POLITICS OF PRIVATE LIFE

FALL AND WINTER QUARTERS

1998-99

This course was designed for people who were:
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ planning to work in social or health services, orÝ education.
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ interested in law and public policy.
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ concerned with protecting your own particular rights.
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Fall quarter. we explored family and household issues:

ÝÝÝ Can I control the way my child is educated?

ÝÝÝ Can I decide how many people live in my house, and what they do there?

ÝÝÝ Do I have true freedom of religious practice?

ÝÝÝ What are the limits that states can impose on marriage and divorce?

ÝÝÝ How do we as a community deal with domestic violence?

ÝÝÝÝÝÝ Winter quarter, we worked on how we treat our bodies:

ÝÝ Do I, the insurance company or the government

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ decide what health care I get?

ÝÝ Who decides what foods and beverages I can eat or drink?

ÝÝ What/who decides when and how humans can reproduce?

ÝÝ Can a child drink alcohol in a church service?

ÝÝ Can I participate in the athletic activity of my choice?

We looked at ways the community, through its legislatures, its courts, and its professional practices, controls what we imagiune to be private choices. Our focus was highly topical. We were examiningWashington State and Federal legislative debates, recent state and federal court cases, and the community regulation, the police, the schools, the clinics and the hospitals.

We went through series of skills workshops in which students learned the basic video, audio and computer graphics tools available at this college.

We spent two evenings on field trips. The first entailed a walk along Olympia's 4th Avenue looking its many examples of citizen "action projects." The second took us on an extended tour of the Thurston County Jail and the Lacey Police Department. We ended the year doing the ropes "challenge" course at the college.
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Our readings and projects over the two quarters

Each student also undertook an individual or group research project in which the task was to determine the best route to carry out a community action project of their own chosing which related in some way to program themes.

RELEVANT INTERNET LINKS

We spent a good deal of time using the internet as a research source. You will find project-specific links on the project pages. On this page we have listed a few key links which apply to program themes as a whole.

ÝUnited States Constitution

ÝFood and Drug Administration

American Civil Liberties Union

Findlaw: A Multifaceted Legal Search Engine

FERPA: a federal law which protects the privacy of student records
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