Assignment:
Each student will attend some sort of an open public (government or non-profit) meeting, held during Spring Semester 2018, that deals with some sort of issue related to public policy (for purposes of assignment, I will interpret the term "public policy" very broadly - essentially, "public policy" means some sort of action on behalf of government). It does not matter to me if you attend a federal, state, or local (or even a non-profit) meeting. For example, you could attend a hearing at the state capitol, a community council meeting, a city council meeting, a county council meeting, a meeting of a state or federal administrative agency, or any other public meeting that involves government action. After attending the meeting, the student will then write an analysis of the meeting focusing on the processes of either formulating or implementing public policy which were observed by the student during the meeting. Within this analysis you should include a detailed description of what happened at the meeting (including the date of the meeting), what were the public policy-related issues discussed, who spoke, and any other pertinent information. In your discussion of the policy-related issues discussed at this meeting, please identify any particular controversy or controversies surrounding the policy-related issues being discussed. The student should then compare his or her speculation about what the meeting would be like to what actually happened. Did you think the meeting was useful? Did the meeting resolve any issues? How many people attended the meeting? What did you learn from attending this meeting? If you were in charge, what would you change if anything about how the meeting was conducted? Finally (and perhaps most importantly), can you apply anything you have learned in this class (from our course text and discussion postings, in other words) to what you observed while attending this meeting (this section of your essay should be at least two pages in length, and must contain at least two citations to our course text)?
Your essay must be between 4-6 pages in length, be double-spaced with standard (1-inch) margins and 12-point Times New Roman font