By Kyle Kern Staff Writer
new administration, tension between different political ideologies is building.
In response to this, the Center for Academic Achievement sponsored a “Let’s Talk” series that dealt with how people deal with differing political views.
David Heayn, adjunct professor of history, led the discussion on “Respecting Differing Political Views” on Feb. 21.
Heayn, who has been a member of the faculty at Susquehanna since May of 2015, ran as a write-in candidate for the state House of Representatives in Pennyslvania’s 85th district.
The event was held in the Benjamin Apple Meeting Rooms. The event started at 5 p.m. with a light dinner.
Throughout the dinner there was light conversation. Heayn then proceeded with the larger discussion about how someone should go about a respectable political discussion.
To begin, he started with the three basic ways to discuss politics that he has encountered the most.
The first one is dialogue, which constructs a learning experience and allows you to explore different variations of the topic.
This option is where the participants converse casually with developing ideas and thoughts, while not trying to persuade the other to believe as you do.
The second option, probing, deals with asking questions, but not exploring the mind of the individual.
Heayn said, “[Probing] is almost like trolling on the internet, to further your own agenda by seeing how the other person responds.”
The third and final way that a discussion on politics happens, Heayn said, is called an attack conversation.
This example of conversation is only for trying to convince the other person that you are right and to convert them to your way of thinking.
The discussion is sharp and deals with one’s own view and doesn’t take the other person’s into account.
To combat the last two discussion techniques, Heayn advocated laying down a few ground rules to help ensure that everyone can voice their opinion and discuss each other’s point of view.
The first is to respect each other. The next step is to use sentences that utilize “I” instead of “you.” This makes the structure focused around what you believe and takes the blame away from the other person.
Heayn believes that once the other person thinks they are being attacked the respect is lost.
He also stressed the negative impact of interruptions, because interruptions disrupt the flow of the conversation and make the other person feel like their opinions aren’t respected.
However, Heayn also said that you should not let anyone walk all over you and that the discussions should be equal and just in all aspects.
Adding upon this, Heayn proposed a few ideas as to why people tend to lose sight of the dialogue-type discussions.
He stated that inflated statistics, misinformation and copious amounts of probing cause constituents to develop an opinion that is based upon false statements.
In several scenarios that Heayn cited, he told of how participants based findings of a situation on false information at first, because they were told that the information was true.
However, even when given sources and information that proves to them that the initial information was wrong, the participants still felt strongly about their opinion that was based on false statements.
One way that could be used to combat this, Heayn later explained, is the use of dialogue more often.
Before the event ended, he set up groups of the participants to begin talking about controversial topics in order for the event goers to experience what he warned them about.
Before he did this, he said, “Trolling can be fun, but it is not effective [or] efficient and is in no way helpful to the situation.”
The groups discussed for the remainder of the event while Heayn went from group to group helping to either moderate the discussion or to add the perspective of the other side to the discussion.
“I don’t think you can have progress in society without respect for the thoughts and opinions of others,” sophomore Rick Farmer said. “Being able to discuss that is a fundamental aspect of the political process.”
At the end of the event freshman Hattie Venable rationalized how conversations could go.
She said: “Attempting to recognize both sides to the conversation is important. It’s useful to try even with friends, neighbors and everyone in order to enhance discussions in the future.”
If any student is interested in attending a “Let’s Talk” events in the future, they can check the mySU homepage for updates on the events.
