The Civility Initiative

I initially learned about Black Lives Matter (BLM) in 2016. Honestly, I didn’t understand BLM’s purpose, and for me, the message fell on deaf ears. I didn’t understand why they’d want to make the claim that “only” Black Lives Matter. At first, I largely disregarded the

Recently, I heard from my friend, Ann, a story relative to one of her college experiences at Brigham Young University–Idaho. In a class devoted to political discussion and social science, she came face-to-face with a young man who insisted that systemic racism, or any kind of racism for that

By Skyler Wixom Identities are tricky to manage. Even the word “identity” seems to consistently either evade a concrete definition or refuse to let any imposed definition stick. Trickier still is two identities trying to manage interacting with each other, especially if those identities seem at odds. When I publicly

How does a Mexican immigrant stay friends with a Trump supporter?  In jest, I want to answer this by saying  “very carefully” but, all kidding aside, I have stayed friends with many Trump supporters. Yep.  You’re reading right.  I am a Mexican immigrant who is a friend of many

By Veronika Tait Current tensions between liberals and conservatives are high. The past two decades have shown large shifts away from ideological overlaps between the left and right. Seventy-three percent of surveyed adults said that Republican and Democratic voters “not only disagree over plans and policies, but also cannot agree

Almost 79,000 hours. According to one study, conducted by OnePoll, on average a person will watch 78,705 hours of television in their life. Add in the amount of time Americans spend on the Internet and that pushes the total amount of time spent on entertainment to over 100,

When I was a graduate student at Brigham Young University, I received weekly training on how to teach BYU’s first-year composition course. One such training focused on helping students find credible sources for their research papers. To illustrate the importance of finding factual sources, our professor described the story

By Duane Adamson I am often asked by students and friends how to find the most objective news and information about political events. Words like bias and "fake" are thrown around frequently by many on different sides of political debates. Quite divergent "news" often exists about

One is the sum of the fractions of us 'Cus we're broken and we're bent But together this puzzle makes so much sense –Mindy Gledhill Growing up in Utah, I always identified as Republican. I didn’t know much about Democrats except that all their

“Politics?” “Again?” “Why?” “Aren’t you sick of politics, Mosiah?” Those seem to be the reactions I normally get whenever I bring up politics.  I always wonder why everyone is so averse to speaking or having a conversation regarding politics. Then I remember people are tired of confrontations with their

“Sometimes I’ve let my passion rule my reason. Sometimes I’ve made it harder to find common ground… Sometimes I wanted to win for the sake of winning more so than for the sake of a contested policy.” - Senator John McCain I still remember as a nine-year-old boy

Hello World, I hope you’ve read our opening letter of why we, the snowflakes, feel like we want to write about the political realm that exists in our country right now. My friends and I are taking to the internet to write about our country, the United States of

Well here we are. Another election behind us, another day in the pandemic, another day of worrying about school closures, job security, deceit and treason, violence and incivility, ignorance and arrogance—it’s hard to know which worry to prioritize. It’s even harder to know who to listen to