2024-2025 Writing Showcase Texts

“I don’t know how else to reach you”: 

ACT UP and the Transformation of Emotion into Individual Action 

Part One: “NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL!” 

    The flyer instructed interested protesters to gather at Trinity Church in New York City at 7 a.m on March 24, 1987. 7 a.m. was early for a protest, but the time was chosen to produce maximum disruption to the start of the trading day on Wall Street. This was going to be an AIDS demonstration, and the flyer outlined seven key demands, most centered around the accessibility and affordability of essential AIDS-related drug treatments. Demands also reflected the broader interests of the protesters: an end to housing and employment discrimination for those with AIDS, as well as “a coordinated, comprehensive, and compassionate national policy on AIDS.” The flyer concluded with the urgent imperative: “AIDS IS EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS NOW.”  (“List of Demands”) 250 protesters showed up at Trinity Church to participate in this protest, many blocking traffic by laying their bodies down in the streets. Others held signs and restricted pedestrian traffic, chanting things like “We are angry! We want action!” or “Release the drugs!” Seventeen protesters were arrested, but the action worked. The Food and Drug Administration shortened its drug approval process for AIDS treatments shortly after the protest. (Davis)  

    This was the first public action coordinated by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.  The organization’s origins are traced to a fiery speech delivered on March 10, 1987 by playwright and activist Larry Kramer to New York’s LGBT Community Center, in which he called for the formation of a new group to address federal blocks on potentially life-saving drugs. Two days later, over 300 people met to form ACT UP and organize what would become their first direct action protest at Trinity Church. (ACT UP) The mission they adopted was a mighty one: address the inadequate federal response to the AIDS epidemic, put a stop to the mounting number of lives lost to the epidemic, and ensure that those living with AIDS lived lives of dignity. Designed with grassroots activism, decentralized leadership, and the utilization of direct action and civil disobedience at its core, ACT UP did more than just change drug policy during the AIDS era. As Alisa Solomon observed in The Nation’s “Larry Kramer’s Righteous Rage,” the queer men and women, many with backgrounds in radical activist organizing, “built ACT UP into an international, scrappy, horizontal movement that won health care, housing, insurance, and other rights for people with AIDS and that forever changed how medications are developed.” (Solomon) ACT UP achieved these sweeping changes through an unconventional alchemy; they centered the individual as a source of power, then turned individual grief, rage and shame into collective action. 

    “SILENCE = DEATH,” the most iconic image associated with ACT UP, was one expression of this alchemy. Designed in 1987 by Avram Finkelstein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás as part of their SILENCE = DEATH Project, the image was reimagined in 1987 in collaboration with the newly-formed ACT UP and adopted as ACT UP’s central imagery. (“SILENCE = DEATH”) It became one of the most durable images of the AIDS era. While the poster’s use of the pink triangle and bold “SILENCE = DEATH” typography are the most referenced elements, the image also contains additional text which speaks to ACT UP’s ethos: 

“Why is Regan silent about AIDS? What is really going at the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable… Use your power… Vote… Boycott… Defend yourselves… Turn anger, fear, grief into action!” (“SILENCE = DEATH”) 

    ACT UP founder Larry Kramer’s “30,000 and Counting… Taking Responsibility for Our Lives” is another demonstration of ACT UP’s ethos. Originally delivered at a 1987 Boston Pride event, “30,000 and Counting” was then printed in full in August 1987 as part of Coming Up!, the gay and lesbian newspaper of the Bay Area. “30,000 and Counting” is a callback to Kramer’s 1981 New York Native piece “1112 and Counting,” an early influential call to action during the first days of the AIDS crisis, and the rage and righteous purpose that fueled Kramer in 1981 was still present in 1987. “We have little to be proud of this Gay Pride Week,” the piece begins. “One by one we are being picked off by the enemy. They are killing us.” (Kramer 6) “30,000 and Counting” is an example of how ACT UP focused on individual power by employing unconventional emotions – rage, grief – in their messages.  

    The ACT UP New Member Welcome Packet, still available in digital form on the archived ACT UP website from the 1980s, demonstrates how the public face and message of the organization was also employed internally. From its first sentences - “You are a member of ACT UP. You became a member by showing up at an ACT UP general meeting, committee meeting, or an action.” – the packet focuses on the importance of the individual and their power to make change. (“New Members Packet”) The packet includes the format of ACT UP meetings, guides to creating actions and “zaps,” and lists of chants that could be used during actions. All of the materials in the New Members Packet empower members to use their skills to make change. “There is a great deal to do in the fight to end the AIDS crisis,” the welcome states. “It is up to you to decide where you fit into that fight.” (“New Members Packet”)  

    ACT UP preserves its focus on individual power and emotion transformation in its more contemporary work as well. In 2003, two early members of ACT UP, Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, created the ACT UP Oral History Project, a video archive of past ACT UP members sharing stories of their time in the organization. The Project tells the story of ACT UP in its own words, and it serves as both an archive of the past and an instruction manual for contemporary and future activists. In a note on the Project’s website, Schulman articulates not only what’s at the heart of the Project, but what was also at the heart of ACT UP: “Here we are. Here’s what we did. Here’s how. Here’s why. In our own words.” (Schulman, “ACT UP Oral History Project”) 

    These four texts, spanning different genres and different time periods in the life of ACT UP, are windows into what made ACT UP such a unique feature in the landscape of AIDS activism. At the center of everything in the ACT UP universe were two things: the individual and the emotion that fueled them. Through their imagery, their messaging, their organization and their history-telling, ACT UP harnessed the incredible power of those two things and used that power to change the world.  

PART TWO: “Use your power…” 

    “SILENCE = DEATH,” visually and textually, both champions the power of the individual and transforms the individual’s emotion into action. Visually, the image is strikingly simple: a pink triangle centered on a black background. The pink triangle, however, carries deep emotional and historical resonances; it was used during the 1930s and 1940s by the Nazis to “mark” queer prisoners in the concentration camps. Its use in any context stirs a number of volatile emotions – fear, anger, horror – but the use of the pink triangle in the context of AIDS goes further. It becomes a provocation to elicit outrage or offense by drawing a line from the atrocities of the Nazis to the treatment of queer American citizens by the United States government. Emotion, particularly turbulent and disruptive emotion, is the goal. For queer Americans, particularly those directly touched by government inaction on AIDS and the growing number of the dead, the provocation could also move in the other direction. This equation of “America = Nazis” wasn’t offensive, but empowering. It acknowledged what it felt like to be rendered invisible and expendable by your own government. The provocation was a call to action. In all cases, the visual language of “SILENCE = DEATH” is meant to disrupt, to evoke emotions. 

    That “SILENCE = DEATH” was designed as a poster further accomplishes this double work. Unlike other visual works like paintings or fine art photography, posters are meant to be both widely reproduced and hung in common, public spaces. The fact that “SILENCE = DEATH” might be encountered anywhere – a community billboard, a telephone pole, a wall of wheatpasted bills, your child’s bedroom wall – helps it work as a provocation, a disruption. The poster could find you wherever you are – unlike “art” only accessible in museums – and work on your emotions. It also center’s the individual’s power. “SILENCE = DEATH” could be placed anywhere by anyone. Its easy reproducibility made it an accessible action tool anyone in ACT UP could use.  

    The poster’s main text, “SILENCE = DEATH,” is as effective in its simplicity as the poster’s central imagery, evoking strong emotions and working as a provocation. The two additional lines of text, however, serve as a kind of instruction manual to the viewer roused by emotion to action, and it’s here where we see ACT UP’s focus on individual power. The first of the two lines identifies the targets of action: “Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? What is really going on at the Centers for Disease Control, the federal Drug Administration and the Vatican?” The second shapes the weapon – the individual viewer. “Gays and lesbians are not expendable… Use your power…,” the text insists, “Vote…Boycott…Defend yourselves… Turn anger, fear, grief into action.” (“SILENCE = DEATH”)  Emotion without action is just reaction. ACT UP aimed to turn collective fear, grief, and rage into a renewable energy source for change, and that was only possible if individuals understood their own capacity for action.  

    “30,000 and Counting” achieves similar effects through different tactics. Larry Kramer was known as a provocateur across his many professional identities. As a playwright, a novelist, an activist and organizer, Kramer used rage as a frontline tool. We can see his use of rage as a rhetorical device in “30,000 and Counting”: 

“How many of you need to die or become infected before you feel you can take action on why every single branch of government in charge of AIDS, both local and federal, is dragging its ass? What’s the number at which you can decide to stop just sitting there quietly like the good little boys and girls we were all brought up to be — and start taking rude, noisy, offensive political action?” (Kramer 6) 

    Confrontational language, insults, and vulgarity are all part of Kramer’s rhetorical toolbox, used in an effort to rouse people to action. Kramer addresses this tactic directly in the piece: “If I use gross, revolting language — go ahead, be offended — I don’t know how else to reach you, how to reach everybody.” (Kramer 8) This mirrors the rhetorical tactics of “SILENCE = DEATH,” demanding action through confrontation, provocation. It is also a continuation of ACT UP’s foundational connection between emotion and action: Get mad, get moving.  

    Kramer is also focused on the power of the individual. Throughout the piece, Kramer uses direct questions – “What does it take to get you off your asses?” or “How long are you prepared to wait for these systems to work?” – to frame his arguments not as “Big Ideas,” but as a one-on-one conversation with the reader. (Kramer, 7) The intimacy of that approach is a rhetorical choice aimed at sparking the fire of action in the reader: 

“Your voice is your power! Your collective voices! Your group power! Your political power! …Your bodies are your power, your living bodies all strung together in one long line that reaches across this country and could reach to the moon if we only let it.” (Kramer 6) 

    For Kramer, power comes from the individual, and collective power is only effective when it is understood as the power of a collection of individuals. You amass power one individual, one body at a time. 

    Genre is also at work in “30,000 and Counting,” embodying ACT UP goals. In an opening note to the piece, readers are told the text was originally delivered as a speech at a Boston Pride event in summer 1987. Reprinting the text as delivered, instead of revising or reshaping it as an article or essay, maintains the emotional energy of Kramer’s words and preserves the immediacy, the one-on-one directness, of a speech. Reprinting it in Coming Up!, a Bay Area gay and lesbian newspaper and events listing, also echoes ACT UP’s penchant for provocation and disruption; this fiery, angry, accusatory text confronts gay and lesbian readers looking for local news or the date and time of a local event. It fits squarely in the broader tactics of ACT UP.  

    These two cornerstone values of ACT UP weren’t just outwardly-expressed. They were built into the fabric of the organization itself. The ACT UP New Members Packet, a group of documents new members received upon joining, embodied their belief in individual power and in the value of emotions. In the “Monday Night Meetings” section, which detailed what to expect at ACT UP weekly meetings, the unconventional structure and its outcomes are made clear: 

“ACT UP felt there was a need to make every member a leader,  rather than having a few members holding the power… The membership in attendance every week at Monday Night meetings, the floor, has the final say on all of the organization’s business. Because of this, the meetings can run very long and become heated and emotional…Just remember that we run things this way because we care about what you have to say.” (New Members Packet) 

    The Packet also includes a section on “Actions and Zaps,” a brief introduction to ACT UP’s direct action. The zaps in particular show ACT UP’s intertwined belief in emotion and individual power. Zaps are direct action projects that can be launched immediately, by individuals, and they “are a method for ACT UP members to register their disapproval of and anger toward the zap target.” (New Members Packet) This is in line with everything ACT UP believed and expressed: your individual anger matters, and it can be transformed into action and change.  

    To embed these values in an information packet for new members, ACT UP was using genre to achieve their goals. From the start, any new member was armed with everything they needed to know to participate fully in the organization’s work and in its decision-making.  It also included tools for taking action on one’s own – instructions on zaps, chants to use at demonstrations. Throughout the packet, there was an insistent reminder that the individual matters, the individual is guiding the ship. In the opening welcome of the packet, it’s reinforced that the “you” reading these words held all the power: “There is a great deal to do in the fight to end the AIDS crisis. It is up to you to decide where you fit into that fight and how much time you have to commit. Your skills and experiences are valuable in the fight against AIDS.” (New Members Packet) 

    While the bulk of ACT UP’s work took place in the late 1980s and 1990s, the organization continues AIDS advocacy today. The work looks different now – for example, ACT UP engaged in direct action work during the COVID crisis – but their core values and approaches remain the same. One example of this is the ACT UP Oral History Project, a video-based archive of interviews with ACT UP members detailing the history and work of the organization. The archive, created in the early 2000s, embodies both core values of ACT UP, turning emotion into action and the power of the individual, in this more contemporary format.  

    Individuals who visit the online archive can use a searchable list of subjects, including “ACT UP Graphics,” “Fundraising,” “Death and Dying,” and “Women and AIDS,” to find interviews in the archive matching their specific interests. Each section contains a number of individual interviews with ACT UP members touching on that subject. An individual interview page consists of a full video interview with the subject, a short clip selected from the interview, a list of other topics the interview is included in, and a link to a transcript of the full interview. The excerpts often pull particularly affecting stories; for example, on the page for Russell Pritchard, the interview clip shares Pritchard’s account of a fellow member and friend’s death – “He actually went into toxic shock and died on our flight home,” Pritchard recounts in the clip. (Oral History Project)  

    The archive continues ACT UP’s focus on the individual. Videos contain single interviewees, and they are sharing their individual stories. No editorialization accompanies individual stories. The focus is squarely on one person’s experience, memory, and feelings about their time in ACT UP. The archive is also individual-focused for the site’s visitor, as well. The viewer decides what subjects matter to them, and the viewer decides what interviews are worth watching. The archive makes ACT UP’s history and work a sort of “choose-your-own-adventure” experience, which is very much in line with ACT UP’s history. The archive also embodies ACT UP’s focus on harnessing emotion. Stories like Russell Pitchard’s memory of his friend’s death, serve as reminders of the brutality and pain of the early years of AIDS, and they serve as provocations for investment in action today.   

    Genre also matters greatly here. With its long history, ACT UP needed to meet changing cultural expectations and technologies in order to meet individuals where they were. The ACT UP of the early 2000s needed more than posters or leaflets in a technology-heavy, video-heavy world. This digital archive provides the media experience contemporary users are accustomed to – webpages, screens, video – and it exploits the visual and user-interface language of the internet to give individuals a tailored experience with what ACT UP was, is, and deeply believes.  

    Across four different texts, as well as different time periods, ACT UP articulated two consistent messages in their work to end government inaction on AIDS: you have the power to make change happen, and your emotion is the key to unlock your individual power. ACT UP took individual emotions, individual passions, and individual bodies, and shaped a battering ram that slammed into – and eventually overcame – a “business as usual” government ignoring the mounting deaths of hundreds of thousands of citizens.  

Part Three: “... this miraculous fact: I am still alive.” 

    The tactics of ACT UP, while ultimately successful in transforming the reality of living with AIDS, were not always praised or embraced. In 1990, a New York Times published and article about the impact of ACT UP called “Rude, Rash, and Effective, ACT UP Shifts AIDS Policy.” It focused on critical voices both within and without the organization decrying ACT UP’s aggressive utilization of emotion. Of particular focus was ACT UP’s action on St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which the Times notes was “deplored” by the Mayor and Governor, and was called by another queer organization’s leader “stupid and wrongheaded.” (DeParle) The rudeness and the rashness, however, as the Times had to concede, was essential to ACT UP’s effectiveness.  

    In “Life During Wartime: Emotions and the Development of Act Up,” Deborah Gould, herself a former ACT UP member, connects the focus on disruptive emotions to a core need in engaging queer communities to action. Gould identifies what she calls “ambivalence” in queer citizens, “simultaneous self-love and self-doubt, along with attraction toward and repulsion from dominant society,” that must be overcome in order to jumpstart queer activist action. (Gould 179) Strong emotions like anger, fear, and grief, Gould argues, are effective tools in overcoming that ambivalence. In Gould’s assessment, ACT UP’s persistence in not subsuming powerful emotions like grief, fear and anger, but instead authorizing them, making them acceptable, was the engine that transformed not only AIDS activism, but the queer community itself: 

“I would posit that ACT UP’s emotion work succeeded because it effectively altered how lesbians, gay men, and other queers were actually feeling. … ACT UP’s repeated emotional expressions elevated one of these emotions—anger—and submerged the others; reiterated over time and in the context of the growing AIDS crisis and government inaction, ACT UP’s grief/anger/action nexus became commonsensical to many lesbians and gay men.”          (Gould 183) 

    That transformation of community is another of ACT UP’s legacies. In “Comedy as Cure for Tragedy: ACT UP and the Rhetoric of AIDS,” Adrienne Christiansen and Jeremy Hanson observe that ACT UP wasn’t just changing the public perception of the AIDS crisis. It was shifting perceptions of the queer community itself. “ACT UP's rhetorical strategies debunk the tragic frame that would position gay men as victims of immoral acts or as sacrifices that symbolically purify society,” they write. “The group reframes the AIDS crisis in comic, realistic, humane, and pragmatic terms.” (Christiansen and Larsen 158) While ACT UP was facilitating a transformation of fear, anger, and grief into action, they were also facilitating a transformation from shame to pride, from scapegoat to warrior, within the queer people in the organization. As ACT UP focused on transforming individuals, their work was transforming the divided society around them. As Christiansen and Larson note, “Although they took every opportunity to shatter society's indifference about AIDS by disrupting business as usual, ACT UP's political efforts ultimately were directed toward social reconciliation rather than social rupture.” (Christiansen and Larson 166) In Gould’s consideration, this radical shift in how the queer community understood itself and how it understood its relationship to society ushered in our contemporary understanding of “queer” identity: “This new identity—weaving together the new emotional common sense, oppositional politics, and sex-radicalism—offered a powerful response to lesbian and gay ambivalence about self and society, helping to generate broad appeal for street AIDS activism.” (Gould 189) 

    In “30,000 and Counting,” Larry Kramer distills ACT UP’s approach to social protest and change with: 

“I am still alive. I must put back something into this world for my own life, which is worth a tremendous amount. By not putting back, you are saying that your lives are worth shit — that we deserve to die, and that the deaths of all our friends and lovers have amounted to nothing. I can’t believe in your heart of hearts you feel this way. I can’t believe you want to die. Do you?” (Kramer 8) 

    In this moment of vulnerability, we see both the belief that rage, fear, and grief can be tools for radical change and the unfailing faith in the power of the individual to create that radical change. Whether it was a poster, a newspaper article, a new member welcome packet, or a digital archive of its history, ACT UP held to those two beliefs, and in doing so, made sure that every life touched or ended by the AIDS epidemic was remembered, honored, and mattered. 

WORKS CITED 

ACT UP. “ACT UP Accomplishments and Partial Chronology | ACT UP NY.” ACT UP, 2024, actupny.com/actions/. 

“ACT UP Oral History Project.” ACT UP Oral History Project, www.actuporalhistory.org/. Accessed 1 April 2025. 

Christiansen, Adrienne E., and Jeremy J. Hanson. “Comedy as Cure for Tragedy: Act up and the Rhetoric of Aids.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 82, no. 2, May 1996, pp. 157–170, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335639609384148. 

Davis, Amanda. “ACT UP Demonstrations on Wall Street.” NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, Mar. 2017, www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/act-up-demonstration-at-the-new-york-stock-exchange/. 

Deparle, Jason. “Rude, Rash, Effective, Act-up Shifts AIDS Policy.” The New York Times, 3 Jan. 1990, www.nytimes.com/1990/01/03/nyregion/rude-rash-effective-act-up-shifts-aids-policy.html. 

Gould, Deborah. “Life during Wartime: Emotions and the Development of Act Up.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 2, 1 June 2002, pp. 177–200, https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.7.2.8u264427k88vl764. 

Kramer, Larry. “30,000 Lives and Counting: Taking Responsibility for Our Lives.” Coming Up!. Aug. 1987. pp. 6-8. 

“SILENCE=DEATH.” Brooklyn Museum, 2017, www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/159258. 

Solomon, Alisa. “Larry Kramer’s Righteous Rage.” The Nation, 4 June 2020, www.thenation.com/article/culture/larry-kramer-obit/. 

“The ACT UP Historical Archive: ACT UP 1987 Wall Street Action - List of Demands.” Actupny.org, 24 Mar. 1987, actupny.org/documents/1stFlyer.html. 

“The ACT UP Historical Archive: ACT UP New Members Packet.” Actupny.org, actupny.org/documents/newmem.html. Accessed 1 April 2025. 

How Supporting Student Workers Fosters Student Metacognitive Strategies; A Deep Dive in The Content Review Program Discourse Community

    The Medical Sciences Baccalaureate program at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine is made up of bright undergraduate individuals who are trying to find a pathway into the healthcare field. The blooming interest of the young generation is fostered in a field of study that students can choose in the hopes of setting them up for success in their future careers. More commonly known as “MedSci,” the major/minor program embodies what society is familiar with when it comes to describing a “pre-med” track. Through its selective admission process and rigorous expectations, this program consists of students from across the country and is set up under the guidance of renowned doctors who have dedicated their lives to advancing the field of medicine and medical education. The future of medicine is built up on the understanding and education that students attain during their younger years, building a strong foundation for the preparation of their academic endeavors such as taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), going to medical school, and serving their communities through the medical industry. This progression in time also incorporates factors like the advancement of technology – One of the biggest emerging sectors in society today is Artificial Intelligence (AI); a machine simulating the complex cognitive abilities of humans such as problem solving, learning, and reasoning with just a click of button or the typing of a couple of words.

    Created in 2012, the Medical Sciences program at the University of Cincinnati has been accredited to a high success rate despite the academic challenges that brings. Professors of this course treat undergraduates as if they are students in medical school, challenging them with bodily and scientific processes that may be quite difficult to understand at first gaze—this ensures that students are prepared for the perseverance necessary to be successful at higher levels, creating avid learners and motivated mindsets. The directors and faculty for this program all have based their education around medicine and work to instill similar knowledge into aspiring healthcare workers. To create a future that can withstand the world of medicine, they have implemented certain rules regarding the usage of Artificial Intelligence in their classrooms, many professors have restricted the submission of work that has been created by these technologies, but that does not mean that they are completely against the use of this emerging technology, nor that students are limiting their usage of AI to further their education. 

    The community that this program consists of includes a variety of people from backgrounds ranging from attaining a high school diploma to a PhD, all working together to either create or be the future of medicine. They have a set of goals to reach and a list of expectations to meet, either stated or automatically understood by its members and experts through modes of communication that are specific to them. The different criteria that the group can encompass, classifies them as a discourse community as studied by multiple researchers such as James Paul Gee, John M. Swales and Ann M. Johns (1986, 2000, 2011, respectively). This type of group is one that has “goals or purposes and use communication to achieve their goals” as identified by renowned linguist, John Swales in his work, “The Concept of Discourse Community” and “Reflections on the Concept of Discourse Community.” The Medical Sciences Undergraduate major from the University of Cincinnati thus meets the criteria emphasized by Swales for being a discourse community in the following ways: 

• Criterion One: A set of common goals – This community aims to create a pathway for students, who are prospective healthcare professionals, gaining an acceptance into medical school and/or finding the higher-up education that is beneficial to their intended career. 

• Criterion Two: Methods of intercommunication – A biweekly newsletter is published to highlight the successes of the program along with providing students and faculty with important information. Also, the syllabi posted by each faculty member includes the emails, important opportunities, and a series of expectations that are to be clearly followed. There is also a website dedicated to the program that lists different contacts to take note of, identifying a clear method of sharing resources along with other information. 

• Criterion Three: Participation and feedback – Members (both students and faculty) have the chance to take part in surveys at the end of each semester, assessing the successes of the class and the information that was taught so that future planning of curriculum is better tailored towards a more in-depth understanding for the benefit of students. 

• Criterion Four: Genres – The community has a series of presentations that are provided to students to display the different expectations that are placed onto them, along with the syllabus of each class, highlighting the different sectors of being a part of the program such as: academics (GPA, the grade scale, etc.), the use of Artificial Intelligence, and the campus resources available (Title IX, religious accommodations policy, counseling services, etc.). Additionally, many of the MedSci classes are recorded for students to go back to look upon to further their understanding towards a topic. Resources such as study videos and notes are published to a course’s Canvas page, accessible to both faculty and students. 

• Criterion Five: Lexis – Members use acronyms in their daily speech that may perplex those who are not a part of the community. Just to name a few, “UCCOM” stands for UC College of Medicine, “MCAT” is the common entrance exam for medical school (the Medical College Admission Test), “WIN” is the acronym that stands for “what’s important now” to allow students dealing with high stress to take a step back and reevaluate their mindset, and finally, “SURF” is short for the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships that many MedSci students try to gain acceptance through to gain experience for their resumes. Members also acquire specific vocabulary knowledge such as “shadowing,” “experiential learning,” and “clinicals” – all of which are pathways that students can access through the program.

• Criterion Six: Expertise – Each MedSci class is under a professor with a doctorate, who not only teaches MedSci courses, but also is a member of the College of Medicine faculty. These individuals are certified to educate both the upcoming generations along with those who are in medical school, allowing there to be more experience to give to undergraduates in showcasing the amount of rigor necessary to get through future education. There is a director who oversees the distribution of students and courses, along with two advisors and a staff member who has the connections to create success for the students in the form of experiential learning. Each first-year student receives a mentor that is in their second undergraduate year with the Medical Sciences program along with a mentor that is an M1 in UC’s College of Medicine. These two mentors are present with the first-year students as they make their way through their undergraduate careers, allowing for there to be more resources available for success and a greater sense of establishment. The program itself has been accredited to be 11th in the nation for preparing students for future schooling and careers such as medical school, dental school, osteopathic medicine, and beyond (“Concept,” 24-27).

• Criterion Seven: Silential relations – It is understood that the mentors in this discourse community have a set of high expectations from students that are not directly mentioned in a syllabus or a rubric when it comes to their overall understanding and presentation of coursework. The professors will also display important information (attendance codes, bodily diagrams, biochemical pathways, etc.) on the screen and it is expected of students to be aware that this information is required to know without a prompt. Additionally, there is a sense of unspoken trust between the professors and students when it comes to the use of AI – educators will have the standard rules regarding this technology’s usage in the classroom but will not strictly enforce unless there is reason to do so/if the students abuse the code of conduct.

• Criterion Eight: Horizons of expectation – Students are expected to stick to the fundamental values of learning and take the extra step to go outside of their comfort zone to understand the highly challenging material presented. Professors are aware of the high-level thinking skills to master a medicine-related topic and are pushing students to help them understand how the real world will be outside of an educational setting. Members are expected to put their best foot forward to not only achieve success for themselves, but also for the future of the undergraduate program. Students should understand that they will gain what they put into the program through hard work and perseverance when it comes to attaining success (“Reflections,” 9).

    The dedication to surmounting academic hurdles and accepting the rigor associated with the great expectations coincides with the shift seen in medical settings nationwide. This occurs in the way that students must prepare for the classes and professionals must prepare for their job; not just through reading the coursework/documents but also acclimating to the different disciplines and challenges that are brought up—AI being one of those topics. 

     “Interested premeds have more access now than ever before to learn AI,” says Dr. Justin Nordan, a graduate from Stanford’s School of Medicine (qtd. in Rizal paragraph 13). He chose to take a less sought out route by majoring in Computer Science, fulfilling his pre-med requisites when he was able to, quickly realizing that the field of technology was changing faster than medicine was and many people just were not ready for it due to there being a lack of background regarding innovation in devices and systems. Students today hold the power of the future at their fingertips and that comes from the introduction of a variety of technologies into the market over the last decade. Although many people are hesitant towards the use of these technologies in day-to-day life, Dr. Nordon is an enthusiast for the use of Artificial Intelligence. He notices the emerging sector in our world and thinks that it should be taken advantage of. In fact, he encourages students to take the first step and learn all about computer science for them to gain a more holistic education regardless of their pre-med title (Rizal paragraph 10). Additionally, Dr. Leana Wen remarks about how AI is already being assimilated into patient care for assessing conditions that people come in with to make the process more efficient in a recent interview with CNN (Hetter paragraph 17). In addition to their positive viewpoints, a study was conducted to assess the familiarity with Artificial Intelligence among patients who were receiving care from young doctors (those who are avidly acclimatized to the use of these technologies), and over 53% thought that the use of AI in the healthcare field is constructive (Fritsch paragraph 3). The discourse communities that these individuals reside in are uplifted using Artificial Intelligence and are getting enculturated with its use in daily life as the technology is getting positive responses throughout many different areas of the medical field. This process of enculturation has become something that has made the use of AI rather common among communities as it allows for members to quickly learn about topics that they might not be well educated in along with facilitating communicative strategies (through email or even face-to-face communication), both of which are severely crucial to work in the rapid-paced healthcare field where many variables play a role.

    With such great feedback from both highly accomplished individuals and the public, what issue lies within the evolution of Artificial Intelligence? 

    For many educators specifically, it is the principle behind the use of this rapidly growing technology. Through the further development of this program, many students are using it to enhance their education and learning, but the issue comes from the misuse of the advancing technology. Prospective medical students may be using AI to get through the material that is being taught and not applying themselves to come to a complete understanding of the concepts that are being presented to them. This causes there to be a sense of disagreement between the values of academic honesty that reside within the discourse community and its members. This conflict includes the fact that professors and students can have clashing ideas on the extent to which AI should be used and what it should be used for. Due to this imbalance of opinions, arguments can be sparked between group members and lead to mistrust among individuals when there is just a lack of communication between the understanding of AI use that members can submit compared to the understanding that the experts of that community wish to see. From this conflict, it can be generalized that the use of Artificial Intelligence is making it more difficult for prospective members to get enculturated into discourse communities that do not support the technology as these people will automatically be looked down upon due to their differing values as explained in Elizabeth Wardle’s work, “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces,” where the main character, Alan, is shunned from being welcomed into the workplace group due to his actions that do not align with the established practices of the workplace discourse community (Wardle 418).  

    Knowledge of the dramatic increase in the use of AI by a student to either aid them in understanding material or providing them with the answers necessary to complete a task is nothing new. Software such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini have emerged and developed at a rapid pace, making it rather easy for students to cruise their way through different parts of their education. Many universities have started studying the impact of AI immersion into students’ learning and how it can be both beneficial and/or detrimental. Sharon Stoeger from Rutgers University shared her perspective as an avid educator, commenting on the fact that with the rapid changes occurring with the job market, the usage of AI in the classroom setting is making it more difficult for teachers to prepare students for the future as there is so much unknown regarding the future of the job market (Rutgers paragraph 4). This uncertainty of job security in the medical field comes from a variety of factors like shifting towards a managed-care system that focuses on quick appointments seeing patients and an increase in computer work (like charting, billing, etc.), along with the technological implementations of robots and/or Artificial Intelligence into sectors like surgery. Educators who have background in the field of medicine are watching these events unfold in front of their eyes and start to question the benefits of AI when it seems as though it is taking over the market. 

    Although Artificial Intelligence is a tool that can support the learning of students, teachers are not appreciating how their curriculum is completely being broken down by this technology for students to easily use. Stoeger claims that in the next decade, robots can be taking over the industry, replacing manual labor, and that what makes it so difficult to prepare for (Rutgers paragraph 20). Several other professionals have shared their opinions on how AI has created a negative impact onto student’s learnings: John Onofrey, a senior author and professor at Yale’s College of Medicine explains how the use of AI, both in and out of the healthcare field is detrimental due to the bias that humans bring to it – he highlights how humans are feeding knowledge to these machines for them to be able to spew back out exactly what you want to see on the screen and that is not morally correct when it comes to the interpretation of data or overall understanding (Miliard paragraph 11). 

    These opinions have been considered, especially as teachers and professors crack down the restrictions when it comes to using Artificial Intelligence in the classroom because many see it as students taking the easy way out of learning (Habib paragraph 7). However, this differs in the Med-Sci community. What has not been highlighted are the viewpoints of the students and professors of this discourse community which can showcase some “unpopular” opinions. While there has been a clear establishment of the misuse of AI causing a strong lean towards opposing this technology, the beliefs of the Med-Sci program using AI firsthand has not yet been explored in a public setting. Further understanding of this AI usage can demonstrate how the discourse community is able to deal with the implementation of a technology that is not accepted by everyone, further providing information on if the community is able to deal with the pressure from the rapidly pressured use of Artificial Intelligence. Through the characterization of AI usage amongst these intuitive individuals and gaining an understanding of their opinions on their own education, one will be able to conclude the true effects of this type of machine learning and how it not only impacts the Medical Sciences program at the University of Cincinnati but also discourse communities overall.

    The research being conducted focuses on a particular overachieving group who is expected to keep their understanding of material at a certain pinnacle. The students of MedSci at the University of Cincinnati are the future of medicine with an array of resources at their fingertips. It can be argued that the use of AI allows that these students get more deeply enculturated into the program because using this technology allows them to gain a deeper understanding of material, showcasing that they truly are intelligent and deserve to have a place in this competitive group. However, some may take this perspective to be faking one’s way through the academic grind that Med-Sci places onto students just so that these undergraduates feel accepted into a community. This work tries to clarify the perspective of students and professors, and how they see AI affecting both their current enculturation into the highly competitive program, along with their futures as they navigate the challenging material that is thrown at them while balancing their academics. The findings observed contradict the opinions of the professional educators outside of the University of Cincinnati mentioned before and allow audiences to gain a new perspective onto how these rapidly changing technologies can be positively uplifting to education compared to the stigma around it. 

    In my research, I first assessed the different readings that have been provided throughout the Intermediate Composition 2089 course from the authors James Paul Gee, John M. Swales, and Ann M. Johns (1986, 2000, respectively) regarding the concepts of a discourse community to demonstrate how this program aligns with those ideas and explained the areas that I hope to study to help the audience gain a sense of my perspective on the purpose behind this research. Next, I conducted research through the form of in-person interview questions, encasing the different students who are a part of the Medical Sciences Program to understand their beliefs on the extent to which AI impacts their learning and how they use it. A total of 30 students were interviewed and their answers were recorded anonymously so that they would not be penalized for admitting to using AI; however I have created pseudonyms for a select few individuals to discuss the results of my research. I also interviewed the director of the Medical Sciences Program, Dr. Kevin Haworth, who provided me with the insight from a figure in authority. Through these interviews, I was able to obtain their thoughts on the influence of AI across this field of study to gain a scope of understanding from a perspective that is specific to the discourse community. The interviewing of students and faculty across the program allows there to be a refreshing eyeopener to the negative stigma placed on the use of Artificial Intelligence in our progressing educational sector and demonstrates how members and experts of a discourse community can work together to come to a consensus about challenges that are highly debated. 

    The results of these personal interviews demonstrated the different ways that Artificial Intelligence is being used to enhance learning. On contrary to popular belief, many students who are a part of the Medical Sciences Program do not use this software to be lazy when completing assignments. “I only use AI like twice a week when I am doing chem homework and I don’t know the process of steps to get to the answer,” says Kaitlyn Moore (pseudonym of interviewee). Several Med-Sci students like Moore believe that Artificial Intelligence is more of a genuine helping hand compared to a crutch to rely on (Moore 2025). 

    Additionally, many say that using AI helps them to understand material better for exams – Livie Foreman (pseudonym of interviewee) explains that many teachers overcomplicate the material being taught; “I asked ChatGPT to explain redox reactions to me in the terms of the Gilmore Girls the night before the exam and I swear I understood it more in those thirty minutes than I had since we learned about them!” (Foreman 2025). Due to the amount of information pre-meds need to know while preparing to take the MCAT, professors tend to go at a faster pace to cover everything that needs to be taught and this is what leads students to getting lost in the material that they are learning. Resorting to AI for them is like using the resources that are so readily available; instead of hindering their education, it is enhancing their ability to understand challenging concepts when they find learning from their current resources to be challenging. When asked the question about their future use of Artificial Intelligence, students were firm in their stance. For example, when interviewed, Joseph Greendale (pseudonym of interviewee) voices that he does not believe AI is going to go away, so one might as well use it in order to achieve their goals: “Technology is just going to keep getting smarter the more that it’s around, so if you can’t beat it, you might as well join it,” (Greendale 2025). This viewpoint is becoming the standard amongst many pre-med students as the requirements for becoming a physician become more challenging and there needs to be a way to balance the material being taught and the amount of it that is truly being understood by the minds of prospective doctors. 

    Along with the positive critiques of AI use from students, even staff members are providing optimistic opinions regarding integrating these programs into their lesson plans. The director of the Med-Sci program, Dr. Kevin Haworth comments that he uses Artificial Intelligence almost daily when it comes to completing monotonous tasks such as summarizing meetings and quickly learning about topics that he does not have a strong background on. He believes that it is a tool that can be beneficial if used properly. Dr. Haworth brings up the point that these technologies have already been integrated into some Med-Sci courses, depicting how the enculturation of AI is already occurring; for example, MEDS3023C is a statistics-based class where Artificial Intelligence is used to analyze medical statistics and assess the data. He is punctual when stating that the technology can be detrimental to the overall learning students if the overuse of the resource takes place within most of the discourse community yet is hopeful in claiming that many skills acquired by the Med-Sci program (like critical thinking and memorization) comes from lessons that AI cannot provide (Haworth 2025).

    The opinion on the use of Artificial Intelligence is one that varies across every sector of this discourse community – doctors working front lines believe AI to be some sort of beacon of light when it comes to patient care as it can make treatment options more efficient. Similarly, many students back up this opinion as they claim that it can teach them better than some of the professors they have encountered. However, if educators from this community disagree with these positive impacts of technology as they see it to be hindering the minds of the youth then this causes there to be discrepancy between members of the group. Regardless of the opinion around Artificial Intelligence, one thing is certain; AI has made its way into this discourse community and the main members (almost 400 students and 50 faculty members) have enculturated its use into their lives for what they have deemed to be beneficial to their learning. The ability to blend learning with the use of technology is something that aligns with the development of this discourse community as they seek out to positively impact the field of medicine. 

    The Medical Sciences Baccalaureate program at the University of Cincinnati has demonstrated its qualifications to meet the criteria for being a discourse community as it brings together faculty/professionals and students together with the common goal of gaining the education necessary to become a physician. John Swales’ key points for a discourse community highlight criteria such as sharing common goals, having specific methods of communication, and a form of specialized language, all of which the Med-Sci program embodies to prepare students for a career in the healthcare system. Despite the opposing arguments of the undermining of the education process using AI, the thoughts shared by the students specifically in the discourse community showcase the opposite idea. Instead of using this technology as a shortcut, students find it to be a necessary tool, useful to use to uphold the expectations of the demanding program and professors are also finding a way to incorporate its use into their teachings so that there does not have to be such restrictive measures against students. The integration of AI into the academic careers of students reflects a form of advancement in education; one that does not seem to be slowing down as it is helping students realize the importance of adapting to difficult situations to gain success. Essentially, the students of Med-Sci showcase the methodical use of technology while upholding the rigor of the program to support both the overarching goals of the undergraduate initiative and the growing description of a discourse community; a group where innovation, learning, and passion come together to create the future of medicine and technology. The Medical Sciences discourse community is challenged when it comes to the presence of Artificial Intelligence in its ability to prepare students for the challenging material that comes with medical school, but the acceptance of this usage is becoming less of an issue as the group opens its arms to welcoming the new technologies that are making up our world, demonstrating growth; a key component of a strong community of individuals. This study regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Medical Sciences program highlights how the group took a subjectively complicated issue (that had the possibility of splitting the community up) and created a positive outlook from it, benefiting or satisfying all the subgroups involved. It is important to note that this is how a successful discourse community should deal with challenges that come up – they must find a way to compromise without shaking away their strongly rooted values for the sake of satisfying the members within the community. As mentioned before, AI is not something that can forcefully be restricted from the users of the internet today due to its everlasting impact on society. With this in mind, it is important to understand how Artificial Intelligence can be incorporated at different levels into discourse communities overall in order to uplift and/or support their values to gain success instead of being something that holds them back from reaching their full potentials.   

Works Cited

Foreman, Livie. Personal Interview. 09 April 2025.

Fritsch, Sebastian J, et al. “Attitudes and Perception of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: A Cross-Sectional Survey among Patients.” PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 8 Aug. 2022. 

Gee, James Paul. “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction.” Journal of Education, vol 171, no.1, 1986, pp. 5-17.

Greendale, Jospeh. Personal Interview. 09 April 2025. 

Habib, Sabrina. “AI Can Help − and Hurt − Student Creativity.” University of South Carolina, 2024. 

Haworth, Kevin. Personal Interview. 12 April 2025.

Hetter, Katia. “Doctor Explains How Artificial Intelligence Is Already Being Deployed in Medical Care.” CNN, Cable News Network, 27 Mar. 2025.

Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity.” Writing about Writing: A College Reader by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, pp.499-518.

Miliard, Mike. “Yale Study Shows How AI Bias Worsens Healthcare Disparities.” Healthcare IT News, 25 Nov. 2024. 

Moore, Kaitlyn. Personal Interview. 09 April 2025.

Rizal, Rachel. “Artificial Intelligence and Health Care: What Premeds Should Know | Medical School Admissions Doctor | U.S. News.” U.S. News, 2022.

Rutgers University. “How Is Artificial Intelligence Impacting Higher Education?” School of Communication and Information | Rutgers University, 28 Feb. 2024.

Swales, John M. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge 

University Press, 2000.

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Wardle, Elizabeth. “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces.” Writing about Writing: A College Reader, 3rd ed. By Elizabeth Wardle and Dough Downs. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2020, pp. 408-424.