OBJECTIVE: This assignment has two key purposes: 1) for the student to identify and analyze their state senate district; 2) for the student to think critically about their state senator (culturally and ideologically). Translation: you are demonstrating your capacity to understand your community (senate district) and assess the quality of your representation.
BACKGROUND: One of the most important facets of a representative democracy is—unsurprisingly—REPRESENTATION. This assignment builds on two aspects: who represents us and how are we represented.
In particular, we are building on the ideas of descriptive representation and substantive representation. Here’s what those mean:
Descriptive representation is the extent to which a representative resembles constituents. In other words, the focus here is on shared identity traits. A Hispanic person being represented by a Hispanic representative is one example. The key idea is that common identities are an important part of representation (occupation, gender, race, age, educational attainment, etc.)
Substantive representation is the actual activity of a representative. This means their view/values and how they behave in office (how they vote, what kind of legislation they support, etc.). From the substantive side, it is less important who they are. What matters is what they do.
PROCEDURES: You are about to link these concepts with your state senate district and state senator (i.e. analyzing the demographics of your district and the identity of your representative). You will conduct this analysis by doing the following:
Websites/Navigation:
1) Find your state senator by entering your address into this web page (https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home). Pay close attention that you are looking up your STATE SENATOR not your U.S. senator. It will say “Texas State Senate District ##” under their name. Click on their name to go to their page.
2) In new windows/tabs, open the links at the bottom of the page titled “District Profile”, “Population Analysis”, and “Election Analysis.” Keep these handy, you will need them.
3) Next, navigate to https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/16/texas-senate-left-right/. Keep this page handy also.
4) Now that you have the pages, you can start on the writing portion. IMPORTANT NOTE: You are largely being graded for how thorough your answers are for each part. This means you should answer each section (1a, 1b, etc.) in AT LEAST 150 words and IN YOUR OWN WORDS). If you avoid being lazy you should do well.
