Civility 101? Ohio colleges are teaching students how to get along

Baldwin Wallace students practice dialogue and listening skills in their freshman course on civility.

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October 7, 2024

Many Ohio universities erupted in protest last spring over the Israel-Hamas war. And with the upcoming election, Ohio universities are preparing for even more polarizing political discussion.

Some are launching civil discourse initiatives.

Case Western Reserve University started an advisory group to promote respectful debate. Baldwin Wallace is requiring freshmen to take a class on depolarization. Ohio State University provides online workshops for its faculty and staff.

Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the most recent universities to join the fray by offering a new certificate for navigating divisive conversations from the Constructive Dialogue Institute. The online training will be accompanied by in-person practice with peers.

It will help students to engage with difficult topics by teaching them to seek common ground and turn down the temperature when conversations get heated, said OWU chief academic officer Karlyn Crowley.

“By equipping students with those skills, they'll just be able to not only navigate being a Democratic citizen better, but their relationships better, their life better.”

Challenges on campus

Polarization has been on the rise in the United States for decades, according to research from Rice University. And Crowley said college campuses haven’t been spared from growing animosity between political parties.

“There's really a middle ground where if we can equip students with how to talk to one another and even faculty and staff, then we have a chance of not fighting or, even if we disagree, we can figure out how to still stay in community,” Crowley said.

On top of that, the view of higher education itself has become more polarized. A 2023 Gallup poll found that confidence in the institution of higher education has declined sharply.

“Colleges are engines of democracy, and colleges are central to so many small towns, even in Ohio. They help solve problems together,” she said. “So we have to work, as colleges, extra hard not only to restore public trust, but to demonstrate the value of what we do.”

The right to protest

This spring, Ohio universities saw many students protest against the Israel-Hamas war on campus. The Pro-Palestine encampments led to student arrests at Ohio State University.

Ohio has a history with student protest suppression. In the 1970s, the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State University during anti-Vietnam War protests. Some professors and students have argued that institutional calls for civility only work to maintain the status quo.

“Civility is in the eye of the beholder. And when the beholder wants to maintain an unequal status quo, it’s easy to accuse picketers, protesters, and preachers alike of incivility, as much because of their message as their methods,” Thomas Sirgue, a historian, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times.

Crowley said OWU doesn’t want to discourage protest – she believes it’s an important tool in a democracy along with civic dialogue.

“To be an effective citizen in a democracy means to be a Swiss Army knife. There are times when you need to learn how to navigate something that's less high stakes,” Crowley said. “And then college is also about figuring out how do I make my voice heard when it's more high stakes?”