Witnessing Before Deliberating
Witnessing Before Deliberating gives students the skills and experiences they need to listen, build trust and confidently take part in respectful conversations.
What is Witnessing Before Deliberating?
Witnessing Before Deliberating is a federally funded project designed to help college students have better conversations with people who’ve had different experiences and perspectives. Before we can have productive conversations about difficult topics, we first need to feel heard and understand where others are coming from. By equipping students with essential skills and practical experiences, Witnessing Before Deliberating empowers them to listen actively, establish trust, and participate in respectful dialogue with confidence.
The Challenge: Being Ready for Difficult Conversations
Talking about issues we strongly disagree on can make us feel stressed, defensive or uncomfortable. When that happens, it can be harder to listen and understand another person's point of view. Many college students experience this challenge.
- 72% feel uncomfortable talking with peers who have opposing views.
- 65% say they hold back from sharing their views in the classroom.
Debate can make us feel threatened or defensive. Listening to another person's experiences can help us better understand their feelings and point of view. Witnessing Before Deliberating helps students build the skills needed to listen, connect and communicate across differences.
How It Works
Witnessing Before Deliberating utilizes:
- Dialogue Labs: A structured format where three people each take turns speaking about their own experience, listening to someone talk through their perspective, and facilitating a dialogue.
- The Witness Wall: A traveling structure where participants are given a prompt and they write or draw their response on a square of fabric, which is added to the wall.
The goal is to help students build empathy, strengthen dialogue skills and create lasting connections. Progress will be measured across the five Oklahoma State University campuses: OSU Stillwater, OSU-Tulsa, OSU Center for Health Sciences, OSU Institute of Technology and OSU-Oklahoma City.
For more information, reach out to wbd@okstate.edu
The Four Phase Model
Readiness: Listen and understand
Students share personal stories and practice structured listening.
They also contribute to the traveling Witness Wall and explore important civic issues through respectful conversations.
Deliberation: Talk across differences
Students build confidence as they move from informal conversations to guided discussions about public issues before working through conflicts and repairing relationships.
Action: Turn conversation into community impact
Students put dialogue into action through work with community organizations on projects that strengthen relationships, increase civic participation and encourage involvement in public life.
Scaling: Share what works
The program will be shared with colleges and universities across the country so other campuses can adapt the model for their own communities.
Witnessing Before Deliberating, a civil discourse initiative at OSU Center for Health Sciences, is led by Matt Vassar, PhD. It’s funded by a federal grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and created in partnership with the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, Let's Fix This, Listen First Project, and the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy.