Reasearch Paper Proposal
This assignment was created by students at The City College of New York for the Freshman Inquiry Writing Seminar, Web Discourse. Students are researching a social issue in one of four large topics: Urban Life, Public Health, Immigration, and Education. This will result in a final research paper that explores both how the conversations surrounding the issue are enacted and how a CCNY student may enter that conversation in a meaningful way.
The topic that caught my attention when I came across it was the trafficking of drugs. I feel that this topic has so many aspects to it and so much information on it such as the history, the affects, and what are the police doing about it. Drug trafficking fits perfectly into urban life because the urban areas are basically the communities where the drugs are mostly located. I have no thesis statement just yet because I can’t decide whether I want to tackle two different areas of drugs. How are the drugs getting into these neighborhoods and why the police aren’t doing anything to stop it, or to speak about the crooked cops aiding in the drug distribution and the major effect it’s having on communities.
These two areas are the questions I have that are unanswered which I will solve through research. I think I’ll eventually find a way to collaborate all these ideas into one big solid thesis statement. My main research goal is to expose to the world that drugs are having a major negative effect on the world because instead of billions of dollars used on drugs, they could be used on something to actually benefit us. The sources that I will use and follow are any modern news stories on drug trafficking to show that it’s still alive today, and scholarly sources to show statistics on how the drugs have been used and distributed in the past years. One challenge I could already foresee is not having exact numbers for the amount of drugs in urban areas. I say this because we only know the amount that the police have gotten their hands on, not what is still being made and sold.
Comments
This is a very interesting and relevant topic. One thing that I recommend is narrowing your thesis down and being very specific about the aspect of drug trafficking that you wish to research. You could write books on the general topic but when you focus more on a small part of it, the length is more appropriate. That being said, I like the topic of how crooked cops aid the drug trade. I think that is one of the more controversial and probably less publicly stated. However because the problem is within the police force, data that hasn't been skewed will be harder to come by. I think you've got a great start, just focus on something that really interests you.
Posted by: Mike - Stanford | October 26, 2009 09:48 AM
Alain,
You definitely need to focus your topic. Maybe pick a specific drug in a specific area, maybe heroin in New York CIty? It is going to be extremely difficult to find information on drugs on the streets, so I would take a standpoint in a police officer's prospective. Otherwise, you are going to run into a dead end, because drug lords don't exactly publish or post details on drug trafficking. If you are still going to try and research crooked cops and how they help drug trafficking, I would recommend watching the movie American Gangster. Although it isn't exactly academic, I think it will help you with your paper. Run it by your professor before you actually use it as a source. Good luck!
Posted by: Kevin Cardey | October 27, 2009 03:53 PM