wmchen

I've been told that this is actually because Brazil has a very competitive local ecosystem of small ISPs competing with eachother on the regional scale.

In my bubble in undergrad, "policy case competitions" were all the rage. You're given a broad topic (often a wicked problem of some kind such as Housing Inaffordability or Climate Change, or something related to the sponsors field of interest), told to write a policy briefing note with no real constraints (money, resources, time) with recommendations to tackle the problem, and then evaluated by expert judges (typically think tankers, professors, senior government executives) who in a very well-meaning way, oftentimes have nothing significant to add or critique (because again, no constraints and they're nice because it's a learning environment), so they end up saying something along the lines of "have you looked at [vaguely related government program, non-profit initiative, etc.]? They used similar wording to your presentation."

I made the case to a competition organizer that we really ought to do away with this format and switch to something more grounded in systems mapping, because I don't really feel it's reasonable to ask undergrads to propose a policy that will somehow solve a wicked problem, or even a subdomain of one, in one fell swoop. I also don't think the format really encourages much original thinking. Most of the recommendations end up being paraphrases of existing proposed solutions, with little opportunity to meaningfully interrogate why those solutions might or might not work in the first place.

Systems mapping, or using a systems thinking lens, doesn't require you to propose a clear or obvious solution to something, but it does give people a chance to systematically examine problems through their own lenses. Having a student map out how they see the world, what they understand to be the root causes of a given problem, and how different actors and incentives interact could actually change some of our minds on how pervasive these problems are, where the feedback loops exist, and where changes might be most impactful. I think there's considerably more value in asking students to develop an interesting understanding of a problem that expands the domain of understanding than in asking them to come up with a superficially convincing solution to it.

The only reference to membership I see from the Commissioner for Lobbying states [1]:

> Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has two classes of members: ordinary members and voting members. Membership in CCLA shall be available to persons interested in furthering the Corporation's purposes and who have applied for and been accepted into membership in the Corporation by resolution of the board or in such other manner as may be determined by the board, in accordance with any membership criteria set by the board. Voting members are members who have been accepted as voting members by the board. A voting membership expires 12 months after the date of board acceptance, unless renewed by the board.

I don't see anything to this effect on the website, like a membership application form.

This is in contrast to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association which just published the decision this week to have a flat $5 open membership.