Northwestern’s chapter of BridgeUSA hosted its first campus-wide conference, “NUNITED,” at Norris University Center on Saturday. The all-day event featured panels, workshops and discussions centered around collaboration and dialogue in mainstream politics.
BridgeUSA is a national organization with more than 50 college chapters dedicated to creating opportunities for constructive discussion about political issues on campuses. It also trains students in leadership on conflict navigation and “building bridges.”
Weinberg senior Camila Vicens, co-founder and president of BridgeNU, said, while she was nervous about hosting a first-time conference, she was ultimately happy with the result.
“I was astounded by just how willing everyone was to speak — it was incredible,” Vicens said. “What I was most impressed with was less about the number and more so the quality of the students who came. Every single person was asking questions and engaging.”
The event was organized in collaboration with NU Political Union and featured No Labels, a political organization that has vowed to put up a third-party candidate in 2024 if President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are nominated. About 40 people attended the conference, which was broken down into four sessions.
The first session was titled “Braver Angels Workshop” and featured small group discussions on stereotypes associated with political affiliations. Groups discussed how these ideas are formed and how to challenge them.
Weinberg sophomore and event attendee Joe Gonsalves said group discussions were the main reason he decided to come to the conference.
“As someone who is relatively left-leaning, I think discussing ideas is important for anyone with political beliefs, and I think that seems to be the biggest thing for the people there,” Gonsalves said.
Vicens said BridgeNU is already beginning to plan for next year’s conference and is hoping to make the event “a little legacy” on campus.
Other group discussion topics included artificial intelligence, TikTok, healthcare and immigration.
Following the workshop, BridgeUSA moderated a panel titled “Political Polarization at Northwestern.” Panelists included NU Hillel Executive Director Michael Simon, political science Profs. Laurel Harbridge-Yong and Jeff Rice, K4 Mobility Co-Founder and CEO Michael Small, and BridgeUSA Chief Operating Officer Ross Irwin.
The panelists agreed that polarization on college campuses is not a new phenomenon and it runs top-down rather than bottom-up.
“The public is not driving polarization; they may be enforcing it in some ways, but they aren’t the initial drivers,” Harbridge-Yong said. “Views towards one’s own party have not become particularly favorable over the years, but views of the opposing party have plummeted.”
Rice said faculty like himself must intervene and promote debate amongst students. He said an inability to do so results in the weakening of democracy.
“On our campus, we have a problem: There is nothing more precious than debate, and if we can’t have public discourse, then we cannot have a functioning democracy,” Rice said. “I tell my students on day one: This class is going to be civil, there will be no ad hominem attacks on each other, we’ll debate, we will argue, but we will never make it personal and we will never stop.”
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