By Rory Dulock | Staff Writer
The Public Deliberation initiative is comes out of the Kettering Foundation, a national partner of Baylor’s, that brings resources to campus for training faculty and students on civil discourse.
Dr. Kevin Villegas, dean of Intercultural Engagement and Division of Student Life Initiatives, said the initiative is about talking to one another and using current issues to bring people together, rather than apart.
“[We] take whatever socially compelling or divisive topic and have a PDI event around that. The way it works depends on the topic,” Villegas said. “It’s not to find a solution that everybody agrees upon, but to understand the nuances.”
Villegas said the Intercultural Engagement office is open to working with anybody across campus and even outside of the Baylor community to do a PDI event.
“If anybody wants to have a PDI event — whether that’s a student organization or a professor wanting that to happen inside their classroom or outside of their classroom as some sort of assignment — we would then talk to those individuals, find out exactly what they want, particular issues they’re after, and then work on curating those placemats together and then hosting the event,” Villegas said. “They just need to contact [Intercultural Engagement].”
Dr. Kevin Jackson, vice president for Student Life, said initiatives like Bridging the Gap and Public Deliberation help advance Baylor’s new strategic plan, Baylor in Deeds.
“The main focus is on helping us be more curious, to help us with our deep listening skills and [to] help us have what’s called positive regard,” Jackson said. “It’s that whole idea that you can disagree without being disagreeable. You can have and you should have your own opinions, and you should feel you’re able to express those while understanding that you’re in a larger community where there’s standards.”
Villegas said he encourages student leaders, clubs and organizations, fraternities and sororities, to lean into participating in this initiative because it is an activity that is meaningful and allows the development of practical skills that will help them in the future.
“My vision is that Baylor will actually come to be known for the way we disagree with one another, for the way we try to bridge gaps in understanding,” Villegas said. “Those are the things I want Baylor to be known for, but it’s going to take our community leaning into some of these opportunities in order to get us to a place where that is just the water we swim in.”
