Public Judgement
Here is my pre-flect on public judgement. First of all, let's define public judgement. Public judgement is a public decision making that allows citizens to make choices that they are willing to help implement or carry out. Looking at the definition, I personally would assume the role to be somewhat passive. However, through experience, I have learned that public judgement requires more effort than one would have expected. It requires time and extensive knowledge about the subject in order for the judgement to be accurate. Like I said before, I had experience with public judgement and so do most people. From midterm elections to daily basis, there are so many opportunities for public judgement. For example, we as a PSEC community have been discussing the constitution. It was not the most exciting thing ever but I did try to pay close attention to it. There were parts that I don't necessarily agree with. For instance, in article II,section 1, paragraph 2, it said "Every member of the student Community must be in a Committee; thereby anyone who is found not in their Committee’s meeting without a valid excuse will be in conduct violation. " I disagree with it. I found most committees don't operate effectively and productively so therefore, why should we take it so seriously that if we miss a meeting, we will be in "conduct violation". However, I agree with many subjects mentioned on the constitution like "Faculty are not to take a lead in any Parliamentary Procedure, and are not permitted to establish order, speak out of turn, or provide advice to what is to be done next..." It's a democratic community meeting and thus, nobody should hold more power than the one next to him or her. Based on those agreement/ disagreement, I'll vote on whether or not I want to adopt this constitution as the Constitution of PSEC, using the art of public judgement.
Here is my article for the week. http://asia.news.yahoo.com/061114/ap/d8ld2v500.html
It mainly focuses on the public opinions, based on polls, on the midterm results. To be a part of the midterm election(ex: by voting), it already requires public judgement. However, this article focus even more on public judgement by asking questions like whether or not voters feel confident about the fairness of the election and what is the top priorities for the government now that it controls by the Democrats...I think this article also relate to the art of evaluation.

Here is my reflection on public judgement. First of all, public judgement is not knee jerk reactions or private thoughts. It is also not polarized views or opinions . It is not about being judgemental. What public judgement is that thinking through the clash of values engaging respectfully and creatively hearing and accomodating others . To summerize all the ideas represented above, we can say that public judgement is when the public accepts the consequences of its views or opinions.
Public Judgement is divided into Seven Stages of Public Opinion:
Stage 1: AWARENESS: People become aware of the issues
Stage 2: URGENCY: People start to care about the issues
Stage 3: SEEK ANSWER: This is a process of understanding
Stage 4: OBSTACLES STALL DISCUSSION: trade offs start to become evident
Stage 5: CHOICEWORK: rational weighing of pros and cons about the issues
Stage 6: ACCEPT CHANGE INTELLECTUALLY: people's attitude often change before the behaviors changed
Stage 7: JUDGEMENT: people accept the consequences and started to change their behaviors
The stages of public opinion are not fixed and can happen out of order and still can be successful.

Application: I believe it is safe to say that we all experience the seven stages of public opinion. I personally did. For me, it was about homosexual marriage right or the right for gay couples to get married. First, I experienced awareness with seeing the news and how the state of Massachusset allowed gay marriage as the country opposed it. After that, I went through the stage of urgency as I started to care about the issue as something that going to effect the country's future and its democracy and justice. I started to discuss it with people and form discussing with others, I experience the third stage, which is seek answer. I started to understand more about the issue like being homosexual is not a choice, it is something you are born with. Also, it is the issue of seperating state and church. After that, I started to evaluate the information I collected and weighing the pros and cons of gay marriage. I realize it is not as offensive and wrong as people think when they think about gay marriage and I started to believe that as people, they deserve to the human right of getting married to the one you love. I ended the process with stage seven as I accepted the consequence of the future America where gay marriage is accepted and everywhere and when I can vote, I will vote yes to it because I have friends who are gay and they are just like us, who love, care and give so much to life so why should they be discriminated against just because they have different sexuality ???