POL1010 Political and Social Issue term paper

POL 1010: American Government

College of Southern

Political and Social Issue

Term Paper

Guidelines

For the issue paper assignment, students are going to choose a current event issue and analyze the issue by responding to the following questions/guidelines:

A. What is the issue- provide background information about the topic you are addressing (e.g. if I was writing about campaign finance reform I might begin with talking about Citizens United,the background of the case, previous Supreme Court decisions or legislation that mattered to this issue and what has happened good and bad from that decision). The background portion should be written in a non-biased way. You will just be telling me what the issue is- not your opinion on it. If a subject is extremely controversial you should fairly address the arguments of both sides. This should be the majority of your paper.

B. Polling and Opinion – You will need to provide information on how people feel about the issue. This can be obtain in one creating a survey or using secondary data (polling information from credible sources).

C. What is your opinion- tell me what you think about this issue (e.g. I agree or disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision because…). This is the section that you will address your opinion on this issue. This must be at least 1 paragraph long but can be longer.

D. Projections for the future (e.g. policy changes that still need to take place in the area of campaign finance reform, how to solve the problems brought about by Citizens United, etc.). This must be at least 1 paragraph long but can be longer.

Papers must be a minimum of 3 and a maximum 6 pages. Students are required to used a minimum of three sources. APA (American Psychological Association) manual of style will be used for all in-text citation and listing of references (See APA Citation link in MyLearning).