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Hawai‘i Pacific Å·ÃÀAƬ held an engaging Launch Party in November 2023 for the newest edition of featuring provocative presentations by some of the published student authors. Five young authors, Tucker Pellicci, Allyza Pineda, Cassandra Walti, Princess Pascua, and Kate Hurlbut, presented their papers to an audience of students and faculty. Mr. Pellicci discussed the dangers of hedge fund schemes within the stock market, particularly addressing issues related to the GameStop stock market predicament a few years back. Ms. Pineda shared her analysis of American tip culture, along with possible solutions towards the growing problems within the tipping industry. Ms. Walti discussed the negative and positive impacts of living in a military family and getting restationed every couple of years, particularly focusing on how this affects children of military personnel. Ms. Pascua researched and responded to socio-medical, scientific, and ethical problems within Big Pharma, along with promoting her own possible solutions for making medication easier to obtain for everybody, especially the ones who need it most but may not be able to afford it. Ms. Hurlbut discussed her findings on the advancement of further research into rare diseases, with specific attention paid to corticobasal degeneration and other more common diseases that are closely related to that rare disease.

Each author’s paper brought about a great deal of discussion with the lively audience, and many conclusions were suggested from different perspectives. It was such a delight to have so many voices heard and opinions debated and supported through each author’s topic. The event was a great example of how, even with very different views and backgrounds, people can come together to build on an idea and create solutions towards growing problems.

Fresh Perspectives is an online published journal and editing and publishing course (WRI 3930, an available part of HPU’s Editing and Publishing minor, Writing Minor, and the English major). The journal allows first-year authors to showcase their impressive essays and have them not only heard by an audience but published in an academic journal. This publication is a great opportunity and allows these students to have an academic resume advantage. The course provides student editors an opportunity to experience first-hand how the academic editing process works and how students’ papers can be transformed into professional academic articles. Dr. David Falgout, faculty editor and course instructor, believes that “Fresh Perspectives is a unique and important publication for incoming HPU students, especially because it only publishes the essays of first-year students. This focus on first-year writing is rare at most universities, especially in Hawai‘i, for both the student writers and editors.” Writing professors nominate student essays for publication, and the student editors enrolled in the course select and prepare the essays for publication.