Getting into the "Ring"

Back in the 1800s, boxing was a huge sport in England. Unfortunately, some boxers died because there weren’t adequate rules. At some point rules were developed to protect the competitors: no hitting below the belt, limiting the rounds, etc. This made the sport much more civil and safe, but still entertaining.

The college campus is sometimes a place where people feel like they are getting “beaten up” by those who have a different opinion or viewpoint. Anything goes, and everything is tolerated. Sometimes the conflicts get ugly, and there don’t seem to be any rules for civil debate.

A year ago, a door of dialogue opened on our campus at Swarthmore College. We began “The Ring,” a forum for public debate that was centered on respect for differences but included a sincere discussion to find truth.

The Ring started with a conversation I had with a student (who happens to be a lesbian) in October 2001 after the Coming-Out Week events of the gay community at Swarthmore. As part of the week, there were some offensive and explicit chalkings written on sidewalks around campus. My friend and I discussed how there didn’t seem to be enough forums on campus to openly discuss deep differences and disagreements in a civil way. As the I-V staff worker for the Swarthmore Christian Fellowship, I had been trying to think of ways to contribute significantly to the campus culture, and this seemed to be a way that the fellowship could address a huge need for civil dialogue on ultimate issues.

So, in conversation with the SCF exec and my friend, we came up with a forum, called The Ring, to address hot topics on campus and bring people together who have differing opinions. In this venue, we would have a student panel present differing views on a given topic, and then open the discussion to the whole group to hear questions, clarifications and further points.

In January, we addressed the topic, “How Do We Know God?” At this Ring event, two Christian students and two Ba’hai students spoke on their differing concepts of God. There were about 60 students in attendance.

After this first Ring, we took a step back and reevaluated. The non-Christian students involved wanted to be more integrally involved in the planning of the events and topics, so we moved the jurisdiction of the Ring from our exec team to a steering committee composed of two Christians and two non-Christians.

In April, we did two more Ring events, one discussing the limits of free speech on campus, regarding the coming out week chalkings last October. Three students served as panelists for this Ring—two who thought the chalkings were acceptable and one who thought they went too far. Late in April we did a Ring discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where one Jewish student and one pro-Palestinian student discussed their different views on the matter.

With these three Ring events, we had one non-Christian emcee who did an excellent and fair job of guiding the discussion. He had expressed a desire for real dialogue and discussion to happen on campus and was a friend of some members of our fellowship.

The Ring picked up again in September, with a few different board members but the same mix of two Christians and two non-Christians. September’s Ring event discussed the question, “Is violence ever legitimate?” in response to 9-11 and its aftermath over the past year.

In October, the gay community held its annual Coming-Out Week, the very thing that precipitated the formation of the Ring a year previous. But this year, the Ring board held a joint event with the Swarthmore Queer Union (SQU) discussing the very idea of a coming-out week. At this event, two members of SQU were on the panel, along with a Christian student. The Christian student, who also happened to be the president of SCF, was able to present her view that she did not agree with the morality of homosexuality, but she still wanted to engage the gay and lesbian students on campus in dialogue because she loved them. Some students could not understand how she could love them but not love this aspect of them. Good, honest, sometimes difficult discussion ensued.

Finally, in November, the Swarthmore African-American Student Society (SASS) came to the Ring board with a request: there had been a racist incident at a recent on-campus party, and SASS wanted a venue where the campus could discuss issues of race that the incident brought up. A few weeks later, about 67 students (and one faculty member) gathered for a Ring event on the topic of “color-blindness” in race relations.

The Ring has been one way at Swarthmore that we’ve tried to contribute to the campus culture and provide a forum to discuss controversial issues on our campus. And when the debate is over, we take off our gloves and shake hands.