A brand new part of CEHV's Civil Discourse for Citizenship Initiative is our Dialogue Facilitation and Skill-Building Program. Led by CEHV Associate Director Aaron Yarmel, this project advances OSU's Shared Values Initiative on campus in two ways: by offering dialogue facilitation training workshops and by facilitating dialogue on campus about important ethical issues.

On April 18, 2023, Aaron joined undergraduate students Zoe Lightcap and Haylee Zavaski to present a workshop about using dialogue to address conflicts that emerge in the context of shared living spaces. The workshop took place at Raney Residence Hall, where Zoe is a Resident Advisor. Both Zoe and Haylee regularly attend Aaron's weekly dialogue facilitation training workshop.

The workshop began with an invitation from Zoe to the attendees to share stories that reflected challenges that they, or their friends, had experienced when living with roommates. Hayley then helped the attendees identify reasons why the challenges in the stories were difficult to resolve. Most pointed to the concern that confronting a roommate could lead to greater conflict down the line.

Finally, Aaron led the attendees through a series of three exercises designed to teach practical skills for addressing conflicts through dialogue. The first exercise was to approach the other person in the conflict with curiosity in order to understand their perspective. In particular, attendees practiced asking for the other person's perspective and charitably repeating that perspective back to them in order to ensure understanding. The second exercise was to invite the other person in the conflict to reciprocate: to ask the other person to share their understanding of the workshop attendee's perspective. Finally, attendees were asked to practice framing conflicts as coordination problems that both roommates could work together collaboratively to solve. 

Taken as a whole, these three exercises provided attendees with a useful framework for turning conflicts into opportunities to improve living situations while deepening relationships with roommates. For example, a situation in which two roommates are operating on conflicting sleep schedules can generate a meaningful conversation about the ways that different roommates value being awake at different times--perhaps one relishes the excitement of staying out late and another enjoys the fresh feeling of going for a run early in the morning--and an opportunity to collaborate on coordinating those schedules into a shared way of life.