Title: Together Beyond November: A Multi-Layered Approach to Building Community through Dialogue
Presenters: Jeff Cullen, Ph.D., David Hoffman, Ph.D., and Romy Hübler, Ph.D.
Department: Center for Democracy and Civic Life and Student Conduct and Community Standards
Abstract: Election 2020 was broadly hyped as the most important election of our lifetimes. The twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systematic racism have ravaged our country and commentators accurately described the American electorate as being hyper-polarized. Given the foreseeable chaos and uncertainty that would follow Election Day, the Center for Democracy and Civic Life, Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging (or i3b), the Counseling Center, and leading campus educators in the use of restorative practices collaborated on Together Beyond November, a train-the-trainers program to prepare campus opinion leaders to facilitate conversations in their networks to debrief the outcome of the elections, to normalize the anxiety and uncertainty that UMBC stakeholders might feel in the days after, and to build or re-build community on campus. This video describes the experiences of 18 Together Beyond November facilitators and participants who we interviewed. Following a methodology rooted in social constructivism, we encouraged interviewees to make meaning of their own experiences as participants in and facilitators of Together Beyond November workshops. A preliminary analysis of qualitative interview data revealed six prevalent themes pointing to the importance of the workshops in building community and supporting participants during a turbulent election year.
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