Academic literature on the topic 'Small cities – Pennsylvania – Fiction'

This article traces the “shadow geographies” of the 1980s gay bar scene in Ohio’s capital, Columbus, and contrasts it with the emergence of LGBTQ movements in Midwestern small towns. Urban gay bar scenes have declined since at least 2009, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only hastened their demise. At the same time, pride events have emerged in the communities like Parkersburg, West Virginia; Washington, Pennsylvania; Marysville, Ohio, and; and many other cities and towns with populations under 50,000 people. The decline of urban gay bars does not mean the demise of LGBTQ activism; it just means that we should look for activism outside of urban centers.

On November 21, 1903, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that its north-south through trains would no longer enter Broad Street Station in downtown Philadelphia and would stop instead at West Philadelphia. Nor would the company sell tickets from that station to downtown. These schedule changes, which seemed minor to the company and were intended to reduce congestion in the central city, threatened downtown merchants and manufacturers who worried that buyers would shift to more accessible cities. Philadelphia had been sidetracked, theNorth Americanreported. The result was an eruption of boycotts, protests, and petitions that pitted nearly every local trade association against the railroad. Encouraged by theNorth American's editorials, partisan reporting, and stinging cartoons, the protesters forced the Pennsylvania to back down, and in March 1904, through trains returned to Broad Street. The newspaper cloaked this local business dispute in the language of antimonopoly, linking the fears of small businessmen to national anti-railroad concerns. The sidetrack episode also helped launch modern corporate public relations, as the Pennsylvania—stung by this threat to corporate autonomy—soon hired Ivy Lee as its first publicity agent.

AbstractObjectiveGiven that small food stores may be important retail food sources in low-income urban communities, our objective was to examine cross-city comparative data documenting healthy food availability within such facilities, particularly those located in low-income areas and nearby schools.DesignFood stores in Baltimore, Maryland; Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota; Oakland, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania were selected for assessment based on proximity to low-income schools. Stores were defined as: (i) single-aisle (n 45); (ii) small (2–5 aisles; n 52); and (iii) large (≥6 aisles; n 8). Staff conducted in-store audits to assess the presence/absence of twenty-eight healthy items, organized within five categories: (i) fresh fruits/vegetables, (ii) processed fruits/vegetables, (iii) healthy beverages/low-fat dairy, (iv) healthy snacks and (v) other healthy staple foods.ResultsThe availability of healthy food items was low, particularly in single-aisle and small stores, and there was significant cross-site variability in the availability of healthy snacks (P < 0·0001) and other healthy staple foods (P < 0·0001). No cross-site differences existed for fruits/vegetables or healthy beverages/low-fat dairy availability. Healthy food availability scores increased significantly with store size for nearly all food/beverage categories (P < 0·01).ConclusionsOverall, healthy food availability in these venues was limited. Region-specific factors may be important to consider in understanding factors influencing healthy food availability in small urban markets. Data suggest that efforts to promote healthy diets in low-income communities may be compromised by a lack of available healthy foods. Interventions targeting small stores need to be developed and tailored for use in urban areas across the USA.

In January 2017, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) implemented an excise tax ($ 0.015/ounce) on sugar-sweetened and diet beverages. This study is a general population-based study to report on the longer-term impacts of the tax on within-person changes in consumption 12 months after implementation. A quasi-experimental difference-in-difference design was used to contrast Philadelphia vs. nearby comparison cities (Trenton, New Jersey; Camden, New Jersey; and Wilmington, Delaware) at baseline (December 2016–January 2017) vs. 12-month follow-up (December 2017–February 2018). A random-digit-dialing phone survey was administered to a population-based cohort. Analyses assessed changes in 30-day consumption frequency and ounces of sugar-sweetened and diet beverages (and a substitution beverage, bottled water) in the analytic sample (N = 515). After 12 months, relative to the comparison group, Philadelphians were slightly more likely to decrease their frequency of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption (39.2% vs. 33.5%), and slightly less likely to increase their frequency of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption (38.9% vs. 43.0%). The effects of the tax estimated in the adjusted difference-in-difference analysis were very small (for example, changes in monthly sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in Philadelphia relative to comparison cities was −3.03 times or −51.65 ounces) and confidence intervals were very wide. Results suggested that, one year after implementation, there was no major overall impact of the tax on general population-level consumption of sugar-sweetened or diet beverages, or bottled water. Future studies should test whether the tax’s effect differs in vulnerable sub-populations.

The present article is devoted to the problem of commenting on medieval chronicles (on the example of the Old Spanish Estoria de España by Alfonso X the Wise, 13th с.) and the need not only to search for the sources of certain large and small stories, but also to explain the choice of words, naming, and the mechanism of putting together various stories from the point of view of the problem of truth/fiction (verdad /fabula) in the perception of the medieval chronicler, for whom an important goal is to present his story as truth and to make it compelling for the listener and reader. As an example, we examine the well-known chronicle story about the genealogy of the Huns (Jordan, St. Jerome, Sigebert of Gembloux), refined and edited by the editors of the Spanish chronicle, as well as two etiological legends about the origin of significant toponyms and the founding of the most important cities of Spain (the legend of the marriage of Liberia, daughter of Span; the legend of King Rocas). The studied stories have shown that the task of creating a reliable story is achieved either by deliberately creating a new, unknown narrative (the stories of Liberia and Rocas) without a clearly identifiable source, or by consciously clarifying and changing traditional information (satyrs as progenitors of the Huns).

Seismic data for studying the near surface have historically been extremely sparse in cities, limiting our ability to understand small-scale processes, locate small-scale geohazards, and develop earthquake hazard microzonation at the scale of buildings. In recent years, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology has enabled the use of existing underground telecommunications fibers as dense seismic arrays, requiring little manual labor or energy to maintain. At the Fiber-Optic foR Environmental SEnsEing array under Pennsylvania State University, we detected weak slow-moving signals in pedestrian-only areas of campus. These signals were clear in the 1 to 5 Hz range. We verified that they were caused by footsteps. As part of a broader scheme to remove and obscure these footsteps in the data, we developed a convolutional neural network to detect them automatically. We created a data set of more than 4000 windows of data labeled with or without footsteps for this development process. We describe improvements to the data input and architecture, leading to approximately 84% accuracy on the test data. Performance of the network was better for individual walkers and worse when there were multiple walkers. We believe the privacy concerns of individual walkers are likely to be highest priority. Community buy-in will be required for these technologies to be deployed at a larger scale. Hence, we should continue to proactively develop the tools to ensure city residents are comfortable with all geophysical data that may be acquired.

Purpose – The purpose of this technical viewpoint is to provide a commentary of how we went about using logistics prototyping as a method to engage citizens, science fiction (SF) writers and small- to medium- sized enterprises (SME’s). Six urban logistic prototypes built on the themes of future cities, community resilience and urban supply chain management (SCM) are summarized, together with details of the data collection procedure and the methodological challenges encountered. Our investigation aimed to explore the potential of logistics prototyping to develop “user-driven” and “SME” approaches to future city design and urban supply chain decision-making. Design/methodology/approach – This Boston field experiment was a case study investigation conducted between May and August 2013. Qualitative data was collected using a “mixed-method” approach combining together focus groups (MIT faculty), scenarios, prototyping workshops, interviews and document analysis. These story-creators could use the prototype method as a way of testing their hypotheses, theories and constrained speculations with regard to specified future city and urban supply chain scenarios. Findings – This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of the SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner. Research limitations/implications – By embedding logistics prototyping within a mixed method approach, we might be criticized as constraining its capability to map out the future – that its potential to be flexible and imaginative are held back by the equal weighting given to the more conventional component. In basing our case study within one city then this might be seen as limiting the complexity of the empirical context – however, the situation within different cities is inherently complex. Case studies also attract criticism on the grounds of not being representative; in this situation, they might be criticized as imperfect indicators of what transpires in other situations. However, this technical viewpoint suggests that in spite of its limitations, prototyping facilitates an imaginative and creative approach to theory generation and concept building. Practical implications – The methodology allows everyday citizens and SME’s to develop user-driven foresight and planning scenarios with city strategists’ and urban logistic designers. It facilitates much broader stakeholder involvement in city and urban supply chain policymaking, than current “quantitative” approaches. Social implications – Logistics fiction prototyping provides a democratic approach to future city planning and urban supply chain design. It involves collectively imagining socio-technical futures and second-order sociological effects through the writing of SF narratives or building “design fictions”. Originality/value – Decision-making in future cities and urban SCM is often a notable challenge, balancing the varying needs and claims of multiple stakeholders, while negotiating an acceptable trade-off between their competing claims. Engagement with stakeholders and active encouragement of stakeholder participation in the supply chain aspects of future cities is increasingly a feature of twenty-first century social decision-making. This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and the urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.

BackgroundArea-level credit scores (the mean of credit scores for persons in a community) may be a unique indicator of community-level socioeconomic conditions associated with health outcomes. We analysed community credit scores (CCS) in association with new onset type 2 diabetes (T2D) across a geographically heterogeneous region of Pennsylvania and evaluated whether associations were independent of community socioeconomic deprivation (CSD), which is known to be related to T2D risk.MethodsIn a nested case–control study, we used medical records to identify 15 888 T2D cases from diabetes diagnoses, medication orders and laboratory test results and 79 435 diabetes-free controls frequency matched on age, sex and encounter year. CCS was derived from Equifax VantageScore V.1.0 data and categorised as ‘good’, ‘high fair’, ‘low fair’ and ‘poor’. Individuals were geocoded and assigned the CCS of their residential community. Logistic regression models adjusted for confounding variables and stratified by community type (townships (rural/suburban), boroughs (small towns) and city census tracts). Independent associations of CSD were assessed through models stratified by high/low CSD and high/low CCS.ResultsCompared with individuals in communities with ‘high fair’ CCS, those with ‘good’ CCS had lower T2D odds (42%, 24% and 12% lower odds in cities, boroughs and townships, respectively). Stratified models assessing independent effects of CCS and CSD showed mainly consistent associations, indicating each community-level measure was independently associated with T2D.ConclusionCCS may capture novel, health-salient aspects of community socioeconomic conditions, though questions remain regarding the mechanisms by which it influences T2D and how these differ from CSD.

ABSTRACTAn important hypothesis about the disease burden of air pollution is that high levels of exposure in childhood can result in a lifetime of health problems, leading to increased mortality rates at older ages. I evaluate this hypothesis using a proprietary data set—Medicare records matched to Social Security records that identify birthplace. I analyze old-age mortality among 390,000 individuals born in small cities and towns in Pennsylvania during the years 1916 through 1927. Some of these individuals were born in places with steel production, and thus likely had exposure to high levels of air pollution in childhood. These individuals have significantly higher rates of mortality post–age 65 than those born in comparable towns that did not have steel production facilities. There are three notable features of the excess mortality among those born in steel towns: (1) the relationship holds for comparisons within counties, (2) the excess mortality is higher in towns that had relatively higher levels of steel production, and (3) old-age mortality is especially high for individuals born in locations with relatively high levels of steel production and relatively low elevation—a finding consistent with the possibility that low-elevation locations were subject to atmospheric inversions that trapped air pollution. By matching the SSA/Medicare data with death certificate data, I am able to establish that the excess mortality associated with childhood exposure to air pollution is due primarily to elevated levels of cancer.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought to the forefront the importance of a local government’s role during public health emergencies. While cities around the world have led the pandemic response in their communities by extending public health services, providing socioeconomic assistance to constituents and aiding small businesses and jurisdictions in the United States have had varying degrees of success in managing the crisis. As such, this study employs the political market framework to explore the impact of supply-side determinants (form of government, preparedness capabilities, and federal aid) and demand-side determinants (population, socioeconomic factors, and political affiliation) on a local government’s COVID-19 response. Given the lack of attention, the emergency management literature has paid on government form, exploring the impact of council-manager vs mayor-council systems on COVID-19 response has been this study’s primary focus. Using a logistic regression and survey data across Florida and Pennsylvania local governments, this study finds government form significant for COVID-19 response. Following our findings, local governments with a council-manager form were more likely to adopt public health and socioeconomic strategies in response to the pandemic than were those with other forms. Furthermore, having emergency management plans, receiving public assistance from Federal Emergency Management Agency, community characteristics like the percent of teens and non-White residents, and political affiliation also had a significant impact on the likelihood of response strategies being adopted.

A first-person narrative adult novel explores the theme of abandonment with its residual and enduring effects, and its antithetical theme of loyalty that is continually tested and measured. The protagonist, editor of the local newspaper in a small, isolated agricultural community in the mid-1960s, provides the narrative nexus of two families. His is a community which is a mix of characters that are quirky by virtue of their natures or the remote circumstances of their existence. Both families in focus have treasure troves of secrets. Only after the appearance of a mysterious young woman and her subsequent murder do the tightly bound secrets of the families and the larger community begin to unravel. The narrator reveals his personal story as it relates to how he reacts and responds to the events at hand. Adding to his personal experience in the community, the narrator offers texture and enhancement to the story through archived newspaper articles and his interpretation of short silent movie reels chronicling the town's history from its earliest days until the end of World War II. Characters from within and without the community assume disguises to maintain their lifestyle or achieve a nefarious purpose while other characters hide behind the falsehoods of their comfortable, everyday lives. The one honest character becomes a victim of his own purity, despite attempts of the narrator to intervene. Not until forty years after the events that changed so many lives is it safe for the truth to bubble to the surface.

In the novel Elvis Plays Texas, which is my Thesis project to meet the requirements for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing/Fiction, a little town in far, far West Texas and its people are having a very difficult time and facing what promises to be a bleak future—a long, long drought has exhausted their water supply, oil has peaked and turned down, “fracking” threatens their way of life, friends and family and neighbors are loading up and leaving town. Then, Elvis Presley shows up. It’s the 40th anniversary of the day he died, August 16, 1977, and he, spiritually though appearing in every way to be flesh and blood, is visiting those who’ve continued believing in him and to whom he had been particularly important during their younger lives. My own long history in that part of the country has played its considerable role in informing the setting, the tone, the atmosphere. These are the kinds of characters—strange birds all—I grew up with. The country is the southwestern desert, hot, dry, empty, big sky—the kind of neighborhood that lends itself to oddities like Elvis throwing a benefit concert to help them out of the economic ditch.

In the following nine linked stories, characters from disparate backgrounds and socio-economic strata converge in a rural community along the Missouri river in central Montana. A Texas-based oil exploration and production company takes up residence in the area, causing a stir in the neighborhood. Long-time local residents experience their daily lives amid a tourist driven economy and reaffirm their aspirations to leave despite significant obstacles and limitations. In "Show Me the Way to Go Home," a young waitress is stranded after a car accident and seeks help from residents living on the single row of houses in the area. In "Give Death Grace," a resident artist leaves to resolve her tumultuous past with her father. In "A Good Little Fisherwoman," a woman deals with the repercussions of her recent reproductive decisions during a fishing trip. In "Little Fires," a local man deals with the tragic burn injury of a child while also facing deeply rooted resentments with his mother. In "Dwelling," an aging local must decide whether or not she will sell her home to two strangers. In "Other Important Areas of Functioning," a woman decides to discontinue her mood stabilizing medications in favor of a more natural lifestyle. While this place means something different to each of these characters, they all coexist while facing individual challenges.

During the decades after the 1820s, Americans reshaped the industrial landscape by gradually substituting coal for the wood and flowing water they were using as energy sources and iron for wood in structures and machinery. The amount of power they could obtain from wood or water at a given place was limited, but coal resources were so large that more was always available. Coal could be transported to distant consumers by the newly built canals and railways. With it, the resource constraints that had led entrepreneurs to favor small, dispersed mills and factories were less important. Production of coal was concentrated in Pennsylvania in the first part of the nineteenth century. At first, the largest markets were in the East, and as long as the Appalachians were a barrier to shipment of bituminous coal from the West, the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania remained the principal source of industrial fuel. Ironmasters using anthracite to smelt ore mined in eastern Pennsylvania dominated American ironmaking until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Industrialists west of the Appalachians experimented with bituminous coal and with coal converted to coke. They built furnaces around Pittsburgh and Cincinnati (where rivers provided good access to coking coal), and then through Ohio, Indiana, and, eventually, Illinois. But it was in eastern Pennsylvania that artisans and entrepreneurs established many of the economic and social practices followed by American heavy industry well into the twentieth century. Industries based on wood and water starkly contrasted with those based on coal and iron. Death and injury from mine accidents, social strife in mining communities, and environmental degradation from mine wastes were new costs of wealth created by the digging of anthracite. Because coal could be hauled long distances and still be sold at a lower cost per unit of energy than locally cut. wood, it could be shipped profitably to distant customers. They used it to make primary materials, such as iron, glass, and brick, and to convert these materials into finished, high-value-added goods. The social and environmental costs of getting the coal were left behind at the mines.

Abstract This chapter presents an analysis of Citizens’ Associations, an assortment of benign-sounding employer-led organizations. Responding to the reformism central to the so-called Progressive Era, the Citizens’ Alliances promoted themselves as committed to supporting “the common people”—small business owners and non-union workers. In reality, these organizations were led by diehard union-busters and strikebreakers, including some who had participated in earlier employers’ associations, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Law and Order Leagues. J. West Goodwin, a former leader of the Law and Order League, was an active organizer of these groups. They came together to form a national organization, the Citizens’ Industrial Association of America, in late 1903. Despite the language of reform, the members of these organizations were involved in brutal strikebreaking campaigns in the remote mine regions of Colorado and Pennsylvania as well as in modest-sized cities like Pensacola, Florida.

Abstract This chapter tells the story of the early American movement for proportional representation (PR), showing how it settled on the single transferable vote (STV). Reformers in the 1890s consider several forms of PR, but only STV is wholly compatible with nonpartisan elections. By the mid-1910s, amidst the Progressive Era dealignment, dozens of cities are fusing majority-preferential systems with nonpartisan elections to small councils. The PR League sees an opening to promote STV. Socialists protest the emerging nonpartisan bargain, warning that “nonpartisanship” is fiction in practice. New data shed light on list PR’s is defeat in Los Angeles, 1913, which convinces reformers to fuse STV with council-manager government. A national, anti-party reform lobby emerges.

This chapter assesses the plans to redevelop Corning, Elmira, and Wilkes-Barre after the signing of the Agnes Recovery Act into law on August 20, 1972. While political leaders touted community spirit, individuals within these cities found themselves worse off than before the flood. To rebuild their homes and businesses, people took out loans through the Small Business Administration program at one-percent interest. Initially welcomed after the flood, these loans caused many people to fall into long-term debt on property they had already purchased. According to one resident of Elmira, who served in the New York State Senate, the loans saddled the inhabitants of the communities in New York and Pennsylvania with burdensome mortgages funded by outside banks, which contributed little to the local economy. While some people struggled, others enriched themselves; the influx of federal and state money available to local governments proved too strong a temptation for corrupt officials. In addition to inspiring public corruption, the Agnes Recovery Act benefited the most influential members of the community at the expense of ordinary citizens. Members of the local business community oversaw redevelopment in Corning, Elmira, and Wilkes-Barre, and in nearly every case, their interests overshadowed the ideas and input of other members of the community.

Abstract Throughout the 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s, as politics and depression convulsed the South, authors of fiction sought to make sense of the South around them. They wrote less of public events than of conflicts over sexual identity, religious faith, the meaning of race, the experience of one’s generation, the volatile changes in the class order, the meaning of industrialization. By and large, they did not use fiction as smokescreens for a Southern political agenda, but rather as a way to order and explore the events and forces that so affected their lives. Their explorations help us map the elusive emotional geography of the New South. In the United States, as in Europe, the late nineteenth century saw a fascination with a literature of specificity, of exotic locales, of quaint subordinate classes. The growing suburbs and small cities of the Northeast hardly seemed the stuff of literature, and the new journals turned to the West, New England, and the South for the vicarious experience of places where life had greater depth and resonance. Readers in the Northeast were curious about these parts of their own country, especially so now that the South had been defeated, its threat removed.

This chapter switches the focus from iconic characters to iconic spaces, following the demographic changes brought about by World War II and the expansion of the domestic infrastructure during the Eisenhower administration. It focuses on the ways in which the military encouraged certain ways of perceiving and experiencing cities, suburbs, and small towns in the transition from World War II to the Cold War. More specifically, it takes on the desert landscape of the American Southwest and tracks its occupation by the military. Closely associated with the development and testing of the US nuclear arsenal, but also with the world of the American frontier and the Western, the southwestern desert appears, in turn, deeply familiar and eerily strange to 1950s American culture. Science fiction films like Jack Arnold's It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Gordon Douglas's Them! (1954) unfold as the Cold War overwrites the traditional connotations of the landscape.

Abstract This chapter takes up a major writer of post-Independence Hindi through a focus on his depiction of urban space. The works of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917–1964) are set in different small- and medium-sized cities across the urban landscape of central India. In his fiction, poetry, and criticism, Muktibodh combined a detailed examination of urban space with a keen sense of local, national, and international scale. The resulting works reveal the unstable grounds of the mid-century Indian city. Through readings of Muktibodh’s short story “Claude Eatherly” and his poem “Cāṁd kā muṁh ṭeḍhā hai” (“The Moon’s Face Is Crooked”), this chapter considers how Muktibodh’s idea of the city was expressed through experimentation with form. These two works consider a range of responses to urban space, from utopian revolutionaries pasting posters across a surveilled, midnight space, to a paranoid internationalism in which an American pilot is held in the center of a newly planned, wealthy city. Both of these pieces present new formal techniques for depicting the city that incorporate both the subjectivity of Hindi modernism and tropes from popular fiction. Muktibodh’s imagination of the city, the chapter argues, offers a unique set of case studies for considering the discomfiting, alienating experience of everyday life.

This chapter assesses the different kinds of police trades that emerged during the nineteenth century, looking at patrolmen and detectives. The new police institutions were permanent, disciplined bodies, but they continued to do the kind of things that had been done by various others, such as watches and constables, or their equivalents. They maintained order on the streets and the highways and byways; and order meant relative tidiness and no obstructions as well as breaking up fights. They arrested offenders, and, in some places, they were responsible for fighting fires. Specialist units began to take on specialist tasks. The detection of offenders, for example, had long been a role for those engaged in the wider role of policing, but detective bureaux became significant, if relatively small, branches of many police institutions, especially in the big cities. The new police, however, could not be everywhere and cover every policing problem. In some instances, the local population continued to act on its own, sometimes with the knowledge and agreement, even the participation, of the police, and sometimes without. The chapter then examines popular policing, as well as representations of the police in fiction.

Aim/Purpose: This paper provides the results of the preliminary analysis of the findings of an ongoing study that seeks to examine the social media use, cultural and political awareness, civic engagement, issue prioritization, and social activism of Gen Z students enrolled at four different institutional types located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The aim of this study is to look at the group as a whole as well as compare findings across populations. The institutional types under consideration include a mid-sized majority serving or otherwise referred to as a traditionally white institution (TWI) located in a small coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean, a small Historically Black University (HBCU) located in a rural area, a large community college located in a county that is a mixture of rural and suburban and which sits on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and graduating high school students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs in a large urban area. This exploration is purposed to examine the behaviors and expectations of Gen Z students within a representative American region during a time of tremendous turmoil and civil unrest in the United States. Background: Over 74 million strong, Gen Z makes up almost one-quarter of the U.S. population. They already outnumber any current living generation and are the first true digital natives. Born after 1996 and through 2012, they are known for their short attention spans and heightened ability to multi-task. Raised in the age of the smart phone, they have been tethered to digital devices from a young age with most having the preponderance of their childhood milestones commemorated online. Often called Zoomers, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation and are on track to be the most well-educated generation in history. Gen Zers in the United States have been found in the research to be progressive and pro-government and viewing increasing racial and ethnic diversity as positive change. Finally, they are less likely to hold xenophobic beliefs such as the notion of American exceptionalism and superiority that have been popular with by prior generations. The United States has been in a period of social and civil unrest in recent years with concerns over systematic racism, rampant inequalities, political polarization, xenophobia, police violence, sexual assault and harassment, and the growing epidemic of gun violence. Anxieties stirred by the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues resulting in a powder keg explosion occurring throughout the summer of 2020 and leading well into 2021. As a result, the United States has deteriorated significantly in the Civil Unrest Index falling from 91st to 34th. The vitriol, polarization, protests, murders, and shootings have all occurred during Gen Z’s formative years, and the limited research available indicates that it has shaped their values and political views. Methodology: The Mid-Atlantic region is a portion of the United States that exists as the overlap between the northeastern and southeastern portions of the country. It includes the nation’s capital, as well as large urban centers, small cities, suburbs, and rural enclaves. It is one of the most socially, economically, racially, and culturally diverse parts of the United States and is often referred to as the “typically American region.” An electronic survey was administered to students from 2019 through 2021 attending a high school dual enrollment program, a minority serving institution, a majority serving institution, and a community college all located within the larger mid-Atlantic region. The survey included a combination of multiple response, Likert scaled, dichotomous, open ended, and ordinal questions. It was developed in the Survey Monkey system and reviewed by several content and methodological experts in order to examine bias, vagueness, or potential semantic problems. Finally, the survey was pilot tested prior to implementation in order to explore the efficacy of the research methodology. It was then modified accordingly prior to widespread distribution to potential participants. The surveys were administered to students enrolled in classes taught by the authors all of whom are educators. Participation was voluntary, optional, and anonymous. Over 800 individuals completed the survey with just over 700 usable results, after partial completes and the responses of individuals outside of the 18-24 age range were removed. Findings: Participants in this study overwhelmingly were users of social media. In descending order, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Tik Tok were the most popular social media services reported as being used. When volume of use was considered, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter were the most cited with most participants reporting using Instagram and Snapchat multiple times a day. When asked to select which social media service they would use if forced to choose just one, the number one choice was YouTube followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Additionally, more than half of participants responded that they have uploaded a video to a video sharing site such as YouTube or Tik Tok. When asked about their familiarity with different technologies, participants overwhelmingly responded that they are “very familiar” with smart phones, searching the Web, social media, and email. About half the respondents said that they were “very familiar” with common computer applications such as the Microsoft Office Suite or Google Suite with another third saying that they were “somewhat familiar.” When asked about Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard, Course Compass, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle, Course Sites, Google Classroom, Mindtap, Schoology, Absorb, D2L, itslearning, Otus, PowerSchool, or WizIQ, only 43% said they were “very familiar” with 31% responding that they were “somewhat familiar.” Finally, about half the students were either “very” or “somewhat” familiar with operating systems such as Windows. A few preferences with respect to technology in the teaching and learning process were explored in the survey. Most students (85%) responded that they want course announcements and reminders sent to their phones, 76% expect their courses to incorporate the use of technology, 71% want their courses to have course websites, and 71% said that they would rather watch a video than read a book chapter. When asked to consider the future, over 81% or respondents reported that technology will play a major role in their future career. Most participants considered themselves “informed” or “well informed” about current events although few considered themselves “very informed” or “well informed” about politics. When asked how they get their news, the most common forum reported for getting news and information about current events and politics was social media with 81% of respondents reporting. Gen Z is known to be an engaged generation and the participants in this study were not an exception. As such, it came as no surprise to discover that, in the past year more than 78% of respondents had educated friends or family about an important social or political issue, about half (48%) had donated to a cause of importance to them, more than a quarter (26%) had participated in a march or rally, and a quarter (26%) had actively boycotted a product or company. Further, about 37% consider themselves to be a social activist with another 41% responding that aren’t sure if they would consider themselves an activist and only 22% saying that they would not consider themselves an activist. When asked what issues were important to them, the most frequently cited were Black Lives Matter (75%), human trafficking (68%), sexual assault/harassment/Me Too (66.49%), gun violence (65.82%), women’s rights (65.15%), climate change (55.4%), immigration reform/deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) (48.8%), and LGBTQ+ rights (47.39%). When the schools were compared, there were only minor differences in social media use with the high school students indicating slightly more use of Tik Tok than the other participants. All groups were virtually equal when it came to how informed they perceived themselves about current events and politics. Consensus among groups existed with respect to how they get their news, and the community college and high school students were slightly more likely to have participated in a march, protest, or rally in the last 12 months than the university students. The community college and high school students were also slightly more likely to consider themselves social activists than the participants from either of the universities. When the importance of the issues was considered, significant differences based on institutional type were noted. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was identified as important by the largest portion of students attending the HBCU followed by the community college students and high school students. Less than half of the students attending the TWI considered BLM an important issue. Human trafficking was cited as important by a higher percentage of students attending the HBCU and urban high school than at the suburban and rural community college or the TWI. Sexual assault was considered important by the majority of students at all the schools with the percentage a bit smaller from the majority serving institution. About two thirds of the students at the high school, community college, and HBCU considered gun violence important versus about half the students at the majority serving institution. Women’s rights were reported as being important by more of the high school and HBCU participants than the community college or TWI. Climate change was considered important by about half the students at all schools with a slightly smaller portion reporting out the HBCU. Immigration reform/DACA was reported as important by half the high school, community college, and HBCU participants with only a third of the students from the majority serving institution citing it as an important issue. With respect to LGBTQ rights approximately half of the high school and community college participants cited it as important, 44.53% of the HBCU students, and only about a quarter of the students attending the majority serving institution. Contribution and Conclusion: This paper provides a timely investigation into the mindset of generation Z students living in the United States during a period of heightened civic unrest. This insight is useful to educators who should be informed about the generation of students that is currently populating higher education. The findings of this study are consistent with public opinion polls by Pew Research Center. According to the findings, the Gen Z students participating in this study are heavy users of multiple social media, expect technology to be integrated into teaching and learning, anticipate a future career where technology will play an important role, informed about current and political events, use social media as their main source for getting news and information, and fairly engaged in social activism. When institutional type was compared the students from the university with the more affluent and less diverse population were less likely to find social justice issues important than the other groups. Recommendations for Practitioners: During disruptive and contentious times, it is negligent to think that the abounding issues plaguing society are not important to our students. Gauging the issues of importance and levels of civic engagement provides us crucial information towards understanding the attitudes of students. Further, knowing how our students gain information, their social media usage, as well as how informed they are about current events and political issues can be used to more effectively communicate and educate. Recommendations for Researchers: As social media continues to proliferate daily life and become a vital means of news and information gathering, additional studies such as the one presented here are needed. Additionally, in other countries facing similarly turbulent times, measuring student interest, awareness, and engagement is highly informative. Impact on Society: During a highly contentious period replete with a large volume of civil unrest and compounded by a global pandemic, understanding the behaviors and attitudes of students can help us as higher education faculty be more attuned when it comes to the design and delivery of curriculum. Future Research This presentation presents preliminary findings. Data is still being collected and much more extensive statistical analyses will be performed.