Twin Cities conservative and liberal college students try not to stay in their lanes
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As she slipped on her bowling shoes, Mena Feleke remembered when she realized her liberal college campus was an intellectual bubble.
“My freshman year, a good friend of mine actually transferred because he didn’t feel like he was able to express his opinions and be able to disagree with the people on campus,” she said.
Feleke is a senior at Macalester College. Most students there are liberal, and so is she. Feleke said there’s not a lot of room for political disagreement as a result.
“I wanted to be able to be in an environment where I could have difficult conversations and then bring the skills that I learned from this group back to campus,” she said.
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Since last fall, Macalester students and a group from nearby conservative Christian University of Northwestern have met monthly to talk politics, usually over a meal. On a warm April day, it was an excursion to the lanes for burgers and bowling at Casper & Runyon’s Ranham Bowling Center in St. Paul.
These aren’t debate sessions. Instead, the group practices listening, empathy and avoiding assumptions about how the “other side” thinks.
Braver Angels, a group that seeks to bridge political divides, facilitates the meetings. Braver Angels is also MPR News’ partner on Talking Sense, a reporting project aimed at helping people have better political conversations.
Jenny Liang joined Feleke at the bowling alley. She is a senior at University of Northwestern where she’s majoring in political science. Meeting regularly with liberal students has reshaped how she might approach a job in politics, she said.
“I feel like a lot of politicians see the world as like black and white, while the voters see it in shades of gray,” she said. “So, I feel like by being so polarized, by being so black or so white about an issue, they kind of forget to see the nuances, and that's what a lot of the voters want.”
Civil conversations about the world
In deeply polarized times, it’s not always popular to talk to people on the other side of politics, said Corbin Hoornbeek, President of University of Northwestern.
But even though University of Northwestern students are politically different from Macalester students, they share a lot of common goals.
“Our students share a lot of the same heart and concern for the world,” he said. “Is it possible that a fairly liberal school and a fairly conservative school could sit down at the table and learn to have constructive and civil conversations together about the world?"
In the classroom, University of Northwestern professor Carlos Tellez said that he was seeing students immediately reject alternative viewpoints. He’s now a faculty lead for the student group.
“One time, I asked students, ‘What’s something you’re really passionate about?’” he said. “ And somebody said that they were really passionate about Bernie Sanders. Everyone kind of laughed. And the guy was serious. I was like, ‘Oh right, because in that space being a progressive is something you laugh at.’”
Macalester President Suzanne Rivera said universities need to better teach students to be comfortable with political diversity. It's a life skill.
“I don’t think it’s our job in higher education to promise 100 percent comfort at all times. I think growing and stretching requires occasionally stepping into spaces that make you uncomfortable,” she said.
In the classroom, Macalester professor Julie Dolan, who is also a faculty lead for the group, said teaching students these skills comes at a critical time in their intellectual development.
“College has this opportunity to really try and think outside of the box, and to listen to different perspectives,” she said. “If everybody around you agrees on everything, then you’re losing a really incredible opportunity to consider something from somebody else’s perspective — or even to allow yourself the permission to think that there may be another perspective.”
New perspectives on media
These regular meetings have changed the way University of Northwestern junior Marie Johnson absorbs media. All of it looks pretty polarized to her now.
“Now when I consume media, I have that understanding in mind where it’s like, ‘I hate that this is the extremists of either side.’ Now I understand that there is a middle ground, and not everybody just existing categories of black and white,” she said.
Macalester junior Freeman Boda agreed. A few months ago, he read a newspaper article that mentioned this group. He said the comments were vitriolic. They accused Boda and his fellow students of “sanewashing” — the idea that making extreme people or ideas seem normal is a concession.
Before joining this group, Boda said he would have agreed with those commenters.
“I’ve had my perspective changed a lot about the power of talking to people that you even vehemently disagree with,” he said. “I think changing someone’s mind starts with having a connection outside of politics, and that’s what I’ve really enjoyed here.”
Both Macalester College and University of Northwestern say the program has been a success, and they’re building their second cohort of students for the next school year.
