Emily Burnham '10

Day 16 and 17

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Day 16 and 17
The last two days at the Commission involved a collaboration of the work I had completed earlier in the block. I worked on organizing more cases, making tables of contents, mailing letters, writing up a cover letter to send to the Commissioners, checking voicemail, checking the mail, etc. However, I did get to see part of the complaint process I hadn’t gotten a chance to see yet. After someone files an intake form, an Investigator (in this case Michelle) sits down with them and asks them questions to better understand the case. I was able to sit in on one of these meetings. During the meeting, Michelle had me take notes, which I typed up later. The woman that we met with seemed pretty calm about the whole situation. Apparently, people usually become very emotional during these meetings. I was glad that I had the opportunity to sit in on one of these meetings before I was done with my internship. Overall, the internship was an amazing experience.

Day 14 and 15

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Day 14
This afternoon was probably my favorite afternoon at the Commission. The Commission hands out promotional items at different conferences/fairs. However, they are running low on supplies. Michelle told me to use my creativity and see what I could find for new promotional items. Of course, at the beginning I found the typical customized pens and pencils. However, after searching for a while, I found some really unique items. I asked Michelle what she thought about them, and I asked her what kind of budget we were looking at. She told me she really liked what I had found. Then she asked me to find some more and come up with slogans for some. One of my favorites was a fly swatter. I think something like that grabs your attention much more than a customized pen. My slogan for the fly swatter was “Squash out inequality.” I made a list of different items with the links to them and the slogans. I really enjoyed being able to use my creativity in this way. Some of the items I found were pretty ridiculous, and Michelle and I laughed quite a few times. It was nice to have a fun afternoon to end my third week at the Commission. As Michelle said, I will have left my legacy at the Commission. They could be using these promotional ideas for years to come.

Day 15
Because of my longer hours on Wednesday and the outside work I need to do for my internship, I didn’t go into the office today. Instead, I spent time working on my paper.

Days 11, 12, 13

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Day 11
Today I learned a new program called Teapots. This is the system housing cases are entered into in order to submit them to HUD, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Within the Teapots system, each case has different components. One of the components is investigation. Under this component there is a subsection called documents. This is the main section of Teapots that I worked with. However, another component, like investigation, is conciliation. I also worked with this component.

Day 12
Today I basically did the same thing as yesterday. I entered several housing cases into the Teapots system. At times this was interesting because I find the complaints and responses interesting to read. The cases I worked on brought a wide range of emotions with them. Some were really frustrating because they were such blatant examples of discrimination. Some were upsetting because of the harm someone had to endure. Some were almost funny because one or both of the parties were extremely ridiculous. Although the material in the cases kept me somewhat interested, the Teapots system is frustrating and tedious. It made for a very long day. There are so many specific things you have to find, and sometime I had no idea what document I was looking at. However, the more cases I completed, the more comfortable I became with the system. This unfortunately just made the process very repetitive and tedious.

Day 13
I got to be creative today. The Commission needed to put together an advertisement for fair housing. Michelle asked me if I wanted to try to put something together. She provided me with the information and some basic formatting things, and then I played around with it for a while until I thought it looked nice. Luckily, she thought it looked nice too. After I completed this project, I completed more secretarial work. There were two boxes of completed housing cases. Each case was in its own folder. However, the boxes were so full that people hadn’t been putting the cases in any order. I had to organize them in chronological order.

After I finished organizing the folders, it was time to go to the Commission meeting. I didn’t play such of an active role in the meeting, but it was nice to be able to see that side of the organization. I passed out some documents at the beginning of the meeting (that I had to copy earlier today). I also had to tell the Commission a little bit about myself. Otherwise, I listened to what the Commissioners discussed.

Days 8, 9, and 10

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Day 8
Today I got the chance to do some work on the paper Michelle and LaSheila are writing. I was on campus today, so I could have access to many databases from which I could do research. Michelle and LaSheila have already found several articles and included them into their paper. However, for some reason, they don’t have a copy of any of the articles. They had all of the journal information such as the name of the journal, volume, date, and page numbers, so today I got to work on my researching skills. Some of the journal articles were really easy to locate. However, I searched through several different databases before locating other articles. I was eventually able to locate almost all of them. I skimmed each article, so I have a better understanding about the sources they are using in their paper.

Day 9
When I arrived at the Commission, LaSheila had some more research she wanted me to do. I logged onto the library databases and found several articles and printed them out. These were more articles about housing discrimination that she needed for the paper they are writing. After I finished with that, I had a chance to interview LaSheila about her background and the Commission. It was really nice to be able to sit down and ask all of the questions that had been on my mind. It gave me a better understanding of the overall mission and process of the Commission. Because of her background in sociology, it was especially interesting to hear her view of the Commission and its mission. LaSheila also asked me to answer the phone and do some reading that is related to the housing discrimination paper. Several of the articles I read explained how to study housing discrimination in a certain area. The studies described in detail the process of paired testing. This method of testing is known as a legitimate way to test for housing discrimination. This is also the method the Commission used in order to conduct their research in Cedar Rapids.

Day 10
Today I worked on several little projects. The project that took the longest time was formatting a scanned document into Word format. The document was a Complainant’s rebuttal to the Respondent’s defense. It was 18 pages long and basically all text. Because of this, I had to read through every single line of the document to make sure it formatted correctly.

I also worked on several smaller projects. There was one binder that had too many documents to shut properly, so I had to find a bigger binder and transfer all of the documents. There were also some documents that needed to be returned to the proper spot in the binder. I also had to copy some documents and put the copies into a certain number of cases. I also checked voicemail messages and passed along the important information to the Investigators.

Day 6 and 7

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Day 6
Today I worked on a project similar to an earlier one, but it involved a slight twist. Last week, I organized several binders and made tables of contents for each. However, all of these cases were employment cases. When the Commission organizes housing discrimination cases, they have a completely different organization method. Because I’ve worked with a couple of these cases already, it wasn’t hard for me to figure out how to organize them, once Michelle gave me a list of the documents and the folders they go into. The hardest part of this project was printing the folder tabs. I took me a while to manipulate a table in Word that would print onto the sheet of tab labels. Of course technology caused the biggest problems. Organizing the housing binders is a very important job because these binders are sent to HUD after the case is complete. The binder is not just a reference for the Commission.

Day 7
I spent most of my day working on information ONE Respondent sent to the Commission. Because the Commission asked for additional information, the Respondent sent a couple hundred pages of additional information. I had to scan each document, format it into a Word document, and make sure there weren’t any errors in transferring the document. Any document that is a chart, picture, table, etc. cannot be transferred into a Word document. For each of these documents, I had to read through the document, find specific information (such as the date of the document), and summarize the document in three to five sentences. I only formatted some of the documents the Respondent sent, and it was over twenty pages, single spaced, in Word. It was a very tedious job, but I can understand why the Respondent sent so much information. They wanted to present as much information as possible to show that they had not discriminated against the Complainant.

Days 3, 4, and 5

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Day 3
Today was even better than the last two days. I started out the day by transferring some more documents from the scanned form to Word format. I spent most of the afternoon formatting findings. Both the Complainant and the Respondent in each case write a narrative explaining their position. The Commission turns each of these narratives into a section in the findings form, which is the form that contains the decision of each case. In order to put the narratives into this section, the narratives must be changed, so they read something like “The Complainant alleges discrimination” as opposed to reading “I believe I was discriminated against.” This project required me to read through the complaint and the response to the complainant. Sometimes there was also a rebuttal submitted. I had already seen most of these documents before, but I hadn’t seen all of the documents from one whole case put together. I was surprised by how different the two parties see the situation. Sometimes it seems as if they were involved in two completely different incidents.

Day 4
I spent this morning formatting findings like I did yesterday afternoon. I worked through two different cases. Although I didn’t think that each case would take very long, each ended up taking about an hour to format for the findings section. Today I was able to see the importance of my hard work. With each case, the Investigator includes the formatted narrative sections into their official decision. LaSheila edited the documents I gave her yesterday, and she provided a logical argument for her decision of the finding. After she finished this, she printed it out for me to proofread. I really appreciate that they try to keep me involved in the whole process, so I know exactly what is going on at all times. During the afternoon, I spent my time organizing several binders and making a table of contents for each. I organized one binder yesterday, but today I organized six. Each one varied a little bit from the last in regards to the documents that were part of the case.

Day 5
Even though today was the end of only my first week at the Commission, I feel like there are some tasks that I can complete efficiently without asking a lot of questions. I can now complete certain tasks much more quickly than I could when I started, and I have a better understanding of the importance of each task. I spent the entire morning today scanning documents and formatting them for the findings section of the case. I have now assisted with findings sections for discrimination in housing and employment, some of which were pretty straight forward and others which were much more complex.

Today I was trained on how to listen to voicemails and what to record from the voicemails. I then passed along the messages to Michelle and LaSheila. This is something I will start doing at the beginning of each day. After I passed along the messages, LaSheila scanned the list and picked out some numbers for me to call back. She explained to me what information I needed to gather from the callers if they wanted to file a complaint.

Days 1 and 2

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Day 1
The first day of my internship was a good introduction to the Civil Rights Commission and what they do. When I arrived at work, Michelle, my supervisor and one of the investigators at the Commission, taught me how to answer the phone and transfer the calls to the appropriate person. I got to sit at the front desk all morning while I was completing some reading, so she wanted me to answer the phone. This was actually really interesting because I got a glance at all of the different services the Commission provides. While I sat at the front desk, Michelle gave me some reading to expose me to the Commission and the process that occurs after someone files a compliant. Some of the reading was a little too complex for me to completely understand everything, but I now understand the basic process of filing a compliant and everything that happens after that.

One of the most important things I learned is that the Commission is a neutral party. The Commission does not represent the Complainant, but rather it looks at the facts and makes a finding of probable cause or no probable cause. After I finished the reading on the Commission, Michelle provided me with reading that was more related to the paper I will be helping with. The reading described how organizations, such as the Commission, can conduct tests to check for discrimination in areas such as the housing market. When the Commission presented its study to the Sociology department last year, I learned about the tests it conducted. After completing the reading, I could see where many of the Commission’s ideas came frrom.

In addition to the reading, Michelle had one other miscellaneous job for me. When a person files a complaint with the Commission, they fill out a sheet of paper. The Commission then types the information onto a formatted Word document. I was given a couple of complaints to transfer onto the computer. I was surprised to see that there were over a dozen different categories of discrimination including race, age, and sexual orientation among several others. I found this to be the most interesting part of the day because it was the most “hands-on.”

Day 2
The second day of my internship was filled with several different, random assignments. I started out by putting together a reference page. LaSheila, one of the investigators at the Commission, provided me with a sheet that explained the format I needed to use, ASA format. She also provided me with all the information I would need for each reference. I found that I really like using the ASA format. After I finished with the reference page, I was taught how to use the scanner. Luckily, it was a pretty standard scanner.

The largest part of my day was spent editing scanned documents. After the documents are scanned onto the computer, they can be transferred to a Word document. However, there are usually some transferring errors. Because of that, each document needs to be read through to correct what the scanner didn’t pick up or read wrong. The documents were the responses from the companies in regards to the discrimination complaints filed against them. Although editing isn’t necessarily the greatest job in the world, I actually found this to be really interesting. This exposed me to a wide variety of situations in which people are discriminated against. In addition, it provided me with an insight into the companies’ justification as to why the complaints should be dropped. I found some letters to be much more convincing than others.

My last assignment of the day was to organization a binder and make a table of contents. The binder essentially contained all of the documents that are sent out from or received by the Commission during one specific case. The Commission keeps copies of everything that is sent or received during each case. I was really surprised by the amount of documents that were involved in this. Every party involved in the case has to be notified as the case progresses, so a lot of paper work is involved. It was an interesting end to an interesting day.