Government

Passing Matthew's Bill Government

Typically in a government class, you would learn all about government on the federal level, and it would take an entire year of class. My government class was not that easy. Thanks a lot, Ms. Durkee. In my government class, we learned all about government on the federal level, as well as attempted to pass actual legislation through the Ohio State Congress, all in a single semester.

As for information on the bill, there's quite a bit, and you can go to http://matthewsbill.wix.com/drss if you would like to know more about it. It's all for a fantastic cause, and you should check it out, especially since I worked on some of it myself.

The purpose of trying to pass the bill was not only for the fantastic cause of improving the state's facilities for people with disabilities, but also to help the students learn about the legislative process and what it takes to get a piece of legislation passed into law. The most amazing thing that I learned was that it really isn't that difficult to hear back from your representatives and that some of them just might actually care about things.

The actual project section of all this (for me anyway) was working on the design of the website (very small parts of it, anyway. I don't deserve much of the credit) and writing the content for certain pages. The design elements were the biggest struggle for me, so that's why I didn't do much of the design. Everyone in the class had different roles in the process of making content that would be published and distributed in an effort to raise awareness for this issue and try to gain support. Some of the class worked on a flyer, others a podcast, a brochure, and of course, the website. I specifically wrote the section of the website titled "About AEF" as well as the FAQ page. After the design and content of the products were completed, they were shown to the class as a sort of mass peer-review process. Of course, the content was revised after all of the feedback was received.

One group was in charge of contacting the Ohio State Congress and telling them about our idea for the bill. With persistence, creativity, collaboration, and quite a bit of luck, we actually got Senator Peggy Lehner to sponsor our bill. As of 4/21/14, the bill has not yet been formally introduced into the State Senate, and one group is still working to contact other Senators and Representatives in order to obtain multiple sponsors.

My understanding of the law-making process improved significantly because I experienced it first hand. The only possible evidence for this is the legislation itself and the press release. By the way, I also helped to make a press release. This process is mostly advertising the ideas presented in the bill, and advertising is a necessary process for spreading ideas or information about products in the real world.