Sustained Dialogue marks decade

Over 150 students, administrators and alumni from 13 schools gathered on campus this weekend for dialogue about dialogue. Ten years after Sustained Dialogue formed on campus, 10 other colleges, a law school and a high school have opened their own chapters. At this weekend’s summit, representatives from these groups — which are all members of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network — celebrated the movement’s 10th anniversary as they shared communication techniques and leadership strategies. Students and administrators said they were excited by the organization’s growth over the past decade and looked forward to an even greater impact in the future.

Sustained Dialogue’s beginnings

During his freshman year, Teddy Nemeroff ’01 said he encountered a campus fraught with racial tensions — but with no appropriate forum in which to discuss them. As a U-Councilor on the USG, he focused on race issues and attended various campus events relating to race but decided that a more concrete approach was merited. When he approached administrators and student leaders at the Third World Center, now the Fields Center, he realized that individuals had “totally different perceptions of what the problem was and couldn’t agree on what needed to be done,” Nemeroff said.

To offer a solution, Nemeroff and then-USG member David Tukey ’02 founded SD, based on a conflict resolution methodology developed by Hal Saunders ’52. Saunders, who joined the University’s Board of Trustees during the end of Nemeroff’s freshman year, is a retired U.S. diplomat who was involved in Cold War negotiations and the 1970s Camp David Peace Accords.

Saunders, Nemeroff and Tukey wanted to see whether Tukey’s sustained dialogue methodology — which aims to improve discussions by building relationships between participants — could be applied to college campuses. In the spring of 1999, Saunders gave a talk about his methodology and the group launched its first workshop. The following academic year, Nemeroff said, the first two discussion groups — which included members of the USG and University administrators — were a “really intense and amazing experience for everyone who participated.”

In the fall of 2000, SD groups opened to all students. Groups later formed on other campuses, starting at the University of Virginia and Dickinson College. Today, there are 650 active participants and 3,300 program alumni. The University’s chapter has roughly 20 moderators and 115 total participants, said Osahon Okundaye ’12, the group’s president.

‘Dialogue as a way of learning’

In presentations and breakout groups at the weekend’s conference, participants focused on how to lead campus dialogue programs and help group members develop leadership skills.

President Tilghman, who participated in sustained dialogue discussions for two years, welcomed the students in a speech on Saturday. Tilghman thanked the founders and subsequent leaders of the organization for the “legacy they left behind,” noting that “issues centered around race in this country are still profoundly vexing.”

Tilghman said that “colleges are places intended to do two things … to stimulate capacity for civil discourse in our society and to allow students to discourse with individuals whose fundamental experiences are different from your own.”

The challenge, she said, is “to be able to have the imagination, the creativity and also the experience” to enable oneself to, in the words of African American studies professor Cornel West GS ’80, “ ‘imagine yourself in someone else’s skin.’ ”

Tilghman stressed the importance of “dialogue as a way of learning,” which she said cannot be accomplished solely in the classroom.

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Janet Dickerson, the vice president of campus life and a former SD participant, said in an interview that SD was instrumental to her work. Because of the experience of students in her SD groups, she “was able to take some action working on issues of equity and fairness” to address concerns about socioeconomic diversity on campus, she said. She recalled that the establishment of the Office of Disability Services, which works to improve the campus experience for disabled students, stemmed from an SD conversation.

Future directions

Looking forward, SDCN is working to expand to other campuses around the world. It has started preliminary initiatives at the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe and the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. SDCN has hired five staff members, including Amy Lazarus as executive director, and is conducting a strategic review.

“We’re really at an exciting point in organizational history, where we’re looking back at the last 10 years and celebrating that, and looking forward,” Lazarus said.

Reginald Galloway ’11, a former president of SD, said “the summit was highly successful because we had a lot of participants from different schools, and everyone learned about the potential impact SD could have.”

Participants in the summit from other colleges voiced similar opinions.

James Lephew of McDaniel College said his “experience has been great,” and Ashley Ortiz, a John Fisher College student, said she has “so many new things to share with my SD board members.”

Moving forward, Dickerson said she hopes SDCN “continues its trajectory of growth” by collaborating with other campus groups and extending its scope to each residential college.

Alexis Morin ’12, a current SD member, said she was impressed by the alumni turnout for the event, adding that “it’s really impressive that SD made such an impact that people came back to celebrate [the 10th anniversary].”