Committees

Your Part of the New World

Student participants in ExoTerra will be divided into Committees, each in charge of designing a different aspect of the new world. Some Committees will correspond to courses, so, for example, the Autumn Quarter Public Policy course on Policing will design the police system, but there are many more parts of the world to design than there are courses, so many other Committees will be formed of students doing ExoTerra as an extracurricular.

Lists of suggested Committees will be posted to the online community, and everyone will be invited to suggest more Committees. Each player will then give the organizers a list of the Committee’s you’re most eager to be on (and which friends you’re eager to be on a Committee with) and we’ll sort people into Committees. Each Committee will work on a proposal for that aspect of the new world, but all participants will get to make suggestions on all topics and see all Committees’ proposals, so if you have a great idea for another Committee you still get to share it.

Meanwhile, the most fundamental decisions will be made by everyone together, via the Council. Each committee will choose one member to represent that committee on the Council, and the Council will decide how the big decisions will be made: subcommittees? vote of the Council? vote of everyone? how will the votes be organized? The Council will decide, and begin the steps of forming the new world’s government.

Examples of Committees Likely to be Formed from Extracurricular Participants:
  • Capital City Design
  • Transit System
  • Economic and Banking System
  • Fuel and Energy Infrastructure
  • Lunar and Asteroid Mining Projects
  • Art & Symbols (flag, anthem, motto, images on currency)
  • Animal Ecosystems (what to release into the nearly-empty forests)
  • Ocean Ecosystems (what to release into the primitive new seas)
  • Agricultural Priorities
  • Experiments to run on other bodies in the new solar system
  • Many more…
Decisions All Colonists will Make Together, Overseen by the Council:
  • Naming the sun, planets, moons, city, rivers, etc.
  • Landing site (coast? river?)
  • System of government
  • Approving or creating founding documents proposed laws
  • Economy (capitalism? socialism? communism? hybrid? something new?)
  • How to use the ExoTerra ship now that the journey is complete?
  • How to use the Space Elevator and other unique resources brought from Earth?
  • What relationship to have with Earth? After a century of cold sleep, Earth may be a very different place from what you left.
  • Other decisions participants feel are the whole community should make together
Committees Likely to be Organized Within Courses:
  • Police System
  • Educational System
  • Healthcare System
  • Soil Microbe Seeding for Agriculture
  • Climate Engineering of Neighboring Rocky Planets
  • Foundational Political Thought Documents
  • Human Rights Documents
  • Architectural Motifs (using imagery from Earth’s historic architecture)
  • How to grapple with and commemorate the relationship between space colonization and Earth colonialism
  • More in future quarters