Continuing the conversation
As associate vice president for student engagement and formation at Boston College, Colleen Dallavalle is always looking for ways to bring students together, and in the months leading up to the second 2024 presidential debate, she pitched her colleagues a new idea: offering free pizza and conversation guides to students who hosted debate watch parties in their residence halls. She called it “Debate Night Done Right.”
To her pleasant surprise, the initiative was an immediate hit, with more than 105 students signing up to host watch parties within 12 hours of receiving the email invitation. On September 10, as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump prepared to take the debate stage in Philadelphia, BC Dining Services churned out 204 pizzas for 637 students to enjoy as they chatted about each candidate’s performance and the issues at hand.
Now, with the election in the rearview but the need for civil discourse stronger than ever, Dallavalle and her colleagues are hoping to use the debate night program as a blueprint for a slew of new events encouraging students to engage in difficult conversations outside the classroom. A collaborative group made up of staff and students from across campus—and from both sides of the political aisle—has been formed to set things in motion.
“The feedback we got from the debate events reinforced this idea that students want to have conversations, they want to understand people’s perspectives, but they don’t always know how,” said Dallavalle. “A lot of our students have been inculcated not to talk about politics, but as part of your education here at BC you should be engaging in understanding ideological differences, political differences, values, decisions—you should be talking about that.”
Presidential Debate Night by the numbers
105
Student hosts
637
Debate watchers
204
Pizzas from BC Dining Services
The University regularly hosts events and programs dedicated to modeling and promoting civil discourse, but the debate night initiative differed in several key ways. Most notably, the watch parties were held in the residence halls instead of academic buildings, and students invited people they felt comfortable sharing opinions with. Student Affairs staff handed out guidelines for civil discourse (inspired by BC’s restorative practices initiative) along with the pizzas, but the students moderated their own conversations.
For Katie Ballard ’25, the initiative provided extra incentive to follow through on existing plans to watch the presidential debate with her roommates. A few weeks later, she signed up to host a watch party for the vice-presidential debate, along with more than 100 others. Being politically literate is important to Ballard, who said BC students sometimes shy away from discussing politics with those who don’t share their point of view.
“It’s a bit more hush-hush and feels almost like walking on eggshells,” she said.
In their feedback forms, nearly all the students who participated in the debate initiative gave it high marks, and said they would repeat the experience if given the chance. Christopher Kerwin ’26, who hosted watch parties for both debates at his off-campus apartment, said the initiative achieved its goal of getting students to engage in conversation. Without any prompting, he and his friends were locked in on both debates from start to finish.
“People’s conversation was pretty much only on the debate, giving commentary on what they thought of what the candidates were saying,” he said. “I think it was a great initiative and I’d be curious to see what they come up with next.”
This spring, Student Affairs and the Office of the Dean of Students are partnering with the Office of Global Education to integrate programming into the residence halls for students to reflect on their experiences after studying abroad, and Dallavalle sees plenty of other opportunities for the format to be replicated, including annual events like the Super Bowl and Mile 21, and for seniors preparing for graduation. The success of the debate initiative has encouraged her and her colleagues to think outside the box when it comes to creating space for students to converse and listen to one another.
“We typically think about initiatives or programs in a very brick-and-mortar static state: ‘Go to this room, do this thing, have this experience,’” said Dallavalle. “What we’re trying to do here is redefine engagement to be informal and accessible, to give everyone a neutral space to engage and understand and think about why they believe what they believe.”