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Around 200 faculty, staff and students attended Syracuse University’s “Life Together” community conversation on issues surrounding election season Tuesday evening, intended to nurture bipartisan civil dialogue on campus.

The event, titled “A Community Conversation for Election Season and Beyond,” was held at Schine Student Center’s Goldstein Auditorium. The discussion came two weeks before the 2024 United States general elections on Nov. 5.

The dialogue is part of the university’s “Life Together Series,” a new initiative aiming to encourage civic engagement and foster political discussion on campus throughout the 2024-25 academic year. Vice President for Civic Engagement and Education Gretchen Ritter, who recently stepped down as the university’s provost, was one of three administrators to spearhead the project.

“The idea behind this whole initiative is to go from an ‘us versus them’ back to an ‘us’ and (help) people to be able to hear each other,” Ritter said.

The evening’s conversations mainly focused on economic issues. According to an NBC News poll, 30% of voters under 30 ranked the economy and inflation as their biggest concern in this fall’s election.

Upon arriving, attendees were randomly sorted into groups at over 25 tables in the auditorium. Volunteers led discussions at each table about economic concerns like how the economy impacts young adults as well as economic solutions at the local, state and federal level.

In her opening remarks, Ritter emphasized the need for participants to lean into critical thinking skills they may not otherwise use when engaging in political discourse.

“In an age where there’s so much misinformation and disinformation, we’re asking people to be able to assess information, to assess the logic … and in doing so, to think about, ‘Well, how do I substantiate my own positions?’” Ritter said.

Over the course of the dialogue, tables discussed questions such as “What can we do to advance life together?” and “How can we promote social and political cooperation and well-being for all of us?”

After discussing each question for roughly 15 minutes, table facilitators, who were previously trained by the university to manage the potentially-tense discussion topics, wrote a summary of participants’ answers.

Responses collected during each “Life Together” event will contribute to a larger, formal report that will be made publicly available to the university community at a later date, said Tina Nabatchi, director of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration in SU’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Nabatchi was also one of the organizers of Tuesday’s session.

Stella Bellman | Contributing Photographer

Gretchen Ritter, SU’s vice president for civic engagement and education, delivers opening remarks during Tuesday’s community conversation.

Another facilitator, Beth Sua Carvajal, who works for PARCC’s Conflict Management Center, said she was pleasantly surprised by how productive her group’s conversations were as the night went on.

“People were shy (at the beginning) and then, when time passed, they were more involved. At the end, they brought all their ideas,” Sua Carvajal said. “They realized that they have a lot of things to say.”

After the first discussion question, there was a panel featuring Meghan Hays, a former senior communications advisor to President Joe Biden, and Lance Trover, a former spokesman for North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s presidential campaign. During their conversation, Hays and Trover said there’s a need for more bipartisan cooperation in politics and less aggressive rhetoric between both sides.

Margaret Talev, the moderator of the panel and the Kramer Director of SU’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, said Hays and Trover recently became friends despite working for opposing parties, because of their constant participation in political discussions on news shows.

Both of them said that, even though they are often pitted against one another on these shows, that doesn’t mean they have to take those disagreements into how they view each other personally.

“I have my beliefs and he has his beliefs, but we can still be friends and have that mutual respect,” Hays said. “I think it’s an important thing to take away that just because someone doesn’t agree with you does not make them a bad person.”

One of the attendees, SU junior Olutoyin Green, said learning to gain respect for others with different views was one reason why she attended the event. She said she hoped anyone who participated would spread what they learned throughout the community.

“I think it’s the importance of…being able to have those conversations where you understand where someone’s coming from in order to move forward in how we interact in a political setting…to be able to create community but still have a level of difference exist,” Green said.

SU has not yet announced what its future “Life Together” events will look like, but the university plans to use feedback from Tuesday’s conversation to inspire future discussions, Ritter said.

Published on October 23, 2024 at 1:14 am