Digital Commons Network^™

Collaborative Nullification: Bending Or Ignoring The Law To Free The Over-Punished, David A. Singleton

Arkansas Law Review

The United States accounts for about 25% of the world’s prisoners but only about 5% of its population. It has the fifth- highest imprisonment rate—higher than China and Russia—with people of color disproportionately impacted. This racialized mass incarceration, and the lack of political will to meaningfully address it, demands bold remedies. Certainly, sentencing reform for low-level, non-violent offenders is needed, but contrary to popular belief, these offenders are not driving mass incarceration. Instead, the problem largely results from increasingly long sentences for violent offenders.

This article proposes that the option, which I call “collaborative nullification,” can provide the over-punished needed …

Holy Cross Magazine, Vol. 60 No. 1, Winter 2026, College Of The Holy Cross

Holy Cross Magazine

The Bell Was Stolen By 3
What the legendary, unsolved theft of the Fenwick Bell tells us about art, crime and absence.
Story by Marybeth Reilly-McGreen ’89
Photography by Michael Ivins

College Tradition Lives on in an Unexpected Place
How necessity, sustainability, happenstance and Jesuit identity converge in the office of Rev. Keith Maczkiewicz, S.J.
Story by Abby Riviello
Photography by Michael Ivins

What Good Can Come From Grief? Quite a Lot, It Turns Out.
Rev. James Hayes, S.J., ’72 has spent more than 50 years engaged in a ministry of consolation, a calling rooted in his own experience of …

Adolescent Math Anxiety: Teachers' Grouping Approach At The Intersection Of Multiple Student Identities, Dara Shifrer, Hannah Sean Ellefritz, David Hernandez-Saca, Allison Roda, Karla Santana Martinez

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Math anxiety represents a substantial barrier to many students’ math learning. In this paper, we apply interdisciplinary perspectives to data on over 13,200 ninth graders and their math teachers from the High School Longitudinal Study. Results suggest that being perceived as dis/abled relates to heightened math anxiety regardless of adolescents’ gender, or race and ethnicity. Our intersectional approach reveals that adolescents’ expressions of math anxiety do not always correspond with gender, racial, and ethnic stereotypes, with Black girls, Black boys, and Latine boys expressing relatively low levels of math anxiety. Finally, consistent with the principles of inclusion and universal design, …

Quality Improvement Project: Impact Of Evidence-Based Self-Care Practice On Burnout In Nursing Faculty, Lori Boyd

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Nursing faculty burnout is a national concern supported by literature, which compromises faculty well-being, creativity, retention, and sustainability of nursing programs. Burnout is characterized by the subscales of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of reduced personal accomplishment. At the project site, leaders reported that faculty often left their roles due to increased workload and being overwhelmed by the rigorous expectations of the role, underscoring the need for a process to support nursing faculty burnout. This quality improvement (QI) project aimed to evaluate the impact of evidence-based self-care practices on nursing faculty burnout using Maslach's Burnout Inventory Toolkit, a valid and …

Evaluating Website Resources Shared Online Amongst Women With Intimate Partner Violence Experiences: Analysis Of An Online Health Community, Vivian Hui, Lidan Tian, Malavika Eby, Bohan Zhang, Rose E. Constantino

SKMC Student Presentations and Publications

INTRODUCTION: Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects around one in four women globally, posing substantial health risks. IPV survivors often consult online health communities for anonymous assistance rather than formal services. Though online health community members frequently share websites to answer questions, no studies have investigated the characteristics and relevance of websites shared in IPV online health communities. This study aims to identify the categories of websites shared in IPV online health communities and evaluate associations between post characteristics and website relevance to survivors' help-seeking needs.

METHODS: Data were extracted from posts and comments on the r/domesticviolence, a subreddit (topic-specific community) …

How The Rhetoric Of Borders Justifies The Erosion Of Rights, Richard Sherwin

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Different But Still The Same? A Review Of Recent Australian University Internationalization Approaches, Samantha Marangell, Jiadi Cai, Mollie Dollinger

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

In the quest for higher education internationalization approaches, there remains much debate about how to redefine “internationalization” in a post-pandemic context through which the limitations of student mobility have been exposed. This article contributes to current debates about future directions and definitions of internationalization by offering insightful analysis of recent approaches and conceptualizations across the Australian university sector. To do so, we conducted a desktop review of universities’ public-facing international strategies and analyzed the documents for patterns in practices and priorities. Our findings generate a timely picture of internationalization approaches and indicate the broadening conceptualization of internationalization within the sector, …

The Impact Of Sleep On Physical Performance And Behavior In Adolescent Athletes: A Study In High School Strength And Conditioning Program, Daniel Higgins

Doctorate in Kinesiology

This study examined the relationship between sleep behaviors and strength performance in adolescent students enrolled in a high school strength and conditioning course. Participants included 112 students, ages 15–19, who completed daily self-reported sleep logs over an eight-week period assessing sleep duration, sleep quality, and pre-sleep technology use. Strength performance was measured through repeated assessments of the bench press, squat, and power clean. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and linear regression. Results indicated that sleep duration and sleep quality did not significantly predict overall strength gains across the training period. However, strong relationships were observed among sleep-related …

Self-Medication And Pharmaceutical Dispensing In Egypt: Practices, Policies, And Regulatory Challenges, Lobna Fawzy Ali Shaheen

Theses and Dissertations

Access to safe and appropriate medications is a critical component of public health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In Egypt, self-medication and informal pharmaceutical dispensing have become deeply embedded practices shaped by systemic, economic, and cultural factors. This research explores the complex interplay between self-medication behaviors, pharmaceutical regulation, and healthcare access in Egypt. Through qualitative interviews with policymakers, pharmacists, physicians, industry professionals, and citizens, the research uncovers widespread informal dispensing of prescription-only medicines, driven by high out-of-pocket costs, limited insurance coverage, and high public reliance on pharmacists as primary care providers. Despite the presence of regulatory frameworks, weak enforcement, …

Under The Guardianship: Experiences Of Mothers In Egypt’S El Nayaba El Hesbaya, Hana Khayry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersectional lived experience of El Nayaba El Hesbaya in Egypt. El Nayaba El Hesbaya, operating under Law 119/1952, is the administrative and judicial body responsible for overseeing the financial and legal affairs of minors whose father or mother had passed. Hundreds of thousands of mothers in Egypt have (had) children under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya. This research delves into the experience of mothers whose children are or were under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya, examining how it shape(s/d) their everyday life as women, mothers, widows or ex-wives, citizens, and legal subjects. …

Journeys Of Emancipation, Struggle, Or Both? Accounts From Professional Egyptian Migrant Women In Germany, Adam Eddouss

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the migration experiences of a group of professional Egyptian migrant women living in Germany. By employing a qualitative approach, primarily through semi-structured interviews, and guided by migration literature, this research attempts to move away from the oversimplistic approach that migration is an ‘either or’ reality. Mainstream migration scholarship, specifically that focusing on migrant women, tends to focus on depicting migration within an emancipation-struggle binary, presenting migrant women either as victims or as heroines. This work, antithetically, describes how migrant women experiences can be complex, highlighting, both instances of strength and struggle. Grounded in the words of the …

Parallel Concepts Found In The Thousand And One Nights And Sufi Hagiography, Walaa Kamal Emam Kamel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that The Thousand and One Nights functions as more than mere populist entertainment; rather, it constitutes a literary corpus imbued with Sufi mystical epistemologies that reflect the spiritual quests and Sufi concepts evident in hagiographical traditions. Through discourse and intertextual analysis of two Nights stories, “The City of Brass” and “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” alongside Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, this study demonstrates how shared rhetorical strategies—specifically David Pinault’s Leitwörter analysis and L.A. Paul’s Transformative Experience concept—reveal a narrative and rhetorical emphasis on the metamorphosis of the self from worldly attachment toward …

Duties To The Self (Body And Mind), Rasha Essam

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contends that self-duties are of vital significance, representing the obligations we owe to ourselves, and examines them through different life phenomena. Chapter One defends the existence of self-duties against a challenge raised by an (alleged) paradox. Chapters Two and Three then explore two particular self-duties related to the body and the mind, analyzed through the philosophical notions of self-objectification and moral testimony. Each chapter elaborates on these concepts with detailed real-life examples that illustrate how such experiences can undermine one’s humanity—as preserving one’s humanity is a core duty toward oneself. The purpose of this thesis is not only …

Securing Or Securitizing? Unveiling The Role Of Securitization “Audience” In Israel’S 2007 Bombing Of The Syrian Nuclear Site., Dunia Essam Hassanin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the 2007 Israeli bombing on Syria's Al-Kibar nuclear reactor through the lens of securitization theory, concluding that intelligence served as crucial audiences in legitimizing the operation. Building on the Copenhagen School's paradigm, which defines securitization as the process by which actors build issues as existential threats necessitating extreme measures, this study fills a critical theoretical gap: the underdeveloped role of the audience. While classic formulations focus on public approval, this study suggests a more sophisticated notion of the Political Intelligence Audience: intelligence agencies that validate and operationalize securitization moves. The concept contends that groups such as the …

Comparative Evaluation Of Conventional And Sustainable Concrete Protective Coatings: Performance, Economic, And Environmental, Andro Ebrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Concrete structures are highly susceptible to deterioration from environmental, chemical, and mechanical factors, making protective coatings essential for ensuring durability and reducing maintenance demands. This study aims to compare and evaluate conventional and innovative coating systems for concrete protection across three dimensions—technical performance, environmental sustainability, and life cycle cost efficiency—and to assess whether coatings often regarded or marketed as sustainable genuinely achieve sustainability across these three pillars. Four representative coatings were selected for assessment: epoxy solvent-based, epoxy solvent-free, acrylic water-based, and cementitious. Technical performance was examined through laboratory testing, expert interviews, and multiple real project cases, providing a comprehensive understanding …

Crafting Power, Piety, And Memory: The Sabil-Maktab Of 'Abd Al-Rahman Katkhuda In Bayn Al-Qasrayn, Cairo (1157 Ah/ 1744 Ce), Nehal Hany Al-Shamy

Theses and Dissertations

Among hundreds of sabil-maktabs in Cairo, the one ʿAbd al-Rahman Katkhuda built in Bayn al-Qasrayn in 1157/1744 stands out as an iconic jewel, rising to be a symbol of the city itself. However, this sabil is more than just a beautiful building, for its beauty was only a means to channel political, commemorative, and spiritual connotations. This thesis is concerned with analyzing the raisons d’être of constructing the sabil through investigating the historical and political circumstances that influenced its patron at the time, and their reflections in the artistic choices he made. I argue that crafting the sabil as a …

Scalable And Fault-Tolerant Network Architectures For Real-Time Video Transmission In Industrial Networked Control Systems, Moustafa Awad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the challenge of transporting supervisory video alongside time-critical control traffic in industrial Networked Control Systems (NCS) without violating stringent real-time constraints. A simple yet scalable network architecture is developed and evaluated for a plant-level deployment comprising three interconnected workcells with sensors, controllers, actuators, and cameras. The design explicitly accommodates bandwidth-intensive video streams while preserving the responsiveness of watchdog/control traffic. Analytical delay modeling decomposes end-to-end latency into transmission, propagation, processing, and queuing components, and Riverbed-based simulations are used to validate the model under realistic mixed-traffic conditions. A traffic-engineering strategy - phase-shifting supervisory camera transmissions - effectively desynchronizes frame …

Assessing Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices (Kap) Towards The One Health Approach In Governmental Officers In Egypt, Nour Elsersawy

Theses and Dissertations

Background: the one health (OH) approach emphasizes the interconnectedness among human, animal, and environmental health and requires multisectoral collaboration to address complex health challenges. Egypt faces significant threats at the human-animal-environment interface, including endemic and emerging zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), food safety challenges, and vector-borne diseases. Despite established coordination mechanisms and the launch of the One Health National strategic framework (2023-2027) of Egypt, the extent to which oh principles are understood, embraced, and practiced by governmental officers responsible for implementation remains incompletely understood. Objectives: this study assessed and evaluated the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding the one health …

The Impact Of Environmental Communication On Consumer Behavior: The Mediating Role Of Ascription Of Responsibility And Attitude, Nada Hussam El-Maghraby

Theses and Dissertations

The current study aims to examine the effect of environmental communication on promoting pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) in the Egyptian society. The study also tests the mediating roles of ascription of responsibility and attitude toward pro-environmental behavior on the examined relationship. Another aim of the study is to explore intention as a mediator in the relationship between attitude toward pro-environmental behavior and behavior. The research is based on the Norm Activation Theory (NAT) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). A mixed-methods approach was implemented in this study. Quantitatively, a survey was conducted, and 406 responses were collected using convenience sampling …

Political Party Leaders’ Branding: The Case Of The Uk Conservative & Labour Parties, Dania Akkawi

Theses and Dissertations

Political party branding has become increasingly shaped by digital communication, particularly through social media platforms where voters actively engage with political leaders and one another. This thesis studies “Political Party Branding: The Case of the UK Conservative & Labour Parties”, focusing specifically on the interconnections between Stakeholder Theory and Emotional Branding Theory on voter opinion and voter interest, during the 2024 UK general election. Through a comparative analysis of Rishi Sunak (Conservative Party) and Keir Starmer (Labour Party), the study tests theoretical propositions drawn from the theories to assess how visibility and emotional intensity shape voter opinion and interest. Using …

Navigating Radical Indeterminacy In The Struggle For A Global Collective Consciousness: The Question Of Eco-Justice And Law Or Universalize The Pluriverse: A Manifesto, More Or Less, Omar Auf

Theses and Dissertations

The processes of interpretation, communication, and re-interpretation leads to the emergence of an approximated collective consciousness, for which it may be struggled and contested by hegemonic. The dominant forces of this contest, capitalism and nationalism, lead to an interdivided world: one that possesses the tools to empathize with each other but is instead leading people to keep their heads down and focus on surviving their own contexts, perceived as existing within different historical times on the same timeline. This leads to legal and justice systems that fail their claim to universality and/or impartiality. Incorporating an ecological lens to justice within …

Law And The (Re)Production Of Class Hierarchies In Egypt, Ahmad Abdelnaby

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how Egypt’s legal system, structurally tilted toward the elite and constitutive of inequality, has interacted with the country’s entrenched culture of class-based discrimination to produce a legal culture uniquely comfortable with hierarchy. It contends that class-based discrimination in Egypt has evolved from a social prejudice into a juridical condition, one in which the law does not merely mirror inequality but actively constructs and rationalizes it. By examining the intersection between legal structure and Egypt’s entrenched moral order of class-based discrimination, the study reveals a legal culture that no longer hides its hierarchies behind the veil of neutrality …

Lived Experiences Of Limited Sexual And Reproductive Health Education Among Egyptian Women, Nada Abdelhamid

Theses and Dissertations

In Egypt, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education remains largely absent from national education and youth policy frameworks, reflecting a broader governance gap at the intersection of education, health, and gender policy. This qualitative study explores how the lack of formal sexuality education shapes women’s knowledge, perceptions, and sexual and reproductive experiences across the life course, drawing on in-depth interviews with twelve Egyptian women from diverse marital backgrounds. The findings point to persistent gaps in basic SRH knowledge, early exposure to shame and stigma, and reliance on informal and often unreliable sources of information, which participants linked to fear of …

Egyptian Feminist Critiques Of Neoliberalism, Asmaa Elmalky

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines Egyptian feminist critiques of neoliberal economic policies through a Third World feminist and feminist political economy framework. It argues that neoliberalism in Egypt has produced controlling power dynamics through restructuring labor markets, social reproduction, and legal systems in ways that disproportionately impoverish women, particularly working-class women. The research maps diverse feminist engagements with neoliberal reforms, including structural adjustment programs, privatization, labor reduction, and legal liberalization. These critiques were influenced by the debates between Third World and transnational feminism, the thesis emphasizes the importance of national specific analysis in understanding how global neoliberal policies are mediated through national …

Exploring Artificial Intelligence Governance In Higher Education: Policy Design, Implementation And Adaptability In Egypt, Rolane Eissa

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE) underscores the need for effective governance frameworks that ensure ethical use and academic integrity. Despite increased policy attention, universities face significant challenges in translating AI governance (AIG) principles and policies into coherent, practical practices within complex organizational settings. Existing research on AIG remains conceptual and focused on the Global North. It offers limited empirical insight into how AI policies are interpreted and enacted at the institutional level, particularly in HE systems in the Global South. This study addresses these gaps by examining AIG in Egyptian universities, thereby providing empirically …

Emergency-Use Vaccine Mandates And Bodily Integrity: Assessing The Validity Of Proportionality Test In Legal Frameworks, Eman Hussien Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

Courts confronting emergency-use vaccine mandates during pandemics have revealed that existing legal frameworks are not equipped to handle the emergency context, as seen in their inconsistent description of government measures and their limited capacity to integrate evolving scientific developments on EUA vaccines into proportionality analysis. This thesis argues that when mandates concern Emergency Use Authorized COVID-19 vaccines, courts must abandon the formalistic distinction between “mandatory” and “compulsory” measures and instead focus on whether the practical consequences of non-compliance remove an individual’s genuine choice; where they do, the measure is coercive in substance and triggers the examination of proportionality. Drawing on …

The Role Of Formal And Informal Institutions In Shaping The Challenges Faced By Social Entrepreneurs: A Cross-Country Analysis Between Egypt And Tunisia, Mirna Magdy Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how formal and informal institutional contexts influence social entrepreneurs in Egypt and Tunisia; Tunisia is characterized by legal recognition and a framework governing social enterprises, whereas Egypt does not have a legal framework. Both countries are characterized by prolonged political uncertainty and high levels of informality. Utilizing Institutional theory as the main conceptual framework, the study explores how different contextual factors shape the challenges and opportunities faced by social entrepreneurs. Drawing on qualitative data from founders of social enterprises and experts in the field from both countries, this research aims to identify how institutional regulatory voids, normative …

Refugees In Egypt: State Framing, Ministerial Narratives, And The Politics Of Representation On Social Media, Habiba Kohail

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Egyptian government discourse on refugees in 2024, a year characterized by heightened regional displacement and the enactment of Egypt’s first Asylum Law (Law No. 164 of

2024). Using a multidisciplinary framework that combines framing analysis with van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach, the study systemically analyzes how the government construct refugees on social

media and sets the boundaries of their inclusion in Egypt.

The thesis analyzes the Egyptian government discourse on refugees across official social media platforms from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2024, a period that witnessed an increase in the government engagement in the refugee issue …

Digital Public Service Delivery As An Institutional Outcome: Data Governance And Interoperability In The Egyptian Public Sector, Waad Hegazy

Theses and Dissertations

Moving beyond technology-centered theories of digital transformation, this thesis examines the institutional and governance factors shaping digital public service delivery in Egypt. It analyzes how governance structures, data governance arrangements, and interoperability frameworks influence the extent to which digital transformation initiatives result in integrated, scalable, and citizen-facing public services. Using a qualitative research design, the study draws on an analysis of relevant policy and program documents and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved in digital transformation initiatives in Egypt. The findings indicate that persistent challenges in digital public service delivery are driven less by technological constraints than by fragmented governance …

The Mind Has A Firewall: An Attempt To Preserve Human Mind Integrity., Sayed G. Batran

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues for the recognition of mind integrity as a distinct human right. It contends that existing protections, such as bodily integrity, privacy, and freedom of thought, are no longer sufficient to shield an individual’s mental domain from new forms of external interference enabled by neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, and pervasive data-driven systems. Mind integrity is defined as the right to govern one’s own mental life—to form, revise, and hold thoughts, beliefs, and desires based on reasons one endorses—free from significant, non-consensual interference or manipulation, regardless of the method used. The thesis first identifies concrete risks and regulatory vacuums by …