Navigating campus unrest: Strategies for civility with Constructive Dialogue Institute

For the latest in our series on organizations that inspire us to take action to build a stronger democracy, Democracy Group community manager Jessie Nguyen caught up with Constructive Dialogue Institute UX Researcher and co-author of the "Maintaining Campus Community During the 2024 Election" guidebook Mary Aviles. We talked about the motivation behind the guidebook, election unrest in recent years and what to come after the November election.

Q: Tell me about yourself, your work at the Constructive Dialogue Institute, your background and what brought you to the democracy space

Mary: I am a UX researcher or user experience researcher at the Constructive Dialogue Institute. I'm an experience-trained strategist and people-in-context researcher, so that's qualitative research, oftentimes one-on-one or small group settings.

Co-creation and the cross-pollination of ideas have been foundational to everything I've done in the last 20 years. I work on discovery and concept development at CDI and across the span of my career, I've looked at innovation and leverage points related to wellness, ease, trust, privacy, and  momentum. In this research specifically related to the guidebook, I'm using our platform to amplify the work of others.

Q: What inspired you to create this guidebook? Was it something particular to this election season or have you always noticed certain problems with past elections?

Mary: The Constructive Dialogue Institute has been engaging with campus leaders for the last 22 months or so in a variety of ways working in small cohorts, and we kept hearing anxiety from those cohorts about what was coming with the election. When we asked what kind of campus culture they wanted around the upcoming election, they were talking about civility and dialogue across differences, but they were worried about divisiveness and even violence erupting. As we started to think about that, we thought that it would be useful to put together a list of lessons learned from past elections, especially the last two presidential elections in 2016 and 2020, which were unique in their own ways, but both represented opportunities for differences and unrest.

Q: For people who are just now coming across the guidebook, do you think there is still hope in tackling polarization and free speech on campus — two of the central themes noted in the guidebook — before the November election?

Mary: I think so. I think there's always hope and what the stories in the guidebook do is promote hope. While the election poses many risks for division, it's also a touchstone ritual of democracy. It's an opportunity to encourage students to be thoughtful, engaged citizens, which is part of almost every campus mission. The effort invested in preparing for the 2024 election can help to educate, foster the capacity to listen to others and replace anger and fear with the spirit of curiosity.

The election comes and goes on a particular day — that's not going to be the end of disruption on campus. So any effort that you put in will have a lasting impact on maintaining campus community beyond the election itself.

Democracy Matters: Solutions to the campus free speech woes

Part of our Dialogue playlist, this episode discusses some of the steps to maintaining campus free speech and civility outlined in the Constructive Dialogue Institute's 2024 election guidebook. Listen on to see these steps in action.

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