Title: “Virtual Attendance at the Lone Star College Board of Trustees Meeting on October 5th: A Reflection on Government Operations and Citizen Participation”

As one of the assignments for this class, you must attend a government meeting.  Because of the shutdowns, you will attend your public meeting virtually. You must “attend” the most recent Lone Star College Board of Trustees meeting which was held on October 5th. Because of Covid, the meetings are streamed and the recording is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlTMGH8xlso 
You must watch the meeting in their entirety. You must write a paper with all the elements in the instructions below.. Please follow the instructions in the assignment completely. Pay attention to how the public is invited to participate, make sure to note which items from the agenda are pulled from the consent agenda. I will warn you that the two most common errors students make with this assignment is that they try to use the minutes to avoid watch/attending the meeting or they fail to watch until the end and their paper doesn’t cover the entire meeting. Since I attend these meetings, I will be well aware of any attempt to do a partial job and you will be graded accordingly. 
Before you attend the meeting you should print the agenda for the meeting.  Then, armed with the agenda, attend (virtually) the meeting. The Agenda is available here: http://www.lonestar.edu/board-agendas.htm  You only need the first 5 pages.  You do not need to print the minutes of the previous meeting or any of the material that follows.  (Printing the entire thing will be over 100 pages). 
1. Take notes of the meeting on the agenda. Note which items on the agenda were pulled out and not treated as part of the consent agenda, who asked questions about one or another action item, were there dissenting votes, who were the citizens that addressed the elected officials, what issue did they discuss and the like. 
2. To complete the assignment you must write a 750 word essay that describes the meeting (what governing body and what it’s responsibilities are) and the date, time, and place of the meeting.  (this may require some outside research)
3. In your essay, describe A) who was there, B) what issues were discussed, including the consent agenda, C)how citizens were involved in the meeting. 
You should conclude your paper with a critical reflection of what the meeting accomplished and how citizen participation impacted the meeting if it did.
Do not simply list Board members unless they were present. Be sure to address the prompts I have asked you to address in the paper.