So far I have finished all the heavy lifting ?? to get started on my archival research paper, so I thought that I would give you an update on how the process has gone so far.
I started out by thinking about topics that would be interesting enough to dive into for a full quarter. Last quarter my friend, who’s an upperclassman, presented a project in the archives with her class and one of her classmates had an exhibit on Greek life at Santa Clara. It caught my attention immediately since I am involved in Greek life. I always found it kind of odd that it is no longer on campus and I was hungry to learn more. This exhibit provided me with a basic understanding of Santa Clara’s Greek life and sparked my curiosity. However, this idea faded into the background because I didn’t really have the time or opportunity to dig into it myself.
photo credits to Santa Clara Alpha Delta Pi
Flash forward a couple months and my professor announced that we would be working with the Santa Clara archives. BOOM. I had my topic immediately and this interest was sparked again. I was eager to investigate for myself what really happened to Greek life. There are all sorts of rumors on campus as to why it disappeared, but I was determined to get to the bottom of it by myself.
When we got to the archives I was rather unimpressed. Information on Greek life was shuffled into a single folder contained in a box of various other topics. Hmmm I thought I was doomed! How could there be so little information on this when it seems to be so involved in student life?
WRONG
That tiny folder actually contained hundreds of papers ranging from flyers, to emails, announcements, and newspaper articles. It was rich in history ranging from the 1980s (when Greek life came to SCU) up until now.
By the time it got to drafting my paper, I was extremely overwhelmed. I wanted to include everything, but it would make my paper too broad. Using Tirabassi’s tip (as mentioned in my previous post) of knowing when to stop, I was able to create more of a focus.
Now that I have more of a focus, I am in the process of doing some of my own research. I am creating a survey on what current SCU students know about Greek life. If you’re an SCU student and you’d like to give it a try, follow this link.
There you have it, the most up-to-date overview of my process thus far.
