WRIT 3152 Experiential Activity Cross Class Presentation
Early 2026 fall semester, I accompanied professor Rorabaugh to speak to professor Pincock’s class at KSU whom were studying political science. There, we invited the students, with visual aid, to join us on a trip our class was taking to observe politics at the capital, including political journalism, state legislative processes, and local stakeholders. We spent a little while explaining what our class was and how we looked at online political discourse and studied digital community engagement.
Governorable Spaces
We briefly discussed with the class our focus on how policy and politics are often shaped by the discussions of everyday people, increasingly in the digital environment. And how the shape and functioning of this digital environment can shape political discussion. Inviting them to read our free and open source book on the discussion called Governorable Spaces.
Open Source & WordPress
After that, we discussed how we make posts on these topics and the digital tool we use to do this called WordPress. WordPress is a free and open source website design tool that allows non-programmers to easily build professional web pages. This led to some questions about what open source means and why it is important for digital spaces to use open source technologies. In our case, discourse technologies allowed us to make posts that were freely available on the Internet without relying on large companies and social media networks that have a history of selectively promoting content based on its political leaning and is governed in a non-democratic fashion.
MARTA Trip To Georgia State Capitol
We concluded by answering the class’s questions on how the trip would function and how there were multiple opportunities to take the trip, both by your own method of transport and a guided trip that would show students how to use the Marta transportation system into Atlanta. As well as other broader questions about the open source movement and how this technology promotes a more democratic online space.
(How to visit the GA state capital for FREE)
Notes on my conversation with Professor Heather Pincock
Two students accompanied Heather Pincock on the trip to the Georgia State Capitol. They were looking into the high school phone house bill which sadly had just passed the day before the trip so they didn’t get to do all the political activities they were hoping for. But they still got to meet their legislators over the phone for a 30 minute conversation and the other student ran into their legislator after a hearing.
The highlights of their trip are as follows:
- The legislator was not in session so they got to walk into the house session and see the papers the representatives had left on there desks.
- They went to their legislators offices but they were not in their office
- Got to ask there legislators why they voted for the phone bill and get some feed back
- They saw a bill in committee that made some non citizens lose their drivers licenses completely if they were on an expired visa and required other non citizens needing to renew their drivers license every 5 years
- They saw a bill in committee on a different day restricting synthetic cannabinoids. While watching the committee the bill was altered to narrow the restrictions so as not to inhibit these chemicals for medicine, which the original prohibited by being overly broad seemingly by accident.
She found there was a heightened spirit of warmth, encouragement and openness among the legislators and staff taking students there for the first time in comparison to previous visits she has done before. She thought it was very funny that the blog post/ communication the students had gotten about there being another group of students from KSU had her official KSU photo, and she had happened to be wearing the exact same outfit in the photo. One of the students came running up to them asking if she was Professor Pincock having easily recognized her looking exactly the same as in the photo. She was able to talk with them and join them going to a hearing before separating to go to the legislators office.
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