Digital Commons Network^™

Letter From The Executive Director, Paisley Currah

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Heterosexuality is under attack--not by the authors of a new "I hate straights" broadsheet, not by vacationers in Provincetown, but by state judges in the US. In August, New York's highest court ruled that the New York State Constitution "does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same-sex." Their reasoning? In part, the decision declared, because opposite-sex relationships are "often too casual," and thus result in the production of children by "accident or impulse." And so, "unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in …

Social Capital: Lessons From A Service-Learning Program, Maria J. D'Agostino

Publications and Research

In an increasingly complex society, public administrators continue to pursue their ultimate goal of maintaining a democratic society. Confronted with decreasing civic engagement and social capital, universities are being sought as partners in the movement to address our faltering democracy. University based service-learning programs provide an opportunity to address our faltering democracy, while addressing the University mission of service to the community. Empirical research, using CASE, the Rutgers University service-learning program, was conducted to further explore the possibility (D’Agostino 2006).

Gambling For Certainty: Luck, Chance, And Uncertainty In Politics, Mindy Peden, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

How much of what we do is the result of our will, and how much the result of chance or luck or fortune? This is a decidedly un-decidable question, but one that needs to be asked. The general assumption seems to be that a person's "lot" in life is physically, morally, politically, even romantically linked to choice. But the use of the term "lot" betrays the underlying uncertainty of what "causes" our "lot", laying bare questions of responsibility, burden, and even explanation. Much (perhaps at the very least 50% according to Machiavelli) of what happens in our lives can be …

Historical Perspective On Performance Budgeting: Performance Budgeting In The United States Before 1960, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

With the assistance of A. E. Buck, Herbert Hoover coined the term Performance Budget in 1949 to rebrand cost data budgeting. Cost data budgeting originated in 1912 in Richmond County (Staten Island), New York. It is strongly associated with the National Commission on Municipal Standards and the Committee on Uniform Street Sanitation Records, which are both direct derivatives of Clarence Ridley’s original work in making sense of performance measurement under the title Means of Measuring Municipal Government, his 1927 dissertation at Syracuse University. Ridley subsequently led the International City Managers Association for nearly 30 years. He teamed with A. E. …

Enhancing The Prospect For Deliberative Democracy: The Americaspeaks Model, Maria J. D'Agostino, Richard W. Schwester, Marc Holzer

Publications and Research

Engaging citizens in the deliberative process is essential to overcoming participatory apathy, cynicism toward government, and the apparent disconnect between citizens and decision-makers. AmericaSpeaks developed an electronic town meeting (ETM) designed to reconnect citizens and government. Ideally, the ETM affords citizens a means by which they can impact the policy-making discourse. This paper examines the extent to which AmericaSpeaks’ ETM enhances the prospect for deliberative democracy. Thirty minute structured interviews were conducted with twenty participants from Citizen Summit III, an ETM held in the District of Columbia in November 2003. The interview data suggest that AmericaSpeaks’ ETM, to some measure, …

Private And Public School Attendance Patterns Among New York City’S Racial/Ethnic Groups And Latino Nationalities In 2000, Cecilia Salvatierra

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning New York City racial/ethnic groups in 2000 – particularly private and public school attendance rates.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: Data indicated that total White educational enrollment for all grades was evenly divided between public and private education, with 49.6% of all students enrolled in public educational institutions and 50.4% enrolled in …