The assignment for the final project is to compose a 6–8-page persuasive essay in which you use your own words to explore your research question on a current civil rights issue.
Your research question is your version of the following sentence:
What can be done [intervention] to increase equity/decrease disparate impact for _________________________ [discriminated against population], whose civil rights are being violated when ________________________[form of the discrimination]?
After fully researching the question, you will offer your well-considered thoughts on how people can act to address the issue, supporting your solutions as much as possible from your research. This is the position you are taking on the issue.
The thesis should look something like this:
Funding schools based on local property taxes leads to schools that are inherently unequal [this is the issue], giving advantages to some students and denying them to others; consequently, we must educate state lawmakers and residents about school funding injustice by engaging in non-violent direct actions targeting state legislatures [plan of action] and convince them to support legislation that will distribute school funds equally among all its students, regardless of where in the state they live [your goals].
This thesis combines an issue (educational inequity produced by school funding policy), why it is significant (continued inequality), goals (equalize funding), and how we can achieve those goals (educate lawmakers and residents to support changed funding policy). The thesis should only be one sentence because writing it that way will require you to put the ideas together into a coherent argument with all the parts related. But please remember for your later writing: not all thesis statements will be one sentence! You are writing the statement this way to train yourself to think of all the necessary components of a thesis, not because this format is the only way, now and forever, amen.
