Honors student Aiden Benoualid ’26 left Berry with an armful of awards: J. Wilson Mixon, Jr. Outstanding Senior Economics Award, Campbell School of Business Outstanding Student Award, G.D. Wilson and Doyle Mathis Awards in Political Science and the All SAA Sportsmanship Award. He’s just getting started. This fall, Aiden will attend Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, with an eye on corporate litigation or contract law. Aiden reflected on the college career that took him from The Silver State to The Peach State.
Why did you decide to play tennis for Berry?
I had grown up in the desert of Las Vegas my whole life, so I wanted to spend the next four years somewhere that had more greenery and seasonal changes. I reached out to the tennis coach, and he organized a visit for me and my dad. I immediately fell in love with the campus beauty, athletic facilities, and the welcoming students and faculty.
In addition to two law internships, you worked with Berry’s in-house counsel. You called it “an enlightening experience.” Why?
Danny Price is brutally honest in communicating the stresses, joys and difficulties of being a lawyer. Through his internship program, I was able to work closely with him on matters pertaining to the school and the student body. He also provided us with projects that simulate what a law school research project will look like.
Through a Kirbo Research Grant, you studied the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting’s economic effects on tourism. What did you learn?
While we expected to find that the shooting decreased tourism demand in Las Vegas, we ended up finding null results. We determined that the mass shooting had no effect on tourism levels in Las Vegas. While we found evidence of some short-term cancelations in the immediate aftermath of the event, there was no long term effect on Vegas tourism, and the city was able to rebound from the visitor safety threat very quickly.
This project would not have been possible without Dr. Alex Marsella’s guidance. He taught the synthetic difference-in-differences methodology, a cutting-edge causal inference technique. I was really excited to apply a method we learned in class to a real-world research problem.
