1.  The essay.  The essay should consist of no more than 800 words, a length a bit shorter than these instructions.  The essay may not include footnotes.  I will award each essay a raw-score so that it can be treated as the equivalent of an answer to an essay that constitutes 20% of the final examination.

    2.  Choosing a town and board.  Go anywhere you want.  To make matters easier, the course's web site includes some basic information on meeting schedules of land use boards in 14 towns in the New Haven area.  Many of these have at least three relevant boards, which are called something on the order of: (1) the Planning and Zoning Commission (which addresses rezonings, plan amendments, and other major questions), (2) the Board of Zoning Appeals (which deals with applications for variances and so forth), and (3) the Inland Wetlands board (which a 1972 Connecticut statute requires of all towns).  There are variations from town to town.  Most boards hold public hearings on applications only once a month (usually in the evening), although they may meet more often than that for other purposes.

    3.  Selecting a particular meeting.  The agenda of a board meeting commonly is published on the prior Thursday in the "Legal" section of the classified ads in the New Haven Register.  You can also call the local office to obtain agenda information.  Cliff Brinson hopes to be able to draw on a variety of sources to post tips under the heading "Meetings of Possible Interest" on the web site.

    4.  Essay topics.  Whatever interests you.  Some possibilities:  How "legalistic" were the procedures and substantive discussions?  Is it plausible to treat an application for a land use permit as a trigger for bargaining among involved parties?  Was there evidence of behind-the-scenes negotiations?  Who were the board members and what were their motivations?  The advocates?  What role, if any, did lawyers and planning staff members play?  Did the process serve (or disserve) relevant policy goals?  How did it square with the public-interest, public-choice, civic-republican, or other models of public affairs?  How were the participants dressed?

    5.  Essay styles.  Whatever you choose.  Some possibilities:  Law-reviewese.  Storytelling.  Social-science jargon.  Role models might include Dave Barry, Ronald Dworkin, Ellen Goodman, Tom Wolfe, William Faulkner, or whomever.

    6.  Additional sources.  Some of you may want to interview one or more participants.  If you do, please be sensitive to other demands on their time.  If you focus on a particular case, you may want to look at the case's official file, which is available for public inspection in the relevant municipal office.  Warning:  A board is likely to hear testimony on an application at one hearing and then render its decision on the matter several weeks later.  Anticipate this delay if the board's ultimate decision will figure in your analysis.

    7.  When more than one student attends the same meeting.  Group outings are permitted and in some ways may be advantageous because perceptions of the same events may differ markedly.  Movie buffs refer to this as the Rashomon effect.  If several of you do attend the same meeting, you may want to coordinate in some fashion, particularly to prevent excessive interviewing (if you are inclined to interview).

    8.  Deadlines.  To make the exercise somewhat interactive, I have established three different due dates.  The class has been divided into three groups, each defined according to the first initial of a student's last name.  Each group has been randomly paired with a due date, with the following results:

                Students Q-Z:  Tuesday, March 24
                Students A-F:  Tuesday, April 14
                Students G-P:  Tuesday, May 5

You may trade your due date with that of another member of the class.  If you do, please inform Cliff Brinson of the trade.  Because a student may submit the essay prior to the deadline, a student has no incentive within the confines of the Land Use course to relinquish a late due date.  However, because social ties among students are multi-stranded (as sociologists say), external forms of implicit compensation are possible.
    In order to carry out the experiment in interactive student writing, each student is responsible for taking into account, as appropriate, the contents of all students' essays that were posted on the web site at least three days prior to the date of the student's submission.  Cliff Brinson will attempt to organize the submitted essays by town and (if possible) subject matter.

    9.  Submitting your essay.  Please place your name and the name of the local agency at the top of your essay.  Submit the essay on disk to Cliff Brinson (either in person or via his student mailbox with the Class of '98).  Write your name and the name of the pertinent file on the disk label.  To enable posting on the web site, you must submit the file in HTML format.  Many word processing programs make this easy.  In WordPerfect 8, for example, open the "Save as" dialog box and choose HTML under "Save as type."  If your word processing program does not allow for saving documents in HTML format, take your work disk to a computer in Room 130 and open the document using Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, both of which allow for saving in HTML.  If you need help, click on the HelpDesk icon on the desktop of the Room 130 PCs and look under HTML Documents/Save as HTML.  See Cliff Brinson if you need additional help.