So, with whom do you agree? Burdett Loomis who says “yes” or Byron E. Shafer who says “no” and why? Each of you will write 250-300 words explaining your choice and defending it. In your writing I require a single sentence reason you picked the side you did – make this sentence bold. This way though many of may choose “yes” or “no” you may do so for different reasons. I want to know the most significant reason you chose to respond the way you did.

You may use any information from our texts or if you do any online research you MUST include the full web address so we can read the article you did. (see format below to do this).   Each student is responsible for responding in the comments to THREE other students’- with whom you disagree! – initial decision with a comment or question. Once someone has replied to your comment on his or her initial decision, you must respond to that person in the thread. Keep it polite, on topic, and honest in that you want to make a point so that we can all see and engage in the debate. Democracy can only function if vastly different points of view can come together to argue with and listen to one another. I trust you to do that here.   I think there are enough students that we will have variety in our responses. If this model doesn’t work for our class in this first Debate I’ll design something different for Debate #2. (but it has worked in past iterations of the course).

Your initial posts are all due by Thursday 24 September. All comments to be made and points finalized to meet the requirements by Monday 28 September.

If you are making a point from an online article, to avoid clutter please do the following. In the text “I think that P. Mdede made the best point about popular elections when she compared Senegal to the U.S. arguing that we are a Banana Republic (1)” Insert a number at the end of your borrowed idea and then at the bottom of your paragraphs match the numbers to the websites.

text text text

(1) web address

(2) web address