Students Present Findings from Costa Rica
By Sara Howard / Staff Writer, The Ithacan Online

When sophomores Amanda Bostick, Kim Gillman and Mandi Morningstar traveled to Costa Rica during the last week of their winter break, they weren’t going to soak up the sun. Instead, they were caught in torrential rains and flooding, they were put to work planting trees and painting buildings and even worse, they had to do research.

The trip to Costa Rica was the annual study-abroad trip for the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholars, the trips combine community service with topic research to create hands-on experiences with social justice issues.

The work did not stop there, however. Wednesday, 10 MLK Scholars joined other students in presenting their research during the daylong seventh annual James J. Whalen Academic Symposium.

The Whalen Symposium provided more than 100 students with the opportunity to display their research work, with focuses including solutions for sustainability, media making a difference and senior academic projects. For example, senior Anthony Santoriello spoke about “Efficacy in Environmental Reform” and senior Elliot Randall gave his economics presentation “Water Allocation Schemes in the Western United States.”

Bostick thought of her topic, AIDS and HIV awareness and protection, during the scholar trip to Ghana last year. Everywhere she went, she saw billboards promoting AIDS prevention. She said one in particular that sticks out in her mind read, “Live to enjoy tourism. Use a condom.”

Once the scholars chose Costa Rica as their most recent travel destination, Bostick began researching the rate of AIDS incidences there. She found that the percentage of the population suffering from HIV in Costa Rica is lower than that in the United States.

While she cannot completely explain the difference in rates, Bostick said that Costa Rica places a great emphasis on health education and recently concluded a four-year government-funded program that taught kids about safe sex.
“That’s part of what makes it a social justice issue,” Bostick said. “Who has access to the education?”

Morningstar answered that question in her research.

“I took an educational psychology class, and an entire chapter covered how gender and race can sometimes play a factor in the quality of education someone gets,” Morningstar said. “So I thought it would be interesting to see if stuff like that showed itself in Costa Rica.”

She did not find gender or racial divides, but she did discover socioeconomic issues. For example, children from wealthy families attended private schools while children from poorer families attended the free public schools and were more likely to drop out by sixth grade, she said.

“Because I’m training to be a teacher, [my research is] making me more aware of these inequalities in opportunities,” Morningstar said. “As a teacher, hopefully I can use that awareness to promote more equality.”

Gillman strayed from her psychology major to compare Costa Rican democracy with that in the United States.

“I think that a lot of times we’re so quick to assume that because we’re such a successful nation our way is the best way for a democracy,” Gillman said.
Despite this view, Gillman said, there are many different ways of practicing democracy.

“Here, the majority rules even if the majority is, like, 50.1 percent,” Gillman said.

“Obviously you’re disregarding a whole big number of people, whereas in Costa Rica traditionally they try to consider everybody’s opinion with a consensus vote.”

While in Costa Rica, a natural disaster gave Gillman a glimpse of the Costa Rican democracy at work. Torrential rains caused a devastating flood near a hotel the students stayed in during the first days of the trip.

“Their houses and cars and livestock, everything, just got carried away by this river,” Gillman said.

While the people waited in shelters, the government took hours before responding. One of the reasons for the delayed action, Gillman posited, was that the government was trying to figure out which course of action would take everybody into consideration.

“I think an important component is that a lot of us are going to relate personal experiences to our research,” Gillman said. “It makes the information accessible to everyone.”