Creating a Dialogue

Cultural change is never easy, especially when what is being changed has been in place for decades or maybe even centuries. In the past year many White Americans were introduced to Juneteenth when it was made a national holiday marking the final emancipation of slaves in the United States. Columbus Day, which acknowledges Columbus’s landing in the Americas, has been a federal holiday since 1971 but since 1977 a movement has gained steam to instead acknowledge the people who were already on this continent when Columbus arrived. This year, 2021, marked the first presidential proclamation for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

For some people, these changes are difficult. Maybe they never thought too much about that Robert E. Lee statue in their town square. Or they grew up in an area that was predominantly their own race and just didn’t have much contact with people of other races. But a change happens, such as moving to college, and a person is suddenly living in a diverse environment. Trying to get to know other people is hard enough; the tension that the subject of “race” brings to a conversation can make it so much more difficult.

World in Conversation, an effort to get people talking about race in a nonthreatening setting and with facilitators, started in 2002 in Professor Sam Richard’s Sociology 119 class at University Park. For several semesters, Karyn McKinney Marvasti, associate professor of sociology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State Altoona, required SOC 119 students to participate remotely in a World in Conversation dialogue conducted at University Park. However, she envisioned a similar program happening on Altoona’s campus. Then, in 2016, “right after the election things were tense on campus,” she says. “The chancellor wanted to have conversations,” and organized a town hall meeting for students to discuss their concerns. When McKinney Marvasti invited students to participate, “a lot of students of color shared their experiences and White students were surprised. That was the final push to start something like World in Conversation here.”

Thanks to a Chancellor’s Development Fund grant McKinney Marvasti was able to bring together her first potential facilitators, “a “really small group, maybe seven students. These first facilitators-in-training enrolled in SOC 300, a one-credit class that met only once a week. But “over the years SOC 300 went up to two credits with a little bit more writing and assignments” and class meetings on two days per week like other courses, and by Spring 2020 the number of participants grew to 11.

In Spring 2021, due to an increase in the workload, expectations and responsibilities of the course, the introductory facilitation training class, SOC 300, had increased to three credits, and McKinney Marvasti added an advanced facilitation training class, SOC 469. With 13 total students in the program, four had taken SOC 300 for multiple semesters, so they were enrolled in SOC 469 and served as mentors to the SOC 300 introductory-level students. This semester—Fall 2021—14 total students are in the program, with five as SOC 469 mentors and nine in SOC 300. As part of their training, SOC 300 students do not facilitate dialogues yet, but “they observe and offer feedback on what goes in a dialogue. In SOC 469 the students act as facilitators and mentors.”

Payton Perry, a senior criminal justice major with a minor in sociology, acknowledges the benefits to McKinney Marvasti’s class. “She has helped me become more confident in having difficult conversations, I have learned so much about social issues and how to talk to others about them. I will take all the skills I have learned in this class and apply them throughout my life.” Perry thinks “this type of class needs to be offered everywhere and used at other schools because it is so important to talk about these societal issues. Not many classes have open discussions about them like we do.”

Kristin Newvine, a former Penn State Altoona student who is now working on dual master’s degrees at Ball State, was a participant from the first days, and thus helped establish the program at Altoona. “I helped Dr. McKinney with the facilitator program after being involved in something similar at University Park. Working with her was an amazing experience and I enjoyed every minute.” Newvine had the opportunity to “both get to facilitate but also to help train new facilitators. It’s such an important program that helps participants to open up and express their true feelings in a safe and learning oriented environment.”

Four Penn State Altoona students who are among McKinney Marvasti’s dialogue facilitators sat down to discuss their roles and experiences. They come from a variety of backgrounds and majors. Shizelle David is a sophomore communications major, Dylan Hartmann a junior biochemistry major. Both Vanessa Gil and Amelia Paterno are seniors, Gil majoring in security risk analysis and Paterno in psychology. What they have in common is they all first took McKinney Marvasti’s SOC 119 course and were then invited by her to join the dialogue facilitation program. Gil and Paterno are SOC 469 mentors and advanced facilitators. David is in her second semester of SOC 300 and is just beginning to facilitate.  Hartmann is in his first semester of SOC 300 and is an observer and note-taker in dialogues.

Each student had different reasons for becoming a facilitator. Hartmann, who is White, says he was motivated to “be able to do something more about ignorance. I just wanted to be an advocate, bring it back home and show them the real problems in the world.” Belying her psychology major, Paterno, another White student, admits that she “like[s] to have uncomfortable conversations with people on subjects they shy away from.” That was what drew her to become a facilitator. “I was really interested in working here.”

Gil and David are both women of color. Gil, from Altoona, says, “I grew up in a predominantly White area. It was hard for me to come to terms with my own racial identity. Dr. McKinney’s class sparked something in me.” When McKinney Marvasti approached her about becoming a dialogue facilitator, “I didn’t hesitate, I said, ‘I’ll do it.’” David, on the other hand, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, “around only people of color. I never had a conversation with White people.” About becoming a facilitator she says, “I wanted to put myself in a situation. A lot of people thought I was diverse, just because [Brooklyn] is a big group of diversity.”

How does one begin this conversation? “We start off with an icebreaker,” says Hartmann. “You ask one question, or pick one out of a hat. It makes everyone warm up to each other. You don’t push anyone to speak. You want everyone to be comfortable but you want them to be ‘uncomfortable’ within ‘comfortable.’” Indeed, while the facilitators strive to create a “safe space,” they also encourage participants to see it as a “brave space” where alternative perspectives are heard. Paterno sees the goal of the conversations as “getting to see other people’s worldview and trying to understand their view in a neutral environment without them feeling attacked.”

David remembers the change she saw happen in her sociology class when facilitators from McKinney Marvasti’s program first joined them. It was “one of the first times I got to hear my classmates. Everyone had to talk to one another,” she says. “I felt like people were very transparent. That was the first instance I heard some of their voices.” The change continued even after that day: “Our class changed, everyone would talk more. The class became more comfortable with each other.” She valued the experience so much that after McKinney Marvasti asked her to join the facilitator training program, “I built my whole schedule around that class.”

With COVID, of course, dialogues had to move to Zoom, which, Gil says, “is very hard.” Meeting in person makes it easier to read a room; “in person you can feel it.” Prior to this class, Gil says when she “would have conversations with people about race and other social issues, it was hard for me. I have a very strong stance and very strong opinions—it would turn into a debate.” By being a facilitator, though, her approach has changed. It’s no longer a debate but a conversation. “What we like to do is point out the awkwardness. You’re asking uncomfortable questions. ‘This is going to be awkward but embrace it. We’re just trying to have a civil conversation.’ Once we get deeper in a conversation, they start sharing their stories, we’re at a good point.” One guiding principle for the class is that the facilitators are “holding space for all perspectives” within the dialogues.

While every effort is made to make all participants feel safe, and to listen, “not to decide what is right or wrong,” as David says, sometimes discussion reaches a difficult point. She describes an encounter with another student who didn’t understand why “all lives matter” is considered “offensive. We have to be neutral. One of his SOC 119 classmates explained why. That could have broken out into an argument. The point of the conversation is not to decide what’s right or wrong, not to resolve it but to dissolve it. He listened to the explanation. Hopefully now when he hears ‘all lives matter’ he’ll think about it.” Out of the exchange she says, “someone learned something, Even I learned something.”

McKinney Marvasti relates another dialogue where emotions spilled over: “One girl started crying. She got really upset.” The facilitators worked on “making her feel safe” and finding out “what was upsetting  her. The best thing to me was she didn’t leave the room. She was upset because she didn’t know how to talk about race without saying the wrong thing.”

Saying “the wrong thing” is a big concern. “The most interesting thing is everyone is nervous,” David  says. “The conversation helps normalize how everyone feels about it. Race means different things to different people. I don’t think we can find common ground without the conversations. ‘Why aren’t you thinking how I think?’ It’s an eye opener all around. Being a facilitator has given me a whole different perspective in how I engage.”

The experience of participating in these classes, the facilitators agree, brings a change in worldview. “I like hearing everyone’s point of view, everyone’s story,” Hartmann says. He believes this experience will help people to “go out into the real world and talk to anyone.” Gil feels she is “helping people, especially from predominantly White areas, open their eyes and see from a different perspective.” For Paterno, being a facilitator even has professional application: “I am a bartender. Facilitating is part of my job. It helps me better understand people.” And that is exactly the goal—getting people to a place where they can better understand each other.

—Therese Boyd, ’79