Culver Academies holds post-election meeting to discuss “how to citizen”

Culver Academies students were encouraged Wednesday to treat the presidential election results like an athletic competition and to be good winners and good losers.

“Most of us in this room are athletes and we’ve won and we’ve lost,” humanities master instructor Jen Cerny said. “We know what good winning looks like, and we know what good losing looks like.”

Students met in an all-school meeting Wednesday afternoon and later in classrooms and smaller groups to discuss the election results and how they were feeling about them.

Cerny said one of the main reasons they held the meetings was to make sure students “know how to citizen.”

“How to think as a citizen. How to decide as a citizen. How to think about what your vote means. And also, when you’re on the losing side, how to put your values into action when you are part of the loyal opposition. So when your party is out of power, how can you still make your values felt and still feel like you have influence even though your side is defeated.”

She said one of the realities of living in a democracy is your side is going to lose about half the time, particularly at the presidential level. She said sometimes politics matter, but what matters all the time is how people treat one another.

“There are a lot of feelings in the room. It is probable that many of you are thrilled and hopeful and fired up. Some of you might just be relieved that it’s over and tired. It’s been a slog,” Cerny said. “Some of you may be appalled and outraged and scared and sad.”

She told the students that a lot of spaces at Culver are shared spaces and in those spaces there will likely be students feeling all of these emotions.

“We have to realize we have a variety of reactions on our campus because we are responsible for caring for one another, even across political differences,” she said.

The theme for Culver Academies this school year has been: “E Pluribus Unum,” a Latin expression that means “Out of Many, One.” The idea is to promote civil discourse. The program is a yearlong effort to encourage instructors and staff to talk with students about contentious issues, such as politics, and to teach them to listen respectfully to others with differing viewpoints.

Humanities chair John Rogers said the meetings Wednesday were part of that process.

“As a school that educates for leadership and responsible citizenship, to be informed and to be engaged, it seems important to our mission and important for us to pause for a moment this afternoon to share where we are,” he said.

He said it was important to meet as a community because school officials knew that no matter who won there would be hard feelings.

“As a community that cares about everyone here, we thought it was important that we come together to think about how to move forward and what the next steps are to continue to be a strong, vibrant community,” Rogers said.

Cerny explained to the students about how the president has limited power that is constrained by the powers of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.

“That’s important to remember because sometimes we can get a little anxious about a specific election, like the presidential, imagining that it means that the president has way more power than the president actually does,” Cerny said.

She told the students that the United States now transitions from a campaign season to needing to actually govern.

“When candidates campaign, they do things like make broad promises. They say what they want to do as though they get to do what they want to do without any opposition whatsoever,” she said.

She said after a candidate wins, they must work to govern under the Constitution and work with other branches of government.

 

 

She told the students that Congress hasn’t been working for a long time.

“It seems like there’s a growing allergy to working across the aisle in a bipartisan way between Republicans and Democrats. They seem to believe in Congress they get the most points for being loyal only to their own parties rather than a higher loyalty to country,” she said. “So that decreases the probability of cooperation, negotiation and compromise. All of that is how you do the business of governing and how you resolve conflict without resorting to violence. We need to have that level of compromise; we just haven’t seen it in a long time.”

She said that has made the presidency become a lot more significant because the president uses executive orders because Congress isn’t making laws.

She showed students a list of problems facing the U.S. government:

·         Congress isn’t working

·         Increased power of the Executive branch

·         Seeming politicization of the courts

·         The influence of money in politics

·         Current climate – high levels of distrust

She said all these problems make some people distrustful and scared of the government.

The students then went to classrooms and held group discussions. In an Advanced Placement European History class, senior humanities instructor Scott Sweet-Christian explained to the students that people aren’t right or wrong, they just have opinions about things.

“Ask them about their opinions,” he said. “It’s really about getting to know who we are and our viewpoints.”

Students started by talking about how they feel about the results of the election.

A CGA student talked about how she felt anxious after seeing the results.

“Just because I do know that the next president was impeached twice and has a bit of a criminal record as well, to me it felt a little disappointing in a way,” she said. “But still, theoretically, I think the best thing to do is respect democracy’s results. I respect anybody’s decision.”

A group of CMA seniors talked about how they hope the election of Donald Trump will have a positive effect on the economy as they enter college.

“Because there were two very different plans proposed from Trump and Kamala (Harris). I’m interested in seeing how that plays out compared to performance of (Joe) Biden and Kamala the last four years,” a CMA senior said.

The CGA seniors talked about how they should lead with empathy and humility and the need to work to find common ground because some of them have roommates with vastly different political views.

A group of CMA international students talked about how social media impacts everyone’s perspectives and how it increases polarization. They also talked about how the campaign disrupted people’s lives.

The meetings Wednesday were part of a series of programs held at Culver so far this year. There have been mandatory and optional programs for faculty and students to take part in these discussions. There have been on-campus optional student discussions on issues such as gun violence, immigration and abortion and more are planned on climate change, cost of living and higher education and civil rights.

There also were presidential and vice presidential debate watch parties. Guest speaker Sharon McMahon, known as “America’s government teacher,” told students that Americans spend too much time focusing on where they disagree instead of working to find areas of common ground.

Head of Schools Doug Bird ’90, Ed.D., told the students at an all-school meeting last week that their efforts on civil discourse had been “outstanding.”