My Allegheny

This post has been archived. Information below may be out of date and/or relate to a past event.

The Law & Policy Program invites all students interested in participating in a national policy proposal competition (with a chance to win $500) to attend a workshop on Wednesday, February 7, from 4 to 6 p.m. in Quigley Auditorium.
Project Pericles (Allegheny is a founding member campus) is requesting an original letter to an elected official from teams (two or more students). Each Periclean college or university is eligible to submit up to four letters (representatives from the Office of Civic Engagement and the Law & Policy Program will determine which four letters will move on). Five of these letters from five different colleges will be selected by a panel of judges as the winners of the 2018 Debating for Democracy (D4D) competition and receive awards of $500 to move their issue forward.

Students who participated in D4D Programs have done impressive work. This is a great opportunity to win funding to work on an issue that students are passionate about.
D4D students’ work includes:
– Testifying before the Maine Legislature about providing aid for asylum-seekers (Bates College). They created a public service announcement introducing asylum-seekers’ stories to Mainers.
– Designing and running a youth empowerment workshops for local high school students, many of whom went on to start a school reform campaign of their own (Carleton College).
– Developing campaigns in support of the DREAM ACT, mountaintop-removal coal mining, Net Neutrality, and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), among others.
– Advocating for their issues with elected officials and congressional staff members in their home states and in Washington, D.C.
ELIGIBILITY: A student must a) be a full-time undergraduate at a Periclean campus; b) be a first, second, or third year student as defined by their college or university during spring 2018; c) write and mail a letter to an elected official, and d) provide a project proposal. Students must be returning to campus for the 2018-19 academic year to ensure that winning teams can work on their issues.
Students will be expected to carry out significant advocacy and educational activities to advance their issue during the 2018-2019 academic year.
Student teams are expected to submit a project proposal with their letter, which affects the scoring of the students’ submissions. This proposal describes what they would do with a $500 award.
Five Awards of $500 each will be announced in April.