Contemporary Issue Essay: Failure of colleges and universities to meaningfully address rape culture on campus

Thoughtfully select additional source material to enhance your argument’s ethos, logos, and/or pathos;

 Thoughtfully select appropriate strategies of argument to enhance your argument’s ethos, logos, and/or pathos;

 Embed quotations and supply attributions that correctly follow the guidelines for successful quoting;

 Present a thesis that is debatable, focused, and intriguing;

 Carefully edit and proofread to create clear, clean prose for your argument; and

 Arrange citations for your source materials that correctly adhere to MLA specifications.

The Basics

 Complete essay must be between 5-6 pages, not including the Works Cited page. To clarify further: “5 pages” means five FULL pages of text; that is, a paper that goes to the fifth page by just a couple of sentences is not  a five-page paper.

 ALL source materials must meet C.R.A.A.P. criteria, including no sources older than a decade.

 4-5 sources from the Digital Curation and TWO new sources to meet your argument’s needs.

The Particulars

 Use 12 Times New Roman or Calibiri font.

 Format the paper according to MLA guidelines and specifications (see here opens in new window).

 Save the document as a Word file or PDF for easy viewing.

 NO MORE than 50 quoted words per page.

 All quoted and paraphrased material must be clearly attributed, either through signal phrases or parenthetical citations.

Organizing The Essay

As you organize the essay and build its content, use the following outline to help you approximate the length of each part of the essay. Please note that the approximate lengths to each part of the essay should be carefully followed so that you meet all of the goals of the assignment.

Introduction (1/2-3/4 page)

 Use an appropriate attention-getter to provide an engaging opening to the paper. Refer back to Module 1, Week 1 and review the file on attention-getters to identify a topic-appropriate strategy for your introduction.

 Outline the issue’s significance and/or background by briefly highlighting the issue’s history (or significant recent developments, depending on your topic), and identify / articulate why the issue is important. You may wish to address the issue’s Kairos and doxa in your setup (or in the “Establishing History and Context” section of your paper).

 Conclude the introduction with a thesis statement that establishes a clear position on the issue.

Body Paragraphs: Establishing History and Context (3/4-1 page)

 Use the M.E.A.L. Plan for this section and for all body paragraphs.

 Open with a topic sentence that clearly establishes the focus and/or purpose of the paragraph(s).

 Present a condensed and focused history of the issue to provide the reader with the background necessary to follow your argument about the issue. The historical information you provide need not be exhaustive; rather, focus on presenting an overview that highlights the most significant “moments” in the issue’s larger history. These “moments” can include discussing how the issue started, major developments that have shaped the issue’s place in our culture, and important and / or recent changes in the issue’s trajectory or significance.

 Depending on what you need to outline in this section, you may need only one paragraph, but you may need, for the sake of both content and clarity, to work through this information in two paragraphs.

Body Paragraphs: Your Position (2 1/2 – 3 pages)

 Remember to use the M.E.A.L. Plan to organize / arrange your paragraphs in this section.

 Identify 3-4 specific points that support your thesis statement, and around which you can build paragraphs illustrating each supporting point.

 Each supporting point will effectively represent a distinct topic sentence (and thus main idea in relation to the M.E.A.L. Plan), and should be seen as a kind of “mini thesis statement” for that particular paragraph.

 Provide at least TWO distinct pieces of evidence (historical examples, statistics, quotes from experts, etc.) to illustrate, defend, or explain the main idea of the paragraph.

 Each piece of evidence must be accompanied by an explanation or analysis of what the evidence reveals and why the evidence is significant or meaningful. That is, what does the evidence make clear? Why is the evidence important? What does it tell us or show us?

 Conclude each paragraph in this section with a sentence that creates a link back to the paper’s central claim (the thesis statement) and which sets up the paragraph that follows.

 One paragraph in this section must address an alternative view or position on the issue so that you can further emphasize why your position has merit.

Conclusion (1/2-3/4 page)

 Avoid repeating word-for-word your thesis statement or your topic sentences in this paragraph.

 You should, however, reiterate your main claim in the concluding paragraph so that you can make closing statements about why your position has merit or value.

 As you build this paragraph, imagine that you are answering one or all of these questions: why is my position on this issue valuable? Why is this position on the issue an appropriate position to take? Or why is this position appropriate to where we are at with the issue at this moment (think Kairos)?

 Consider using an attention-getter strategy to build good closure for your essay.