We The People hearings taught civil discourse

On Friday, Dec. 6, Riverside High School’s junior government class held its annual “We The People” hearings as part of the district assessment.  Students interviewed said it showed them you can disagree while being civil and respectful. 

Teacher Stuart DesRosier explained, “This is a very challenging assignment where the students prepare a written response to difficult constitutional questions and present them to a panel of judges from outside the school.  After their presentation, the judges then asked them questions concerning their answers.” 

  DesRosier continued, “This is a great opportunity for students to interact with adults from outside the school about questions concerning government, democracy and the constitution as well as its real-world use.  Having the panel of judges ask probing questions makes the students apply their knowledge gained throughout the semester.” 

 The students prepared to answer three questions not knowing which one question the judges would ask.  The juniors selected to answer questions on units concerning:  What rights does the Bill of Rights protect? What challenges might face American constitutional democracy in the 21st century?

The judges who spoke to the students included The Honorable Bobbi Overfield, County Commissioner Deb Craft, County Attorney Marsha Bean, Assistant County Attorneys Jennifer Kirk, Kimberly Mickelson and Clayton Culbreath, Basin Mayor CJ Duncan and retired teacher and judge Tom Harrington.

  DesRosier said “This year was particularly interesting, after doing this for several years I can predict which groups of students will probably do well.  The groups that looked good in practice did well but several groups that were iffy really stepped up and did outstanding work.  One of the aims of this project is to increase the level of civil discourse and the idea that you can disagree with someone and still be civil.  Several of these groups did that exceptionally well.”

“The rigor of the questions has increased over past years with this year’s questions dealing with censorship and free speech on social media platforms and the nuances of dealing with social media in other countries.  One particular student’s favorite question dealt with athletes and their role with international diplomacy; this led to many discussions concerning both the Olympics and transgender athletes.  One other nice side of this project is the students use the principles of the Constitution to address real-life issues affecting the students and how it all comes together.” 

One team was made up of student participants Loomis Alexander, Mason Brown and Mo Wyatt. 

Brown stated, “It’s different. We are forced to talk about controversial topics that have a wide variety of different ideas. It is a difficult conversation to have most of the time.” He continued that people have disagreements on topics such as politics and religion. 

All three students said the most important part of the exercise is how to have the discussion civically.  

Wyatt explained, “I enjoyed talking about my opinions with the counterparts of each other’s opinions. All in a professional setting.” 

Alexander said the topics they discussed were voter ID, civil rights, Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated misinformation and transgender individuals in sports. He tried to blend “their thoughts on the various topics and give a generalized statement of how we should combat some of these ideas.” 

Brown and Wyatt had different opinions on the topics. They both stated that while they appreciated the discussion, neither changed their views.