By: Jessica Saganowich The third deliberation that I attended focused on women’s reproductive rights and how these rights should be enforced. The group structured their talks with open questions and then requested audience feedback. After the group discussed initial concerns, each table was assigned a moderator for the three approaches. Each approach lasted about twenty minutes; the large audience present that day made it easier to hold more discussions because everyone had different opinions. After the approaches concluded the group as a whole discussed the main topic points of the discussion and wrapped up the deliberation with a few closing remarks. One take away that I would like to implement in my deliberation was that the moderator in the group gave some of their opinions as well. As an audience member it was nice to know that my thoughts were being heard and thought about.
In regards to the topics discussed the first topic entailed how women’s reproductive rights are being implemented at a national level. The group talked about some health care policies that would require insurance companies to include birth control in their offered plans. There were two sides to this question. The for inclusion of birth control argued that it is a medication that people need to be healthy and that the medication is not just a contraceptive. The against argued that it was cost more money to include birth control in the plan. The group continued to discuss stigmas that surrounded birth control and decided that the public needs to be more educated about its uses such as hormone therapy. The concluding thought was that if medication will be offered to men through their insurance the same service should be offered to women no matter what the use. The second main topic was discussing possible solutions that could be implemented at the state level that would allow for more state wide control of insurance plans. Some members thought it is a right to have equal insurance for men and women and that states should not decide whether birth control is included. The other consensus was that if states could vote on this policy than more conservatives states could choose to not include the medication under religious circumstances. Personally I say that separation of church and state is an important feature of our government and should be remembered in this debate. The last topic that our group talked about was how to solve the stigmas associated with birth control and how people are treated who want an abortion. The most popular solution that came up was education. If younger children were truly informed of the uses and benefits of birth control less people will grow up with negative opinions of it and hopefully more people will be open minded to it. In regards to abortion the group discusses why women are forced to attend a counseling session before they go in to get an abortion. We all agreed that this service should be an option but not mandatory. The most inspiring moment of this deliberation was that one of the male group members said “Wow I didn’t know that birth control had all these other uses.” The fact that this deliberation was able to educate and reach someone brought this group one step closer to discussing women’s reproductive rights.
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By: Jessica Saganowich The second deliberation that I attended focused on the Electoral College and the audience’s opinions of it. The group structured the talk with a variety of open ended questions asking if we felt that our vote counted and was valued. After the initial questions the deliberators broke up the audience into groups and designated a group member to moderate each group. After each approach was explained each group discussed the topic at hand for about ten to fifteen minutes. Then at the end the deliberators asked a member from each group to summarize what their group discussed or decided on. After this summarization period the deliberators asked for any final comments. The moderating skill that I would take from this deliberation would be how they dealt with silences in the audience. If the audience did not participate in one of the open ended questions, one of the group members would give their opinion on the topic. This made participating much more approachable because there was an initial topic to build off of.
In regards to the topics discussed, the group posed two options. Option one was to keep the Electoral College as it is. Then the second was to get rid of the Electoral College and create a new system. The deliberators also facilitated conversation about modifying the current system in order to improve it in a more realistic and achievable manner. In our group we discussed option one in depth. We agreed that some system is needed and that a popular vote would not be successful because some sort of representation should be present between the citizens and the elected candidates. However, we discussed options about how to modify how electoral votes were distributed. Moving into approach two our group thought that if electoral votes were based solely on population then each states vote would have a more proportional influence on the government. In addition to this delegation of votes our group discussed making it mandatory that each state have a winner take all system so the voters would be properly represented based on how the citizens voted. However, outside our group opinions in the crowd were divided, others wanted to keep the system in tact while some wanted to abolish it completely. The deliberators encouraged the conversation to continue at the end by offering additional resources to look into. This divide was probably the most inspiring part of the deliberation. It was satisfying to hear that so many people had diverse and educated opinions on this issue. It gave me hope that if this discussion continues a real and successful solution will emerge based on the high level of conversations that were deliberated. By: Jessica Sagnowich The deliberation that I attended was named Mental Health, The Invisible Illness. The overall structure of the event was based on frequently asked, open ended questions that the audience was able to reposed to and receive feedback via the moderators. To help start off the conversation the group asked the audience if they had any concerns regarding mental health that they wanted to speak about. After the initial concerns were said the deliberation group broke up into their approach teams and rotated. Then at the end, the group summarized the key topics and asked for any final comments. The main take away that I wanted to apply to my deliberation was to comment or repeat what an audience member said back to them when they participated in the talk. By personally participating in the discussion and then being validated that my thoughts were heard made me feel comfortable sharing my opinions.
In regards to the topics discussed, their three key solutions included enhancing education, accessibility, and affordability of care. The topic of enhancing education was an interesting discussion. Our group decided that there was simply no preliminary education on mental health in the public school system. We concluded that if education on mental health was taught in lower grade levels it would destigmatize mental health in general if everyone was aware of the symptoms and how common it actually is. The second topic included accessibility. The main point that was discussed here was that the only resource on campus (CAPS) is truly inefficient in helping everyone that seeks its assistance. We decided that the major flaws of the program included long wait times, finite number of appointments, and lack of insurance accepted. This issue really upset me because there are students on campus that are brave enough to seek help and are being denied for lack of staffing. In my opinion this would be the easiest and most effective solution for Penn State to fix. The last approach includes affordability of psychiatric care. This issue involves more long term, complex, political solutions, but never the less was still interesting to talk about. Our group decided that the next step would be for insurance companies to treat mental illness as any other form of injury such as a broken arm or leg. By taking this step, psychiatric care would be more affordable to those who really need it. Overall the discussions were very impactful because I learned so many new things about mental health from the moderators and the group members themselves. However, the most impactful moment of the evening was learning how mental health was a personal issue for many of the deliberators or of someone the deliberators know. It allowed me to feel connected to the issue in a more personal way which really helped me discuss it further in conversation. Lastly, it was moving how dedicated they were to this topic and it really inspired me to make a difference regarding mental health of this campus. |
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