I was taking classes at a community college around I wanna say 2011 or 2012. Teachers didn’t want you to use phones during class because they didn’t want you to cheat or be distracted, but there was a big push from the administration to get students to buy digital copies of the textbooks (I assumed because physical copies can be sold used and that was eating into their profits). But reading the digital textbooks on your smartphone was in direct conflict with the no phone policy. So the workaround they found was to say, “phones are not allowed but tablets are ok and encouraged” (which is silly because a tablet can do anything a phone can do). To add confusion around this time phone manufacturers were exploring with making bigger and bigger screens, meanwhile tablets were exploring being more portable, so there was ambiguity in the distinction between the two both in function and physical dimensions. So how did they determine what devices were allowed and which ones were banned you ask? They landed on an arbitrary dimension of 7 inches. Anything smaller than 7 inches was a phone and was clearly being used to cheat, anything larger was a tablet and was an instructional tool. Teachers were given rulers to measure devices and if you were caught using a device smaller than 7 inches you would be disciplined for academic dishonesty. Mind you we also had laptops that also were not viewed as an issue, the school had free WiFi everywhere on campus, and we had apps like fb messnger for messaging and Skype and google voice for phone calls and also access to just Google, so there really was no distinction in mechanisms for academic dishonesty or for distractions between the two.

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So I am constantly told that local elections is where real change is possible and regardless of the shit show going on with the presidential elections its super important to vote down ballot. But then I look down ballot and its mostly a bunch of judges and like one department seat that had something to do with water. I look up all the candidates in all the down ballot races and there is zero information about their platform, their policies, how they tend to vote, nothing, no coverage.

So I feel like I believe when people say the down ballot races is where we have a chance to make a difference, but how can I make a difference if I can’t even cast an informed vote? Do you have any resources to learn information on these judges?

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