The Impact of Constitutional Amendments on Business: A Class Exercise

This publication has two purposes. It first provides some guidance on Florida's mid-term elections 2018. Second, it demonstrates to teachers and community educators an exercise that can be used to develop system thinking and get students to understand the complex impact of regulatory changes on business and individuals.

STUDENTS' OUTPUT: Guidance to business on the likely implication of each of 12 constitutional amendments proposed on the ballot. Students' names have been omitted for privacy. This guidance was completed as part of a class learning exercise.

Draft Guidance on Florida Constitutional Amendments:

Amendment 1 Amendment 2 Amendment 3 Amendment 4/TBA

Amendment 5 Amendment 6 Amendment 7 Amendment 9

Amendment 10 Amendment 11 Amendment 12 Amendment 13

Note that the opinion expressed here are not mine or my institution. Students drafting these guidances had a single hour to prepare, do the research and write a one page guidance - So please respect the imperfection of their work albeit ANY feedback would be more than welcome in the comments section.

Briefing Handed to the Students Ahead of their In Class Exercise

Note on the Process for Teachers:

This exercise was conducted with 48 undergraduate students who organized in 12 teams of 4. Each team undertook to review a single proposed constitutional amendments that was on the ballot. The students had only one hour to complete their individual parts of the project and 15 minutes for the group part. Each Student was handed a briefing, a blank form in which to fill their input, and the following guideline: Remember that the client DID NOT ASK whether the members should vote YES or NO. Rather she asked which businesses could benefit and which could be harmed. A simple way of trying to assess that is to think HOW DOES THIS MEASURE HELP INCREASE THE PROFITS (or CAUSES) of a group and HOW IT HELPS REDUCE OR LIMITS THE PROFITS (or Causes) of a group.

The one hour time was too short and as a consequence not all the teams' opinions are perfectly informed. You can easily modify this for your local elections and issues. The exercise was conducted during early election period and students were highly engaged. It was followed by a one hour debrief were each team presented the highlights of their research and shared the team's overall evaluation of the proposed constitutional amendment.