PublicEye.org - The Website of Political Research Associates

A Critical Resource - PRA Interns

Fresh energy flows through PRA's offices every semester as new interns join us. We are reminded why our work is important by seeing it through their fresh eyes. Our fall intern Jessica Hitch, a recent Boston University grad, remarked, "It's taking me a while to digest all this inequality" as she waded through right-wing arguments. Another intern marveled at the level of detail in Focus on the Family's Unplugged magazine, a guide for parents in choosing what music and movies their children can listen to and watch. Library interns recently encouraged us to be more nuanced in our descriptions of books on race, leading us to enrich our categories.

Anna Mester

Christina Collins

Interns assist research staff, write short entries for The Public Eye, and undertake special projects. This past summer, our intern from the Reproductive Rights Activists Service Corps at Hampshire College was Ana Mester from Mount Holyoke, who focused on updating our Defending Reproductive Rights ARK. Vivian Chang from Wellesley and Christina Collins from Hampshire worked on updating our Constructing Homophobia files. Josh Flaccavento, a Clark University grad student, helped secure permission for online updates to our Immigrant Rights ARK. This fall, Jessica is following up on Anna's work by ensuring our Reproductive Rights ARK has the most up to date selections and securing author permissions for the web version.

For the past year, a fantastic crew of library volunteers helped design a special on-line cataloguing system of our collection of 7,500+ volumes; this new resource will soon be on our website. Spring library interns were Sean Thibodeau from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science and Kathleen Bridget O'Keefe, a library volunteer at local collections, who stayed through the summer. This fall we are joined by Gena Pliakas and Jennifer McClain, a Simmons grad and grad student, respectively, and "Anna" Aeyoung Chung, a local library volunteer.

Vivian Chang