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Guidelines for the Competition

  • All applicants must be enrolled in either their junior or senior undergraduate year or enrolled in a graduate program at an accredited college or university.
  • Applicants may write bills on any topic they choose, but this topic must address an aspect of women’s social and/or reproductive rights injustices in the United States.
  • Bills should be creative and original. Bills should be organized in content, with a clear writing style.
  • Bills must include Title, Preamble, Body of the Bill, and an Enactment Clause. For more information on writing a bill, the following sites provide a good starting point: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/building-a-bill-in-congress.html, http://pmc.princeton.edu/writeabill.php.  To look up examples of actual bills that have been passed or are currently being debated by Congress, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php.
  • The Preamble should not exceed 300 words.
  • The Body of the Bill should be within 300-2500 words.
  • Bills should be 12-point font, Times New Roman, and Double Spaced with no grammatical or spelling errors.
  • Citations of all sources used for the bill are necessary. Please follow the format for citations laid out by the APA, MLA, or Chicago Style formats. Both in-text citations and a reference page, as dictated by the formatting style you choose to use, are necessary.
  • Plagiarism is unacceptable. Should Trust Women discover that a bill contains plagiarism, it will immediately be disqualified.
  • We will be accepting applications from September 1, 2011 to November 15, 2011.

Criteria for Judging
Aside from points given for correct formatting, as discussed in the Guidelines, applicants
will receive points during judging in the following categories:

  • Creativity/Originality
  • Relationship and Relevance to Contest: Bills must fit within the stated mission of Trust Women and must address an aspect of women’s social and/or reproductive rights injustices in the United States.
  • Clarity of Writing
  • Research and References: as evidenced in the Preamble as well as in-text citations and a reference page as dictated by citation style used.

Prizes

  • Trust Women will award $500 for first place, $250 for second place and $100 for third place.

Judging Panel and Process

  • A panel of leaders in the reproductive justice movement will anonymously judge applicants.  As the organizer of the Bill Writing Competition, Trust Women will not have a seat on the panel.  Once we receive your entry, we will assign it a random number, which will be the only identifying piece of information on your bill.  Judging will be based on the grading rubric and total points accumulated.
  • Judging will take place in November and December. We will get back to you with the results of the competition by December 31, 2011.

Submitting Your Entry

If you have questions regarding the Bill Writing Competition, please email competition@trustwomenpac.org.

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