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LaGrange College Political Science students gave what could be the most impactful presentation of their college careers.

Political Science professor, John Tures had his Research Methods class meet in the Callaway Academic building on Wednesday along with a special guest, Debbie Bucker, District 137 representative in the Georgia House. 

Buckner had reached out to the local college in hopes of hearing from students on some bills that she was working on. The representative presented the bills to the class, who then created presentations using statistical models to find if the bills could be effective if passed in Georgia. 

“I kind of gave the topics based on bills that we had introduced and had trouble passing that I thought were bills of interest to a lot of people in my district. I knew, here, you would have students…from all over the state of Georgia,” Buckner said. “It would give me an opportunity to say, ‘Okay, I’m not off base.’ This is something that would be good for the entire state, not just in my district.”

The three groups of students presented on: Why Georgia should eliminate sales tax on period products; If environmental bad actor laws actually improve the environment and; The relationship between gun-related incidents and access to mental health care. 

All of the projects looked at other states and their laws to find any statistical significance for arguing for the passing or not passing of Buckner’s proposed legislation. 

The first group of students, Mackenzie England, Makenzi Maltezo, Katie Gonzalez and Jenna Pittman presented on the “period tax,” which is a term to refer to Georgia’s sales tax including menstrual products as a taxable product. They found through their research three “statistically significant” findings: States without period tax have higher women’s employment and earnings, better healthcare and safety rankings and have potentially stronger legislative representation. 

“The number of women in State legislatures does affect the likelihood of having a state tax on period products,” said Gonzalez. 

Maltezo also found a slight statistical relationship between a period tax and the rate of women living in poverty. 

The groups concluded that eliminating a sales tax on these products would address economic and health disparities faced by women. Buckner told the group that health was a new angle to the discussion, that she and her colleagues had not considered before. 

“We have used the economic argument for years…[Those in opposition] have said that the money, which is what you were just talking about in poverty, was not significant,” said Buckner explaining over a lifetime a woman would pay like $200-$300 through the tax.

The official continued, “But we’ve never linked it to health, and we have a horrible problem with maternal death. So that gives me a whole new argument to use. Just leave the money out of it and just talk about [how it] correlates with women’s health…If this would help, then we need to do something about it. So thank you. Good job.”

The next group discussed the role of environmental bad actor laws, or “laws that allow state officials to deny permits to companies that have a history of environmental violations,” according to Vanderbilt University’s law school.  

The group, Curt Bonner, Ryan Melia and Sosuke Niki, said their objective was to see if these laws have a measurable impact on the environment. 

Their research did find that states with bad actor laws tended to have better water quality and quality of life. However, the data also showed that while these states do have higher environmental and state litter scores, they are not “statistically significant.”

While the students’ findings suggest that in general bad actor laws generally have healthier environments, they alone are not enough to keep the environment healthy. 

They ended their presentation with some solutions: “Heavier fines for companies that break bad actor laws,” said Melia. And, enforce bad actor designations to out-of-state companies. 

Buckner drew the second solution to the Okefenokee Swamp debate currently going on, where an Alabama company is hoping to mine near the state park. 

“The problem for [Georgia] in regards to the Okefenokee Swamp, the company that wants to mine next to the swamp is from another state,” Buckner said. “If it was a Georgia company, [they] would have to come under the bad actor law, and their past performance would be looked at, because the records are kept here in Georgia.”

The last group, composed of Merideth Baswell, Makayla Page and Eli Rodgers, presented on guns and mental health. The three variables of their project looked at if there was a correlation between access to mental health care and gun-related death, gun ownership and firearm-related suicide rates. 

According to their data, there is states with better or higher access to mental health care have fewer gun-related deaths, lower rates of gun ownership on average and lower rates of firearm-related suicide. All of these findings were statistically “significant or highly significant.”

The students said that the school shooting in Winder, Georgia happened in the middle of researching for this project.

Buckner is working to pass two seemingly unrelated bills to gun violence but could have a marked impact on the prevalence of mass shootings. 

“When the situation in Winder happened, that student had only been at that school three days, the records of all of his mental anguish at the other school where he attended had not arrived at the school where he was attending,” she said. 

One of the bills would not allow a student to attend classes before their records arrive at their new school. 

Another problem, said Buckner, is that in Georgia, the name of someone who has been involuntarily committed is purged off of the criminal background check database five years after leaving the mental health facility and they are able to buy a firearm. She is working on a bill that would not allow the system to purge those names. 

Buckner has put in a request to have the students once again present their projects, this time at the capitol building. 

The thing that impresses me so much about the presentations is I got a totally different…argument,” Buckner said. “It’s a new angle to use to get interest and hopefully votes and support for all three of them, which is what I was hoping for.”