Going into deliberation week, I honestly wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting into. I had a general idea of what the whole situation would be like, but I wasn’t quite sure how the whole deliberation process would work. Now that I’ve attended another deliberation, I can definitely say that I’m lot more comfortable and familiar with how the whole process works. It was also certainly beneficial to attend another deliberation about the opioid epidemic, because I now have a better understanding on the issue as well as a grasp on what the different talking points on each approach coming from our audience may be.
I love how the group opened the deliberation in a very friendly, welcoming manner. I didn’t feel out of place while I was there, and I hope our group is able to replicate this when we have our deliberation.
There was one thing early on that threw me off, however, and that was the sheer size of the group’s discussion guide.
Their discussion guide was four full pages long, filled to the brim with information. In contrast, my group’s discussion guide is only two pages, consisting mostly of bullet points. Although I do like how informative this group’s discussion guide is, I honestly prefer the brevity of ours, because I like the possibility of quickly glancing down at the page to get some information for continuing a discussion topic, rather than having to wade through paragraphs to find the information.
Despite having a rather small discussion audience (there were probably ten or less participants outside of the main group), we were actually able to have a high-quality deliberation. Never was there an awkward silence or a pause in the momentum of the discussion; at all times, someone had something to say. I certainly think that if we can manage our discussion the way this group managed theirs, then we shouldn’t have a problem maintaining the flow of the deliberation.
One thing that I really got a lot from in this discussion was the multiple facets of the topic that we hadn’t considered already. Although this group’s topic was slightly different than ours (ours focuses just on the opioid epidemic in Centre Country, theirs covered the epidemic from a national viewpoint), I felt like a lot of the information revealed was applicable to our own deliberation. Some topics we hadn’t considered include the possibility of regulating pharmaceutical companies and their extent of power on the epidemic, the economic factors that would have to be sacrificed in order to save lives, and the problems with doctors overprescribing opioids or forcefully prescribing opioids in order to avoid bad reviews from customers and pressure from employing hospitals. Some of this info does pertain to our discussion (possibly the economic viability part), and others not so much, but overall, I certainly believe that I have a better understanding of the issue and the possible approaches that come with it.
My only complaint about the deliberation is that the room was quite loud, and I often couldn’t here what the facilitators or contributors were saying. I’ll be making sure that I can be heard when the time comes for our group’s deliberation.
Overall, the group did a great job of facilitating a worthwhile conversation about the opioid crisis. I stated at the deliberation that I believe the best way to find a solution to a problem is to keep the problem in the spotlight and discuss all the possible ways we can find a solution, and I certainly found that to be true here. I’ll certainly be using this group as a model for our own deliberation.
