Lydia Jacob '27 discusses her poster project at GUS.
More than 80 students took part in the College's annual symposium, which features a wide range of topics.
“This is a bit of a passion project for me. It’s of extreme personal importance so I hope my presentation was informative – I think it was.”
Jordan Fridley ’24 has seen the stigmatization of trangender students like themself. That’s why Jordan knew the importance of their thesis project, “Aliens from Mars: The Experience of Transgender Students in Triad Colleges and Universities, 1974-2017,” which was presented April 3 at the College’s annual Guilford Undergraduate Symposium (GUS).
Jordan, a Hege Research Award winner this academic year, was one of more than 80 other Guilford students who took part in the 15th annual Symposium, which celebrates the College’s diversity, depth and scholarly research.
Jordan’s research included archived work and personal interviews of the transgender community. They said it “was important to retrieve and record the tansgendered community’s history to violence and minority stress theory.”
“There’s a stigmatization against trans identities,” Jordan says. “There’s also issues with hate crime, with poverty. People who experience the stress of being a marginalized group will experience more mental and physical health issues later in life.”
Jordan says there’s a higher than average suicide rate for trangendered people compared to the rest of society. “In order to preserve that history and limit the taboo nature of trans issues, we need to look at these people as historical figures rather than people who can and should be omitted.”
“This is a bit of a passion project for me,” says Jordan. “It’s of extreme personal importance so I hope my presentation was informative – I think it was.”
Judging from the audience’s reaction in the Hege Academic Commons, others agreed. Students lined up after the session to ask Jordan more questions and thanked them for their research and presentation.
In other presentations, Kevin Buikpor ’24 reported on the Raspberry Pi Network Monitoring System. Axel Sandoval ’24 explored the relationship between music and technology in the modern age. Andriquez Brooks ’23, Ariel Morley ’25, Avery Reuter Lorenzana ’23 and Josia Rich ’25 analyzed “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”
Since the first Guilford Undergraduate Symposium was held in 2008, nearly 1,600 students representing various disciplines have presented their creative work. Video, sculpture, readings, music, dance, talks, posters, exhibitions of art, costumes, and education resources, demonstrations, and some presentations that are difficult to classify have been part of GUS.