By Anish Sikhinam – Staff Reporter

The Civil Discourse Club was recently created at Law with the aim of helping students find common viewpoints on certain topics.

Unlike a typical debate club, where debaters on either side come to convince or win the other person over, students in the Civil Discourse Club work together to find a solution that both sides agree with.

“Civil discourse is not necessarily formal, but there are some rules about it,” librarian and founder Mrs. Briggs said. “Those rules mostly involve finding common ground and active, respectful listening, where you listen not just to refute what somebody is saying, but you listen to understand.”

The club meets in the Media Center during common time, although there is no set schedule as of now.

“I envision meeting at least a couple of times a month, just to touch base with people,” Briggs said. “I want to give people enough time to do some research, but I also want to give people multiple opportunities to attend meetings.”

The club’s first meeting was during common time on December 4. It was mostly an introduction meeting, where the students decided what topic they wanted discuss.

The club plans to have its next meeting on January 8 during common time. The chosen topic that the students will discuss is climate change and what can be done about it.

“I want it to be all student run,” Briggs said. “I want the topic ideas to come from the students and be things that they’re really interested in talking about.”

Briggs has also shared library resources for students to research the topic and support their viewpoints between meetings. “We discuss topics of interest to the group and prepare for meetings by researching our topic a bit,” sophomore Brian Zirkel said.

The actual discussion will run having multiple sides, with limited teacher intervention, similar to a Socratic seminar.

The idea to start this club came from an article from the School Library Journal, which stated that in society and especially online, people don’t have the skill to be able to talk civilly amongst one another.

“People are ending up very angry and frustrated, and there’s a lot of villainizing of the other side and people who don’t agree,” Briggs said. “What I really want is for students to get a lot out of it, and walk away from the conversation not feeling angry or riled up, but feeling hopeful about the future.”

Most students in the club do seem to like the idea of civil discourse.

“I think it’s really important because in this day and age there’s so many people that have different opinions and everyone is always arguing,” sophomore Rachna Vipparla said.

The club hopes to recruit new members as well going forward. “I do think there’s obvious appeal to the Model UN kids, to kids who have done debate clubs,” Briggs said.

“I joined this club to speak better, learn how to communicate, and debate and defend my position,” sophomore Sanskar Shah said. “This club is for people that feel strongly about and like to express their opinions on current hot topics.”