Who must write the essay?
What form must the essay take?
How long must these "brief" essays be?
What is the topic for analysis?
How do you narrow the topic?
How do you develop a question for the narrowed topic?
What format/style must you use?
Where do you get your information?
How do you submit your work in this paperless course?
When is it due?

Who must write the essay?

As stated in the course syllabus, the essay requirement will be waived in the case of students who consistently write very good to excellent critical comments and responses and who maintain acceptable participation in the online seminars. Students who are not granted the waiver and must therefore write the essay, will be so notified in Week 9. These instructions provide specifics about the essay writng requirement.
 

What form must the essay take?

Actually, you will be writing two very brief essays--one "Yes" and one "No"--on a narrow question.  As with the seminar topics, your question should have a plausible “yes” and a plausible “no” answer.  It will make your task impossible if you try to work with a broad, general question or with one that clearly has only one plausible answer, in your judgment.  Your task is to develop a question and write a brief essay that answers the question in the affirmative and a brief essay that answers the question in the negative.  You should be able to support both answers with persuasive arguments.
 

How long must these "brief" essays be?

The combined length of the two essays must be about 6 pages.  This means that your "Yes" and "No" essays each will be about 3 pages (excluding the title page and the endnotes).  

What is the topic for analysis? 

You should choose a topic that is not covered in seminar (as the central question).  The topic must be a question about a problem or controversy that the American body politic is currently struggling with. 

Here are some topics on which you might develop a question: 

a) Fraud in the accounting practices of major corporations
b) United Way funding for the Boy Scouts, which bars gays from its membership
c) Deregulation of the electrical industry and the electric power crisis
e) Protection of endangered species
f) Use of taxes for vouchers that pay for education in private schools
h) Abortion
i) Globalization
j) AIDS crisis in less developed countries
k) Sex and violence on television
l) Distance learning
m) US dependence on foreign oil/oil exploration in ANWAR
n) Fixing Social Security through private retirement accounts
o) Tax limitation through public initiatives
p) Desecration of the U.S. flag
q) Voting and election reform
r) Global Warming
s) World Court for trying war crimes and crimes against humanity
t) Reproduction and “designer” babies
u) Native American sovereignty
v) Wealth gap between the "haves" and "have nots"
w) Landmines
x) Discrimination and obesity
y) Bankruptcy in America
z) Interracial adoption
aa) US presence in Iraq
bb) Bush administration policies on the environment
cc) Secrecy in government
dd) Incarceration and deportation of undocumented aliens
ee) Genetic modification and food

If you decide on a topic not listed above, you may want to check with Jose just to make sure that it is a viable topic.
 

How do you narrow the topic? 

The topics listed above are intentionally broad in order to give you as much latitude as possible to develop the question you want to write about.  Your first task is to narrow the topic as much as possible so that it will be appropriate for a short essay.  For example, let's say that you are interested in writing about political reform that is necessary to restore citizens' trust in government.  Clearly that topic is monstrously broad, broad enough for at least 50 tomes!  So, you would think hard about some kind of political reform that you want to write about.  "Aha!" you say, "term limits!"  You have identified a topic that is appropriate for a brief essay, but you are not finished.  It is still too broad.  Go on to the next step. 
 

How do you develop a question for the narrowed topic?

Here, again, you have great latitude to choose the question you want, but your question must be appropriately narrow for a short essay.  In most cases, you will be able to develop your question by merely asking something about the narrow topic you have identified.  However, you should ask your question in such a manner that it can be answered as either "yes" or "no."  If your question does not lend itself to such an answer, restate it.  Questions that begin with Who, What, Where, When, Why or How are all inappropriate.  The question must begin with a "helping" verb: Will... Do... Does... Should... Would... Is... Has... Have...?

Consider again the question:  "Should the Number of Congressional Terms Be Limited?"  Clearly, that question can be answered "yes" or "no" and is appropriately narrow for 12-page essays.  However, it is too broad for our short essays.  That means that we must think of some sub-question under that broader one.  "Aha!" you say, "a more productive Congress!"  You have identified a question that is appropriate for a brief essay: "Would a Limit on Congressional Terms Make Congress More Productive?"  You can see that there can be many, many appropriately narrow questions.  If you find that you can answer the questions in a short paragraph, you probably have narrowed your question too much.  Too narrow a topic is seldom a problem for short essays, but when it is, it is the opposite problem from a topic or question that is too broad. 

Different topics are narrowed in different ways.  Some lend themselves to easy narrowing.  Some seemingly can't be narrowed enough to do justice in a brief essay.  If you find that to be the case, analyze one major issue of contention within the narrow topic/question.  Probably you will then be surprised to find that you can re-write your question even more narrowly to fit that major issue of contention.  You can then write your yes/no essays.  “Reducing violence through gun control” can be narrowed, for example, through an analysis of what the term “violence” encompasses, from gang banging to gun accidents. 
 

What format/style must you use?

In our readings you have encountered a variety of formats and styles.  Some are congressional testimony by politicians or political advocacy organizations.  Some are written by think tanks on the right and on the left.  Some are written by journalists and others are written by professors.  Some are based on solid empirical research.  Some are heavily laden with opinion. Some have endnotes; others do not, etc.  For your essays, you should: 

 
1) Write in the third person.  This means that you should not use the first-person words I, we, me, us, our, ours, my, mine or the second person words you or your.

2) Not state your personal view.  Your personal opinion is irrelevant for this exercise.  The ban on the use of the first or second persons will make it virtually impossible for you to express your personal opinion about your issue

3) Use MLA-style endnotes (rather than footnotes) to reference your sources of information, to identify other sources that support a point, or to provide an explanation or comment that is subordinate to the main argument in your text.  You should use a set of endnotes for each essay: one for the "Yes" essay and one for the "No" essay.  Each set of endnotes should be placed at the end of the appropriate essay. It is likely that you will have only a few endnotes. [In case you are not sure what an endnote is: An endnote serves the same function as a footnote.  Both are placed in numerical order--the footnote at the foot of the page, and the endnote at the end of an essay, chapter or book.]  Please note that an endnote is not a bibliography.  A bibliography is "a list of the works referred to in a text or consulted by the author in its production" (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary).  Works included in a bibliography are listed alphabetically.  Because your essays are brief, I am not requiring a bibliography.  For further explanation about how to write MLA-style endnotes, and to see examples of endnotes and sample endnote pages, click here.

4) Type your essays double-spaced, use Times or Times Roman font, 11 or 12 point, and use standard margins.

5) Clearly label one essay "NO" and the other one "YES".

6) Compose your entire work in one document (file).  The document should be organized in the following order:

a. a "cover" page on which you type, in the following order:

 i. your name
 ii. your e-mail address
 iii. the question you are writing on
 iv. a 1-3 sentence synopsis of your thesis for the YES essay
 v. a 1-3 sentence synopsis of your thesis for  the NO essay

b. the "Yes" essay

c. the endnotes to the "Yes" essay

d. the "No" essay

e. the endnotes to the "No" essay

7) Paginate with "1" beginning on the first page of the "Yes" or "No" essay, depending on which one you place first.

Where do you get your information? 

You are not expected to read books for your research.  You can get all the information you need from relatively short articles in newspapers, in periodicals and on the Internet.
 

How do you submit your work in this paperless course?

You must submit your work by e-mail. A hard copy will not be accepted. Please submit your work as an attached document (preferably Word).  Please do not submit your work pasted or typed into the main body of an e-mail message.  You must submit it as a file attached to your e-mail message.  Please e-mail your work to Jose (gomezj@evergreen.edu).  Please do not insist that your e-mail service does not have a feature that allows you to send attached files.  In the highly unlikely event that this is true, please open up a Hotmail or Yahoo or some such free e-mail account.  These allow you to send attached files with ease.  If you still don't know how to do it, please learn!  Learning to use the essential tools of the Internet is part of what this course is about.
 

When is it due?

The deadline for submitting the essay is 5 p.m. on Thursday, September 4, with a four-day grace period ending at 5 p.m. on the following Monday.