Deliberative Dialogues spark debate

Author: Katherine Doorley

Last semester ended with many members of the Middlebury community questioning their own ability to discuss issues of diversity and belonging, and wondering how Middlebury could work to improve communication among members of the campus community on important issues.

The Deliberative Dialogues program was therefore instituted as part of this year's Orientation, in the hopes that the program would facilitate this sort of discussion. Associate Dean of Student Affairs Karen Guttentag described one of the motivations in an e-mail to potential Deliberative Dialogue leaders: "As you know, this has been a provocative year regarding issues of difference, and now more than ever we need student leaders who can participate constructively in some of the challenging campus-wide conversations that await us."

An additional reason for making Deliberative Dialogues part of the orientation process was articulated by Ena Yasuhara '06: "The goal of having Deliberative Dialogues during first-year orientation was to get firstyears familiar with this form of dialogue and communication from the beginning, at an early stage, so that during the four years here, they would be more prone to discuss things and facilitate dialogue on campus."

Deliberative Dialogues is a program established at Franklin Pierce College. The Deliberative Dialogues Web site at the College states that "Deliberative Dialogues are structured conversations of varying lengths and formats with ground rules and a discussion guide that lays out a range of possible approaches to an issue - an issue book or an issue brief - that participants move through with the help of a trained moderator. The ground rules encourage participants to listen to each other, and to get beyond debating and other adversarial ways of communicating." The Middlebury Deliberative Dialogues were set up around three different topics: "By the People: America's Role in the World," "Racial and Ethnic Tensions: What Should We Do?" and "Gender: What Difference Does it Make?" Leaders for the program were selected over the summer by Guttentag and Roman Graf, dean for Institutional Diversity, and worked in pairs to lead a discussion group on the last night of orientation.

By all accounts the program was a great success, despite its placement in the orientation schedule, which put it on Saturday night right before the "First Chance" Dance. Angelica Towne '08, an intern in the Office of Institutional Diversity and Deliberative Dialogues leader, said that "the program was an overwhelming success because post [program] surveys showed continued interest and approval." This sentiment was echoed by Yasuhara: "Most first years had something important to say about the topic they deliberated. They listened to each other's opinions and stated their personal experiences and opinions as well. That's what amazed me the most; just how much the first years were willing to listen to what others thought and what they had to say about the topic."

The program did not only affect the first-year students. "Deliberative Dialogues has already impacted the 40 moderators for the first-year orientation enough to want to continue to have honest thought-provoking conversations about real issues that change the way we see ourselves, others and our role in the world," said Towne.

The program was so successful that Towne decided to begin a Deliberative Dialogues club on campus. The club plans to bring the Deliberative Dialogue model to the entire campus in order to discuss racial and ethnic tensions. Stated by Towne, "The mission of the club is to give people who are otherwise unaffected or not exposed to certain conflicts (such as racial tensions or feminism) a context for those issues and a safe place to explore those topics." She added that "the goal is to get students who do not have a stake in the issues to better understand the standpoint of those who do [in order] to eventually cooperate and resolve latent and obvious conflicts."

The success of the program indicates that the first-year students may indeed have learned the lessons that Yasuhara hoped they would. "I hope they gained from the experience the idea of really listening to others and looking at things from another's perspective," he said. "It seems like something we all do, something that is so easy to do - but thinking of the events from last year, perhaps all of us may need to just quickly remind ourselves that we all come from different backgrounds and have different opinions and that everyone deserves to be heard."