A plan for expansion, improvement, and success!

TS’ FIVE PROGRAMS

My five programs, as outlined below, are all designed to help improve JSA. Each will work in a different way, and each is individually necessary and designed as a stand-alone program. But, when all of the programs are implemented when I am elected, they will complement each other well, as explained in the chart.

Program One: Expansion and Statehood

Southeast JSA has only been a territory for a few years. The state of Florida and its school-age population absolutely have the capacity to support a JSA state, but that hasn’t happened yet. I promise to lead Southeast JSA into statehood. While the title itself is basically symbolic, it symbolizes an increase in the number of chapters under the organization and also an increase in activity in those chapters. It is my firm belief that by working toward statehood we can greatly enhance Southeast JSA.

 

Program Two: Minicon Support

The minicon is a useful tool for the Junior State of America. I plan on promoting what I call expansion minicons. I will expand JSA using expansion minicons, planned and organized by willing chapter leadership and with as much assistance as I can provide, that will help explain the organization to students from schools that don’t yet have JSA chapters, to prospective new members or chapter founders, and also give a taste of what our actual conventions are like. After attending these expansion minicons, students not yet in JSA will become interested, and hopefully form new chapters and thus expand the organization.

 

Program Three: Expansion of Activism

I will encourage activism in all JSA chapters. Activism is a way to increase the standing of JSA on campus and to attract recruits. An important part of our organization, it is also noble for us to support causes we believe in. JSA is a

state-wide organization that has chapters in most areas of the state. By distributing petitions to individual JSA chapters, JSA members who chose to support these petitions can become active in their government and also support causes they believe in. We will select and distribute petitions within the nonpartisan spirit of JSA.

 

Program Four: Convention Preparedness

I will use the minicon as a tool for convention preparedness. Minicons will be encouraged to use proper moderating procedures to train moderators for conventions. I will do all that is possible to provide a cabinet member to minicons to help explain moderating procedures. I will encourage cabinet members to attend and will attend as many as possible myself.

 

Program Five: Internet Infrastructure

Southeast JSA has a limited budget for communications. Luckily, in the modern world, any human can sit atop a powerful telecommunications network. I intend to bring Southeast JSA in to the modern era, making our leadership easy to contact, as they should be in any small organization, unifying our membership, and promoting discussion among leaders and members. With this program, JSA leaders will listen more to the membership and be more responsive to the popular will. The Southeast JSA website will have its content improved and expanded under my leadership.

Current Posters

Old-School Logo

Cool, Modernist Poster

Platform Conclusion

These five programs are my creations. They are based on my own ideas and what I’ve heard at conventions, my discussions with you the members, my discussions with teachers, chapter presidents, and state governors. They are my creation, but they are our vision. They are my distillation of what I’ve heard others say. And in order to make sure that they stay this way, one of my programs is designed to keep me and my cabinet listening to what you have to say, to keep your vision from becoming just my vision.

Program Five: Internet Infrastructure

Southeast JSA has a limited budget for communications. Luckily, in the modern world, any human can sit atop a powerful telecommunications network. I intend to bring Southeast JSA in to the modern era, making our leadership easy to contact, as they should be in any small organization, unifying our membership, and promoting discussion among leaders and members. With this program, JSA leaders will listen more to the membership and be more responsive to the popular will.

 

The Southeast JSA website will have its content improved and expanded under my leadership. This will cost JSA nothing and will not necessarily involve much work. As of now, little is put on the website by the cabinet because the website is little used by members. I will expand the website’s usefulness, creating a natural increase in use. This expansion will include posting of more information about JSA, more guides as discussed above, more convention information, more activism information, and more multimedia recruiting and expansion tools for chapter presidents. The website will become another centre of the organization.

 

I will work to set up a blog for the state cabinet and also a Southeast JSA forum. The blog will allow JSA members to be generally kept informed on what we’re up to, including expansion support and activism. It will be updated as often as individual cabinet members see fit. The Southeast JSA forum will be a discussion board open to all JSA members. Chapter presidents will have powers to invite members, and it will be an independent entity from networking sites like Facebook. This forum will be official and will be set up to allow JSA membership to communicate directly with cabinet and to allow discussion of important issues. It will also allow quick dissemination of information by the chapter cabinet, something that I believe the membership should be able to expect in the modern age.

 

One of the goals of these programs will be to make state cabinet more accessible. My cabinet will be more responsive to the popular will thanks to the forum and the blog, it will accept more input from members than any previous cabinet. It is my belief that any JSA member ought to be able to contact me, even if it is through their chapter president. I believe the same should be true for all cabinet members. The blog will allow membership to see what we are up to, the forum will allow them to voice their opinions and provide debate topics, activism ideas, and any other concepts to not just the cabinet but to the chapter membership. 

Program Four: Convention Preparedness

I will use the minicon as a tool for convention preparedness. Minicons will be encouraged to use proper moderating procedures to train moderators for conventions. I will do all that is possible to provide a cabinet member to minicons to help explain moderating procedures. I will encourage cabinet members to attend and will attend as many as possible myself.

 

One of the major issues that arises at Spring State is moderating. Moderators are often unprepared and unknowledgeable. This is understandable, they are poorly taught. I will change this not only by making sure that proper moderating procedures are taught and used at conventions, but also through a broader education program. A guidebook and video will be made discussing proper moderating procedures, produced by my chapter. We will also improve the last-minute information provided at the beginning of convention. Moderators, often freshman who have attended few or no conventions, will thus know what is going on, and we will see much better moderation.

 

I will encourage individual chapters to hold practice sessions for the debates at conventions. In order to facilitate debate practice, I will try to make debate topics and legislation available as early as possible. If chapters have debate topics early, they will have time to run through the debates their newer members are participating in so that their membership can be better prepared for the debate. It is always easier for a new debater to discuss a topic they have discussed previously.