Democratic Innovation at Jacobs

Have you ever been upset with decisions taken by your student parliament? Or have you felt that choices in referendums on campus are influenced by gut feeling rather than knowledge? Very soon, the campus will undergo a democratic experiment with the potential to solve these issues. On May 9, or Deliberation Day, 35 undergraduates will engage in a Deliberative Referendum. Some of you may already have been contacted to participate in this event and/or to complete the survey.
Developed by professor James Fishkin at Stanford University, Deliberative Polls® aim at empowering ordinary citizens to make informed policy decisions. A random sample of the respective population is invited to participate in a weekend seminar. The participants have time to deliberate on the topic in small groups with trained moderators and can question selected experts.and. Previous polls around the globe have shown that participants gain knowledge and that there are clear shifts of opinion.
The USC Deliberative Referendums has been studying Fishkin's method and other democratic innovations throughout the semester. The students are now organising the first ever Deliberative Referendum in Germany on the issue of whether a mandatory community service programme should be established on campus. For more than a month the students have been contacting experts, developing informational packages, undergoing professional moderation training, and organising the logistics of the event. Everything but the scale will be as close to the original as possible. This is not just an academic experiment. Should participants indicate support for some form of community service by Jacobs University students, a proposal will be subjected to a campus-wide referendum. University leadership has already agreed to discuss the results in the Academic Council, the forum where important decisions on campus life are taken. To get meaningful results, we need a high response rate. So if you have been invited to participate in D-Day and/or to complete the survey, please respond and help us make Deliberation Day a success!