Policy Speech Full-Sentence Outline
Topic: The housing crisis at UGA
General Purpose: To persuade
Specific Purpose: To persuade my COMM 2150H colleagues to push for the creation of cost-effective university housing and the reform of university housing policies.
Thesis: The University of Georgia needs to set about creating new campus and off-campus housing in addition to regulating the prices of current housing to ensure students’ access to affordable housing.
Organizational Pattern: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Introduction
The Attention Step
What would you do if you were unable to find housing for the coming academic year?
Many students have no answer when faced with this dilemma.
However, it is the unfortunate reality
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The UGA off-campus living guide references many off-campus apartments to live in at low, medium, and high price points.
The options listed at low price points currently have minimum rents that calculate to nearly $8000 for the year lease and nearly $7000 for 10 months given that some students sub-lease for the summer (UGA Student Affairs 6-10).
This trend is especially to the detriment of students on financial aid as the UGA Cost of Attendance (COA), the estimate that controls how much financial aid a student is allowed to have, has not changed to reflect the current prices of off-campus housing.
The COA estimates that undergraduate students will only spend an average of $4,550 on off-campus housing (UGA Office of Student Financial Aid).
Students relying on financial aid for housing are then left with a minimum of over $2000 to pay out of pocket for housing.
[Transition: However, despite the discouraging housing situation, there is strength in numbers, and we have the power to sway the University in creating more housing and lowering
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Moreover, as stated in The Politics of Joint University and Community Housing Development: Cambridge, Boston, and Beyond, “The Report of a Presidential Committee at Stanford University summed up responsibility a year later: ‘The Committee believes that when the University (or any other institution) contributes to creating a severe social problem, it has a responsibility for contributing to a solution for that problem’ (Shipler, 1968, 4)” (Sobel et al. 82).
Since UGA contributed heavily to the overcrowding of and rent spikes in Athens, it has an agreed upon responsibility to assist in the implementation of the solution, even if the solution is not free.
[Internal Summary: Now you’ve seen how the University can help aid its housing crisis and why it has a responsibility to fix it.]
[Transition: Let’s all envision together what UGA will look like with these changes