How We Engage

In the 2024–2025 school year, a group of juniors and seniors were asked to come up with a student perspective on guidelines for engagement, making these tenets applicable to kindergartners through seniors. Our collective mission was to define: how do we engage in difficult conversations with different perspectives at play? How do we move from debate to conversation, from a single perspective to multiple ones? What might the lattice work be that supports understanding?

The Tenets of Dialogue are:

Open dialogue allows us to seek knowledge and a deeper understanding of other perspectives; to explore and understand differences. This student-written document outlines how we can foster such discussions at Collegiate.When entering a conversation,
Challenge thoughts, not people.
We should be open to hearing others’ ideas and sharing our own. We should also recognize that others’ ideas are often tied to their identities. Careless criticism of an idea can be interpreted as a personal attack. Therefore, we should strive to separate individuals and ideas before we speak. 

When participating in a conversation,
Engage in dialogue, not debate.
We should not view conversations as competitions. Seeking to win leads to counterproductive arguments. Instead, we should strive to be curious about others’ viewpoints and to interpret them in good faith so as to better understand weaknesses in our own position. 

When leaving a conversation,
Carry away understanding, if not agreement.
Finding common ground is a fortunate byproduct of open dialogue, but it’s not an inevitable outcome. It is okay to walk away in disagreement, so long as we have generously reflected on—and sought to understand—others’ perspectives.

Authors
Hugo B. '25, Jay T. '25, Noah C. '26, Yusuf C. '26, Louis C. '26, Luke K. '26, and Iliyan M. '26 
With gratitude to Owen Boynton, Jared Lister ’01, and Dwight Vidale