Students and faculty discuss what it means to be Buckeyes after the vote

University experts host Back to Being Buckeyes After the Election

Students and faculty discuss what it means to be Buckeyes after the vote

Interactive session hosted on eve of election day

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Chris Booker Ohio State News [email protected] 614.292.7276

In Ohio and across the nation, the final hours of voting are coming to an end. Once those votes are counted and the outcome is clear, the country and The Ohio State University campus community will need to determine how to live well as fellow citizens after the election.

Hoping to lay the groundwork for that action, the Institute for Democratic Engagement & Accountability (IDEA) and the Salmon P. Chase Center - in collaboration with Listen. Learn. Discuss.- hosted an event to discuss ways to promote understanding and responsible civic engagement.

"Back to Being Buckeyes After the Election: Working Through Our Outrage" was an online and in-person event held Monday evening. The goal of the conversation was to offer knowledge, skills and strategies to engage responsibly in the local community, regardless of the election outcome.

Michael Neblo, director of IDEA, said the ability to remain civically engaged matters because once the election ends, the work for the common good should begin.

"Nobody is saying that this should be a big kumbaya party. People can wear their partisan hats during elections and campaigns and fight for their candidates and their positions," he said. "That's part of democracy. It's a healthy thing in a democracy. But it's also healthy that once the election is settled and the newly elected representatives are ready to go, that we move into the mode of governing, and part of that requires the rest of us to come together."

Lee Strang, executive director of the Chase Center, said the campus community should remember its many shared connections and interests. He also encouraged a commitment to civil discourse.

"Civil discourse is one of those habits that we have to be intentional about, like civic friendship. That the person next to me might have a different letter after his or her name, may have voted for a candidate that we think is really a bad candidate to lead the United States. But for the good of the long-term project of the United States, emphasizing and being intentional about our civic friendship with our fellow citizens and discoursing with them in a civil and thoughtful way is the way to continue and to augment, to facilitate, the great good that is the United States," he said.

The panel of experts did not minimize the impact the election would have on the community. Jason Opal, dean and director of Ohio State Mansfield, is a historian by profession. He said the election of 2024 will go down in history as one of the moments where people vividly remember where they were and what they were doing as the country passed through a particularly difficult time.

Opal said one way to remain anchored to the community is to "go local" as opposed to ideological. He encouraged the audience to see people at an individual level.

"It's to engage with people only as you're taking them in and understanding them and seeing them and being with them, and not as the existing ideology tells you about other people because that will not lead to a good response," he said.

One way to maintain a better connection to the civic process is to engage in the work of our democracy, Amy Lee, associate director of IDEA, said. Lee said she worked as a poll worker and recommended that others do the same.

She also encouraged people to be open-minded about what the other side of the political aisle really thinks.

"We tend to think that people who are on the other political side from us are much less committed to democratic rules of law and much more committed to their more partisan ideals than is actually the case," she said. "I think that it is actually true that regardless of which party anybody belongs to, most people are, deeply above all, committed to maintaining the American experiment."

During the session, participants had an opportunity to discuss how to engage constructively during the election and after. Advice included setting boundaries on media consumption and around conversations.

Others recommended approaching constructive conversations that have an agreed-upon beginning and end, which could include a sense of understanding, if not agreement.

In addition to the session, Ohio State offers resources to help navigate difficult conversations. They include:

• Workshops on the 4Cs of Civil Discourse: The Center for Ethics and Human Values (CEHV) provides workshops on learning to navigate difficult conversations using the 4Cs (be Curious, Charitable, Conscientious and Constructive).
• Shop Class for Democracy: IDEA hosts Shop Class for Democracy forums that build students' skills in critical thinking, dialoguing across differences and deliberative decision-making. These, in turn, can increase our commitment to democratic values and institutions. IDEA offers these forums through First Year Experience and other programs in addition to supporting curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities led by other units to extend deliberative discussion across the university.
• The university has also combined several election-related civil discourse and civic engagement resources on the Listen. Learn. Discuss.website.

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