the realm of current events

Purpose: The essays in this class will serve the purpose of allowing you to develop an academic voice as well as your own confidence in writing your own arguments. For this essay, your topic must be about a current event, i.e. something that is happening NOW. Any topic older than November is not acceptable for this paper. Some topics are restricted, and two are banned for reasons we will discuss.

Instructions: Select a topic within the realm of current events, i.e. something that is of national, international, science or medical or economic concern. Develop an argument (thesis) about the topic that you wish to advance. Find at least four reputable sources on the topic (two from the library; two from the current news) and use them to support your argument.

Format: Minimum of 4 full pages. Your paper must follow proper MLA format, with the proper information in the first five lines (Your name, Instructor, Class, Date (Day Month Year), and Title (Centered). The paper must have 1” margins, and be written in 12pt Times New Roman font (what you are reading right now) double spaced. You must include a Works Cited page (which does not count for your page count) which adheres to MLA guidelines.

Audience: You are writing for a general academic audience.

Restricted topics list don't write about it

Abortion

Affirmative Action

Conspiracy Theories

Pseudoscience

Gun Control

Immigration

Lowering the drinking age

Drug legalization

Sports (I’m close to banning this topic outright because no one follows my requirements for this topic)

Entertainment

Religion

Death Penalty

Other topics at my discretion

Please do not misunderstand: I want people to write about these topics, but I also want to make sure that they are at the level of your audience. Two topics is banned: drunk driving and child abuse. If you can find a reputable source in favor of drunk driving to prove that there is another side to this topic, I may relent, but this is a purely middle school topic, for which there has not been anything new written in over two decades. Child abuse is a banned topic because literally every paper a studnet has written on the topic has a thesis that is basically “Child abuse is bad,” as though that wasn’t completely obvious. Topics must have reasonable arguments with which reasonable people may disagree. As they have been presented to me, students at the freshman writing level do not have the sophistication yet to deal with either of these topics with enough nuance.