Deliberation Reflection

It was an interesting experience both participating in a deliberation other than my own and planning and executing my deliberation. “Setting the Standard on Standardized Testing” allowed me to appreciate the work that goes into such conversations and attending “To Drink or Not to Drink: A Spirited Conversation of Binge Drinking on College Campuses” allowed me to view a different conversational experience to compare to my own. Overall, I thought that both deliberations that I will be discussing met most of the criteria stated in Gastil’s chapter on deliberation, although there were areas in which both groups could have improved upon to perfect their deliberation.

One of the most important elements in a productive conversation is respecting participants and adequately distributing speaking opportunities. In my deliberation, I do believe that these criteria were adequately met. The deliberation was held in Webster’s Bookstore Café, which had many downfalls and impeded our conversation. The arrangement of the café caused half of our participants on a stage, and the others surrounding us on a lower surface in rows. The people in the back row on the lower surface did not get to share their opinions as much, but after prompted by our deliberation moderators, were willing to share more than in the beginning. I also thought that everyone’s opinions were respected, and all participants were honest and acknowledged other’s unique experiences and viewpoints. Also, since the café was relatively loud, we tried using a microphone to make the speakers heard, but it ended up making the conversation turn into more of a presentation and somewhat annoyed the normal café-goers, who were not participating in the deliberation.

The binge-drinking deliberation did not have these barriers to overcome, and I thought that their conversation was able to run more smoothly because of it. It was easy to hear everyone, which allowed for a better, more adequately distributed speaking process. I think that there was a bit less respect in this conversation because some people were not open-minded in possibly changing their predetermined views on drinking in college and argued a bit more, but overall it was a respectful experience.

Both deliberations also identified a broad range of solutions and adequately weighed the pros, cons, and tradeoffs among the proposed solutions. With the SAT deliberation, since I was involved with choosing the three proposed solutions, I am somewhat biased in saying that they did cover a broad range. It was interesting to me that our solution to create a more strenuous college application process for applicants and reviewers by adding more elements was a more popular solution among participants than eliminating the SAT. These two solutions were quite opposites, and going into the conversation, it was interesting to hear how most participants did not enjoy the SAT, but afterward, gained a newfound appreciation for the exam due to our discussion. Each solution proposed by our deliberation assessed both the pros and cons of the proposals, although more than half of the time for each solution was spent on the pros, so it was not exactly even.

During the binge drinking discussion, I thought that the conversation also had a broad range of solutions. The proposal of lowering the age of drinking for beer and wine but keeping the age of 21 for hard liquor to have kids adjust to alcohol slowly was interesting to me. I did not know that some countries already implement this and already have a lower rate of teen-drinking incidents than the United States. The pros and cons were weighed well, although it was hard to assess the pros because it is known that anyone consuming alcohol under the age of 21 is breaking the law, so some people were reluctant to share their opinions due to the loaded capacity of the topic. There was a great discussion of the limitations to each solution proposed because none of the solutions will truly eliminate binge drinking.

Finally, both conversations seem to adequately provide a solid information base to build upon in the deliberation while also ensuring mutual comprehension. In the SAT deliberation, I feel as though team overview did a great job with the issue guide and the presentation of background at the beginning of the deliberation. The microphone did catch us a bit off-guard, but I think we adjusted well and adapted to the situation as best as possible. Since most students had to take the SAT to get into Penn State, all of the participants had background already on the subject, so by listening to us and reading the issue guide that we created, it was well understood what the deliberation was about. A few of the participants even told us afterward how much they liked our topic and how relevant it was. This ensured a mutual comprehension and participants did ask for clarification respectfully on several occasions when needed.

The drinking on college campuses presentation also provided well-explained background information. It was slightly overdone and took up a large portion of the time that would have been better used to further discuss the solutions, but it was thorough and relevant. I think they could have discussed the background of Penn State-specific information more and discussed less of the United States as a whole to make it more applicable and specific, but overall it was great. They also had an adequate mutual comprehension, although as I stated before since teen drinking is more of a touchy topic to some people, many participants did not speak plainly about their opinions. Also, there were many more people at that deliberation than the SAT deliberation, so this could also account for why more people shared during the SAT conversation than the binge drinking one. Despite the circumstances, I believe that both deliberations were successful and stimulated interesting conversations in their unique ways.