OUR STUDENTS
GRADUATE: SADÉ LINDSAY Sadé Lindsay has persevered through trials few her age have ever known. While lining up for the procession into Ohio Stadium for graduation in 2015, Lindsay got a phone call. Her brother had been killed in a car accident. Within a month of starting her journey as a graduate student, her father lost his battle with cancer. Despite these tragic losses, Lindsay continues to prevail. Since her career as a graduate student began, she has been selected by the American Society of Criminology for a Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Racial and Ethnic Diversity and by Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences for its Graduate Student Award for Distinguished Service. Lindsay’s research on racial inequities in media coverage of the opioid and crack epidemics garnered her honorable mentions from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation. As judged by her faculty mentors and peers alike, Lindsay has tremendous potential to become a leading scholar in the field of criminology. A Columbus native, Lindsay attended Eastmoor Academy, where she excelled in academics and athletics; as a junior, she was selected to The Columbus Dispatch All-League Girls Basketball team. Her discipline and determination earned her an academic scholarship to Ohio State, which worked out just fine for the avid Buckeye fan. “I have an extreme love for all things Buckeyes,” she said. “My mom went to Ohio State, and growing up in Columbus, you’re all about Buckeye pride.” As an undergraduate, Lindsay discovered her passion for criminology when she took a criminal justice course taught by senior lecturer Deborah Wilson. “I loved the course,” said Lindsay. “I loved learning about legal cases, and my instructor was so inspiring that I started taking as many sociology classes as I could.” Lindsay eventually switched her major to criminology and began formulating ideas for a series of research projects, one of which would become her master’s thesis. When she graduated with her BA in criminology, the opioid epidemic was just beginning to emerge onto the public scene. Lindsay had been following the news as the crisis unfolded and began to question whether race played a role in how the media and public responded 8 | DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
