The Penn State Student Activity Fee Board, its members and composition

At Penn State each campus has a student activity fee(SAF). These are funds that every individual student pays into for campus events and activities. Currently at Mont Alto the fee is around 82-85 dollars. Each year Mont Alto's student activity fee normally stands around 180,000$.

There is a University Student Activity Fee Board that legislates policy, rules and regulation on how the money can be spent across the campuses. Currently some rules that were created and enforce by the board include the prohibition of paying for wages and salaries. The SAF can also not be used to pay for programs that all students do not have the oppurtunity to particapate in.

This board is compromised of 13 members. These include: The Vice President of Student Affairs, The Director of Union Student Activities, The Director of Student Services, A Director of Student affairs, a University Faculty senate member, Four Commonwealth campus students including the President, two University Park students including the President, The Student Government President of the Graduate schools and the chair of the University Park allocation committe.

8 students and 5 administrators=13 members.

7 votes are needed to pass a motion. The composition of this board is debated and semi controversal. University Park has 45,000 students but only 2 votes on the board. All of the commonwealth campuses I,e. Mont Alto, Altoona etc.. Have 35,000 students and 4 votes. Some argue that the strength in the board is not proportional. Others argue that, student money should not be spent by faculty members and that no administrators should be on the board.

What are your thoughts? And furthermore, do you feel as if commonwealth campus students have to much power on the board?  Should adminstrators be on the board?

Posted for Hannah

Summary for Banzhaf Voting System

By: Hannah Eisenberger

A couple weeks ago we learned about Banzhaf Voting System. I am going to explain the steps that you have to do to complete a problem. First you have to determine all the winning coalitions. You have to determine if any of the votes can win the election by itself. For example [6:4,3,2]. 4,3, or 2 cannot be equal to or have more than 6. However 4 and 3 do, 4 and 2 do, and all three of them together have enough to be equal to 6 or more. Step two is to determine the critical players in each winning coalition. To figure out if A (4), B (3), and C (2) is critical or not count the number of votes the coalition has without each other (A, B, or C). Back to the combinations from step one A and B both are critical because if one of them leaves then they won’t win. Same with A and C. In A, B, and C only A is critical because the coalition still wins if B leaves or if C leaves.  The next step is to find the number of times A, B, and C is critical total. So in this case its 5 times. Step four is to find how many types EACH A, B, and C are critical. A is 3, B is 1, and C is 1. Therefore the final step is to put these into fractions. So A is 3/5, B is 1/5, and C is 1/5.

Wednesday, April 10 - In class we discussed Project 3 - since no one completed correctly we're allowed to redo Project 3 and turn it in next class.  We also discussed the reading/questions for Baker vs Carr. 

A group of appellants - anyone qualified to vote in the state of Tennessee - brought a suit against the State of Tennessee alleging that the State failed to properly classify/represent the voters in each county because the state never reapportioned the counties - even though the populations of each county drastically changed since the original apportionment. A lot of the city counties experienced substantial growth and were not represented adquately in the General Assembly.

The original case was dismissed by a middle District court, but after being reviewed by the Federal court it was decided that the case was dismissed in error.  The Federal Court stated that it was in the State's jurisdiction and therefore they couldn't make a final ruling, but they did say, basically, that the appelants had a justifiable case and that they should be entitled to a trial and decision. Justice Brennan also stated in his opinion that District court should vote consistently with the Federal Courts findings, which were that the State should reapportion the counties based on a new census count of the counties. He listed several examples of where there was blatant disregard for the law and constitution.   Brennan also listed out several requirements on what the new apportionment should qualify each county for - including the number of representatives, number of senators, etc.

We also discussed Justice Franfurter's disagreement with Brennan.  He basically states that as long as basic legal requirements are met, that the Federal Court should leave it up to the District Courts to decide.  He states that the Federal Court is always pulled into political disputes and that it is not in their jurisdiction to weigh in on such terms, at least until there is a law broken. 

The Philosophical Implications of the Political Redisitricting Process

The Philosophical implications of the Political Redistricting Process

In class we learned about the constitutional implications and mandate of redistricting.
Baker v.Carr determined and stated that States have a constitutional obligation to redistrict to grant equal oppurtunity under the 14th ammendment.

Redistricting was used to empower new members of the state and their legislatures. The lack of redistricting in state legislatures severly disadvantages those in populous areas. In the Baker v. Carr decision, once the supreme court decision was affirmed it empowered minorities. This was acheived by enforcing redistricitng so that there growing population would equate to adequate representation.

However, recently redistricting has had a negative effect on minorities voice and representation. In 2009 Republicans in the VA house of represenatives won the re-drawing of district lines 20-19.  This granted them the ability within constitutional lines to remake the district.

Republicans argued that this increased the number of predominately Black districts from 5-6. However, Democrats argued that the grouping and removal of blacks from other districts diluted their overall strength because they were essentially removed from a dozen districts.

Redistricting is definitely necassary but it is important to be aware and notice its political implications.

How do you all feel about its effect on the Democratic proccess?

Extension 4/3/13

I found this unique entry someone wrote about how there could be another way than to just redistricting. They go on and talk about how it can be more of a divide and conquer method for urban areas to have more  control. In 11 states there is something called redistricting commission, basically stating that elected or appointed officials focused on strictly on purposes of drafting new congressional and or state districts based on information from the Census. The effectiveness as of now is difficult though because of the growing movement of states. It does state that they have a higher propensity for standing up in court challenge compared  with legislatures, especially when considering congressional redistricting. There is a really good quote in the article that gives information of California's redistricting commission. It goes on talking about how the legislative redistricting bug kicks in and to benefit the party over the altruistic goal of benefiting the state over rides the discussions. This article also mentions on how Texas has thought about the redistricting commission before. They want this Bill called Wentworth's bill to be passed by the next redistricting, so that the "will of the voter" is fair within this Bill.

This is the website I read the information about.

http://www.concernedinsa.com/2011/09/19/redistrictingthere-is-another-way/

Summary 04-03-2013

In today’s class we discussed districting/redistricting, which is the process of dividing a state up into districts for the purpose of representation.  We saw that while all districts had to have the same population, not all districts had to be the same shape.  In order to determine how many people should be in each district you have to find the ideal district size.  You do this by taking the total population and dividing it by the number of districts that you want.  If there are 100,000 people in a district, for example, that is the number of people a representative represents.  There are four desirable features a district should have.  First, it should be contiguous.  This means that districts should be in one piece instead of scattered into a bunch of little pieces across the state.  Second, a district should be convex.  In order for a district to be convex it must have no dents in its shape.  Third, districts should respect geological boundaries.  Examples of these include rivers and mountains.  Fourth, districts should respect geopolitical boundaries such as city limits and county lines.  We also learned about gerrymandering, which is when districts are drawn up in ways that benefit a certain politician or political party.  The term was named after a New York politician named Gerry, who drew up a district in the shape of a salamander.  This act caused scandal, and a case against it was brought to the Supreme Court who did not say it was illegal, but did not approve of it either.  The Baker v. Carr case was also discussed in which residents of urban districts in Tennessee felt that their vote was being debased because rural districts with smaller populations had the same number of representatives as them.