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Students research area attitudes toward Muslims Brad Hosley, standing at left, speaks as panelists Molly Danforth, Preston Price, Deanna Mulaskey, Cassandra Anderson and Elizabeth Schiller look on. [Photo by Hannah Jones] Sunday May 21, 2017 at 7:46 PM May 21, 2017 at 7:46 PM By Hannah Jones For the Tidings Amid recent changes surrounding U.S. immigration policy and the protests that ensued after, a group of Southern Oregon University students set out to analyze the effects of these policies on the local Muslim community and other’s attitudes towards Islam. The group shared their findings Wednesday as part of the Southern Oregon Arts and Research program at SOU. “Our impulse as social scientists is to get out in the world and talk to people,” said Mark Shibley, professor of sociology, who led the sociology seminar class titled “Creating and Negating God.” Although Shibley initiated the study in his winter term class, he insisted that he was merely there to be a guide and that the research was done entirely by the students. Cassandra Anderson, Molly Danforth, Brad Hosley, Deanna Mulaskey, Preston Price, Elizabeth Schiller and Michelle Weston were each designated a different aspect of the study to present. The students began with background on President Donald Trump’s executive orders seeking to limit travel into the U.S., and offered insight into why they felt a study on the Muslim population was necessary. Shibly said their research began by going outside of the classroom, seeking out individuals in the Muslim community and documenting their experiences. Danforth, focused on local media’s coverage of Muslim communities, concluding that most articles focused on efforts to thwart discrimination in the Rogue Valley. Michelle Watson then focused on attitudes surrounding Islam on social media, even using Craigslist as a platform to reach out to people regardless of their political views. “I think people like to talk about it more than they would actually engage,” said Weston. “People much more vocal about opinion when they were behind a computer.” As part of her participation in the research, Mulaskey attended a packed City Council meeting in Talent during deliberations leading to a decision to pass a resolution to support the Muslim community. According to Mulaskey, more than 300 people attended the meeting. The divisive resolution passed with a tie-breaker vote by the mayor. “After sitting through all these testimonies, I was shocked that people could even vote against it,” she said, explaining she sensed the general approval for the resolution throughout the audience. “I expected to hear tale after tale about terrible things that happened in public places, but definitely not as many as I thought,” said Hosley, who attended a service at the Masjid Al-Tawheed Mosque in Talent as part of his research. The students also recalled a Muslim man who had visited their class to talk about his experiences who intentionally chose to disregard the negative actions taken against Muslims. “It’s not necessarily that they don’t experience the discrimination, but he chose not to focus on that,” said Schiller. The students' conclusion was that the university,as well as the Rogue Valley in general, is a welcoming environment for all religions and that anti-Islamic rhetoric that was expressed was quickly shut down. “The clear message that we got was that the Muslim community was happy that people were reaching out to them to learn more about them,” said Shibley. “They didn’t feel particularly unwelcome.” “It also had a huge impact on the students who were involved in the study,” he said. Ashland freelance writer Hannah Jones is editor of The Siskiyou, the Southern Oregon University student-run news website. Email her at [email protected].