Expanding Our Circles

Expanding Our Circles

Holy Cross talks POLITICS

     We need more dialogues than debates. Ethan Bachand (’20) of the SPIRE emphasized the need for more dialogue as he warned about how debates and seeing persons in constant opposition can cause a lot of harm. Ethan was making this point during a gathering of student leaders – in an event dubbed “Politics: Seeing Across the Aisle” - last February 20.  Organized by OME’s Multicultural Peer Educators (MPEs) and the Chaplaincy’s Student Program for Urban Development (SPUD) volunteers, the affair brought in students to talk about their impressions of American politics.  The event employed the “expanding our circles” approach which aims to promote learning and understanding outside persons’ usual comfort zones.  In conversations, Ethan expressed, we will need to remember the humanity of persons.  Taking out the component of “persons” in any dialogue, he says, is dangerous. 

      For his part, Pax Christi’s Will Poplawski (’20) notes how the online world while creating a reality that is different from what is experienced, can tend to add to deeper conflicts.  While politics, he says can indeed divide people, Will also emphasized that “what we stand for is much bigger than politics.” Mary Kate Sebby (’20) for her part, acknowledged how conversations are impacted by the identities of peoples and how the urgency of conversations varies according to how parties are directly affected by life situations.  Dialogues, she implies will necessarily be followed by a corresponding action and resolution.  BSU’s Yandi Pierre (’22), on the other hand, notes the importance of “reaching out to strangers.”  Conversations, she notes can begin even in elevators.  We need to learn how to smile at each other, Yandi suggests and create more venues where people can show up and discuss issues.

      “Politics: Seeing Across the Aisle,” was facilitated by Francis Lubega (’20), Moriah Taylor (’20), Luna Alexis (’21), Jenny Feraud (’21), Syl Dwyer (’21), Catherine Brennan (’20) together with Marty Kelly of the Chaplaincy Office and Fr. Frank Savadera, SJ of OME.