In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Wheaton College launched Politics in the Park—a biweekly dialogue series that allows students to discuss polarizing political topics in an open and respectful forum. Held during the campus-wide free period to encourage student involvement, faculty and staff facilitate the series outdoors (weather permitting) with an emphasis on real-time fact-checking and providing academic context to current events. Attendance has grown steadily, with professors eventually bringing their entire classes to participate. After the election, the initiative held a two-part series to decompress, with the most well-attended event so far — approximately 60 people attended the first one, and 80 participated in the second. The initiative aims not only to educate but also to prevent escalation by providing a structured and effective venue for engagement.
Hear from Luis Paredes, Associate Vice President for Inclusive Excellence and Community Engagement, about how the initiative came to be:
“This really came to be as part of our efforts to provide an equitable space for all students to have capacity at discussing controversial topics… especially surrounding the then political mobility towards Election Day.
It really provided students with the opportunity to engage in dialogue… where students were invited to discuss, to disagree, to engage in uncomfortable discussions around topics.
We wanted to be proactive instead of reactive—especially since in the spring of ’24 we saw on other campuses, large demonstrations, a lot of arrests, a lot of complexities unfolding.”
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