Challenges for Week 8

You have four options this week, you must complete ONLY ONE challenge:

Energizing Young Elephants

The GOP is trying really hard to energize younger Americans. Recently, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) created a hip new BuzzFeed-like website (Links to an external site.) aimed at getting young people excited about their message. For this Challenge, you must imagine that you were just hired as a “Youth Participation Consultant” for the NRCC. Your job is to serve as a representative for the Millennial generation and help the NRCC design an ad campaign that communicates their social message to Millennials. The ad campaign must include designs for three posters.

Campus Picks A Mayor

In this Challenge, you will assume the role of a student outreach director for a mayoral campaign looking to increase the student vote. Your task will be to write a memo (two to three pages) in which you demonstrate familiarity with the 2nd, 4th, and 6th precincts; outline a campaign issue that for the mayor must adopt so as to mobilize student turnout for the upcoming 2015 mayoral election; and design a social media strategy involving at least two platforms you use to educate other students about the campaign issue and mobilize them to vote.

Fixing the Debate

For this Challenge, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD)—a non-profit, non-partisan organization that sponsors and produces the presidential and vice presidential debates that you see on television—has asked you to make recommendations and come up with a new way to present the debates so that public debates might be viewed as “Must See TV.” At the same time, your recommendations must respect the CPD’s interest in maintaining, or establishing the debates as meaningful political dialogue, not just entertainment.

I'll Be (Amicus) Brief

One of fundamental roles of the United States Supreme Court is judicial review—the the power to review the constitutionality of a law. An amicus curiae (literally, “friend of the court”) is someone who is not aparty to the case who offers information that bears on the case. This usually takes the form of an amicus brief, a document that provides information about legal arguments, or how a case might affect people other than the parties to the case. For this Challenge, you will choose a constitutional issue and write an amicus  brief for it.