Blog Posts

By Henry Griffith, DCI Fellow

As part of my work as a DCI Fellow this year, I had to complete a personal deliberation project of my own design and implementation. As a scholar-athlete, I have engaged in several conversations around marijuana policy during my time at Davidson. With the broader landscape around marijuana shifting so much in the United States in recent years, the discussions within Davidson have consequently responded. However, it seemed to me that there was a gap in that conversation for Davidson as a whole. To me, that gap was between the policy conversations occurring within the athletic administration and the beliefs, knowledge, and experiences of scholar-athletes at Davidson. I firmly believe that most members of the Davidson community agree about various points in the conversation around marijuana, and yet, the topic continues to drag with it a burden of potentially unnecessary conflict. In this blog post, I wish to discuss my small implementation of a deliberation between students and administration around a specific Davidson policy to demonstrate how a deliberative mechanism could clarify policies and amplify agreement within the Davidson community.

My project intended to bridge the perceived gap between students and administration by creating the place to hold a constructive, structured, and facilitated conversation around marijuana policy at Davidson. The deliberation was created with the broad intent to answer, “How lenient or strict should Davidson’s marijuana policy be to best foster the growth of scholar-athletes?” To create the space for this conversation, I invited a few administrators from the athletics department, several scholar-athletes, and an administrator from the Dean of Students (their office is involved with the marijuana policy for all of Davidson). While scheduling and organizing this deliberation with many people was quite the challenge, it was quickly clear to me that those who entered the conversation wanted to better understand the current policy and its possible path forward.

Following along with the deliberation guide created for the conversation, the participants quickly engaged with one another and managed to settle into the deliberative space. Perhaps most importantly, it became clear that they understood that getting on the same page about the current policy was a sufficiently successful outcome; they did not need to come away having proposed radical changes to the policies. Rather, it was beneficial simply to create a space for all parties involved to better understand one another’s perspectives. They engaged with one another directly, including by asking clarifying questions and asking to hear more about individuals’ experiences. Deliberation guides can be useful in providing a formal structure for conversations; however, I think that conversations like this which were intentionally trying to bridge a gap are best served by allowing for flexibility in the conversation’s path.

Before the deliberation, I was quite worried about a student vs. administration dynamic. However, deliberation continues to surprise me with its ability to cool off such dynamics and produce unexpected agreements by the end of the conversation. I believe a large source of this surprising agreement comes from engaging with the nuanced areas of the policies. By focusing on specific components of and reasons for Davidson’s policy, students and administrators were able to agree where I believe they didn’t expect it. In the final section of each deliberation, there is a period reserved for reflections on the conversations in which each participant shares some reflection. And in these reflections, several participants noted that they were pleasantly surprised by the group’s areas of agreement.

It is due to the success of this small implementation of a deliberative policy conversation that I seek to argue for a broader use of deliberations in Davidson’s policy decisions. This year, students have seen policy changes such as the “Wellness Wendy” and non-food dining dollars change that created some backlash among the student body. I believe that deliberation could present an intermediary in these kinds of decisions for the future of Davidson. From my perspective, much of students’ frustration was that the policy was changed without consulting students. These situations are those which I believe deliberation could represent a powerful tool for aiding.

It might be somewhat foolish of me to assume that deliberation could help or change all policy choices that presently occur within Davidson. However, I do believe that creating a deliberative mechanism before a policy conversation even begins could be instrumental in helping get students, faculty, and administrators on the same page. These deliberations would not have to be lengthy. But I believe they would present a beneficial environment for members of the Davidson community to engage with one another as equals, per deliberation’s egalitarian agreement.

One of the factors for success in the deliberation around marijuana policy was that it took place shortly before the administration were planning to have a formal discussion on the matter. Thus, the deliberation allowed for the administrators to preemptively test their ideas with students before taking them to the formal conversation. It is this type of mechanism that I believe could be very beneficial for Davidson, not only in hopefully continuing to improve and adapt policies, but also in simply allowing all parties to be heard. Producing equitable, fair policies is quite a challenge. However, I believe that this mini deliberation around marijuana policy could set the stage for a consistent implementation of deliberative environments in future Davidson policy discussions.

By Meggie Lasher, DCI Fellow

As a participant in DCI, I was eager to step into the role of facilitator. I had an excellent experience with my past facilitators, Dalton and Steve, and was hopeful about developing my own facilitator persona. The step from participant to facilitator quickly seemed like a leap — the careful consideration and compassion from Dalton and Steve seemed nearly impossible to achieve when I began training.

My initial hurdle as a facilitator wasn’t a surprise to me. I undoubtedly have the gift of gab. I can speak extemporaneously, chat with anyone, and really don’t mind public speaking. Frustratingly, this loquaciousness does not lend well to deliberative space. It may seem contradictory to struggle with talking too much when deliberation requires us to talk to each other. Yet, talking to fill a lull or void quickly felt disruptive during my first deliberation as a facilitator. Instead of validating and demonstrating my own intentional listening, I slipped into wandering with my words.

Looking back, since these sessions are recorded on Zoom, I was not visibly nervous per se, but I looked a little lost. I struggled to really be with the group, to lead and follow each stage of the conversation. I was married to the deliberation guide and hesitated to move from it. I owe much of my growth and ability to reflect to that first group of participants. They helped me de-center myself and talkative nature as the driving outcome for deliberation and showed me how to step back and let things flow.

As Fellows, we have access to others’ tools and opportunities to grow our skills. I especially appreciate the video series Beyond Bigots and Snowflakes. These short videos from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Dr. Ilana Redstone are accessible and informative as we wrestle with the highs and lows present in facilitating difficult conversations. They’re worth the watch! My favorite so far is “The Problem with Telling People to Stay in Their Lane.”

Additionally, we have campus members and outside speakers come to our weekly meetings. Recently, Dr. Daniel Layman from Davidson’s Philosophy Department visited. We talked about how sometimes people present something that sounds awfully close to an argument but when you invite them to distill it in a few words, they wiggle out of it. We also discussed how you don’t have to be “fancy” to participate in discourse, which resonated with me and my value of deliberative spaces aiming for accessibility and approachability.

We also heard from Dr. Leila Brammer, who visited from the University of Chicago during Davidson’s Freedom of Expression Week. I attended her evening lecture, “Revitalizing Public Discourse on Campus and Beyond.” I found her description of how public discourse often tugs people into extremes to be particularly helpful with our hot topics this semester like gun control and abortion policy. She spoke of how even middle school students slip into the polarity; I used her technique of introducing an outside, third perspective to offer a perspective in the middle of the two radical poles in a recent deliberation. I’m looking forward to reading her book chapter about integrating deliberative pedagogy into first-year curricula.^[1]

Now in my second semester, I have two groups meeting for two hours. Last-semester me would have croaked! I work with a virtual group that is a mix of alumni and students as well as a special in-person group at a local 55+ active living community. With the tools and confidence I’ve gained, I am a radically different facilitator. I ask deeper questions, connect with participants, and dare I say, have fun? Now I know when I make space and hold it for others, their voices come pouring in.

^[1] Leila R. Brammer. “Deliberative Pedagogy as a Central Tenet: First-Year Students Develop a Course and a Community.” In Deliberative Pedagogy, 51–. Michigan State University Press, 2017.