Before graduation, Dr. Joe Johnston sat down with Ben Gonzales, Sociology and Criminology Major, to look back at their Gonzaga journey, and look forward to what is next as they move into the world.
Dr. Joe Johnston: So Ben, why did you stick with sociology and criminology? Were there times where you doubted it or considered changing majors?
Ben Gonzales: I picked up criminology after my freshman year, it started out as my minor after taking Dr. Rodgers’s Criminology 101. I've always been interested in criminal law; I've had family members who had been involved in kind of the criminal civil service. I was just always really fascinated by the mechanization of power in our legal system. I just really liked the attention to the material effects on people's lives that Dr. Rodgers took in his introductory class, and I just wanted to learn more about how our systems of power affect people like that. So, I picked up the Criminology major, and that's what led me into taking sociology classes. I took Sociology 101 with Dr. Gow, and that really opened up my eyes to how our social structures are actually producing inequitable social outcomes and the constrained agency that individuals face in everyday life, and I just knew I wanted to learn more. I had my English major in the background, but I kept taking Criminology classes and then more Sociology classes from there. I kind of had enough SOCI and CRIM credits to finish both of them so I was like this makes sense, because I figured out that this is really what I wanted to spend most of my time doing, and so I just finished it out.
Joe: Wonderful. You spoke to this a little bit already, but what specific course or courses experiences, people, maybe assignments or projects do you want to remember from your Sociology and/or Criminology major, and why?
Ben: I think Research Group with Dr. Gow and Dr. DeLand was a really critical experience for me in developing an identity as a sociologist where I got to do my own research. I conducted an ethnography of the Logan neighborhood, specifically landlord tenant relations and how landlords police the deviance of tenants, but also how landlords interact with transient residents. I kind of compared those two, I did observations as well as interviews, and that was really interesting. We also took a trip to the Pacific Sociological Association, where I got to interact with other scholars and present my research but also attend paper presentations, and that really made me start thinking that maybe sociology was something that I wanted to do, or I wanted to be part of my professional life. Another key course for me would be Sociology of Health and Medicine with Dr. Bertotti. Both my parents are medical doctors, so I was raised with a lot of medical ideology that I just kind of accepted as natural. Unlearning those and recognizing them as social constructions was a really exciting experience to see how my worldview was shaped, and why it was shaped that way. And to learn about my parents' own experiences that they had in medical school, that was a really important course for me. Dr. Gow's Global Social Change was also really important for me in that I'd never really thought of development as a bad thing before, or the inequitable power relations that are involved in development, and how development postcoloniality has really kept intact the structures that were in place under formal political colonialism. That really excited me as something that I wanted to keep studying. Through Dr. Gow was where I learned about social reproduction and started thinking about that, and that really expanded my thinking to what needed to be done to redress these inequitable social structures. That leads me to this last class with Dr. Brower: Capitalism, Environmental Justice and Resistance, where I really started to get a good vocabulary and grasp on responding to the inequitable structures and austerity policies under our neoliberal social order that we're currently experiencing. But also, the hope that there are robust social movements that are militantly contesting our current status quo and envisioning a more humanistic future.
Joe: The scary question, what are you hoping to do in your post Gonzaga life? And how do you think sociology and or criminology will connect to those hopes?
Ben: So, I came into undergrad thinking I wanted to be a lawyer, hence the Criminology major. And over my college career, I've decided that I want to be a college professor or a law professor. I've been admitted to a master's in Sociology at the University of Chicago, and that's what I'll be doing next year. I haven't decided if I'm going to apply for joint JD PhD programs or just do a PhD in sociology. Right now, I'm leaning a little bit more towards just a PhD in sociology and letting myself off the hook a little bit. I still have a real fantasy of practicing law, but with the ideological constraints on the legal profession, I could not do that as my sole career. I think that I want to participate in opening up possibilities in people's worldviews, and I think that that does happen in teaching, so that's what I'm hoping to get into is teaching and research that helps reclaim possibilities for a more just society that is working for collective liberation.
Joe: Last question. What else would you like to share, if anything?
Ben: I think the only thing that I would say is don't be afraid to talk to your professors and invest in the relationships with your professors. Don't be afraid to take 18 credits and just really get the most out of your college experience. Because, I mean, there's so much to learn, and there's so many people to meet, and I think you just have to get the most out of it that you can.