Empowering the Marginal Student: An Innovative Skills-Based Extra Credit Assignment

A simple extra-credit assignment explicitly rewarded marginal or failing students for improving their learning and study strategies. The instructor approached individual students who were at risk for failing the course following the midterm exam and gave them the option of earning extra-credit points for regularly documenting a variety of effective learning and study skills. In contrast to control groups of matched marginal students and of nonfailing students, those attempting the extra-credit assignment improved their test performance from midterm to final exam. They were more likely to earn at least a grade of C and less likely to drop out of the course than the matched control group. They also evaluated the experience quite positively

The Party”: Role-Playing to Enhance Multicultural Understanding

Describes a role-playing activity used to teach the effects of stereotyping and enhance multicultural understanding. Student response

Racial Identity and Voting: Conceptualizing White Identity in Spatial Terms

Recent political events have prompted an examination of the analytical tools and conceptual frameworks used in political science to understand voting and candidate choice. Scholars in the behavioral tradition have highlighted the empirical relationship between racial resentment and anti-black affect among white voters during and after President Obama’s successful run for re-election. The theoretical role of white identity within the context of the privileged status of this racial group has seen much less scholarly attention by political scientists, particularly with respect to racial group identification and its implications. To address this lacuna, we argue that racial identification among white voters can be conceived of as a utility-based trait relevant to candidate choice, combining a social-psychological approach of group membership together with a rational choice perspective. This conceptualization of the political utility of white racial identity provides wider conceptual latitude for empirical tests and explanations of voting in U.S. elections

Playing “Sherlock Holmes”: Enhancing students’ understanding of prejudice and stereotyping

A very simple, innovative classroom exercise designed to heighten students\u27 understanding of stereotyping and prejudice is described. Students\u27 evaluation of the exercise was very positive. Students reported greater awareness and understanding of their own and others’ stereotypes and prejudice and of the negative effects of prejudice, with females more than males reporting enhanced awareness of others’ stereotyping. Students also rated the exercise as very enjoyable. There was a trend among Non-White more than White students to report that the exercise helped show them how to reduce stereotypes and more Non-White than White students offered solutions for reducing prejudice that involved actively reaching out and interacting with others different from themselves. Additional suggestions for instructors are discussed

Asian Americans and the 2008 Election

Presents results of a survey of Asian Americans' views on the 2008 election and political participation. Examines candidate preferences, issues of concern, and percentages of likely voters, by party affiliation, voting record, ethnic group, and state

The Amending of Articles 23 and 27 of the United Nations Charter: A Mathematical Analysis

From the time of the San Francisco Conference, the composition of the Security Council and its voting procedure was most severely criticized. The basic criticism had been the veto power of the five permanent members on substantive resolutions. This resulted in a long and vigorous political struggle on the part of the non-veto members of the Organization to amend the Charter in order to increase their voting strength in the Security Council. When the changes on membership and voting procedure came into force on August 31, 1965, a great victory was claimed. This case of the United Nations is intriguing and deserves attention of legal scholars, mainly because the proponents for the amendment to the Charter had no knowledge of intricacy in the relationship between its unique procedural formality of voting mechanism and the distribution of voting power as was concealed in the Charter. The purpose of this article is not to discuss juridical points but to analyze this concealed knowledge which should have been known in the course of amending the charter. The analysis will demonstrate that the so-called political victory turned out to be an empirical defeat and it will examine power distributions under two alternative plans for future amendments to the Charter