Colorado Voices
Colorado State University hosts summit to equip students with the skills to become champions for democracy
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The weeklong series of events included debates, documentaries and discourse.
During the weeklong Democracy Summit, students, faculty and community members engaged in conversations about the state of our democracy and how to strengthen it.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
Colorado Voices
Colorado State University hosts summit to equip students with the skills to become champions for democracy
Clip | 3m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
During the weeklong Democracy Summit, students, faculty and community members engaged in conversations about the state of our democracy and how to strengthen it.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipI mean, I certainly think that the climate on campus and all campuses, I think they've gotten more and more strained lately.
I think the political polarization at the national level, unfortunately, start kind of bleeding down, make it harder and harder for for us to have some of these tough conversations, I think the biggest obstacles to democracy is getting people to care.
a lot of students don't realize, the power that they hold and that they can make their voice heard.
I'm Martín Carcasson.
I'm faculty in the communication studies department here at CSU.
And the founder and director of the CSU center for Public Deliberation.
we started the planning for the Democracy Summit probably over two years ago or so.
And some of us actually even before, before Covid of the idea.
part of this is wanting democracy to be kind of one of the key things CSU's known for.
My name is Emily Orozco, and I'm a fourth year student at CSU, and I've been working as a democracy fellow this year.
the Democracy Summit, is this week long series of events aimed at elevating democracy for students.
And just the community in general, if you look at the history, what we're seeing is this cycle that plays out through American history, where we have movements towards equality and democracy, and they inspire a backlash.
And then we go back People say democracy is under threat and it is, and we should be aware of that.
But we should also be aware that this is not a new thing.
the threat that we're facing to our democracy Now has been with us from the beginning.
It's one of the threads that runs through American history, and no one gave Americans democracy.
We had to fight for it.
And then in a lot of the country, it was taken away.
And we had to fight to get it back.
And we have to fight to keep it now, it's clear from from the research that humans, unfortunately, are much more wired for polarization and outrage.
We like simple stories.
we like, you know, good versus evil.
We love our heroes and our victims and our villains.
And once we decide who's playing what role, we see the world through that lens.
Right?
but the good news is we're understanding more and more why that is What changes people's minds is not facts, right?
It's not internet memes.
It's not sending a YouTube video to show them that theyre wrong.
All those things not only don't work, they probably backfire.
They probably have people dig in kind of more, right?
What changes people's minds is a genuine conversation with someone that they built some trust with.
it's important to hear from young people because we are the next generation of elected officials and politicians and policy makers and a lot of people in government right now are very old, and obviously they're not going to be able to be there a lot longer.
And so I think it's really important to like train and prepare the younger generation to take on these roles and hopefully do a better job than people have done in the past.
When you give people an alternative, they see the value of it.
I think people are sick of just screaming at each other.
Right.
I think they're sick of kind of all the division and the polarization.
So when you give them an alternative and like, oh, here we came together and had a really good conversation about how do we take on this challenge together.
Right?
They see that and they want more of that.
democracy requires high quality communication.
We have to be able to talk to each other, particularly a diverse democracy.
know, so if we lose that ability, if we have no trust in each other, if half the country thinks the half is just kind of corrupt or evil, it all breaks down,
When life gives you a house, move it.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS