Peter Konwerski is the vice provost and dean of student affairs.
Despite the name-calling and the doom and gloom saturating the airwaves, there is a reason to be optimistic about our future as a society this election season.
I’ve been incredibly impressed with the tone of one recent debate, but it wasn’t by the major party candidates. The one I found incredibly reasoned and respectful was a recent debate hosted by the GW’s campus radio station WRGW, with student leaders representing GW’s College Democrats and Republicans. As an administrator and professor, it was inspiring to hear our students adeptly put their knowledge into action, posing policy solutions and well researched scenarios into thoughtful debate positions. Unlike the candidates atop the current slate for President, our students aren’t focused on attack ads. Rather they’re offering a lesson in civility both candidates can learn from.
In the debate, students articulated their action plans, discussed advocacy campaigns and highlighted their online organizing efforts. Now as the most politically active campus in America, experiencing a high-quality debate didn’t actually surprise me. What impressed me most was the tone and tenor of how our students continue to conduct themselves throughout this election. While they’ve seen some bad political discourse over the past 18 months, and the worst I’ve seen in decades as a D.C. political junkie, I’ve been continually impressed by the mature perspective our students have brought to this campaign season, including their assessment of the key issues affecting us at home and abroad. And while both parties haven’t been the best at focusing on the facts and regularly impinge their adversaries, our students continue to keep the conversation substantive and focused on the stuff that really matters – real solutions for actual people, built on sound social policy.
While commentators routinely criticize millennials, I’m in awe at their engagement and aptitude, as well as their willingness to work across partisan lines. Maybe that’s a result of their realization that problems don’t get solved in silos, despite the way we often organize and elect our leaders in our two-party system. Our students see possibility and potential, often long before we do, to cross partisan lines and work to achieve common consensus. Not that there isn’t disagreement but they are not unwilling to engage in difficult discourse on our campuses, and that’s a spirit we need to ensure we maintain in academia.
Although the current civic debates have been anything but civil, our students have risen above the rancor, and time and time again, consider the implications that elections have. That’s why they’ve worked hard for their candidates of choice, up and down the ballot, but they also are not giving in to the pettiness, anger and outright hostility that we’ve seen from the two top candidates of late.
And knowing that elections have consequences, our students haven’t shied away from being willing to engage around tough issues and ask difficult questions. We see that whenever global dignitaries, Congressional VIPs or administration experts attend events on campus. Our students come together not only to engage, but also to learn. I hope that the civility our students display can extend beyond our community. That people can hold those same high ideals as we head into the final days of this election cycle.
While getting out the vote and watching the final tallies is the next step in the process, coming together to govern and working toward sound, common senses solutions will ultimately be the real task at hand for either side that ends up on top. The question: Will our country come together like our students have learned to do, and can we overcome the anger and enmity that comes with an election as contested as the race we’re all on the verge of witnessing?
