Policy & Society

On November 8, 2011, absentee voters in Takoma Park, Maryland, will have the option to verify their votes for mayor and city council using a new Internet voting system called Remotegrity. Internet voting has been used to elect government officials before (for example, in Switzerland, Estonia and Norway), but what is new here is that voters mail in paper ballots and use the Internet to independently verify that their votes have been received by the city and recorded correctly. Anyone can check online that the recorded votes were tallied correctly.

From Nancy Young, Vice President, Student Affairs I am pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Barnhart will be joining our division as the new Director of Off-Campus Student Services (OCSS). Dan comes to UMBC from Stevenson University with many years of prior experience in off-campus student services, student activities, veteran affairs and the military. He received his doctoral degree in Education from George Washington University and earned a Counseling degree from Wake Forest University. His demonstrated leadership skill, best practice research and strategic visioning will be valuable assets to the department of OCSS and the Division of Student Affairs. We… Continue Reading Daniel Barnhart Named Director of Off-Campus Student Services

In his latest Baltimore Sun opinion column, UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller focuses on the US tax policy debate. “We talk a lot about spending cuts but rarely, if ever, about revenue increases. Why the asymmetry?” Schaller asks. Read “The Gospel of Tax Cuts” to find out.

The Maryland Humanities Council (MHC) has elected seven new members to its Board of Directors, including Stephen J. Sfekas, a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge who previously taught health care law and administrative law at UMBC. According to Baltimore Citybizlist, Sfekas has served on the boards of The ARC Baltimore, the Maryland Disabilities Law Center, the Society for Values in Higher Education, and the President’s Advisory Council for UMBC. MHC board members are involved in strategic planning, fundraising and fiscal management for the group.

On Thursday, November 10, Michael Fallon, senior lecturer of English, will read from his two new books of poetry: “Since You have No Body,” winner of the 2011 Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Competition “Overall, Since You Have No Body is about making peace with the organic, as well as the ontological world, with death, with the shadow, and hence with the void…” -Contest Judge, poet Corey Mesler and “The Great Before and After” In The Great Before and After, George C. Tumulty, a comic everyman, contemplates the origins and fate of himself, humanity, and the universe, raising the big… Continue Reading Michael Fallon, English, to Read from and Sign Books

“It would have been easy in recent days to mistake Courtroom 5D as the site of a Maryland political convention rather than the forum for a public corruption trial,” wrote the Washington Post‘s John Wagner, on the defense of Sen. Ulysses Currie. Prominent character witnesses were brought to the stand over several days to vouch for Currie’s integrity in light of corruption allegations — a potentially risky move for some, considering their own career ambitions. “I don’t know whether a jury will look at politicians saying nice things about other politicians in a cynical way or a laudatory way,” said… Continue Reading Donald Norris, Public Policy, in the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun