Eliminating Demonstrated Interest

The mission of Carnegie Mellon University includes the cultivation of a diverse community. All throughout our campus there are examples of this commitment though initiatives such as the recent creation of our Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, among many others. With this responsibility in mind, our undergraduate admission process is shifting to focus more on diversity and inclusion of all populations by reducing or eliminating advantages that have been inherent in certain aspects of the admission process. The goal is to provide a more equitable, level playing field where all segments of our applicant population have the same opportunity in the admission process. Were eliminating demonstrated interest as a consideration in our admission paradigm. Well no longer encourage supplementary submission of materials, including resumes, research abstracts, writing samples, multimedia demonstrations of talents, and maker portfolios. Going forward, were no longer offering alumni interv iews in advance of admission decisions and are refocusing alumni efforts to connect with admitted candidates instead. Our on-campus interviews are no longer evaluative, but rather are counseling sessions to help students align their interests with our programs. Weve changed our long application essay to a series of short essays to better understand student context, unique talents and interests as well as special considerations which candidates would like to bring to our attention. Yet even with these impending changes, theres more work needed on our part to achieve a more inclusive process. Issues surrounding standardized testing, for example, are complex in a research university like ours, and while we’ve lessened our SAT subject test requirements we’re hoping there is more we can do. All told, were working hard to change our process in a more inclusive direction. Our changes extend to our waiting list process as well. Like many other institutions, we are inundated with demonstrations of continued interest and additional recommendations, mostly from well-resourced or well-advised applicants. Though we dont request any at all, students write letters of continued interest, send us more recommendations, send projects, visit our campus to make their case in person and also have anyone with any perceived influence make phone calls to lobby and advocate for them. Our waiting list process is designed to give everyone who is interested in remaining on our waiting list the opportunity to respond about their uniqueness by sending us a paragraph at the appropriate time, only when we know there are additional places to fill. No letters of continued interest, extra recommendations, expectation of campus visits, lobbying efforts †¦ nothing but a paragraph. Information about the paragraph is included in the information made available to all students off ered a place on our waiting list when admission decisions are rendered in March. Weve not provided the exact topic in advance since we have wanted to avoid having students work on it needlessly in the event we werent going to admit candidates from our waiting list. These are fairly significant changes for us. We’re learning that the journey to a more inclusive and equitable process that eliminates unfair advantage to some is certainly not convenient or easy. It’s uphill work †¦ but work worth doing. In honesty, we’re learning it may take many trials before ultimate success. We believe these changes are important steps to move our process toward eliminating unfair advantage and making it more inclusive and equitable for all. Michael Steidel Dean of Admission Carnegie Mellon University

rip essays

rip essays If you like books like The Firm or The Chamber then this is the book for you. It has a great mix of suspense, action and drama. Its about a young man named Rudy Baylor who had aspirations of breezing through law school, graduating, and having a rich and prosperous future waiting for him. But after graduating the company that had hired him as a student was forced into a merger and the new owners dont want to have anything to do with him. It looks as if the whole world is crashing down on him, except for one case, one chance to pull himself away from being just another sleazy lawyer taking garbage cases that fall like scraps from the corporate bigshots tables. Its an insurance dispute that has left a family broken and devastated and has also opened the door for a lawsuit, if only Rudy can find a licensed lawyer to file it for him. When he finally gets to court he finds himself face to face with Drummond, the leader of a big time corporate defense team. Hes thrown into a nightmar e of lies and cover-ups that have hung like a dark cloud over Great Benefits, the insurance company being sued. What started as a small dispute is quickly expanding into a million dollar legal war with the most trusted and respected insurance company in America. Its a case that puts Rudy in great danger, but if he wins he would be the most popular lawyer in America. I go to my apartment to load the last of my things into the car. The cleaning service was in yesterday so the house is temporarily without the smell of mildew. Its ready for Miss Birdie. I write Miss Birdie a long letter promising to call. Check the house once again and drive to a branch bank and close my savings account. A stack of 28 one hundred dollar bills has a nice feel to it, I hide it under the floor-mat. Its almost dark when I knock on the Blackss front door. Dot opens it, and almost smiles when she sees its me. The house is dark and qu ...

Market Development and the Importance of Economic Development to Essay

Market Development and the Importance of Economic Development to Marketers - Essay Example An Outline of the Stages of Market Development Which a Country Passes In The Process Of Developing Its Market of a Product or Service An outline of the stages of market development that each developing country passes through include; an invention of an apt idea, selecting of the appropriate ideas to apply, building up a preferred idea and verifying its viability, evaluation of the business, Beta testing and market testing, scientific execution, commercialization and new product value (Levitt, 2006, 25). An Explanation of the Stages of the Market Development Which a Country Can Go Through Invention of Suitable Idea Invention of suitable is the first stage in setting up or developing new markets. Organizations have adopted for stage process when operating in the small market. This is made possible because undivided attention is a lad on the customer’s need. A developing country has to monitor the types of ideas it initiates into its daily operation through monitoring and studyin g of consumer needs. Good inventions of ideas lead to quick achievements of the objectives of a firm or an organization. Suitable ideas will determine the marketing policies applied by nations in building new markets (Levitt, 2006, 59). Selection of the Appropriate Ideas to Apply This is the step in which potential ideas are separated from bad ideas. Not all initiatives are inimical; as a result, screening of ideas is done to lead to a positive growth of the organization. A developing nation has its processes passed through appropriate screening and promising ideas put in place for the country to grow positively. The ideas selected should follow the principle of AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire and Actions). The principle helps an entity to discern what it requires from a targeted market (Levitt, 2006, 71). Building and Verifying the Viability of a Preferred Idea This is the stage where the best results are taken for implementation into other products that can compete globally to t he other markets, and the proposed are tested. Developing nations passes through this stage since all the process and procedures that they apply in their operation are verified for viability. Evaluation of the Business Evaluation of the business involves a thorough evaluation of the souk like the market size in a particular environment. Evaluation of advertising strategy is a core aspect in the expansion of stable market for a country. Most countries have espoused business evaluation in their system to lessen the process they take in market expansion. Evaluation of the business helps the author clarify some useful notions that may be a hindrance in developing a new market. Beta testing and souk testing This refers to the development of model around a product to make it unique from other products. The profits ad losses accrued are used to resolve the feasibility of the merchandise. Beta testing and market testing are both processes that a country might pass through in an attempt to e xpand its market. Scientific Execution This involves implementation of new resources to improve the operations of resources within an organization. Countries wishing to expand their existing market are bound to bring in new equipments and knowledge required to lead to the growth of the market. Commercialization Commercialization involves the advertising of new products in the market. The product in most instances is unique to the market. Comme

Managing change at bingham business college Essay

Managing change at bingham business college - Essay Example Having said that, Stacey (2011, p.27) cautions that â€Å"the particular explanation one adopts directly affects the particular account one gives of any phenomena, including those to which the concepts of strategy and organisational change apply†. Thus this interpretation is partial and not objective, which is not how business situations should be viewed. The correct business approach to problem solving is represented in the rational decision-making process described by Miller et al (1996): Figure 1: Rational Decision Making Model (Source: based on Miller et al, 1996, p.76) This appears to be the approach taken by Snook when devising his new system. However, what he perceives as a problem is not necessarily a problem. His issue is how the Central Records Office appears to those outside of the Office, with data security and the impact of anticipated increases in student numbers seemingly secondary to his primary impression of the Office as being unprofessional. He wants the Col lege to appear professional and the Office to appear the same as part of that. He makes several assumptions about the original Office set-up, including it is inefficient (â€Å"it must be, it’s a mess†) and that a fundamental restructuring is needed. He ignores evidence showing the Office has been operating at 120% capacity, using the original system, that he doesn’t like, and proceeds with his ideas without advising the Office staff of the potential for additional student enrolments or asking them for their views on how the Office might need to change to deal with this. At no point has he actually discussed his opinion of the Office with the staff, which might have averted the crisis that now exists. He even ignores the warning from his â€Å"expert† that the Head of Central Records would not be comfortable with the proposals, projecting his own preferences onto Fearne to justify his decision. Ignoring Roberts’ point, when it is made by someone wh o has been at the College for some time and therefore knows how things operate both formally and informally, is a major error of judgment on the part of Snook, who has only been in post for a matter of months. A Learning Organisation Perspective A learning organisation is one that â€Å"encourages and facilitates the learning and development of people at all levels of the organisation, values the learning and simultaneously transforms itself† (Mullins, 2010, p.827). Stacey (2010, p.99) looks at different approaches to strategy, stating that one belief is that â€Å"an organisation’s strategic development could be better understood as arising in processes of learning†. Organisations become what they are due to â€Å"the quality of their learning processes†, with organisational leaders required to â€Å"design learning processes and inspire effective learning† (ibid). Fearne would argue the learning experience for her and her team is one of how not t o manage change. Snook’s imposition of the change indicates he does not consider the College to be a learning organisation, nor does he consider the Office staff have any knowledge which could be useful to him in redesigning the Office systems. He also believes the staff do not need development, which could have happened had he involved the staff in the change process. Stacey (ibid) refers to Senge’

Lost and Found Essay Example for Free

Lost and Found Essay It’s a story that many people have lived through, from one side or the other. You’re a child in a busy department store, tethered to your mother’s side by her firm grip on your hand, your eyes constantly drawn left and right by the colorful displays. She lets go to grab something or talk to a salesperson, and you see an exciting toy or stuffed animal and run to it. After playing with it for a few minutes you try to walk back, but your mother is gone. First a wave of confusion hits you, but it is quickly overcome by dread. You are alone and lost in a sea of noise and people. When great philosophers or authors talk or write of being â€Å"lost† they can mean all sorts of things, but few are as visceral as the feeling of being lost that a child in a situation like that can experience. Even if there’s a good chance the child is in no danger at all, the feeling of dread that accompanies feeling alone and lost in a crowded department store can be terrifying. Most people will have their first feeling of being lost as being literally, physically lost as children, whether it is in a department store, or in a large park, or simply down the next street. It makes sense, then, to start defining what it means to be â€Å"lost† with the experience of a child. What about that deep, philosophical â€Å"lost,† though? When people say they feel lost (as opposed to being physically lost) they often are referring to alienation of some sort. One way that people address alienation that serves as a good comparison is religion. People who believe strongly in their religion will often feel like they are spiritually â€Å"in place.† On the other hand, if some tragedy or crisis of identity strikes, they might suddenly feel spiritually lost. The same dread that a child who can’t find his mother feels in the department store can be felt by an adult who experiences a tragic accident and loses their belief in their religion. These definitions of lost could apply five hundred years ago just as easily as they apply today. I believe, though, that every era has challenges that are unique to it, and the information age is no exception. The â€Å"information age† really is aptly named, because in today’s fast-paced world we are hit with more information than any humans have ever faced. As modern people, we are constantly inundated with a flood of information everywhere we turn. Magazines and newspapers and books and nutrition labels and billboards and television programs – they’re all feeding us new information every waking moment. All these mediums pale in comparison to the true information mother lode though: the internet. With computers, people gain access to the vast majority of the world’s information at their fingertips. With the increasing popularity of internet-connected smart phones and tablet computers, though, this information is not only at our fingertips but alwa ys at our fingertips. What does the internet have to do with alienation and being lost? The sensory overload that Wikipedia and Youtube provide can be great for keeping people entertained, but it can also be all too easy to get lost in. Many people know the feeling of logging onto a computer or smart phone with a single goal in mind – sending an email, perhaps, or checking the weather next week – and spending not five minutes but an hour and a half, as the myriad attractions of the digital age distract them. Just like the child in the department store, people can be drawn to the colorful displays of the internet, and realize only when it is too late that they are lost. So, then, we can define (at least) three different ways that people can be lost. There is the physical â€Å"lost† – not knowing where you are physically. There is also the spiritual â€Å"lost† – not feeling at peace with your own existence. Finally, there is the information age â€Å"lost† – being trapped, pinned beneath ever-growing piles of information that your mind will never have time to process all of. All three of these forms of being lost have something in common: they feel bad, but are actually ultimately helpful. Since it’s been established previously that being lost is connected to being alienated, it might seem contradictory that it is actually a good thing. After all, those feelings associated with being lost – hopelessness, dread, despondence – are all quite uncomfortable and even painful to feel. Nobody likes to feel like they don’t know where they are in life, like they are out of place. No child likes the feeling of separation from their loved ones. And certainly nobody likes to look up and realize they’ve just wasted three hours of their lives they’ll never get back watching funny videos about cats on the internet. Overall, all the emotions that being lost makes people feel are negative – but all the negativity serves a purpose. Without darkness, there’s no light, and without being lost, there’s no being found. There’s an old stereotype that people who are on a bad path in life will never be able to clean up their act until they hit the lowest possible point, and in a way getting lost can be like that. Realizing that they are lost can be the ultimate wake up call. It’s easy to demonstrate how getting lost once or twice in a physical way can help someone. Going back to the example of the child in the department store, what is most likely to happen is that the child will have a harmless scare for a while and then be re-united with its mother. While in the short-term both the child and its parents will be scared, in the long-term the child will hopefully learn not to stray far from its parents in an unfamiliar place. If the person getting physically lost is an adult instead of a child, they may learn the value of being more prepared (by bringing a map on a road trip, perhaps) or even the value of asking other people for directions. Spiritual periods of being lost can be similarly helpful to a person’s growth and development. Someone who’s faith has never been tested may continue to go on acting as they do while life is easy, but if things get harder they won’t know what to do. On the other hand, if someone experiences a tragedy or unexpected twist in their life their faith might be challenged and tested. Even though they may feel horribly lost during this period, they may emerge from it with a new, stronger faith in their beliefs. On the other hand, if they find their beliefs to be lacking, they may instead have new personal revelations and growth that will lead them to a belief system that they more truly support. Getting lost in the information age is less easy to define than the more traditional ways people get lost. In many cases, people embrace the information overload and dive right in. Every day, people’s jobs and education can require them to submerse themselves in the sea of information that is the internet. It is hard to say what the consequences of people being inundated with so much information will be. The easy access (and unavoidable flood) of information is a relatively new thing, that has only been around to this degree for at most a bit over a decade, so the implications have yet to be seen. What is it to be lost? There are at least a handful of answers to this question, but in the broadest terms possible, being lost is being alienated from one’s surroundings. Everybody gets lost from time to time in one way or another, and that will likely never change. Getting lost can be uncomfortable and scary, but getting lost is an important part of life. Through getting lost and then finding themselves again, people can grow and learn more about themselves and their surroundings. So what is it to be lost? To be lost is to be in a state of change: to be lost is to be down, but coming back up, to be in trouble but in hope of being found again.

Chapters 1- 6 of To Kill A Mockingbird :: To Kill a Mockingbird Essays

The first five chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird introduce the setting, atmosphere, theme, and many different characters, who have unique characteristics. The theme of prejudice is also developed in this introductory section. The Finch family and some of their neighbours are introduced as well, along with important elements such as the Radley house.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Radley house is an important element of mystery in the beginning chapters. As Scout was describing the setting, she described the mysterious house by saying, â€Å"The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end,† (Lee 6). Dill, who was from Meridian, Mississippi, was fascinated with the Radley house, and would stare at it for long periods of time. The house had darkened to the colour of the slate-gray yard around it. Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance on the front yard. Inside of the house, people said there lived a â€Å"malevolent phantom† named Boo Radley (Lee 8). He supposedly went out at night and peeped into other people’s windows. Scout also mentions, â€Å"When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them.† (Lee 9) Tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, from the Radley chicke nyard. However, the nuts would lay untouched by the children, as it was said that Radley pecans would kill anyone who ate them (Lee 9).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Different types of prejudice are evident in this chapter. For instance, Scout refers to Walter as a â€Å"Cunningham†, and this automatically places him in the poor class (Lee 20). Miss Caroline displays prejudice towards Scout because she can read. Scout is singled out after she reads to the class, and Miss Caroline accuses her of her father teaching her how to read (Lee 17). It seems as though more serious types and instances of prejudice will develop as the story progresses.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Atticus Finch is a respectable man and an example of his nature can be seen when Walter Cunningham is invited over to eat dinner. Atticus treated him with the same respect he would treat anyone else, even though Walter is poor (Lee 24). Another notable characteristic of Atticus is shown when he says to Scout, â€Å"We couldn’t operate a single day without Cal, have you ever thought of that? You think about how much Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?

Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction Essay

So emphatic is Melissa Fay Greene that Praying for Sheetrock is a work of nonfiction that she includes the phrase as a part of the title. Perhaps she feared that her use of novelistic techniques might lead the reader astray into believing that the stories she tells, the history she recounts, are imagined or distorted. Without resorting to journalese, she employs some of the reporter’s tricks to make her work more immediate: background stories, anecdotes of local color, repetition, and just enough narrative tension to push her tale forward. Consciously or subconsciously, she absorbs and uses to great effect some of the techniques Truman Capote developed for In Cold Blood (1966). She re-creates conversations without unnecessary asides and, more important, in the language she heard in McIntosh County. This skillful use of dialect establishes character in ways that expository description could not. Her own narrative voice is distinctive, assured, often poetic, as in her introduction to the place about which she writes: â€Å"McIntosh County, on the flowery coast of Georgia-small, isolated, lovely.† She never forgets that it is home to the men and women, black and white who help tell her story. She says, â€Å"If the Messiah were to arrive today, this cloudless, radiant county would be magnificent enough to receive Him.† Its beauty, however, is deceptive. The grinding poverty of its residents is all too real and ugly, and, until recently, the corruption so pervasive that the county’s name was synonymous in the state with good-old-boy political chicanery. For example, one of the effective ploys to keep the black citizenry in line was to allow them to plunder wrecked transport trucks on busy U.S. 17. From the aftermath of just such a wreck, the book gets its title, and for a people as dependent on miracles as on the economy to get by, God took on the epithet of â€Å"Sheetrock- Deliverer.† Finally one man, a disabled black boilermaker named Thurnell Alston, decided his community could no longer depend on the whims of God or the vagaries of white men for justice. The men and women of McIntosh County had lived so long under a time- honored, not always benevolent despotism that, at least on this local level, Alston was revolutionary in thinking that law could be impartial and that each man and woman deserved a voice in deciding how he or she would be governed. If  McIntosh County resembled a feudal realm, it was because the sheriff, Tom Poppell, had made himself lord and master, and under him certain whites and one or two chosen blacks as his nobles. Poor blacks and whites were, pure and simple, the serfs, destined to await the largesse of Sheriff Poppell and the other elec ted white officials. Yet, as the author describes the place, it was peaceful for the inhabitants, if not for the unlucky transients who stopped enroute to Florida: â€Å"For most of this century, there was a strange racial calm in the county, consisting in part of good manners, in part of intimidation, and in part because the Sheriff cared less about the colors black and white than he did about the color green, and the sound it made shuffled, dealt out and redealt, folded and pocketed beside the wrecked trucks and inside the local truckstop, prostitution houses, clip joints, and warehouse sheds after hours.† It was a place, then, where everyone knew what was going on and, in general, accepted it, a place where problems for the old were taken to the church and for the young to the juke joint. Greene emphasizes that special local circumstances, at least particularly Southern ones, dictated that â€Å"when angry groups of blacks and whites faced each other, everyone would know everyone else’s names and addresses, and know their mamas.† They would also all be armed to the teeth, a dangerous stalemate that ironically forestalled violence. The confrontation came when a white deputy, annoyed by the drunken bantering of courtship, shot a black man in the mouth and threw him in jail without medical attention. The black community, abuzz with the news, came together in protest, and the Civil Rights movement in McIntosh County was born. Its undisputed leader was Thurnell Alston, who along with Sammie Pinkney, a retired policeofficer, and Nathaniel Grovner, a preacher, brought the tactics of protest and confrontation to bear on a system of patronage controlled by Sheriff Poppell. He had actually employed black deputies and had â€Å"allowed† blacks to register to vote in the past. He depended on their voting in a bloc for his hand- picked candidates after 1966. Until that time, he manipulated the process so that no black man or woman could have been elected to the county commission, but he was a wily and astute politician who thought that he could control the shape of the inevitable  changes he saw elsewhere when they came to â€Å"his† county. In that year, his black candidate, a 78-year-old man, was elected to the commission so that federal minority participation guidelines were satisfied. Poppell guaranteed federal funding of county projects, and although he was never indicted for any crime, some of those funds are said to have lined his and his relatives’ pockets. Sheriff Poppell already had, therefore, a respected black churchman, Deacon Thorpe, on the commission, and when Thurnell Alston ran against him the year after the shooting, the at-large voters returned the sheriff’s yes-man to office. Once again, Poppell proved his clout. Among other things he controlled in the county was the selection of grand juries, and soon after the first election Alston lost, these white men exercised what they thought would be a routine bit of county business by appointing the brother of the county grand jury’s foreman to the county board of education. â€Å"And to create that opening, they displaced Chatham Jones, the only black member of the board of education. Thus, operating out of a system of patronage and nepotism, the all-white grand jury created in its own likeness the all-white school board to preside over the majority-black public schools.† The grand jury also had the responsibility of selecting trial juries, and in such fashion, the system took vengeance on blacks who had demonstrated a raw, as-yet undisciplined, power after the shooting. The black community organized, and its leaders contacted lawyers with the state’s legal-aid network, the Georgia Legal Services Program. These â€Å"young, upper-middle-class, mostly urban, mostly Yankee lawyers,† most of whom were white and nearly all of whom shared the messianic idealism of early 1970’s radicalism, were eager to help once they realized that enfranchised blacks-the county had roughly 44 percent of its blacks registered to vote-could effectively be cut out of local politics even when they constituted a majority of the population. With help from the legal-aid attorneys, the black community eventually won a series of suits that by 1979 stipulated a random, nondiscriminatory jury selection process and that divided Darien, the county seat, into two wards, one of which is majority black, and McIntosh County into four districts, two of which are majority black. To achieve these ends, the black community transformed itself into an activist, cohesive bloc not at all reluctant to use tactics of confrontation, including boycotts, that had been successful elsewhere. They had a charismatic leader in Thurnell Alston, who appeared to relish the challenge. He became the first independent black man, untethered to the Poppell political machine, to be elected to the county commission. Greene’s description of that long, hot election day in August, 1978, combines levity with suspense to emphasize the historic nature of the occasion. She says that the celebration that night, one she recounts in vivid, you-are-there prose, was over a principle, hardfought and won, â€Å"the principle that if a person is freezing to death in the winter, she shouldn’t have to pray for sheetrock. Municipal services ought to provide her with some. â€Å"Equally momentous for this backwater of Georgia-and, probably, Greene does not give it the weight it deserves in her chronology-was the opening of the final stretch of Interstate 95 through the county. Along U.S. 17, the no-tell motels, the clip joints, the gambling dens, the rough bars dried up from lack of business and went away, and, suddenly, it was less necessary, less profitable, to control county politics in order to assure that highway robbery remained legal. Or, as Greene puts it more poetically, â€Å"The old highway became a long, hot daydream of Florida.†Meanwhile, Alston annoyed his fellow commissioners by pushing a social program while they wrangled over attracting industry, paving roads, and promoting business. His accomplishments may appear small compared to changes elsewhere, but for the rural, isolated county, they were extraordinary. In his decade in office, ignoring, defying the sheriff at every turn, taking the issues to the public, he oversaw the creation of a hospital authority and a physician-staffed medical building deep in the county. He brought plumbing and water to settlements where people used outhouses and wells. He arranged for renovation assistance programs that aided homeowners in adding bathrooms to their cabins. He saw that a multipurpose building was built for the antebellum black community on Sapelo Island. He attracted a grant to build a mental facility out in the county. He did all these things without help or hindrance from the sheriff, who was too smart not to read the writing on the wall. Local politics in Georgia are notoriously byzantine in their good-old-boy machinations, and so in a peculiar twist of fate, Thurnell Alston, in his capacity as county commissioner, served as a pallbearer at Poppell’s funeral in 1979. It is fitting death-of-an-era symbolism, especially seen against the interstate’s eclipsing of commerce, legal and otherwise, along the busiest road through the county. Had the story ended here, Praying for Sheetrock would have been a compelling study of current events, one that could be universalized to what was happening across the South. Unfortunately, the story has a coda, one equally relevant to what is happening all across the country. Thurnell Alston and his wife, Rebecca, lost a child in a mindless accident. They drifted apart, and Alston became embittered, indifferent, and eventually, careless. A local spokesman against drugs, he was nevertheless nabbed in a sting operation and sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and for using a telephone to facilitate the sale of drugs. In spite of what some in the county saw as ultimate treason to his own people, Thurnell Alston had helped effect great changes in McIntosh County. In 1992, two members of the McIntosh county commission were black, the chairman, elected on an at-large basis, was white. Two members of Darien’s city council were black; the mayor, again elected at-large, was white. Half of the county’s deputy sheriffs were black, as was half of Darien’s police force. In 1989, two black women were elected in at-large countywide elections to positions as superintendent of schools and tax commissioner. Praying for Sheetrock, among other honors, was nominee for one of the National Book Awards. It is worthy of all the critical and popular praise it has received. Beautifully written, perfectly paced, and authentic in voice and action, the book is a model history, one less gifted writers will have  trouble emulating. Its greatest success is in dramatizing one small chapter of important, very human, history. McIntosh County’s people, for the most part, are still desperately poor, and in spite of the well-deserved attention stirred by this book, the county is still an economic wasteland. Yet its people, true to their traditions, still pray for help to a busy God. More practically, they have learned that they have the United States Constitution on their side as well. references Atlantic Journal Constitution. September 22, 1991, p. N8. Chicago Tribune. December 1, 1991, VI, p. 3. The Christian Science Monitor. December 2, 1991, p. 13. Commonweal. CXVIII, December 6, 1991, p. 722. Library Journal. CXVI, October 15, 1991, p. 106. Los Angeles Times Book Review. December 15, 1991, p. 1. The Nation. CCLIII, December 23, 1991, p. 821. The New York Times Book Review. XCVI, November 3, 1991, p. 7. Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVIII, August 16, 1991, p. 40. The Washington Post Book World. XXI, November 24, 1991, p. 3.