Loyola University Chicago School of Communication faculty members met to discuss how the unit could address issues of social justice more purposefully in the classroom. The members decided that each year they would vote on a theme to highlight across all disciplines to establish a larger, and more powerful method of communicating about social justice. Our first theme for the 2016-2017 school year was gun violence.

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We are living in a culture where there is strong opposition to sensible gun laws, yet nearly every day in Chicago, another young person’s life has been forever altered or taken by gun violence.  Given our location, it would be useful to shed an academic light on the families of persons affected and the policies that enable easy access to weapons—legal and illegal.  Chicago has also experienced a bit of infamy along with many other cities in the U.S. over possible excessive use of force between police officers and community members.  We live in a country that is unique in its constitutional protections for gun owners, yet the same protections do not at this time seem to be afforded to victims of gun violence gathering places like churches, movie theatres and shopping malls.

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The articles published here represent work by students in the Fall 2016 Data Mining and Visualization course. This 300-level special topic course provided students the opportunity to go in-depth on the data surrounding these complex issues and to visualize them in a compelling way.