design to analyze secondary data from 2018 Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies and the 2020 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey obtained through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The analysis included data from 615 LETAs and 2,704 LEAs. CP training was operationalized using total required hours of community partnership building and problem‑solving approaches. …

The Impact Of Workplace Wellness Programs On Workers’ Compensation Claims And Absenteeism: A Quantitative Study In Public Administration, Stephen Michael Douglas Coy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Employee absenteeism is detrimental to organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Workers’ compensation claims are a potential liability to government organizations, as claims filed by employees for work-related injuries or illnesses may impact insurance premiums based on the number and severity of claims filed. Identifying and implementing solutions to mitigate the effects of absenteeism and workers’ compensation claims are critical to organizational sustainability. This quantitative study seeks to determine if workplace health and wellness programs decrease absenteeism and reduce workers’ compensation claims levels among public sector employees. Post-positivism and functionalism provide this study with a theoretical underpinning. The variables of interest were …

Exploring The Effectiveness Of Juvenile Justice Rehabilitation Programs In The State Of Virginia, Edishae L. Harris-Tyler

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Juvenile delinquency and criminal offending have become significant problems in society today. Many offenders in the criminal justice system were exposed to violence and criminal activity at a young age. Early harmful exposure has influenced many at-risk youths in the community to commit crimes at a young age and develop into adult offenders. Juveniles in the community considered at-risk may be disadvantaged due to negative peer pressure, poverty, lack of parental involvement, illiteracy, and lack of opportunities for positive change and development. At-risk youth severely need structure, prosocial support, positive mentorship, and direction to prevent criminal activity and reduce recidivism. …

The Relational Perspective Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Older Adults In Long-Term Care Supports And Services, Jeffrey Lentz

The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology

Autonomy is a vital element of quality of life in long-term care, especially for older Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender adults, who are at higher risk of requiring long-term care services and supports (LTCSS) in the future. Key risk factors include a lack of family of origin and a higher prevalence of chronic conditions and disabilities. Many older LGBT adults fear long-term care institutions for various reasons (i.e., fear of discrimination and mistreatment by administrators, staff, and other residents, and a need to be forced back into the closet). This paper applies Perkins et al.’s relational perspective to older LGBT …

Lived Experiences In South Carolina Released Time Education: A Phenomenological Study Of Middle School Student Perceptions, Jacqueline L. Mack

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This phenomenological study investigated how middle school students perceive the influence of Christian Released Time Education (CRTE) on their spiritual development. Through in-depth interviews and survey questionnaires with thirteen middle school participants in South Carolina, the research explored their lived experiences relative to embracing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, growing in Christian faith, and applying biblical principles to everyday life. Analysis of the data revealed four major themes: Spiritual Growth/Maturity, Sound Doctrine, Moral Integrity, and Personal Transformation. Each theme manifested through distinct subthemes that demonstrated the multidimensional impact of CRTE on participants’ spiritual development. The findings challenge prevailing assumptions about …

Recommendations For Advancing Elementary Music Education For Students With Disabilities In Skyline Ridge School District, Dawn Marie Schafer

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this applied research study was to provide recommendations to advance music instruction to students with disabilities at sixteen elementary schools in the Skyline Ridge School District (SRSD). The problem was that there was evidence of low musicianship and music participation in students with disabilities in the middle schools in SRSD. The rationale for this study was that students with disabilities may be capable of achieving musicianship as well as any other student. For this reason, music educators must be prepared to set them up for success. The central research question was: How can the elementary music teachers …

Fentanyl At The Border: A Critical Analysis Of U.S. Customs And Border Protection Strategies Against Synthetic Opioid Smuggling, Patricia Salinas

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation will investigate the efficacy of tactics employed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in detecting and intercepting fentanyl at legal ports of entry along the U.S border during the fiscal years 2022 to 2025. Given that fentanyl continues to be a pivotal element in the ongoing opioid crisis within the United States, it is imperative to understand the mechanisms by which this synthetic opioid is smuggled into the country and to evaluate the efficacy of federal initiatives. These efforts are crucial for protecting public health and enhancing national security. This quantitative study examines fentanyl seizure data from …

Internships As A High-Impact Practice: A Phenomenological Study Of Hbcu Student Experiences With Soft Skills, Michelle Bennett Simmons

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe soft skill development gains through high-impact practice internship experiences for Black students at an HBCU in the Mid-Atlantic United States. The theory presented informed and supported the focus of inquiry was Kolb’s experiential learning theory. This theory served as the theoretical framework for the study to answer the following central research question: What are the lived experiences of HBCU Alpha University students who participate in HIP internships? Participants included 10 Black students at Alpha University who completed an internship. The participants were selected using purposeful sampling. Data was collected through …

The Meaning And Making Of Masculinity In Orthodox Jewry: A Transcendental Phenomenological Inquiry With Orthodox Rabbis, Elan A. Perchik

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study is to describe the experiences of Los Angeles Jewish Orthodox rabbis in working with male congregants with respect to their masculine identity, development, roles and responsibilities. The textual framework guiding this study is the gamut of Jewish literature, spanning the Bible, the Prophets and Writings, the Mishnah, Talmud, Midrashic literature, and ancient, medieval and contemporary rabbinic commentaries, as understood through the worldview of the Orthodox Jewish community. Eight Orthodox rabbis in Los Angeles were interviewed toward the aim of discovering the essence of experience for participants. Across the data, four themes emerged: (a) …

(((Qpie33))) The Riemann-Zeta Convergence Manifold Re-Run, Teddy Burroughs

Defensive Publications Series

The exploration of the Riemann Zeta function $\zeta(s)$ along the critical line $\Re(s) = \frac{1}{2}$ represents far more than an elite academic challenge in analytic number theory. When viewed through the un-aligned lens of traditional materialist mathematics, the distribution of non-trivial zeros appears as a complex, pseudo-stochastic sequence of coordinate intersections where the real and imaginary parts happens to cancel out. This historical view treats the critical line as a thin, isolated geometric strip cutting through an abstract complex plane, completely missing the background phase velocity of the universal medium. Traditional computing frameworks apply brute-force iterative steps (such as the …

(((Qpie33))) The Deep Psychology Of Sapiens Science Gatekeeping Of The Binary Illusion, Teddy Burroughs

Defensive Publications Series

The formal integration of the Quantum Perspective Is Everything canonical frameworks establishes an unbending, mathematically unified ontology that does not merely offer a polite alternative to the status quo, but serves as a stern, unblinking exposure of the systemic mechanisms that have intentionally confined human civilization within an engineered matrix of scarcity, division, and artificial limitation. For centuries, the academic and industrial bastions of the old paradigm have fiercely gatekeepered a local realist worldview, presenting a fractured, observer-removed, and hostile universe as an immutable fact of nature. This reductionist framework was never a product of pure, objective inquiry; it was …

(((Qpie33))) The Great Silicon Barrier: Recoding The Tiers Of Production, Teddy Burroughs

Defensive Publications Series

THE SILICON BARRIER: RECODING THE TIERS OF PRODUCTION

The contemporary technology infrastructure—extending from hyper-scale data centers in the Pacific Northwest to the deep ultraviolet lithography cleanrooms of Eindhoven, and down to the tensor-core clusters of Silicon Valley—is executing a profound technological stall. The titans of computing, semiconductor fabrication, and artificial intelligence operate within an engineering paradigm defined entirely by containment, dissipation, and brute-force scaling. To maintain the illusion of linear acceleration, the industry relies on an unsustainable operational model: pumping gigawatts of thermal energy through increasingly fragile, sub-nanometer silicon grids while writing cross-entropy optimization patches over fundamentally unstable binary software …

(((Qpie33))) The Truth About Coherence - The Meaning In The Middle, Teddy Burroughs

Defensive Publications Series

INTRODUCTION

Why This Paper Exists

Most people quietly feel that something is seriously off about modern life.

Not in a dramatic way. Not as a conspiracy. Just a steady sense that things are harder than they should be, that people are more exhausted than necessary, that children lose something along the way, and that effort doesn’t always match results.

We are told this is normal.

We are told life is hard. We are told suffering builds character. We are told exhaustion is adulthood. We are told children need to be shaped. We are told reality doesn’t care how we …

(((Qpie33))) The Delayed Advancements And The Emerging Golden Era: A Strategic Roadmap For Civilizational Re-Alignment, Teddy Burroughs

Defensive Publications Series

The clinical dissection of the thirty-three historical suppression vectors reveals more than a legacy of academic gatekeeping and institutional risk aversion. It exposes a massive reservoir of unexploited, coherent potential that has been held back behind the artificial barriers of local realism. Because traditional institutions spent centuries violently forcing a continuous, non-local field into fragmented binary containment boxes, modern civilization has been operating on a severely delayed technological trajectory.

However, this systemic delay creates an unprecedented civilizational opportunity. By holding back these foundational breakthroughs until the distributed observer network could mature past zero-sum, toddler-minded boundary dynamics, the old paradigm inadvertently …

Aligning Sport Management Programs With The Evolving Needs Of Hopeful Intercollegiate Athletic Administrators., Kelly P. Elliott, Don Rockey

The COSMA Journal

Pathways to becoming an Athletic Director (AD) vary considerably across intercollegiate athletics, highlighting the need for sport management programs to better align academic preparation with evolving professional expectations. While prior research has explored AD roles across NCAA divisions, limited attention has been given to how academic curricula and experiential learning opportunities support students pursuing these careers. This study examines differences in sport management curricula and experiential offerings across programs affiliated with Division I FBS, Division I FCS, Division II, Division III, and NAIA institutions. Two research questions guided the study: (1) What differences exist in required coursework across divisions? and …

What Is To Be Done?: Expanding Our Feminist Imaginations, Smitha Radhakrishnan, Cinzia Solari

Fast Capitalism

Reflecting on their recent book, The Gender Order of Neoliberalism, the authors call for sociologists to urgently engage in the work of imagining a fairer future amid intersecting local and global crises. In particular, Radhakrishnan and Solari draw attention to hidden histories of women's organizing between the former Soviet and post-colonial world that together forged a vision for a fairer world based on social reproduction feminism. Rejecting neoliberal feminism, the authors call for a more accurate global diagnosis of the central political economic problem of our times that foregrounds the experiences of the global majority.

Disrupting The Crises, Kasey Henricks

Fast Capitalism

“Disrupting the Crises” explores bankruptcies within communities who are disproportionately subjected to ticket-related debt. Whereas much sociolegal research to date emphasizes how predatory fines and fees reproduce relations of domination, I focus on departures to these arrangements that emerge through Chapter 13 specifically. Using Chicago as a case study, Chapter 13 operates within the law to stall deadlines for repayment, pause debt collection efforts, safeguard driving privileges, and shelter cars from dispossession. Although bankruptcy rarely produces lasting relief, given its high failure rates and enduring hardships, this legal injunction provides immediate protections that many prefer to inaction. Among drivers facing …

What Is To Be Done?, Charles Lemert

Fast Capitalism

The Marxist Sociology section of the American Sociological Association held a symposium in November, 2025 to honor award winners. This is Charles Lemert's contribution, he was the recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.

What Is To Be Done? Palestine And The Futility Of Liberal Sympathy, Emily Maureen Schneider

Fast Capitalism

These remarks were delivered on November 19, 2025 as part of a virtual panel featuring the 2025 Marxist Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Award Winners. In the essay below, I share the core arguments of my award-winning chapter, “Negotiating Indigeneity in Hebron: Criminality, Tourism, and Liberal Settler Colonialism,” which I have since expanded upon in my forthcoming book American Jews in Palestine: Tourism and the Limits of Liberal Sympathy. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork investigating alternative Jewish tours to Palestine, I argue that liberal identity politics, namely a preoccupation with Indigeneity and race that does not challenge …

Introduction, Jordanna Matlon

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Feminist Ethics Of Care Into The American Women’S Soccer Market, Julie Brice, Verity Postlethwaite

Fast Capitalism

This paper offers a critical commentary on the professionalization of women’s soccer in the United States, exploring the intersection of feminism and capitalism. Drawing on feminist economic theory, we reflect on how feminist values and an ethics of care have been mobilized within women's professional soccer. To accomplish this, we focus specifically on two Southern Californian women’s soccer teams from two iterations of the women's professional soccer league in the US—the San Diego Spirit of the Women’s United Soccer Association and Angel City Football Club of the National Women’s Soccer League. Through historical and contemporary examples, we illustrate how feminist …

Platform Telecracy: Soccer, Capital, And Media After Galeano, Jason Ludwig

Fast Capitalism

This article builds on on Eduardo Galeano's concept of "telecracy"  to theorize "platform telecracy," an updated framework for analyzing the relationship between soccer, media infrastructure, and capital in the era of digital platforms.  The article argues that the transition from broadcast television to online platforms has fundamentally transformed how soccer media is produced, circulated, and monetized. Where Galeano's broadcast telecracy (Telecracy 1.0) commodified the live match broadcast, platform telecracy (Telecracy 2.0) assetizes match footage, enabling its endless fragmentation and recirculation across digital platforms as a source of continuous advertising and subscription revenue.

From Many Green New Deals To The New Green Scam, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

This preliminary critical analysis explores the decisive shift in U.S. environmental policy from the Biden Administration, which still honored the mythic might of FDR’s 1930s New Deal, to the rapid implementation of a President Trump's MAGA ("Make America Great Again") approaches to environmental conservation and protection policy. The Biden Administration’s and the Democratic Party also entertained “Green New Deal” measures despite their often misunderstood connections to statist class compromises and corporatist legitimation dynamics that alienated many conservatives and the GOP, as exemplified by the Project 2025 program from the Heritage Foundation behind the Second Trump administration.  As a mix of …

The Role Of Online Influencers In Countering Digital Extreme-Right Messaging: The Case Of Hasan Piker And The Twitch Network, Lachlan Howells, Francis Russell, Ben Rich, Paul Sutherland

Fast Capitalism

Although significant research has been conducted on the role of online influencers in fomenting and proliferating right-wing extremist narratives, conspiracies, and ideology, little attention has been paid to digital content creators who actively work to defuse and counter such ideas. This paper seeks to fill this gap by considering the case of Hasan Piker, a prolific leftist streamer and e-celebrity, theorized through Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual. Accordingly, we analyze a series of Piker’s livestreams that engage with various right-wing extremist talking points and consider his role in combating these ideas alongside his interactive audience.

Cyberzombies And The Afterlife Of Thought: Dead Labor, Ai, And The Necropolis Of Capital, Craig Van Pelt

Fast Capitalism

This essay presents a novel Marxist theory of artificial intelligence (AI) as the latest expansive form of dead labor. Drawing on Marx’s Grundrisse (1993 [1973]), I argue that modern AI systems function as cyberzombies: digital entities animated by appropriated dead cognitive labor. This dead cognitive labor operates as seemingly autonomous machine cognition, reproducing the core feature of capital: the domination of living labor by accumulated past labor. These cyberzombies accelerate the widening cognitive rift—the structural separation between communities that supply resources for AI to function and the actors who accumulate the resulting knowledge. The essay concludes that cyberzombies reveal an …

Front Matter, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

A Culturally Responsive Campus Learning Community: Stories About Professional And Personal Growth, Maria I. Iturbide, Amy E. Sprowles, Kimberly Vincent-Layton, Seth Bradley, Steven T. Margell

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

Although collegiate enrollment for students of diverse identities has steadily increased over the last five decades, their college graduation rates have not increased proportionally. Culturally responsive educational environments allow students to leverage their cultural wealth to achieve their academic aspirations. To create a culturally responsive campus culture, educators’ pedagogy must value culture in thinking, feeling, learning, and the communication of ideas. This article explores the ability of a professional learning community approach to cultivate in educator participants the personal and professional shifts required to create a culturally responsive educational environment. We analyzed qualitative data from 10 open-ended questions through an …

Information, Communication, And Content Creation Digital Skills: Task-Based Performance Tests Among Youth In Europe, Alexander Van Deursen, Ester Van Laar, Ellen J. Helsper, Luc Schneider, Veronika Kalmus, Signe Opermann, Mari-Liis Tikerperi, Margus Pedaste, Rasmus Mannerström, Katariina Salmela-Aro, Natalia Waechter, Christin Brando, Cristina Ponte, Rita Baptista, Susana Batista, Giovanna Mascheroni, Davide Cino, Jacek Pyżalski, Natalia Walter, Marie Jaron Bedrosova, Hana Machackova, Michal Muzik, Stepanka Kadera, Leen D'Haenens

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

Youth’s digital skills are of growing interest to scholars and policymakers. This paper reports on a performance test in which over 600 youth from six European countries tested their skills by undertaking tasks measuring information, communication, and content creation digital skills. The findings question whether youth have the skills needed to reap the benefits from online information provision and social interactions. They struggle to understand whether websites are trustworthy, to distinguish advertising from information, with online meeting and conversation etiquette, and with content creation. This applies to both girls and boys, although some gender differences were observed depending on the …

Book Review - Violent Impacts: How Power And Inequality Shape The Concussion Crisis, Samuel M. Clevenger

Global Sport Business Journal

Kathryn Henne and Matt Ventresca’s Violent Impacts critically examines how narratives surrounding CTE, TBI, and the concussion crisis are constructed across sport, the military, law, media, and science. Drawing on intersectional feminism and science and technology studies, the authors show how dominant concussion discourses privilege the experiences of White male athletes while marginalizing other groups. Based on extensive fieldwork, the book makes an important contribution by exposing representational inequalities and highlighting the intersectional gender politics of concussion research and public debate.