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PROBLEM AREA/ TOPICSPROBLEM AREA/ TOPICS

OPEN LETTER TO THE TOPIC COMMITTEE

What is your role?  Don't decide "let the voting membership decide."  You were elected to this committee because you are trusted by the community to write good topics which encourage opportunity and good debating.  It's much too easy to decide that les

SOME IDEAS.

1. Consider the importance of a resolutional agent.  Whether the USA acts alone or in consort with other nation states in its relations with Latin America may affect how the relations are perceived, received, or rejected.
2. Consider the function of the Fall resolution.  For many participants it is used to help introduce students to debating, hence there is an obligation to produce a topic that is not overly expansive while interesting.
3. Consider the implications of writing out subject areas which have been debated in recent history.  Write out immigration and border control.  Write out human rights.
4. Consider the term "Latin America" is not a geographical but a culturo-political term.  As such, cultural issues are implicit to any topic you word.

CONSIDER IMPORTANT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES.

Some illustrations:

1. Castro's Cuba will change when he leaves office and there's some excellent political speculation in the literature.
2. Mexico's financial woes may have been precipitated by its dependence or interdependence with technological capitalism and there are excellent critical writings in the literature.
3. Recent arrests in Bolivia and Venezuela and the drug cartelization in South America make this topic timely and easily researchable in the popular press.

Some reservations:

While environmental and indigenous people issues are constants in this area, trade and foreign aid issues are not.  
Trade between the USA and Latin America has been mitigated/moderated/defined by NAFTA, hence major trade issues are mostly associated with NICs on the Pacific Basin.  
On the other hand, foreign aid questions during an election season are usually unclear and most of our interests are being focused on Central and Eastern Europe and CIS republics.

RECOMMENDATION:

Write restrictive topics and consider writing six topics:
1. USA and Mexico
2. USA and Cuba
3. Indigenous people and culture
4. Environmental issues
5. Drugs
6. A broad general topic area.

POLICY OR NON-POLICY:

We can debate topics with or without the word should.  Write the clearest sentence.  There is some likelihood that the community may vote for a non-should resolution regardless of subject or other wording considerations because it is non-policy.  I wou

REMEMBER

The second place problem area goes onto the Spring problem area ballot.  Consider the implications this will have when the Fall topic is placed on the ballot of Spring topics for continuation.  3-5 topics on one problem area and another on the previous
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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