Attend this Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies panel that brings together Washington state legal professionals to discuss the variety of ways in which they work in and with the law. Representing a range of demographic backgrounds and lived experiences, the panels will talk about the paths that brought them to careers in the law, as well as how they view their work in the current legal, social, and political moment.

May 15, 3:30 – 5:00 pm | Communications Building

May 15, 7:30 pm | Meany Hall

An evening of software performances and human-machine communions, drawing lines between the worlds of immersive sound, performing arts, and experimental extended reality. The familiar, the bearable chaos and illusions of听order unfold across technologically mediated hyper-realities, temporalities, and mnemonic worlds. Performances where interactions and reactions occur across choreographies and spatial arrangements, binding the virtual with the real in unexpected knots and impossible behaviors.

Free |

May 16, 2:30 – 3:30 pm | Kane Hall

91爆料 faculty member Shirley J. Yee (Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies department) will be in conversation with 91爆料 Women鈥檚 soccer coach Nicole Van Dyke, Courtney Gano (91爆料 Softball 鈥�16) and Amy Griffin (91爆料 Women鈥檚 Soccer and Executive Director of the Seattle Reign Academy). This event is part of the Jackson School鈥檚 new Global Sport Lab.

Free |

May 16 – 19, 2:30 or 7:00 pm | Meany Hall

The 91爆料 MFA candidates in dance invite everyone to the premiere of eight diverse dance works, created for 70 undergraduate dancers. Join the Department of Dance for an evening of dance in styles drawn from contemporary modern, ballet, Chinese dance, hip-hop, street, and club dances, to explore themes about humanity, homogeneity, community, and support.

Learn about the program to support the development of educators in any dance form.

Tickets |

May 16, 12:00 – 1:30 pm | Gowen Hall

Becca Peach, a Political Science Ph.D. candidate, will lecture on “Replacing the Welfare State As We Know It: Neoliberal Welfare Policy & Development of the Religious Right鈥檚 Institutional Capacity Under Charitable Choice” for the Political Theory Colloquium.

Free |

May 16, 7:30 pm | Kane Hall

Join paleontologist Dr. Jingmai O鈥機onnor for a trip back in time to learn how birds became birds and the adaptations that helped them thrive. Dr. O鈥機onnor will share a new fossil discovery that tells more about the earliest birds and the dinosaurs they evolved from.

Free |

May 16, 5:00 – 7:30 pm | Husky Union Building

Join the 91爆料 Center for Human Rights for a very special 15th-anniversary edition of the annual Spring Symposium & Awards Celebration featuring stories from those deported through Boeing Field.

This year鈥檚 event features a storytelling project collaboration between 91爆料 students, immigrant rights group La Resistencia, and Hinton Publishing, showcasing stories of those held in deportation proceedings in Washington state.

Free |

May 16, 7:30 pm | Brechemin Auditorium

Free |

May 16, 7:30 pm | Meany Hall

Tickets |

May 17, 5:00 – 7:00 pm | 听Communications Building

The center, in the , has released the first in a series of research memos under an initiative called , which seeks to “strengthen the work of frontline human rights organizations in Washington state.”

The memo, first in a planned series, is titled “.” It notes the center’s (thus far unanswered) requests for information from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 鈥� about immigration enforcement in Washington state.

“We need to be able trust law enforcement to keep us safe,” said center director , a professor of international studies and the . “Numerous courts have found that our local police or sheriffs shouldn’t be enforcing immigration law, and for that reason many jurisdictions have barred cops from asking questions about immigration status.

“But if they’re calling ICE to ask the question 鈥� and then to haul members of the community away for civil violations 鈥� it’s not that different than if they’d done the asking themselves. And it ruptures the immigrant communities’ ability to trust law enforcement.”

The report also describes the center’s survey of scores of police, sheriff and other Washington state agencies on immigration matters and sounds a note of caution about , a California-based for-profit company that provides language used in many, though not all, police policy manuals.

To study how jurisdictions “are defining the limits of local law enforcement collaboration with ICE and CBP” in their policy language, the center submitted information requests to 165 Washington state agencies 鈥� 131 city or town police departments, 26 county sheriffs and eight state agencies within the where CBP claims authority to conduct stops.

Studying such agency and other documents, the researchers cited problematic policies now in force:

• Local policy manuals often tell law enforcement officers to call CBP or ICE to the scene even in encounters where no crime has occurred. Once on the scene, CBP or ICE officers ask about the person’s immigration status 鈥� which “effectively converts a local law enforcement encounter into an occasion for immigration enforcement.”
• Though most jurisdictions instruct jails not to honor federal ICE detainer requests without a warrant, policy manuals offer inadequate guidance on which types of warrants are sufficient to clear concerns that would prohibit “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
• Also, such policy manuals still instruct jails to notify ICE prior to an inmate鈥檚 release. “While this represents an improvement over holding them without cause,” the researchers write, “such information-sharing may still facilitate the handoff of inmates to immigration authorities, including in cases where they have not been convicted of any crime.”

Not all jurisdictions, the researchers note, have adopted policy language based on Lexipol’s guidelines, and they cite Seattle and King County as “positive examples.” King County has an ordinance in place barring ICE detainers unless they are accompanied by a judicial warrant.

The researchers cite what they feel are weaknesses in Lexipol’s taxpayer-paid service to public clients.

The company, they write, promises clients up-to-date, “state-specific” information including best practices and developments in immigration case law. But the report finds that Lexipol’s guidance sometimes results in “worse, rather than better” policy language on immigrant rights.

“Many of the policy manuals legitimatize ethnic profiling by suggesting that cops can derive reasonable suspicion of criminal activity from a person’s ability to speak English and ‘other factors based on an officer’s experience,'” Godoy said. “Courts have condemned such behavior.”

The researchers add that jurisdictions might save money and reduce potential legal liability by skipping Lexipol’s costly service and instead pooling their resources and seeking guidance from Washington state’s attorney general.

“These concerns are not abstract hypotheticals,” the researchers write. “The policy manuals we examined translate into real-life cases of rights abuse, some of which have been deemed unconstitutional by Washington courts.”

In such cases, everyday law enforcement encounters too easily become immigration enforcement cases “because local law enforcement handed off Washington residents to federal immigration authorities in ways that violated their rights.”

Godoy said, “We don’t want people in Washington state to be treated unfairly because of the way they look or the language they speak. It’s wrong.”

###

For more information, contact Godoy at 206-616-3585 or agodoy@uw.edu.

Geography professor sits at the front of a 91爆料 classroom on a recent afternoon, listening and making suggestions as students discuss the data challenges they’re having.

Some are wondering how to put data in a particular format. Others are muddling through the process of mapping data, or figuring out where to source information.

鈥淭hink about who has the data you need, and how do you shake it loose from them?鈥� Elwood says. 鈥淭here are many public and nonprofit agencies that may be holding data they鈥檇 be willing to share with you.鈥�

The juniors and seniors in Elwood鈥檚 GIS Workshop course are applying lessons learned in class to projects with local nonprofits ranging from food banks to criminal justice organizations. The course isn鈥檛 new, but this quarter is the first time nearly all of the 10 class projects have an inequality or social justice aspect to them.

That focus is intentional: Elwood is the co-founder of the , a 91爆料-based international coalition she launched with fellow geography professor Victoria Lawson to reframe how poverty is perceived and researched (read a story about the initiative ). The class projects, Elwood says, dovetail with that goal and offer benefits on both sides.

鈥淚t鈥檚 best-practice learning for everybody, because the students are collaborating on a real project. They may not know anything about the Salvadoran Civil War or human rights advocacy, and the community partners might not know much about GIS,鈥� she says.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a very consultant-like, community organizer-like experience for the students. And it’s a way for under-resourced nonprofits to maximize what’s possible for them.鈥�

A geographic information system, or , is designed to capture, analyze and map various types of spatial and geographic data. Elwood鈥檚 students are using GIS applications in different ways to meet specific needs identified by the partner organizations.听One student team is analyzing census and client data for a coalition of Seattle-area food banks to determine whether they are reaching areas with the greatest need, and to make recommendations on where to locate summer food programs for children and mobile van drop-offs for elderly clients.

Another project is using social media data to examine how public space is used around Pioneer Square, while another seeks to identify areas in three Washington counties where outreach would most benefit former inmates.

Stella Jones is part of a three-person team working with Real Change, a Seattle organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold on the streets by low-income and homeless people. The students are analyzing data to identify which factors make some sales locations more successful than others and to develop a map showing untapped 鈥渉ot spots鈥� where vendors aren鈥檛 yet selling.

鈥淭his project is showing me how we can apply technology to various social issues in a way that can aid different organizations in their work,” says Jones, a junior and geography major. “It really fits my interests as far as where I see myself working in the world.鈥�

Another student group is working on the 91爆料 Center for Human Rights鈥� project, which is documenting atrocities committed during the El Salvador Civil War from 1980 to 1992. The students are creating an interactive map that will show where massacres occurred throughout the country and enable users to click on locations and get detailed information.

They are also making recommendations about low-cost, low-tech methods researchers can employ to gather geographic data while they鈥檙e in the field 鈥� for example, using paper maps to jot down where bodies are buried or where survivors were when incidents occurred.

, the center鈥檚 director, says the work will put the brutality of the war into a visual context that words alone cannot convey. And looking at the data in new ways, she says, might help identify new patterns or insights.

鈥淚t鈥檚 one thing to see it in an Excel file and another to see it across a map,鈥� Godoy says. 鈥淚鈥檓 very interested in hearing what [the students] have to say, not only about our basic operational details, but also how to think a little more expansively about how to go about our research.鈥�

Student Wyatt Hoffman, a junior in the 91爆料鈥檚 Community, Environment & Planning Program, says working on the Unfinished Sentences project is a more meaningful way to learn and apply GIS skills than just following a tutorial.

鈥淚 feel like I鈥檓 working on something significant,” he says. “This has a real-world impact on people.鈥�

Students have also spent class time learning about team leadership, conflict resolution and collaboration, which means working not just with partner agencies, but also with peers who may come from very different economic backgrounds. Students who grew up in poverty, Elwood says, develop firsthand knowledge their more privileged peers may not have.

鈥淔or a student whose family relied on a food bank growing up and maybe still does, they understand in an experiential way what these agencies are doing,” she says. “It puts them in a position of authority.”