BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — With the nation coming off an intense election cycle, Bowling Green State University hosted a Day of Dialogue on Thursday, where students and public officials engaged in conversations about democracy in a nonpartisan way.
Day of Dialogue: Engaging in Democracy was started in 2020 during the year of the global pandemic.
Robert Alexander, a professor of political science at BGSU, said oftentimes people get stuck in their social media way of doing things. He said this event is an effort to improve the dialogue about democracy.
"They're only hearing from people that they agree with and I think this is really important for folks to see that we need to have conversations with people face-to-face,” Alexander said.
Ava Evers is one of the students who got a chance to both learn and engage in conversation with public officials.
"I thought the panel was really interesting. I thought we got to hear from a lot of different perspectives," Evers said. "I thought it was a meaningful opportunity to really engage in a democracy setting in a different place than we normally would."
"I think it's just really good hearing different perspectives, and I feel like if someone were to come here and listen to the talks that we're having, I think it's just really good, it's a good educational experience,” CC Hampton, a BGSU student said.
BGSU brought together a group of legislators, Republicans and Democrats to talk about the importance of working in a bipartisan manner.
"Having a dialogue about working across the aisle and bipartisanship in the statehouse," State Rep. Michele Grim (D, Toledo) said. "It was exciting to talk about that with a panel of my colleagues, with students and staff from BGSU."
"Republicans have ideas, Democrats have ideas. People that may be politically agnostic have some ideas," State Rep. Haraz Ghanbari (R, Perrysburg) said. "The way in which we find those building blocks to build upon is through conversation and dialogue."
Lawmakers said Thursday was the perfect day to have the event and hit the reset button after the election. BGSU said it plans to continue having these conversations for many more years to come.