With the presidential election season in the air, students and faculty from the Division of Public Administration have a goal to get the community involved in a conversation about the federal budget in a symposium titled ””Create The Fix: Empowering the Public to Solve the Federal Budget Crisis””:http://publicadmin.wvu.edu/home/create-the-fix.

The event, held on Tuesday (April 3) will begin with registration at 9 a.m. at the Waterfront Place Hotel. Registration is free and lunch will be provided. The program will close at 3 p.m. The deadline for registration is Saturday (March 31) and can be done by visiting http://simpleforms.scripts.wvu.edu/sf/CreateTheFixRegistration/.

The leaders of the symposium aim to communicate a truthful, non-politicized picture of the federal budget to the public and create a conversation to take a step toward developing realistic solutions.

“We are not trying to solve the issue in one day, but get the discussion started. This symposium is going to be a template for other campuses across the nation to get their communities involved,” said Hilah Zia, public administration graduate student at WVU. “The students that have been working on this are passionate about this issue because it is impacting our generation and our future job outlook, as well as how communities will be in ten to twenty years from now. If we have just one person that takes something away from the event, it will make the whole day worth it.”

Zia encourages anyone within the community who is curious about the topic to get involved.

“The symposium is about empowering the public, so we want members of the community to get involved,” Zia said. “We have a great list of panelists participating that are traveling to Morgantown to hear from the WVU community.”

More objectives of the symposium include: examining the elements of the federal budget with a focus on the choices that have contributed most to the national debt issues; exploring how traditional and social media portray the issues to the public with a focus on considering the media’s potential to educate the public; and identifying opportunities for the media and public administrators to educate the public on the federal budget issues.

For more information on the event, visit http://publicadmin.wvu.edu/home/create-the-fix. For more information on the Division of Public Administration, visit http://publicadmin.wvu.edu. For more information on the Waterfront Place Hotel, visit http://www.waterfrontplacehotel.com/.

-WVU-

CONTACT: Will Turner, Student Association for Public Administrators
717-343-5831, Will.Turner@mail.wvu.edu

mm/03/30/12

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