What is Bridging the Divide?
Bridging the Divide seeks to reduce partisan division by fostering civil discourse among students and promoting civic virtue. The program brings students with different ideological and partisan political perspectives together for small group conversations about current political issues and beliefs. Rather than reaching a consensus, the goal is simply to replace snark with civil dialogue and increase engagement and understanding between people with different opinions.
Our Mission
We replace snark with conversation, tweets with real talk, and scrolls & likes with face-to-face dialogue. We seek to create an environment where students, staff, and faculty on UW campuses are welcome to come and share their thoughts on politically charged topics and ultimately leave with a better understanding of the people who have different views than themselves.
What to Expect from an Event
- Attendees register before the event using a QR code found below. While registering for the first time, attendees complete a brief and confidential survey on their political views. There will also be a sign-in sheet at the door of every meeting used for attendance purposes.
- Attendees are sorted into ideologically diverse small groups by computer based on the survey they completed prior to attending an event. No faculty, staff or other students will see any person’s survey responses.
- Each session, the small groups meet over dinner (5:30-6:30) to discuss their views on one or more current political topics chosen for the day. We provide a discussion guide for each topic to help the conversion.
- At the end of the event each group will be asked to share what their group discussed on a given topic- it is ok and normal to not get to all the discussion guides!
Most importantly, food is on us! Each session will have pizza provided- if you have dietary restrictions, please disclose this on your registration form so that we know to accommodate.
Who Should I Contact if I Have Questions?
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to us at b-t-d@uwm.edu or reach out to Isaiah, the Campus Leader for BTD at UWM, at chang336@uwm.edu!
