Carnegie Mellon University

Program for Deliberative Democracy

Department of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy  ›  Program for Deliberative Democracy  ›  Deliberative Forums  ›  Campus Conversations

Campus Conversations

College and University campuses are not unlike a Greek polis – a small, self-run City-State. Among its many missions, Higher Education can serve to develop the student as a citizen and as an active participant in the ongoing life of the campus community and beyond.

As such, campuses can be a fertile ground for embedding the principles of deliberative democracy in what we call Campus Conversations or Campus Deliberative Forums. Bridges, Dickert and Bonfini explore this in detail in the first part of their chapter, Deliberative Polling® in Pennsylvania: From Student Senate to State Senate.

Very often, the desire to organize a deliberative forum will arise from issues emerging on the campus itself, whether it be a controversial piece of public art or student concerns over free speech. The design of these forums can have significant advantages over other forms of student input and can highlight the advantages of bringing multiple perspectives and life-experiences to bear on a topic. Carnegie Mellon developed a Handbook for Campus Deliberative Forums for use by colleges and universities across the nation.

 Climate Change & The Campus

Universities can play a particularly valuable role in addressing climate change. As “mini-cities” they can account for a large percentage of a community’s greenhouse gas emissions. The energy used each day by thousands of students and employees to commute, to heat and cool buildings, to power sophisticated lab equipment, to light perfor­mance spaces and sports facilities, and to power every other function of a university all adds up to create a large “carbon footprint.”