Letter to politician

POLS 2301-Fall 2019: Out of Class Assignment - Section 05

Assignment I: Letter to Politician - DUE: Tuesday, September 17 Please write a detailed letter to an elected politician about a political issue, upcoming legislation, or laws and rules that concern you as a citizen. MAKE sure you type your letter and print it out as you need to submit the actual letter to me typewritten in a traditional letter format for a grade AND you must also upload your letter to Blackboard for assessment purposes as ONE Microsoft Word document (letter and references must be together in ONE file). Failure to upload your document to Blackboard will be an automatic zero for the assignment. Failure to submit the document in class as a hard copy will also result in an automatic zero for the assignment. All assignments must be scanned through Safe Assign or you will receive a zero. Assignments must be uploaded as a Word file. Only one document may be uploaded, if you upload more than one document it is an automatic zero. Failure to upload your document in Word will also result in an automatic zero. So that a politician gets your letter, I recommend that you also copy and paste your letter from your document into an e-mail to the politician. NOTE - Many politicians have "comment" or letter sections on their websites for you to use but if you ONLY type your letter in the comment box you will NOT have a copy to submit to me in class. Students who receive a response to their letter (not an automated reply stating that the person will get back to them) will receive 5 extra credit points to be added to their Exam #I grade. To receive extra credit, responses must be submitted by printing them out and handing them to me in class or forwarded to me via email by November 25 . ALL assignments must be submitted as hard copies as well as being uploaded to Blackboard by the time class begins. If you will NOT be in class, you MUST submit it as a hard copy the class period before it is due.

Who can you write a letter to? I. US Representative from your "home" district in TX (the representative who serves the Lamar University area is

Randy Weber), to find out your representative go to http://www.house.gov/ and do the "zip code" search to find out who your representative is as you need to write to someone from where you are from.

2. US Senators from Texas: Ted Cruz and John Cornyn (for email information www .senate.gov) 3. State Representatives - http://www.house.state.tx.us/welcome.php - click on "members" and then on the

subsequent page, you will be able to search for your representative by zip code. (There will be several representatives who represent your zip code in the TX House). (If you live in Louisiana, please use this website to find out who represents you - http://www.legis.state.la.us/district/zipcode.asp)

4. State Senators from TX - http://www.senate.state.tx.us/7Sr/Senate/Members.htm#FYI - you can then search on this page by your street, city and zip code (there will be two ST A TE Senators representing this area in the TX State Senate)

5. State Governor: Greg Abbott - http://www.governor.state.tx.us/ or http://govemor.state.tx.us/organization/constituent communication/

6. State/Federal Government Agencies - Check with me for specifics but you need to write to someone who is an elected leader. There are some departments that have elected leaders, when in doubt google the position to find out.

7. City Councilmen, Mayors, Judges, County Commissioners, etc. - Google "City of. . . " or "County of. . . " and then click on the relevant website for the city or county and click on tabs for "government," "city council," or "contact information".

8. Any other elected politician that you can think of but think about the message you are sending and figure out who is most appropriate (local government, state government, federal government). You should NOT write a letter to President Trump (or a former President for that matter) or to anyone other than an elected politician. Additionally, you should ONLY write a letter to a politician who represents you (i.e. - a person representing the zip code in which you reside, so unless you live in California, you should NOT be writing Representative Nancy Pelosi). NO Letters to a politician who has not yet been elected to office, so for example, do not write to a candidate's Exploratory Committee for President or others campaigning for office or anyone no longer in an elected office. Remember Cabinet positions are NOT elected. Before you consider writing to someone do a simple google search to make sure that they serve in an elected position.