For Immediate Release

HARTFORD, Conn., March 30 – When Trinity College students enroll in a class about contemporary social issues taught by Assistant Professor Lori Waite, they are often transported from the safe confines of the Trinity College campus to the school of hard knocks.

Former drug abusers, people who have lived in homeless shelters, and reformed gang members are among the visiting speakers to Waite’s "Social Problems in America" course. The unconventional lecturers recount the realities of their lives in vivid detail, putting a face on America’s social issues and reinforcing the reading and research done by the students.

"People aren’t necessarily poor because of their own fault," says Waite. "There are larger processes at work that sometimes make it impossible for them to escape their situation."

A faculty member at Trinity since 1998, Waite is a nationally recognized expert on social issues. She has contributed five entries to a new encyclopedic volume on the civil rights movement that will be published this year by MacMillan Publishing, and a chapter on African-American political consciousness for Oppositional Consciousness, a book that will be published by the University of Chicago Press this spring.

A native of Tennessee, Waite began focusing on urban problems while a journalist for Georgia Public Television and the Atlanta Tribune. With a degree in journalism, Waite decided to further her knowledge by returning to school and earning master’s degrees in Black studies and political science from Ohio State University and a doctorate in sociology from Northwestern.

"Lori brings many things to the department of sociology at Trinity," says Stephen M. Valocchi, department chair and associate professor of sociology. "There is a way of looking at the world sociologically, that we refer to as ‘the sociological imagination.’ Lori has one of the most creative and insightful sociological imaginations that I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing."

Students also praise Waite’s approach, which includes incorporating community learning into her course. In the fall of 1999, sociology major Alissa Sexton ’00 took Waite’s urban sociology class, comparing urban issues in Hartford and New York by talking with activists and members of neighborhood organizations. Sexton also examined community policing, focusing on the shootings of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who was shot by four white police officers in New York City, and Aquan Salmon, a Hartford teenager who was shot by a white Hartford police officer.

"We learned that a lot of tension exists between African-Americans, Latinos, and the police," says Sexton, who with other students joined the neighborhood activists from the two cities and shared their findings in a public panel discussion on campus.

Waite says one of her challenges as a teacher is to get her students to step outside themselves and to see the world from the perspective of groups that possess less power.

"I strive to teach students to question their own participation in hierarchical power relations," says Waite. "It’s important for young people to develop the capacity for critical thinking because their understanding of the world shapes our future. I want students to become agents of social change."

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