Host: Mónica Guzmán
Senior Producer & Editor: David Albright
Producer: Jessica Jones
Contributor: April Lawson
Artist in Residence: Gangstagrass
Cover Art & Graphics: Katelin Annes
Show notes: Ben Caron and Don Goldberg
Featured Song: “The Sound of Us” – Words and Music by Lynette Williams and Nicholas Zork, Performed by Wayna
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Introduction- Host Mónica Guzmán discusses the importance of disagreeing passionately, respectfully and productively, especially on college campuses.
Mónica introduces guest Sam Rechek, a recent graduate of the University of South Florida who started the First Amendment Forum to foster civil discourse on campus while a Freshman.
The origins of the First Amendment Forum (1AF): Sam recounts how witnessing a student being attacked for his views inspired him to create a space for civil discourse.
- Rechek: “I said okay my campus is suffering from these challenges that we’re facing because of high partisanship and failure to engage with both sides.”
Rechek explains the format of the weekly meetings, which include warm-up exercises with a “hot take” and then discussions on controversial political topics.
- Rechek: “First they share their names and a hot take…but it’s just trying to make people comfortable with sharing things that are maybe a little bit less you know like commonly held views.”
- Rechek: “You remember this like insight that you have forgotten that disagreeing is fun.”
Rechek shares that weekly topics are chosen by student vote and range from current headlines to deep societal issues.
The forum uses small groups to lower barriers for participation and encourage diverse viewpoints.
- Rechek: “One of the sort of like core insights that we tried to instill amongst the members was that nobody’s unqualified to talk about what the right thing to do is. So if you can try and try to find a way that people can enter into the conversation, they’ll realize that this this this insecurity that I haven’t read enough, I’m not qualified to talk about this. It’s not as grounded in truth as they think it is.”
Rechek shares his how his personal background and philosophical influences shaped his commitment to The First Amendment, free speech and civil discourse.
- Rechek: “Philosophers for a very long time have recognized that there is serious value for both a just society and for the creation of new insights and knowledge in protecting as large a range of perspectives or protecting the expression of what as large a range of perspectives as is possible.”
Rechek describes growing up in a household with diverse viewpoints, which helped him appreciate the value of competing perspectives.
- Rechek: “I grew up in a household with my mom is an evolutionary psychology professor…and my dad is Catholic…they certainly think differently about religion. They disagree on whether there’s a God and the value of religion to Society, but I think the real insight that we got, that I got as a child growing up in my household, was that competing perspectives can live well or can live alongside each other even when they’re fundamentally in disagreement about the most serious questions at the heart of being a human and what it is to live a meaningful life.”
Supporting Partners: The Flip Side
Rechek highlights the value of having participants who aren’t afraid to provoke and challenge the group, leading to deeper discussions.
- Rechek: “I think this is one of the reasons that we, we people who are invested in freedom of speech value comedians so much because they’re often willing to just say the outlandish thing that then we can draw the nuance from.”
Rechek and Mónica discuss the advantages of individual contributions building on one another in discussion.
- Mónica: “One thing I’ve noticed about human brains is what we tend to do when we start to think together, ’cause I think what you’re describing is this beautiful magic of humans thinking together. It’s almost like a mega brain starts to form. And so what I’ve noticed for myself at least is if I’m in that situation and someone else has already said the thing I’ve said, my brain has already made it a priority to dig deeper so I can say something else.”
Rechek posits that students secretly hunger for productive discourse on college campuses.
- Rechek: “I think that there’s a perception of students on college campuses that holds them to be closed off from discussion, resistant to talking about politics, hesitant to share their views or like really staunchly committed to a position and unwilling to change their mind. And I just don’t think it’s that simple and I especially don’t think I think that what I saw at 1AF meetings was that truth be told students actually hunger and yearn for like real productive discourse.”
Rechek shares some challenges they’ve faced as an organization, including when the group debated abortion and the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill.
Rechek gives an example of a socially conservative student finding his community in 1AF and rising to leadership within the organization.
Rechek addresses the critiques that civil discourse is less important than action, and that some people just won’t ever change their minds.
- Rechek: “Maybe Dogma has a place. Some people won’t have the commitment to your values and if your values are sort of like in equal diversity. Some people are more naturally inclined to see it as an intuitive idea than others are, and part of valuing pluralism in a democratic society is valuing pluralism with hierarchies of values too.”
- Rechek: “If civil discourse is practiced right, it’s a way for students to then feel like they have done justice to the importance of an issue. Protest is an effective way to do that too…I have nothing against protesters…Civil discourse is an affable alternative, because it allows students a place where they can, by finding their way into the issue, and hearing others who disagree about the issue, they can start to give or do the issues justice.”
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Mónica, a Blue, discusses the interview with her conservative co-host, Red, April Lawson, and what they think their sides are good at or not so good at when it comes to civil discourse.
- April: “I think that frankly, I would say that reds are not as good on average at saying we’re showing up to play, we’re going to be in the game, there’s a bit more heckling from the outside than I think is ideal. And now I’m speaking about Red’s broadly in American politics broadly.”
- April: “I think that there’s a bit more this to laugh at the whole thing and that actually that’s helpful if it’s done with a good spirit. The motto of my, the debate, the like conservative debate group that I was in in college was we take ideas seriously but not ourselves and I think that that attitude can be really helpful.”
- Mónica: “I think what you said is absolutely true that the blue side is taking itself very seriously in which, and under that context, it’s very hard to laugh. Laughing becomes offensive and how dare you make light of anything and I understand because hey not everything’s funny. We all have things where you don’t joke about that and it’s not always appropriate clearly. So I do think there’s a lot of fear that grips the blue side and has made comedy. Comedy itself has felt like chained up in the last many many years.”
- April: “My understanding or theory, I guess, about why blues tend to be more wanting to police that sometimes is that they don’t want tension to be taken out of some conversations, right? They don’t want it to be the case that we can just laugh about. I mean, if I were to put this in the spaces that I am sensitive to, like sexual violence jokes, not very funny to me. They’re just not because I don’t want the tension to be released. I want people to grapple with it instead. And so I guess what I’m saying is in an effort like reach across rather than just criticize the left for being laughter police.”
April asks Mónica what she’s seeing visiting college campuses and Mónica shares her wishes for her son’s future
Mónica and April highlight that structure and form supports civil discourse
April speaks to the effect of perceived “cancel culture” on civil discourse
- April: “I think that the parts of the right wing that I don’t align with right now exist in reaction to this perception that you can’t even use words anymore without somebody declaring you a deplorable or some sort of other horrible human being the speech policing dynamics on campuses feed this broader understanding of our world where Frankly, not only conservatives although especially them, but also older liberals will often tell me I feel like I can’t even talk like because what happens, right? If someone says you can’t say that or you can’t say this this way is that somebody who’s been putting their best faith effort Into saying something sincere in the right way. If they get, yeah, but you said it wrong, what they’ll often do is say, great, all right, fine. You’re gonna reject me? I’m just not even gonna try.”
- April: “If you want to be a leader on this, you’ve got to be willing to like, be the one to switch into the other person’s language. And then, particularly for young people, although I think this actually applies to a lot of folks, but particularly for young people, it’s all about social change. For those folks, you have to be willing to speak their language and you have to help to like, bring them into the idea that making your case powerfully to your opposition rather than dehumanizing and ignoring and canceling your opposition is actually part of getting you where you wanna go.”
Mónica and April share their hope in the future generations and how we all can support them and all of us collectively to be better at civil discourse.
Mónica speaks about the generational divide, informed by the work of sponsors- USAFacts. Mónica shares some data on Gen Z in this episode’s data plunge:
Mónica concludes the episode affirming Rechek’s work with 1AF and wonders what will happen in the Fall on college campuses.
Song: “The Sound of Us” – Words and Music by Lynette Williams and Nicholas Zork
Episode Credits.
Mónica Guzmán:
Sometimes talking to people who are fresh into adulthood brings up things we all know but don’t let come to the surface very often.
Sam Rechek:
You remember this insight that you have forgotten. That disagreeing is fun.
Mónica:
And not only can it be fun, but what if the disagreement itself is how we make an impact in our politics.
April Lawson:
Making your case powerfully to your opposition rather than dehumanizing and ignoring and canceling your opposition is actually part of getting you where you wanna go.
Mónica:
All that and more is just ahead.
Welcome to a Braver Way, a show about how you can disagree about politics without losing heart. I’m Mónica Guzmán, your guide across the divide, and I’m here to help you hear and be heard by people who confound you. Across this country, we are proudly conservative, liberal, independent, or just ourselves.
And we don’t want to be at war here. We want to be at home. So strap in, because it’s time we learn how to turn up the heat, turn down the fear, and get real about things that matter with more of our fellow Americans than we thought possible.
(Music out)
Mónica:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I know, things are wild out there. I know, the political volume feels like it’s getting turned up and up every day. Today, we are going to talk about a piece of American life that, right now in the middle of summer anyway, feels eerily quiet. An institution for learning and growth that just a few months ago was as loud and agitated as anyone’s seen in 50 years.
That’s right. Today we’re talking about how you really can disagree passionately and productively about very political things on the American college campus. And what lessons that holds for everywhere else.
So, what better way to get schooled on this, I say, than with a student.
(music under)
Mónica:
I met my guest today in an auditorium at the University of South Florida in the spring of 2023.
He was a senior then, undergrad, there to moderate a discussion on political polarization in college and beyond, featuring a professor, Dr. Matt Reichel, and myself. Sharing that stage with Sam Recheck, while he toggled between us panelists and the audience, two things became clear to me. One, this was not his first rodeo. He was more fluid and confident taking on some powder keg topics than a lot of moderators twice his age.
But two, and more important, when people brought up challenging ideas at that event and after, he knew how to listen. But like, really actually listen. And later I learned where he learned it. It wasn’t a class. It wasn’t a professor. It was a new weekly ritual he built up on campus with a team of liberal and conservative students who, like him, had had enough of fear, silence, and separation. And wanted to do something about it.
(music out)
Mónica:
Coming into college as a freshman with conservative views, on a liberal leaning campus, Sam already had an idea of what things might be like.
Sam:
I knew what I was getting into when I came to campus as a political science student. I thought I might see self censorship. I thought I might feel the tug of self-censorship. But I guess I, I, maybe naively, but hoped that my campus would be different.
Mónica:
That first year, Sam remembers sitting in a philosophy class when the topic turned to climate change.
Sam:
And the general consensus was that the U. S. government needs to be doing a lot more to counter the effects of climate change. And this one student expressed a view that was not really that opposed to it, but questioned some of the ..But what about the need for the, what about the jobs that might be hurt? What, I think he expressed a sort of just like a general free market concern about too much government involvement in market mechanisms.
Mónica:
Something a little more from the conservative side, if you were to map it.
Sam:
Right. Right. And the rest of the students in the class just jumped on that. They took the worst version of his argument and attacked it. And then what was striking to me was my professor kind of jumped in at his defense. My professor was a philosopher, and I think, well, often you often find this with good philosophers.
They’re, actually what matters more to them is that the quality of the argument than what the argument is in defense of. So, he stepped in, in the student’s defense. And I thought that was something special, but his, the professor’s attempts at giving him a shot in this discussion were drowned out by, the other students in the classroom. This student’s name was, I think, Chase and I went up to him after class and I was like, “Chase, how did, how did that make you feel?”
And he said, “yeah, I didn’t like that. And, and I don’t think that I’ll express a view like that again.” That’s what he said.
Mónica:
Wow
Sam:
And so
Mónica
Yeah,
Sam:
…that was my first. And I said, okay, my campus is suffering from these challenges that we’re facing because of high partisanship and failure to engage with both sides.
(Music up)
Mónica:
What Sam saw in class that day, a fellow student getting pounced on for bringing up a different view and a professor trying and failing to open up the discussion stayed with him all day. By that night, he had the seeds of an idea. He shared the idea with friends in his dorm. And within weeks, that idea became a brand-new student organization on campus.
He called it the First Amendment Forum, or 1 A F.
(Music out)
Sam:
At its core, First Amendment Forum is a student organization dedicated to providing a discussion space for students in accordance with the principles of that are behind the first amendment and the principles of free expression and civil discourse.
That’s what we did. So the core of the mission was advocacy for the first amendment and its principles by putting them into practice with civil discourse. Each Wednesday, that was, there was a discussion meeting
Mónica:
Every single Wednesday.
Sam:
Every single Wednesday. Yeah.
Mónica:
Okay. So, let’s paint the picture. I’m joining this coming Wednesday’s first Amendment Forum meeting. I’m a little nervous, but I’ve got a friend telling me, “let’s go check this out.” So, I show up. What happened next?
Sam:
Well, the first thing to note is that your friend probably wanted to check it out because they heard that there was free food. So, at USF, the draw for student organizations is if you can get free food to people, then you’ve provided them a dinner on a Wednesday night. And
Mónica:
I saw a poster for it. Yeah. That said like free speech, free people, free food.
Sam:
Free food.
Mónica:
Think I saw that on one of your posters.
Sam:
I am so proud of the team that succeeded me. That’s an innovation. We never thought of that. That was a tagline that was an innovation this past year. And this will probably come up multiple times, but I am so nostalgic for that kind of thing, these like little tweaks and the trying to draw people in. It was so meaningful. It was so much fun.
(music up and under)
Mónica:
So, the events work like this. Students who show up get put into small groups where they do a couple of warmups. First, they share their names, and a ‘hot take’.
Sam:
And it can be any kind of hot take, but it’s just trying to make people comfortable with sharing things that are maybe a little bit less, you know, like, commonly held views. But everyone’s got hot takes. I mean, pepperoni on pizza.
Mónica:
Sure. I was just thinking pineapple on pizza.
Sam:
Pineapple on pizza. Pineapple on pizza is such a safe one.
Mónica:
Then, digging a little deeper, but still in warm up mode, 1AF organizers introduce what they call “The five minute topic.”
Sam:
And it’s something silly that comes up. Like, there was a time when that 5-minute topic was,” Are foot fetishes weird?” That was the 5 minute topic for one of our meetings.
Mónica:
Oh my gosh. (laughing)
Sam:
It’s completely, that the goal was to have a topic that was completely separated from political ideology whatsoever.
Mónica:
Warmup.
Sam:
So, you could just, warm, exactly. And it’s fun. And you remember this insight that you have forgotten; that disagreeing is fun. Arguing, providing reasons for people or for the views you have. And then finding that someone thinks differently, and they have reasons and you find them silly and you can call them out on their silly reasons, like that, it’s fun. It’s so much fun.
Mónica:
I want to pause on that because it almost sounds like you said something taboo, right?
So often, so often our disagreements that we think of are the terrifying ones, they’re the really scary ones. And I completely agree with you in my work, I’ve noticed that too, that it takes some courage to get sometimes into spaces where you, I love the way you put it, you remember an insight we’ve forgotten, which is that disagreement can be fun.
Oof. Yeah.
Sam:
Yeah. It can be fun.
Mónica:
Just pause it on that, just highlighting that.
Sam:
And of course, I’m not so naive to say that it’s always fun. But it certainly can be, and if we do it well, it’s more likely to be fun.
Mónica:
After the five-minute topic wraps up, they get ready to shift to the weekly topic, the main event. What each week’s big topic will be is up to a vote of 1AF student members. And they don’t shy away from the tough stuff. So, a lot of times it’s whatever’s heating up in the headlines and on campus that week. Anything from abortion, to policing, to protest, to something that was a big deal in Florida. “What role schools should play in teaching kids about gender and sexuality.”
Sam:
You’re warmed up and you kind of know everyone. And they’ve got their like, discussion persona. You know, somebody’s the leaning back in their chair and they’re like, “You know, I think”, and then they’re going to say the most controversial thing that you’ve just heard today. And then there are the people who are a little more timid and they’re like, well.. Then there’s the sort of like people who are they’re really activists and they know what they think about the issue. But everyone’s kind of already assumed those personas on the topic.
Mónica:
Sensing that different people come to disagreements with these different personalities or personas, which I find such a neat insight by the way, Sam and his team worked hard to make sure that these events made room for all of them.
Sam:
One of the sort of like core insights that we tried to instill amongst the members was that nobody’s unqualified to talk about what the right thing to do is.
Mónica:
Umm
Sam:
So, If you can try and try to find a way that people can enter into the conversation, they’ll realize that this, insecurity that ‘I haven’t read enough, I’m not qualified to talk about this’. It’s not as grounded in truth as they think it is.
Mónica:
Yeah. And I, I love that you’ve mentioned now the second, you know, controversial statement, I suppose in some circles, you know, the first being disagreeing is fun.
The second being no one’s unqualified to discuss issues that affect us as a society.
Sam:
Oof. No one’s certainly to discuss the things that affect all of us. Maybe I’m unqualified to, as a student, to be in a position of implementation of those, the conclusions that we’ve reached. Maybe, you know, there’s a little bit more to that, but all we’re doing is discussing it. Nobody’s unqualified for that.
Mónica:
So clearly first amendment free speech, I know because I’ve talked to you about this before, matters a lot to you. So this became the name and part of the heart of the first amendment forum. Why?
Sam:
That’s, right. And that’s because the First Amendment is a part of our constitution because of the philosophical ideas underpinning it.
This idea that the search for truth is best pursued on the basis of a vast variety of competing perspectives. The recognition that in human life, there’s a really close connection between being a person and having things to express. I think that’s embodied in the First Amendment as well. So the first Amendment is, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a paragraph of text and it just outlines rights that Americans have.
But it’s there because philosophers for a very long time have recognized that there is serious value for both a just society and for the creation of new insights and knowledge in protecting as large a range of perspectives, or protecting the expression with as large a range of perspectives as is possible.
Mónica:
Yeah, and how did you know, as a young person growing up, how did you know that that was important to you?
Sam:
I often trace my…So it’s not that I knew all along, but once I read some of this philosophy, once I read snippets from John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” for the first time, advocating for tolerance of competing perspectives felt intuitive to me. And I often trace that to the fact that I grew up in a household with my mom is an evolutionary psychology professor at the university in my hometown in Wisconsin, and my dad is Catholic. And so I would come home from my Catholic school where I had learned religion and I had learned the creation story.
And I would come home, and I would see Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins, these famous evolutionary psychologists who, I would see books called “The God Delusion” on my, my bookshelf at home. And I saw my mom and dad, they’re happy, you know, and I, they, they, they make it work and they, they recognize
Mónica:
Oh, so they disagree with each other.
Sam:
They, well, yes, they certainly think differently about religion. They disagree on whether there’s a God and the value of religion to society. But I think the real insight that we got, that I got as a child growing up in my household was that competing perspectives can live well or can live alongside each other. Even when they’re fundamentally in disagreement about the most the most serious questions at the heart of, being a human. Like what it is to, to live a meaningful life.
(music up)
Mónica:
Before we move on, I want to tell you about one of our supporting partners. In an oversaturated and partisan media environment, A lot of us are either making incomplete, biased choices about what news we consume, or letting big platforms choose our news for us. Enter The Flipside. It’s a newsletter for the average person who wants to get out of their news bubble and spend time with different viewpoints.
It’s hard for liberals to watch Fox News, or conservatives to watch MSNBC. But if a bunch of us take five minutes a day to read The Flipside, which I do on the regular, by the way, we’ll have a good starting point for talking to friends and neighbors who see the world differently. To learn more about The Flipside, a member of Braver Network, visit theflipside.io.
Learn more about Braver Network and the movement for civic renewal at braverangels.org/abraverway.
(music out, and up)
Mónica:
Get ready to experience an exciting, and yes, fun, way to dig into controversial issues through our Braver Angels debates. Our special parliamentary format encourages good questions, ensures civility in disagreement, and strives for learning and better understanding for everyone.
You’ve never seen a debate quite like this. Head to braverangels.org/events, select “national online debate” in the event category, and register for our next debate. We’ll see you there.
(Music out)
Mónica:
So back at the 1AF meeting, the small groups dissolve and everyone joins one big conversation for the week’s main, controversial topic.
Sam:
And so, everyone takes their chairs and they swing out into a large circle. And the small group was probably one of the better innovations that we introduced because we started seeing that the large group prevented some people from feeling really empowered to share their views.
Mónica:
Yeah, yeah. No, because it goes back to Chase, you know, in a big classroom, it’s like you’re outnumbered and the number matters. You reduce the size of the group and then if somebody has an opinion that is a little scarier to share or doesn’t seem as common, the smaller the group, the lower the barrier for that person to share it.
Sam:
And the other thing that the lower the barrier and the more likely that somebody’s in the group, somebody in the group is just trying to be a bit funny. So, they say they say something like provocative and there were people like that and they added a lot of value to 1AF discussions.
Mónica:
Ooo. Say more about that. You mean people who provoke a little bit for fun, but not but in good faith. Or how would you what do you mean?
Sam:
And there was this one guy. His name was Romeo. He was this person I have in mind where he’d like sit with his chest back and shoulders back and then he would say something, like in a conversation about gun control he’d say something like, “I think that we should just give teachers guns, you know”. He would say something like that and actually he may have meant it, to his credit, but if he said it in a sort of comical tone, then someone who is like inclined to say, “well, hang on, there might be something to that”. Maybe that’s not the solution, but why would people suggest, you know, who wants to introduce the nuance. Often, I think what you see is the provocateur is willing to offer the absolute stark statement that the nuance is then drawn out of.
Mónica:
Oh, I love that. So that’s the value you saw. Yeah. Is someone with, you know, the bravado and maybe the guts and a little sense of humor to just kind of state something bluntly. . And maybe they believe it, maybe they don’t. That’s not the point.
Sam:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Mónica:
Wow.
Sam:
And it also, it made people a little more comfortable questioning the, the common orthodoxy because someone’s just said something so radical. I mean, this is just as a side note, I think this is one of the reasons that we, people who are invested in freedom of speech value comedians so much. Because they’re often willing to just say the outlandish thing that then we can draw the nuance from.
Mónica:
So, in the large group, the students continue to discuss, using questions organizers presented as a jumping off point. Meanwhile, the organizers keep a running list, in order, of the students who raise their hands to speak.
Sam:
And yeah, then people would express their views, and we would go down the list. And oftentimes people would say, “Oh, I’ll, I was going to say something here, but I want to respond to that as well.” And there was a, we were able to have quite a complex discussion with a lot of threads that people could pick back up on.
Mónica:
Right . I think of it as, it’s like people are in line, but you know, you’re in line to say one thing, but as you’re in line, you’re still listening. And by the time it’s your turn with the mic or whatever, you’ve, what you’ve said, now you can connect to what others have been saying. You are, you, you are building. You are building something as a group together, that adds layers and dimensions to what would have just been your opinion that you’d express in isolation.
Sam:
It’s like you’re waiting in line to order a blizzard at Dairy Queen, but they keep changing what the toppings that you can put in as you’re, as you’re getting closer to the cashier. Or they keep and then it’s actually new things come on the menu. And now it’s not just a blizzard, but you can also order an ice cream cone or. So that sort of thing. And what I can’t tell you how many times the student would say, “well, I’ve pretty much. What I wanted to say is basically what you know, Andrew said, but I guess I’ll just say this instead.” I mean, it would say something that they had thought. It was pretty cool.
Mónica:
One thing I’ve noticed about, you know, human brains is what we tend to do when we start to think together, ‘cause I think what you’re describing is this beautiful magic of humans thinking together. It’s almost like a mega brain starts to form. And so, what I’ve noticed for myself at least is if I’m in that situation and someone else has already said the thing I’ve said, my brain has already made it a priority to dig deeper so I can say something else.
Sam:
Isn’t that cool?
Mónica:
And so, you’re pushing people to dig deeper. I just find that so cool.
Sam:
It is really cool. It’s it was, you might think that people in that situation would – the timid people, especially – they would say, “Oh, well, I’ve already, what I’ve said has already been said.” Move on.
And of course you did get that like once in a while, but more than more often than not people would say, “Well, what I’ve already said has been said.” And then they would start to say it again but find a new thread along the way.
Mónica:
Do you think there’s a hunger that builds? I want to pause on this cause I think there’s something really kind of beautiful here.
And I feel like in these group dynamics, where so much is welcome and being generated, it’s like an engine and it starts to roar and move, that it feels almost like people can’t help but be pulled in and want, and their hunger to express and to add begins to build from somewhere. And so it’s almost like, it is almost like a swirling thing and you just are drawn to it.
So yeah, you may not have the thing you wanted to say, but something makes you want to connect and to say and to contribute and to add.
Sam:
Yeah.
Mónica:
Does that resonate with you?
Sam:
100%. It resonates with me a very great deal. I do think it’s something like what you’re outlining is probably at the core of every student and every, human when they’re talking about something that it’s something they’re curious about. And I also think that people in the right situation can be curious about a lot more than they think they’re curious about so there’s that as well.
Mónica:
Yeah, right.
Sam:
But yeah, I think that there’s a perception of students on college campuses that holds them to be closed off from discussion, resistant to talking about politics, hesitant to share their views or like really staunchly committed to a position and unwilling to change their mind. And I, just don’t think it’s that simple. And I especially, I think that what I saw at 1AF meetings was that, truth be told, students actually hunger and yearn for like real, productive discourse.
Mónica:
What do you remember as being failures?
Sam:
So, I mentioned that the people in the organization chose the topic each week.
That often meant that the topic that was the most pressing in the news was what we discussed at the following week’s meeting. So, when the draft leak came out, signaling that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade, You know that within the next week, the topic was Roe v. Wade and abortion.
And that was a really well attended discussion of that. Because at that point we had started to establish that the group was becoming to take on its form and people were starting to recognize what it stood for and that the people of different perspectives could come. So, we actually had a significant showing from people who were pro-life at that.
And I remember at that conversation, the hot take that someone introduced themselves with said, you know, my name is Ben or whatever, and I think life begins at conception. It was just like right out, you know, and it’s those kinds of moments that as someone trying to facilitate civil discourse I was terrified at that conversation because I just knew how like high strung campus was that I thought it was going to break down. There was another topic that actually, I guess, I would say it wasn’t a failure, but it was just, it was such a, a near miss for the organization, both as like a discussion, but also as an executive board. I can’t emphasize enough how hard civility is when the topic becomes one that touches your heart. So, we had in the same term, the Florida legislature passed a bill that was colloquially called the “don’t say gay” bill,
Mónica:
Right
Sam:
And it established that high school teachers in public education could not teach up to third grade or something like that, could not teach sex education, which it wasn’t even, nowhere in the bill did it say “don’t say gay,” but that was just what it became.
Mónica:
That was the name.
Sam:
And it became, yeah, it became a beacon for the LGBTQ community on campus as something that they were really quick to jump on and issue statements about. And one of the members of the executive board was in that community and asked me to sign a statement against that bill and the governor’s decision to try and request the names and health records of students who were receiving care for being transgender. So, there was that.
Those two things together were like, campus tensions were flaring, and I knew it. And then a member of the executive board wanted me to sign it and was really obviously right, understandably right, really upset. And I said, “no.” I had to say, I mean, I have to say no. And because commitment to nonpartisanship as an organization and commitment to not taking political stances meant it was, it was so core.
And so that’s a clear line if you’re a nonpartisan organization. And of course, when people care about an issue that deeply, it seems wrong to even call it political. So that was a thing that created a rift within the executive board.
Mónica:
So, for a lot of people, let alone students having one conversation on a tough topic with people who might really disagree with you would be hard to conceive doing at all, let alone every Wednesday. So, what did it do to you? What did it do to you to do this over and over and over again?
Sam:
That’s, I’ve never thought about that before. Oddly. But I guess it, I saw that students really are hungry for these discussions and capable of having them. I have so much more trust in my peers to have these conversations on difficult topics.
Mónica:
Yeah. A little more optimism.
Sam:
Yeah. There’s a student named Nicholas. Nicholas is, he’s, he’s still a member of the organization and he’s actually going to be the vice president in the coming year. He started attending meetings and I honestly, I, people disagreed with most of what he said all the time. That he was conservative, but he was so open minded at least in the discussions. I don’t know how many times I saw him change his large superstructure of his views. But he would happily cede things to points in the thick of discussion.
So, he would always be willing to say, “Oh yeah, I’m inclined to, I might”, you know, “I might agree with you on that, “but still I think this larger thing, because he had pretty firm convictions and they were socially conservative convictions. I take it that at 1AF, if it’s doing its job, right is a place where students like him can now go for a community. Nicholas now is leadership for the organization and we were all friends, everyone really enjoyed Nicholas.
It’s easy to think that that’s a bleak world, but in the, in the right settings, students can provide… I provide, I mean, as a student, I was so overcome by optimism about the possibilities for the future of civil discourse because of the leadership there.
(Music up)
Mónica:
I don’t know about you all, but it was pretty refreshing to hear someone who spent so much time in the heat of political disagreement say that they’re overcome by optimism about how we can do it better. But there are two critiques I hear a lot that are worth bringing up here. “Sure, we can sit around and talk, but some of us want to make real change in the world” is one of them. The other is kind of the opposite. “There’s no way I could talk to those angry, disruptive activists that I see on TV”. Here’s what Sam had to say when I brought this all up.
Sam:
So yes, and one thing I think I would suggest to people who are worried about that problem, if you’re worried about that problem, what about the students who aren’t ever going to change their minds? You’re not that student. So then, you can take them as those provocateurs that we saw in 1AF. and take them as offering the stark position that you can then draw the nuance from, as I think we put it.
So, you won’t reach everyone. That, I think, is something that needs to be said. I’ve mentioned already that civil discourse is really hard. We can think of the space as being occupied by a multitude of positions and theirs are the ones that are clear: you know exactly what the position is.
And so, you can then see what’s good in it and draw, as much value out of it as you can. So, I suppose that, that would be…it’s a bit of a, it’s bittersweet, right, as a recommendation for how to engage in the conversation, because you, it does acknowledge that some people won’t have their minds changed. But we see this, I mean, we see this a lot in our families. Some aunts and uncles, some grandparents aren’t just, there are some things on which people just won’t change their minds. And I honestly, I don’t, I might even be inclined to say that that’s good? Maybe dogma has a place?
Some people won’t have the commitment to your values. And if your values are sort of like pluralism and people diversity, there’s some people are more naturally inclined to see it as an intuitive idea than others are. And part of valuing pluralism in a democratic society is valuing pluralism of hierarchies of values too.
Mónica:
Right, right, right. Yeah, it’s not necessarily that we don’t share our values, but we rank them in a different order for different issues and there’s still ways to be curious about that. I mean, what you’re laying out is just the complex diversity and range of views that just exist. We can deny them. We can deny that people, some of them have stronger opinions than others. We can deny that, look, like the only person who can change my mind is me. So, you want to influence me? You got to speak so I can hear you. And that’s one of the toughest categories of skills to learn or even want to learn given the urgency of issues out there.
Sam:
I think a lot of student activism that we see right now is an expression of the sense that things that are really important are happening. And if civil discourse is practiced right, it’s a way for students to then feel like they have done justice to the importance of an issue. Protest is an effective way to do that too, I think.
I mean, that’s why protest is … I have nothing against protesters. But I think a lot of people looking on might maybe worry that what are these protests doing? This is pointless. And to the extent you think that civil discourse is an affable alternative because it allows students a place where they can, by finding their way into the issue and hearing others who disagree about the issue, they can start to give or do the issue’s importance justice.
(music up)
Mónica:
This season we are proud to be partnering with two fantastic media organizations to help us reach more listeners like you. KUOW is Seattle’s NPR affiliate station. Founded with the idea that everyone should have free access to honest, fact checked information. Deseret News is a multi-platform newspaper based in Salt Lake City committed to providing thoughtful reporting and insightful commentary from the Intermountain West.
Help us by helping them. Learn how at KUOW.org/brave or deseret.com/subscribe. Thank you, Deseret News, and KUOW for helping us create bridges between communities and “A Braver Way” listeners everywhere.
(music out/change/up)
Mónica:
Braver Angels is leading the nation’s largest cross partisan, volunteer led movement to bridge the political divide. Through community gatherings, real debates, and grassroots leaders working together, We’re offering America what it needs to overcome the bitterness of our politics. And here’s the thing, you can join us and be part of the solution. Head to braverangels.org/join to become a member and support our growing movement.
(music out/change/up)
Sam’s experience with tough disagreements on campus brought up a bunch of ideas and strategies, not just for higher ed, but everywhere. To unpack it all and how it might sit super broadly with liberals and conservatives, I want to bring in my friend and political red to my blue, April Lawson.
Hi April, how are you today?
April:
Hello, I’m good. How about you?
Mónica:
I am doing good. We just heard from Sam Recheck, who was a student at the University of Southern Florida and did some incredible things to get students of different political persuasions to actually talk to each other. It can happen.
So, let’s start with favorite moment. What stood out to you?
April:
Oh man, it’s obvious for me, which is disagreeing can be fun. I loved that. I was like, yes, no one understands this these days, but it’s so true.
Mónica:
I love that he said that too, and I had that down as my favorite moment.
April:
Oh my gosh, really?
Mónica:
I did! Well, because it, it feels so controversial to say,
April:
I know!
Mónica:
..but it’s true, and we don’t need to be ashamed of it just because sometimes disagreements are painful. They really can often be very fun, and that’s a reason to try to have them more.
April:
For sure.
Mónica:
So, okay, let’s move to our next question. As a red, you, and as a blue, me, what do we think our sides are good at or not so good at when it comes to these strategies?
April:
For sure. I mean, I think there are things to be said about reds and blues on campuses broadly, and roughly that there is a tendency, on the blue side to get into sort of righteous protest mode and on the red side to get into provocateur mode and that I, as somebody who was a conservative on a campus, I think that how you approach that stuff is really key.
And I’m frankly sort of frustrated with the right on campuses now that does the provocateur thing, because I think that it’s not necessary. There are so many good conversations that can be had. Oh, I guess maybe I’ll just take a second and say I’ve done work on college campuses in this area for the last five years, and I would say two things in terms of strategies.
One, this is more of a like trait than a strategy, but my generation, Gen X was notoriously apathetic, and Millennials were also pretty apathetic, and like, boy, Gen Z is not apathetic, like,
Mónica:
Boy, that’s for sure.
April:
…have whatever opinions you want about them, but like, these people are, like, in it to win it, they are so committed, and I think that, frankly, I would say that reds are not as good, on average, at saying, we’re showing up to play, we’re going to be in the game. There’s a bit more heckling from the outside than I think is ideal.
And now I’m speaking about reds broadly in American politics broadly. However, what I would say a strength on the red side is humor. I think that the thing about free people, free thought, free food and like disagreement can be fun. I think that there’s a particularly in contrast to blues sometimes where there can be the sensation of like tightness that reds have a strong tendency, sometimes it’s like, you know, all the “owning the lib” stuff is not necessarily…
Mónica:
Yeah.
April:
It can be mean spirited. Like it’s not always positive, but I also think that there is a tendency on the right to say, “okay guys, I know, but like, can we just relax for a second? I know I’m saying the wrong word or I’m saying the wrong, like I’m doing it wrong.”
And so, I think that there’s a bit more willingness to laugh at the whole thing. And that actually that’s helpful if it’s done with a good spirit. The motto of the conservative debate group that I was in in college was ‘we take ideas seriously, but not ourselves’. And I think that that attitude can be really helpful.
Mónica:
That was a motto. For you in college. Say, say it one more time. We’ll be.
April:
We take ideas seriously, but not ourselves.
Mónica:
Amazing.
April:
And it…
Mónica:
I really,
April:
I just think it was healthy.
Mónica:
I really like that. And it sounded between the lines that Sam was trying to bring that culture. Because he called out Romeo was the name of the guy who, you know, he said he was a sprawl in his chair and say, “teachers should just have guns”.
And I loved that point he made that it’s a choice to hear a stark position as a threat. An alternate choice is to hear a stark position as a starting point in a conversation and he, the way Sam put it, I loved his language around this, you know, name the stark position and draw the nuance from it, that the stark position carries that service.
That’s so cool, but you do have to do it in a context where you’re not so afraid. And humor and fear seem kind of opposed, so if you can laugh, you’ll be less afraid.
April:
That’s right.
Mónica:
So
April:
How about you?
Mónica:
I would have said, and I think maybe we can have a little showdown, I don’t know. I would have said a strength of the blue side is humor, which is a strength you set in the red side.
April:
Really? Wow, I’m taking all your answers. But yeah. I don’t see that argument yet at all. Please make it.
Mónica:
Interesting. I think of, what, what comes to mind? So, I think of, I grew up with The Daily Show on Comedy Central and Jon Stewart, he was really good at using humor to point out like absurdity. But I think what you said is absolutely true that the blue side is taking itself very seriously in which, and under that context, it’s very hard to laugh. Laughing becomes offensive
April:
Offensive..
Mónica:
and how dare you make light of anything? And I understand because, hey, not everything’s funny.
April:
True
Mónica:
We all have things like, you don’t joke about that. And it’s not always appropriate, clearly. So I do think there’s a lot of fear that grips the blue side and has made comedy, comedy itself has felt like chained up in the last many, many years.
April:
Yup. I’ve actually thought a lot about this because what my understanding of it, because I’ve spent so much time trying to understand so called “cancel culture” and college campuses. There is some research that suggests that laughter is actually more of a bonding mechanism to release tension for a group than it is a direct response to a stimulus. And so, my understanding, or theory, I guess, about why blues tend to be more wanting to police that sometimes is that they don’t want tension to be taken out of some conversations, right?
They don’t want it to be the case that we can just laugh about, I mean, if I were to put this in the spaces that I am sensitive to, like sexual violence jokes, not very funny to me. They’re just not. Because I don’t want the tension to be released. I want people to grapple with it instead. And so, I guess what I’m saying is in an effort to like, reach across rather than just criticize the left for being laughter police I want to say I do think there’s actually a, there is an argument to be made for it.
Mónica:
Yes. I think that’s spot on. I, as we’re talking, I’m realizing just how closely related humor and fear really are. And fear is useful. Fear and tension, you know, fear keeps you activated. And a little bit of fear means I got to figure this out. I got to figure this out. I got to be okay. This is
April:
This is important. Pay attention.
Mónica:
Exactly. So, if people are not in that state of tension, Then they’re just going to roll by the thing that’s really important for people to talk about. And so this happens in our lives. It happens in our politics. And so, it’s occurring to me that it’s sort of a healthy tension between tension and humor, you know what I mean?
April:
For sure.
Mónica:
‘Cause now I think blues are afraid of losing a lot of the tension that they think in the last many years has really driven culture forward. And if we lose that tension and start letting people laugh, then we’ll lose the war. We’ll lose the battle to make a better world. And what high stakes, what high stakes, right?
April:
Yeah, I see that a little differently. I guess what I would say is, I understand the value in pushing social norms forward by policing things, including social interactions like laughter, and I think we have to do that in a way that doesn’t leave so many people behind. It feels a little, sometimes like the, the blue side is trying to gallop so far ahead that all of the rest of us reds are a mile back there saying, “Hey, guys!” Like…
Mónica:
Exactly.
April:
…we’re still here.
Mónica:
Right.
Yeah, which, you know, brings us back to the driving question of this episode is about liberal and conservative students and how they can disagree better on campus.
April:
The future.
Mónica:
At USF, at many, not all, certainly not all, but at many college campuses across the country, the blue side’s got the dominant culture.
April:
Oh, yeah.
Mónica:
And so, when you talk about that, red’s being left behind, yeah, I’ve visited lots of college campuses in the last couple years, and that’s a very, very alive kind of topic. When I went to college, I graduated in 2005, it was a topic, but people almost laughed it off. I worked at the college paper, and I was the opinion editor and I’m liberal and we had our conservative columnists and in the newsroom. There would be mockery.
April:
Hm.
Mónica:
And nobody thought it was a problem.
April:
Right.
Mónica:
You know? There’d be mockery of, oh, what did the conservative columnist say this week? Ha ha ha ha.
April:
Uh Huh.
Mónica:
So that is that what we want? Yeah. If I could go and talk to myself, you know, with what I know now,
April:
uhuh.
Mónica:
I’d, I’d have some words.
April:
I’m curious, like, what you’re seeing since you do go to campuses in terms of, like, what is working? And how have you seen this show up in your life?
Mónica:
Mmmm. So, I’m thinking about all the visits to colleges for sure, but maybe the most tender thing is I have an 11-year-old.
April:
Mm hmm.
Mónica:
And my money is, he’s conservative.
April:
Ooh,
Mónica:
My money’s on that. We’ve had profound conversations about all kinds of things. He knows what mom does for work.
April:
Wow!
Mónica:
…and My parents did such a great job bang up job, I think, raising me to be my own person and think my own way, that I’m trying to do the same with him for sure. So, I’m thinking about that, that do I want college or education to be a place where my son can’t be fully expressive and fully received?
It just kills me to think that someone would just…
April:
Write him off
Mónica:
…prejudge. And, and, you know Sam in the interview talked about Chase in class, that story that he opened with, that Chase had a different opinion, and his professor stood up for him, at least stood up for, “Hey, let’s have the discussion.” And the students still drowned him out.
So that, to me is taking someone’s light and turning it off. You know, why would, we do that to each other? And again, let me be clear. It’s not like conservative students are the only ones, you know..
April:
For sure
Mónica:
..there’s, we unsee on so many levels, it’s complicated, layers and layers of unseeing. So, I just think of that.
You asked about strategies. So, I think that one of the things that really helps that came out in Sam’s retelling of what the first amendment forum meetings look like is, structures that force people to listen. Force people to listen. So, you’re familiar with these because, you know, a lot of the Braver Angels debates and other things that you’ve worked on follow these kinds of things.
But he talked about how people raise their hands, and he writes the names down on the board and you go in order. And so, you’re being forced to listen, not just to the room, but to yourself. You have to listen to your own thoughts, become more conscious… What am I actually trying to say? Oh, that guy just had a good point I better add that point to my point. Oh, that guy just said what I was gonna say. Hmm, what am I gonna say instead? And that’s usually, in disagreements that have no structure and a lot of tension, nobody pauses to listen. We just don’t. We don’t even If you really set a timer on this stuff, it’s ridiculous. Like, you won’t even let another person talk for 20 seconds before you interrupt. That’s what we do. And so, yes, structures that allow you, that force you to listen, but that you’re bought into, that you don’t think it’s okay because your turn will come.
April:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we can do that conversationally in our own lives, right? Usually, the things that are the most effective, especially if you’re dealing with a difficult conversation, usually it’s best to listen first, but there are also ways to cue that like, I really want to hear your perspective. I just want to share this. Or whatever. If you can communicate, you will be heard. That makes people able to listen in a totally different way. So yeah.
Mónica:
Exactly. Did you, in your personal life, what else comes up for you?
April:
Yeah. So, I think about depolarization on college campuses way too much. I think about this all the time. And I would say a couple things. The first is that I care about college campuses and the polarized dynamics there, partly because I think they have an outsized influence on America, on American polarization.
So, for example, I interviewed and would also talk to single issue Trump voters in the first Trump election who were voting specifically because of what they perceived as cancel culture. I think that the parts of the right wing that I don’t align with right now exist in reaction to this perception that you can’t even use words anymore without somebody declaring you a deplorable or some sort of other horrible human being.
So, the, speech policing dynamics on campuses feed this broader understanding of our world where frankly, not only conservatives, although especially them, but also older liberals will often tell me, I feel like I can’t even talk like, because what happens, right? If someone says, you can’t say that, or you can’t say this this way, is that somebody who’s been putting their best faith effort into saying something sincere and the right way.
If they get, yeah, but you said it wrong. What they’ll often do is say, great. All right, fine. You’re going to reject me. I’m just not even gonna try. You’re going to hear my real thoughts now and frankly, I’m going to rebel against your social control by saying something even more offensive to you. And there’s a thing that happens that is bad for everybody.
And there’s this outsized power that this story about college campuses has on, like, sometimes feels like our whole country is in the grip of this and President Trump and other people like him sort of use this to dominate the media cycle and all of this stuff. The truth is that on most college campuses, most of the time, the discourse is much better than what we see in the news, but the media covers the bad stuff, right?
Mónica:
That’s right.
April:
And so, I don’t know how to change that narrative, but I think we can change things on college campuses themselves.
The other thing I would say is that I really like activists because again, I grew up not liking apathy. And so activists care, man, right? Like, whatever side, they care. The tricky thing is for people in our space, right? The “let’s talk to each other, let’s not just defeat each other” space is that those folks often say, yeah, that’s fine, but I want to actually change society. I want to rectify an injustice. And what I have learned from working with college campuses is that you have to speak the language of the person you’re talking to. It’s not realistic to wait for them to learn your language. If you want to be a leader on this, which I think all of us have to be. Anyone who’s listening to this podcast, you’re on deck for this. If you want to be a leader on this, you’ve got to be willing to be the one to switch into the other person’s language. And then particularly for young people, although I think this actually applies to a lot of folks, but particularly for young people, it’s all about social change. For those folks, you have to be willing to speak their language and you have to help to bring them into the idea that making your case powerfully to your opposition rather than dehumanizing and ignoring and canceling your opposition is actually part of getting you where you want to go, which it is, right? Because of what we were saying earlier, that if, if y’all blues just run on ahead with your social norms and like leave us behind, the world is not going to change in the way that you want.
Mónica:
Exactly.
April:
And so speaking into that worldview, I think is really key.
Mónica:
When you were describing that dynamic where there’s a right way to say a thing and so someone comes in and is giving it a try and is trying to say it the right way, but then is kind of punished because it wasn’t perfect and then not heard. The dynamic where that person doesn’t just say what Chase told Sam, I just won’t speak up again, where it’s actually, oh, no, no, no, no, I see how it is.
April:
Yeah.
Mónica:
And I’m not gonna be turned off like a light. And now I’m gonna be out here, and I’m gonna build an identity from being out here.
April:
Exactly.
Mónica:
I’m gonna build an identity from hating you and your stupid rules. If the point is to use the beautiful dynamic of persuasion, to help each other actually change our own minds about things that we see now better than we used to because we’re exposed to different perspectives that have illuminated our own like that’s that’s how any real change happens.
April:
For sure well and one hopeful note just to wrap is that I have been on so many college campuses and I swear to you, there is a Sam on every campus. In fact, there are several, there are people on every campus who want to make this change, who want to like lead in this direction. And so I think the older generations often despair of the kids these days, but actually they’re great.
Mónica:
They are,
April:
We just have to set them up; to help them create a social world where they can speak.
Mónica:
Yes, it’s how can we set them up. But it’s also, it’s not an us versus them, you know?
April:
Nope!
Mónica:
Like, young people set themselves up. We all set ourselves up. Just, let’s make sure that we don’t create institutions and conventions and sets of habits that make a Sam feel like he, no, this isn’t gonna work, I just won’t do it. Right? So, yeah, like, let’s all create the conditions where people can do this because they are hungry, April. You’re absolutely right.
April:
Oh my goodness.
Mónica:
This is, to your point about the narrative, the narrative out there about college campuses being these like chaotic cesspools, completely, completely wrong. And I loved what Sam said, like, what if we take the protesters as, well, those people’s ideas are clear. Let’s use them as starting points.
April:
Yes
Mónica:
You know, to have the conversation and to bring out the nuance like what if we did that So, okay.
Well, wonderful. Thank you so much April
April:
And you and yeah, just my love goes out to all the college students out there and just young people who are fighting the good fight so to everyone, thank you, but especially those folks.
Mónica:
Definitely. Keep going.
(music out)
Regardless of your preferred ideology, if you were born before 1997, you are bridging a divide this episode that we don’t talk about as much around here. The generational divide. Confession. I find generations absolutely fascinating. In one of my first journalism jobs, I got to interview Neil Howe, a big generational theorist, and I geeked out.
I was in my early 20s, and a millennial, the object of much generational speculation at the time. Of course, now it’s Sam Rechek’s generation, getting a lot of the attention. Gen Z. What is different about Gen Z, politically and otherwise? Rather than do what know it all adults did with us millennials back in the day, speculate, I went to USA Facts and I did some digging.
USA Facts is a nonpartisan nonprofit that’s out to guide people through the maze of public data from the nation’s more than 90, 000 government entities. They do that by compiling the data. and organizing it so it’s accessible and understandable to everyone. Not just policy wonks, not just journalists, everyone. USA Facts is also a proud sponsor of A Braver Way.
The first thing I learned clicking around USA Facts and landing on some resources from the Library of Congress is that the oldest members of Gen Z turned 27 years old this year. That’s three years too young to serve in the U. S. Senate, but just over the bar for the U.S. House of Representatives, where a man named Maxwell Frost became the first Gen Z member of Congress back in the 2022 midterms. As for where he’s serving, it’s the Sunshine State, Florida. Now for Gen Z’s voting record, it’s what you might say we’ve come to expect the last couple of generations from our youngest adults.
46 percent of Gen Z’ers who are eligible to vote, were registered to do it in 2022. And just 26 percent of them voted. That’s at least 10 percentage points lower than every other generation that’s eligible to vote. What other trends is Gen Z contributing to? It’s general knowledge now that, according to how race is defined by the U.S. Census, America is growing more racially diverse. The biggest swing in Gen Z from us millennials? Hispanics. The racial category I check off now applies to a full quarter of Gen Z.
But going back to school for a minute, I thought about how college just seems to get more and more expensive, and found myself wondering, is higher ed less accessible for Gen Z than it was for me? And how much does having a college degree impact what they can earn as they move into adulthood? The numbers look like a red flag, and charts from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Labor Statistics spell out why. From 2000 to 2019, the cost of one year of college went up 59%.
But wages for people with bachelor’s degrees, inflation adjusted wages, only went up 1.7% in that same period. And if you got a high school diploma but didn’t go to college, your wages actually went down those years by 0.5%. It’d be good to have some fresh Gen Z energy helping us tackle this, right?
Thank you, USA Facts, for the quick data plunge.
(music out)
Sam Recheck is now a USF graduate on the lookout for his next step. When I asked him what he wants that to be, he told me he wants to channel the experiences he’s had and the skills he’s built to, as he put it, improve the quality of our politics for the years to come. How does that sound? And hey, if you happen to have a lead for him, reach out to us. We’ll let him know.
Meanwhile, I guess I can say this for myself. If campuses around the country bust out again this fall with tension and agitation about the issues challenging so many of us, if I see and hear in the news a sense that it’s all a mess, that it’s chaos, that it’s hopeless, I’m going to wonder where the Sams are. And the Romeos. And the Nicks. And the Chases. And what I can do to give their stories a boost.
With that, I am ready to send you brave souls back to your worlds with a song. It’s called “The Sound of Us,” by Lynette Williams and Nicholas Zork. And it was a 2020 entry to the Braver Angels Song Competition.
Take a listen.
Lynette Williams and Nicholas Zork:
(music)
What does it mean to be free? When we’re made to feel so divided We’re too afraid to believe life is small with all of us…
(music under)
Mónica:
Thanks everyone so much for joining us on A Braver Way. If this episode sparked questions or stories you want to share with us, we are all ears. You can always reach us at abraverway@braverangels.org or join our new text line to check in throughout the season from right there on your phone. To get started, just text the word BRAVE to 206-926-9955.
A Braver Way is produced by Braver Angels and distributed in partnership with KUOW and Deseret News. We get financial support from the M. J. Murdoch Charitable Trust and Reclaim Curiosity, and count USA Facts as a proud sponsor.
Our senior producer and editor is David Albright. Our producer is Jessica Jones.
My disagreement buddy is April Lawson. Our theme music is by the fantastic number one Billboard bluegrass charting hip- hop band, Gangsta Grass.
A special thanks to Ben Caron, Don Goldberg, Gabbi Timmis, and Katelin Annes.
And, to everyone who’s been sharing episodes of this podcast with your friends and family this season, or written a review of the podcast for others to find. That has been wonderful.
I’m your host and guide across the divide, Mónica Guzmán. Take heart, everyone. Till next time.
Braver Angels is the nation’s largest cross partisan volunteer led movement to bridge the political divide and the organization that produces this podcast. And here’s the exciting part. You can join us in our mission to overcome toxic polarization and strengthen our democratic republic. Head to braverangels.org/join to become a member and support our growing movement and let them know A Braver Way sent you.
(music up and out)