by LAURA PAPPANO March 31, 2019 A Students at the University of Minnesota formed the Bipartisan Issues Group and designed a logo with elephant and donkey overlapping to form a heart. Logo courtesy of designer, Johanna Schmidt This story also appeared in The Washington Post Divided We Learn Getting rid of the ‘gotcha’: College students try to tame political dialogue Rebelling against political discourse that polarizes people, new campus groups seek common ground and informed discussion of hot-button topics The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox. NN ARBOR, Mich. — Tempers are flaring again over “free speech.” But while adults shout and Tweet across the political divide, college students are organizing civil campus discussions — with both sides at the table. In the wake of violent political protests on campuses around the country, some students have stepped away from the fray and sought what’s been lacking: space for reasoned conversation, listening and middle ground. The hunger for moderation comes with rules that emphasize facts, ban personal attacks and respect ideological opponents. It begs two questions: Are we allowed to feel hopeful? And, can we learn something? These students are hardly “snowflakes.” They’re plunging into touchy subjects like prison reform, immigration, the government shutdown, teachers unions, health care for all, abortion, gun control and even — depending where they are — agricultural subsidies. ABOUT DONATE TOPICS This website uses cookies as well as similar tools and technologies to understand visitors’ experiences. By continuing to use this website, you consent to our usage of cookies and similar technologies, in accordance with our cookie policy. ACCEPT ACCEPT
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by LAURA PAPPANO March 31, 2019
A
Students at the University of Minnesota formed theBipartisan Issues Group and designed a logo with elephantand donkey overlapping to form a heart. Logo courtesy ofdesigner, Johanna Schmidt
This story also appeared in TheWashington Post
Divided We Learn
Getting rid of the ‘gotcha’: College students try totame political dialogueRebelling against political discourse that polarizes people, new campus groups seekcommon ground and informed discussion of hot-button topics
The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that
reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly
newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.
NN ARBOR, Mich. — Tempers are flaring
again over “free speech.” But while adults
shout and Tweet across the political divide,
college students are organizing civil campus
discussions — with both sides at the table.
In the wake of violent political protests on
campuses around the country, some students
have stepped away from the fray and sought
what’s been lacking: space for reasoned
conversation, listening and middle ground. The
hunger for moderation comes with rules that
emphasize facts, ban personal attacks and
respect ideological opponents.
It begs two questions: Are we allowed to feel
hopeful? And, can we learn something?
These students are hardly “snowflakes.” They’re plunging into
touchy subjects like prison reform, immigration, the
government shutdown, teachers unions, health care for all,
abortion, gun control and even — depending where they are
— agricultural subsidies.
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“The expectation is that you come in and you are willing to
hear anything people might say,” said Christina Laridaen, a
senior from Prior Lake, Minnesota, who is the outreach
coordinator for the Minnesota Bipartisan Issues Group at the
University of Minnesota.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
What started with six friends talking politics a few years ago now
draws 40 every Thursday at 7 p.m. to Coffman Memorial Union for
organized discussion on preselected topics. The group has a logo
(donkey and elephant butts form a heart) and motto (“politics
without the yelling”).
Although the sessions attract “highly political people,” Laridaen said,
they also demand “a recognition of other people’s humanity: ‘I have
these values and they are important to me. And somebody has these
other values and they are just as important to them.’ ”
Related: OPINION: Election 2018’s winners include campus
activism, diversity — and polarization
The notion that people who disagree with you are not evil or ill-
intentioned is at odds with the prevailing national climate. To be
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“As a conservative,it’s an open spaceto talk about andshare my views; …most of the time,you get shunned.That doesn’thappen here.”Kyle Herbstreit, junior, referring tothe University of Michigan’sWeListen club
fair, campuses remain split and charged, but there is also a new drive
for meeting spaces and a quest for common ground.
Students are forming new clubs, reviving old ones,
launching bipartisan journals and organizing events. It’s
happening across the country at campuses large and small,
public and private — from Washington State University to
Tufts — and getting a boost from organizations like
BridgeUSA, which started in 2016 at Notre Dame and the
University of Colorado Boulder (and whose chapter at the
University of California, Berkeley, began after violent
protests around a planned visit by Milo Yiannopoulos in
2017). In the past year, BridgeUSA has grown from four to 24
campuses and will hold its second summit April 26 in
Dallas.
“It’s about putting a face to the other side,” said Daniel
Lewis, a junior who led a day-long Policy Challenge on
March 30 for Tufts CIVIC, which stands for Cooperation and
Innovation in Citizenship and is described as a “multipartisan
discussion forum.” Said Lewis, “It’s much harder to scream at
someone in front of you than someone across the room or across the
web.”
Julie Wollman, president of Widener University, who launched the
Common Ground Initiative there in fall 2017 to lead regular
conversations on campus for students and faculty, thinks people
simply “want to find a better way.” For student groups that means
creating club leaderships that are politically even, plus putting
emphasis on rules and sharing nonpartisan facts at each session.
WeListen, a club started by University of Michigan students in 2017,
is aggressively balanced. Its current co-presidents, Kate Westa, a
junior from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Brett Zaslavsky, a
sophomore from Glencoe, Illinois, are matched political opposites
(she right, he left). The executive board “is a 50-50 split, half
conservative and half liberal,” as is the six-member “content team”
that provides background research for each gathering, said Evon Yao,
vice president of outreach.
Even the composition of discussion groups at events is balanced.
As 49 students entered Room 110 in Weiser Hall on a recent Monday
evening, they dropped backpacks and grabbed slices of cheese pizza.
But not before “checking in” on a laptop, where they rated their
political orientation overall and then on the issue of the evening —
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On a recent Monday evening, 49 students gathered inpolitically mixed groups to discuss and debate the deathpenalty at a session organized by WeListen, a bipartisanstudent group at the University of Michigan. LauraPappano, for The Hechinger Report
the death penalty — by indicating how strongly
they felt and where they fell on a spectrum from
“immoral and should be illegal” to “ought to be
used, especially for heinous crimes.”
A student-built algorithm then created a
composite score for each attendee and sorted
individuals into eight groups that optimized
political and ideological diversity within each.
Groups also had a secret “moderator,” trained in
conflict resolution, to keep talk fair. (Moderators
had gathered before the session to preview ways
to resolve possible tensions, such as talk
becoming a moral face-off, in which case
Zaslavsky advised, “bring it back to policy.”)
Before reporting to assigned tables, students received a two-page fact
sheet (including, for example, “There have been 1,492 executions
since 1976”; “from 2000 to 2015, 43% of inmates killed under the
death penalty had received a mental illness diagnosis”). They took in
a slide presentation on the history of the death penalty (the Code of
Hammurabi, views of the Founding Fathers).
Then came verbal guidelines. “People have good intentions and
genuinely believe what they say,” Westa announced. Zaslavsky ticked
off reminders — “be conscious of body language,” “no personal
attacks,” “no Googling facts.”
He added that people can change their views. “Don’t freeze people in
time. You see a lot of the same people week after week. . . . Keep an
open mind.”
To set the stage for civility, conversations began with five minutes of
nonpolitical chit-chat. Then, students in Group 7 — which included a
mix of college years, majors (history, mechanical engineering and
chemistry) and geographic origins (Michigan, Maryland and New
Mexico) — delved into a death penalty discussion that ranged wildly.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Julia Pascale, a sophomore from Baltimore, and KyleHerbstreit, a junior from Stevensville, Michigan, discuss
There was mention of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” Ted Bundy,
Osama bin Laden and Hitler. They debated the death penalty’s
purpose (deterrence or retribution?), considered the soaring cost of
chemicals for lethal injection, the mental health of death row
convicts, the risk of wrongful execution, the cost of life
imprisonment versus the death penalty — even whether the death
should be painful for those guilty of heinous crimes. To which Tyler
Ziel, a soft-voiced junior with black-framed glasses, suggested that
lessening suffering at death may not be about the convict: “Is the
humanity for them or for us? So we are not so barbaric?”
In the end, nothing got decided. But that’s the
point. There are no “winners.” Bipartisan
discussions are about letting go of “gotcha’s” and
hearing others’ thoughts.
This tone attracts regulars like Kyle Herbstreit, a
junior from Stevensville, Michigan. “As a
conservative, it’s an open space to talk about and
share my views,” he said. Because the campus is
so liberal, “most of the time, you get shunned.
That doesn’t happen here.”
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the death penalty during a session sponsored by WeListen,a bipartisan student group at the University of Michigan.Laura Pappano, for The Hechinger Report
“It’s much harderto scream atsomeone in frontof you thansomeone acrossthe room or acrossthe web.” Daniel Lewis, junior at TuftsUniversity
Kate Westa, a junior from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who isco-president of WeListen, a bipartisan student group at
Related: OPINION: Do we kill the liberal arts
when we demonize people for their ideas?
It’s not entirely clear how or why the desire to
share stances — rather than set fires or chant over opponents — is
gaining traction nationally. Perhaps it is the byproduct of a
generation that, unlike its older siblings, seeks to solve problems, not
just join sides.
That distinction struck Jacob Heinen, a former vice president of the
Washington State University College Republicans club. Although he
once proudly spray-painted “Trump” on a wall that club members
had built on campus, Heinen grew tired of what he saw as a focus on
antagonizing others to get attention and “just making people mad.”
And when the president of his university’s College Republicans,
James Allsup, surfaced at the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 in
Charlottesville, Virginia, Heinen resigned from the group – and
helped to start a nonpartisan Political Science Club on campus. “I felt
there were more efficient ways to communicate conservative values,”
said Heinen, now a senior. “I want to engage people in honest
conversation.”
Ditto, you might say, for Andrew Solender, a junior at Vassar.
He’s hardly conservative — a Democrat who worked on
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — but he found the
far-left antics around a visiting Cornell law professor’s talk
on free speech polarizing, allowing no room for those
deemed “not progressive enough.” It led him and friends last
spring to start the nonpartisan Vassar Political Review. (A
recent headline: “Opinion: New York Democrats should Vote
for Republican Mark Molinaro for Governor.”)
Related: Should college students’ money be paying for
controversial speakers and programs?
Creating a fair and cordial space,
student leaders say, starts with interrupting
knee-jerk political alignments to focus on issues.
In Michigan, WeListen’s approach is so in
demand that club members get called to lead
discussions for other groups (recently on
immigration at the university’s Osher Lifelong
Learning Institute and at Ann Arbor’s Greenhills
School).
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the University of Michigan, beside the “check in” screenfor a session on the death penalty. Laura Pappano, for TheHechinger Report
“We go into theconversationsassuming we allwant the samethings, like safetyand freedom. Ithas changed how Italk to people onthe left. I havemade a lot offriends.”Kate Westa, co-president of theWeListen club at the University ofMichigan
Sarah Wagner, graduate program
coordinator in the psychology
department at the university, had
attended WeListen sessions as the only
staffer among undergraduates before she organized, last
April, a version for faculty and staff. About 50 people now
meet at lunchtime every other month.
“Sometimes you find that you have the same idea as
someone else who is a far-right Republican,” said Wagner,
who leans left and has become friends with people she
would not have otherwise gotten to know. She wondered
aloud: “Would we have had this conversation if we started
with our political affiliation?”
It’s a fair question. Being forced to explain her views, said
Wagner, has made her think deeply about what she believes
and why. She’s also heard perspectives she would not
otherwise encounter. During a conversation on mass incarceration,
she said, “at my table we had six people and four had immediate
family members who had been in and out of prison throughout their
lives.”
Wagner prizes the sessions because people “get to practice the skill of
having difficult conversations.”
That’s something typically avoided, but which students must learn to
do, said Wollman, the Widener president. “We have young people at
a place in their lives where they are asking, ‘How will I deal with this
when I am in the workplace?’ ”
This is a challenging moment because just as colleges seek greater
diversity of thought and experience and “throw together all these
people who are very different” to broaden students’ exposure,
Wollman said, “our country feels like it is working against that.
Instead of bringing people together, it is dividing them and
highlighting differences.”
WeListen co-presidents Westa and Zaslavsky said participating has
changed their perceptions of their political opposites. Before, Westa
said, she saw liberals as opponents who forced “a lot of abrasive
conversations” whenever she set up a table on campus to promote
Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative group that she helps
lead. Zaslavsky admitted to thinking “people on the right were
beholden to special interests or they were thinking backwards.”
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Pressed to see how others come to beliefs, rather than just aiming to
change minds, reveals commonalities, both said. “People’s hearts are
in the right place,” said Zaslavsky.
“We go into the conversations assuming we all want the same things,
like safety and freedom,” said Westa. “It has changed how I talk to
people on the left. I have made a lot of friends.”
This story about political dialogue was produced by The Hechinger
Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on
inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s
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Laura Pappano
Laura Pappano is an education journalist who also writesabout gender and sport. She is a regular contributor to TheNew York Times Education Life…
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