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Fall 2006 Newsletter
Spring 2006 Newsletter
Fall 2005 Newsletter
Spring 2005 Newsletter
Winter 2004 Newsletter
Fall 2004 Newsletter
Spring 2004 Newsletter
Winter 2003 Newsletter
Fall 2003 Newsletter
Spring 2003 Newsletter

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WSSA Student Paper Competition

Win $500, a free one-year subscription to the Social Science Journal, free conference registration at the April 2008 WSSA conference in Denver, Colorado, and the opportunity to present your paper at the WSSA 2008 Conference. Download Flyer.

How to Win
If your paper on a social science topic is judged to be the best of the submissions for your class level, you win. Undergraduate and graduate papers are evaluated separately thus there is a winner for each level.

Papers are judged based on a) advancement of knowledge, b) appropriateness for a broad social science audience, c) quality and implementation of research design, d) definition and significance of topic, e) analysis of findings and discussion of their implications and f) clarity of writing.

Paper Requirements

Papers must be received on or before February 1, 2008. Please clearly indicate undergraduate or graduate status, institutional affiliation, address, phone number and e-mail address. Send an e-mail copy (Word or rich text) or three hard copies to:

Jack Hou
Dept. of Economics
California State U.
Long Beach, CA 90840-4607
TEL: (562) 985-4710
E-mail: jackhou@csulb.edu

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Issues in Women's Studies

A Special Issue of The Social Science Journal (vol. 44, no. 1, 2007) contains a special collection of articles on Issues in Women's Studies edited by Susan Barger Green and Priscilla Smith. Articles in this special collection:

Feminist thought in transition: Never a dull moment, pages 23-39 by Rosemarie Tong

American women and the lingering implications of coverture, pages 41-55 by Joan Hoff

Women's rights and the Constitution, pages 57-66 by Judith A. Baer

How far does the gender gap extend?: Decision making on state Supreme Courts in Fourth Amendment Cases, 1980–2000, pages 67-82 by Madhavi McCall and Michael A. McCall

Equality of recruitment: Gender parity in French National Assembly elections, pages 83-90 by Priscilla L. Southwell and Courtney P. Smith

Ethnic and gender differences in attitudes toward driving, pages 91-97 by Jacqueline Bergdahl

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Publisher's Exhibit

The Annual Conference of the Western Social Science Assocation includes a book exhibit specially organized by the LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE (LSS). LSS seeks your input to assist in developing a comprehensive collection of titles encompassing the full range of topics in the social sciences and related disciplines. The book exhibit will bring together recent and significant titles, and contribute substantially to the excitement and intellectual value of our conference.

If you are an AUTHOR and wish to have your book included in the display, or if you wish to recommend titles for inclusion in the exhibit, please please respond by e-mail to MeiHaChan@cs.com or fax to 413-832-8145. Please be sure to include your own name, telephone number and e-mail address with the information that you submit.

Bargain Hotel Rooms Hurt WSSA

Larry A. Gould, WSSA Executive Director
As you begin to make your plans to attend the annual meeting of the Western Social Science Association we ask that you consider the following. As you make your hotel reservations, it is no doubt tempting to use online travel websites and discount travel companies that promise big savings in room rates. The possibility of securing lower room rates appears to be fiscally responsible; however, booking discounted rooms can actually hurt WSSA and could eventually lead to much higher conference costs.

This is an important issue for any organization that holds a conference and I have read similar articles in other places such as the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Newsletter and in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Ron Lieber, “Hotel Discounts That Are No Bargain” (Aug 6, 2003).

What most attendees don’t understand is that the room block reserved for their event is a trade-off for renting the event space for breakout meetings. We use twenty-five such rooms at each of our annual meetings. In other words, we get the breakout space at no charge to the Association, IF we fill the number of guest rooms described in the contract with the hotel. If we do not fill the guestrooms we pay a penalty. This is a standard in the hotel industry.

When attendees stay at other hotels both the Association and the hotel suffer and when the attendees book rooms at the conference hotel through a discount service the Association suffers. Not only does this make it difficult for us to book hotels for future years, it can cost us in terms of huge penalties for not meeting our room quota. When an attendee books a room through a discount service at the conference hotel and the discounted price is lower than the conference rate WSSA does not get the much needed credit for that room.

Conference site hotels and some conference organizations are already beginning to charge attendees a higher registration if they don’t stay at the conference hotel. Also, many hotels have barred non-guests from using the shuttles and other hotel services provided for their registered guests.

It is important that the majority of attendees register as guests at the conference hotel, otherwise WSSA meetings can be seriously impact by the increased financial burden.

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