Reading through my peers’ posts about issues in the world today gave me a sense of inspiration and unity. It felt very refreshing and empowering to see that people care about current issues and can go out of their way not only to educate themselves about them, but to think about effective possible solutions and ways to help. When reading through the projects to choose from, I chose the great Pacific garbage patch, voter ignorance, and the workload of college students. I am glad I chose these projects, as they were topics that interested me most, and it was really interesting to see what my colleagues in PSL did with these topics. I realized that the best and most engaging way for me to learn was through powerpoint presentations, this way, there was not a lot to read all at once, and images kept the information exciting and interesting. Additionally, seeing just the main points of the issue really made me feel like I was not searching through an essay or article looking for the most import facts, as the main points were right in front of me, so I did not have to search. I usually find, that when listening to a presentation, I do not naturally thunk of questions. However, being told to think of one was helpful, because I felt encouraged to really dig deeper into the topic that I learned about while the information was fresh in my mind. Therefore, the requirement to ask a question helped me to become more personally involved in the project and helped me to continue thinking about the project I had just looked at even after I was done reading the information. Overall, I think the project was a really showed off the intelligence and ideas of the members of the Politics, Society, and Law program, and I am excitied to be able to be on the other side of this project next year.

Is there a way to change Congressional apportionment in the House to make it “fair”?  If yes, how?  If no, why not?

Although the definition of fair is subjective, I think that there is a way to adjust congressional appointment in congress to make representation much closer to “fair” than it is now. A major problem in representation is that some people are represented more or less than others, and people in America are becoming more aware of this issue. For example, in the most recent presidential election, Clinton received over 2.5 million more votes than Trump, however Trump received more votes in the electoral college and won the election. That incidence is a perfect example demonstrating how the American people are not accurately represented in congress, and that current representation is far from fair. In fact, it can be argued that representation now is corrupt. I think that the best way to change representation to make it more fair is to proportionally represent the population distribution in both the senate and the house. The most pressing change that must occur first in my opinion is to give representation to those who have none, such as to those who live in the District of Columbia and the United States territories. Second, representation in the house should be changed so that the same amount of people are represented by one person in the house for every state. This representation may not be completely equal all the time, as it is simply not feasible, however, it is completely unacceptable for the opinions of people in Montana to be half as valuable in the government as those of people in Wyoming. Once representation is given to everyone and made proportional, this new change should be maintained, and when the census is taken, the number of representatives in the house must be adjusted accordingly. I believe that this method is the only way that the United states can stay true to the idea of democracy and be anywhere close to fair.