08 Oct Texas politics and government.

Texas Government

During this course, I hope that you will become more aware of the current political events going on in Texas and establish a better base of knowledge for understanding the politics of Texas. This assignment requires you to write a brief one-page double-spaced reaction paper to a particular current event dealing with Texas politics and government. You are free to choose any current event that interests you personally, just with the requirement that it must be clearly related to Texas government. You should find these current event articles through any reputable news source that you choose. If you have a concern or question on whether a particular article satisfies this requirement as a valid source, please feel free to ask. A few reputable news sources that you can consider (but certainly not the only ones) are:

The Texas Observer (texasobserver.org)

 • The Texas Tribune (texastribune.org)

• The Houston Chronicle (chron.com)

• Texas Monthly (texasmonthly.com)

• New York Times (nytimes.com/topic/destination/texas)

 • Huffington Post – Texas Politics (huffingtonpost.com/news/texas-politics)

 • National News organizations (CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox) also regularly cover Texas political news. *This syllabus provides a general plan for the course, deviations may occur. The paper will require more than simply re-describing the article, I want you to critically think about the information in the article and discuss the importance or significance it has for Texas government and politics. You are certainly allowed, in fact encouraged, to provide active voice, and include your own personal perspective on the current event, but I will require you to incorporate information that we have covered in this class into your reaction paper, where applicable. This is not intended to be a one-page political rant about a current event. You will need to do three major things in these papers. The first part of the paper will be a brief summary of the current event in your own words. Over reliance on direct quotes from the article will result in deduction. The second part of the paper will be your reaction, this can be a critique of the piece or event, or the significance of the event, simply your perspective on such. This is intended to be your thoughts, thus please use first person. The third component of your papers will be relating the current event to course material in some manner (i.e. where does this article fit into the course material – textbook chapter, discussion, film, etc.). Each of these are required in both papers. The format for the paper can be any writing style that you are familiar with (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.), however there are a few things that I will require. Papers will be written double-spaced in 12-pt Times New Roman font with 1” margins on all sides. Please note that these may not be the default settings on your word processor, but you will still be expected to change the formatting to these conditions. I will warn you, do not try to adjust these to make your paper longer, as it is obvious when the margins and font sizes are not correct. Also, papers do not need to have a massive header that takes up half a page, this does not count toward the length of the paper, so don’t try. Your name at the top will do just fine. Also, you will need to attach or provide a working link to the original article with your paper. You can put the link in your paper as a works cited or post the link into the comments box on the submission page. If you do not include a working URL link, a 10pt penalty will be assessed. These papers will be turned in through Blackboard under the ‘Assignments’ tab through ‘Dropbox’. I will note again, each of these will be screened through turnitin, and instances of plagiarism will be dealt with swiftly. You will see the two submission pages listed under Dropbox. These papers will account for 10% (5% each) of your final semester grade.