Written by Anna Levinson, Spring 2026 TAD Student Leader
As an event lead for the Talking Across Difference Spring Social, I enjoyed facilitating an event that introduced students within the Rutgers community to the organization and our core values, such as having productive discussions without debates, setting ground rules, and creating an inclusive and safe environment for peers to discuss any topic. The event was meant to use engaging and fun discussion based activities to familiarize attendees with expressing their opinions in front of people with different backgrounds, listen to other perspectives, and come have productive conversations.
We created a word cloud where attendees were able to come up with their own ground rules after we shared our typical list of ground rules, such as being an active listener and giving others space to talk. Next, we set up a low-stakes game of “would you rather” where participants shared their preferences and their reasoning for them, as well as listened to others who disagreed with them. Several questions were related to the topic of having ‘difficult’ discussions, which helped attendees consult themselves with whether they would rather correct someone loudly or let them be wrong forever, or have uncomfortable conversations or avoid discomfort to maintain peace? Many people hadn’t thought about these sides to discussions before, and it brought a lot of personal revelations in terms of communication styles. We also played a game of human bingo, where participants completed a bingo sheet by meeting everyone in the room to learn about others who they may not have ordinarily met. This aided in comfortability speaking with people who have differences and leaving a communication comfort zone by getting to know peers.
Participants gained a sense of community and an understanding of the importance of ground rules in discussion. These are key skills for the future Talking Across Difference events, as we discuss topics such as voting, immigration, and disinformation in digital media. This allows for productive conversations in the future and encourages the Rutgers community to be more inclusive, diverse, and confident in their individual voices.
