On Wednesday, March 27, people from across campus attended around 30 events part of the University of Montana’s first Democracy Summit, organized by UM’s Co-Lab for Civic Imagination.

“Today’s work goes to the heart of what we do as a University,” UM President Seth Bodnar said at the summit’s closing event. 

From women in government to critiques of individualistic culture in Montana, the all-day event was designed to spark conversations about the meaning of democracy and promote dialogue across differences.  

Michael Rohd, the primary organizer of the summit and Co-Lab’s director, got the idea for the summit after he was asked last year to lead UM’s democracy priorities, one of the items on Bodnar’s agenda to promote throughout the year. He wanted to take that goal out into campus and get people from across UM on board. 

“Everybody was super excited and responsive,” Rohd said. 

At first, because resources were tight, Rohd just wanted to focus on the campus. But then other people got interested, like the mayor and county commissioner. Even United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg would have stopped by as part of a Western tour if it fit into his schedule, but had to go to Baltimore on March 26 in response to a major bridge collapse. 

From workshops to seminars, here’s the Kaimin’s coverage of various events from the summit. 

(Andy Tallman)

A “how-to” for healthy democracy: Ranked-choice voting, supermajorities and individual action

Danielle Allen, a Harvard professor and political theorist, believes we can save our fractured democracy. She shared how in her lecture, “Bringing Democracy Back from the Brink: A Strategic Vision and A Call to Action.” 

“Lots of people ask me the question, ‘Danielle, can we save our democracy?’” she said to a crowd of over 150 people. “Of course! It’s necessary to have a healthy democracy. The only question is how.” 

According to Allen, America needs leaders to prioritize non-violence, universal inclusion and belonging. It also needs to remove primary elections and spend time working together across ideological divides.

Allen said primary elections create fewer and more extreme choices, and independent voters can’t participate in states with closed primaries.

Both 2024 presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, secured their parties’ presidential nominations through primaries. 

Different states have different types of primaries and rules. For example, voters participating in a closed primary must register with a political party, while open primaries don’t require voters to choose a party at all. Montana is one of 15 states with open primaries.

A few states hold a single primary where all candidates are listed on one ballot, known as a multi-party primary. Depending on the state, either the top two or the top four candidates advance to the general election. Allen said Alaska, which uses top-four primaries, has the best model because candidates have to campaign to everyone, instead of just those in their own party’s base, and voters have more choices in the general election.

“I was on a panel recently with a Republican state senator from Alaska,” Allen said. “Somebody asked her how it changed her experience of running for office. She said, ‘I knocked on the doors of Democrats for the first time in my career.’” 

According to Allen, politicians work in a system incentivizing bad behavior and polarization. 

“We change the incentives and we get the behavior we need and the leadership norms we need,” she said, referring to Alaska Republicans campaigning across partisan lines. “That also brings cultural change and cultural improvements.”

In elections, Allen also wants to see ranked choice voting implemented. The Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center website said in that system, voters rank candidates from all parties in order of preference. If there’s no majority winner, the candidate with the fewest votes gets eliminated and voters who ranked that candidate first have their votes counted for their next choice until there’s a majority winner. 

“I’m tired of not being able to vote my conscience because I can’t vote third party. I’m tired of the mudslinging. I’m tired of feeling like my vote doesn’t count,” said Eric Buhler, the executive director of Rank Choice Voters Montana and an audience member. 

Rank Choice Voters Montana is a nonprofit advocating for ranked choice through petitions, surveys and educational outreach. Its current petition is for ranked-choice voting in 2025 through two official ballot initiatives by Montanans for Election Reform: Top Four Open Primaries and Majority Winner Mandate, where elections for certain offices must be decided by a majority vote, more than 50%, rather than a plurality, which is simply the most votes. 

Montanans for Election Reform is the group sometimes seen on campus asking people to sign petitions.

Policy changes such as these start with a supermajority for democracy, Allen said. 

“If you’re gonna have a stable democracy, more than two-thirds of Americans need to want it,” she said. “That’s gotta be people from both parties.”

The Pew Research Center lists the elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022 as three of the highest U.S. voter turnouts in the last several decades, with around 66% of the voting-eligible population voting in the 2020 presidential election – the highest rate for any national election since 1900. 

But voter turnout in the U.S. is low by international standards, according to Fair Vote. In developed countries, turnout averages 70%, and in countries with mandatory voting, it’s 90%. In 2020, 73% of Montanans voted in the presidential election, which was held entirely by mail.

Allen said partisan divides are also threats to supermajorities. “We’re at a point where those kinds of divides produce the same degree of antipathy as was true for race in the middle of the 20th century,” she said.

Now, the same percentage of people who used to care if their child married outside their race care if their child married outside their party, she said.

According to the National Library of Medicine, a 2017 article by Voice of America reported that in 1958, 33% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans wanted their child to marry within the party. In 2016, the percentages increased to 60% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans.

Fortunately, according to Allen, individual actions can make a profound difference in decreasing polarization and strengthening democracy when we all do our part. “The good news is there’s a lot of us in this room, so nobody has to do everything,” Allen said. 

People who can dedicate one to 10 hours per week should join the League of Women Voters, their local Ranked Choice Voting group and party committee, and sign up as election workers, she said. 

“So I hope, with that array of options, there’s something here for everybody,” Allen said. “Remember, it’s not whether we can still have a healthy democracy, it’s only a question of how.”

(Vivianne Ostheimer)

Language students defend their programs against potential cuts

Interim Provost Adrea Lawrence held a discussion to hear student feedback regarding the Academic Affairs Playbook plans alongside members of the student government at the University of Montana on Wednesday. This marked the first official opportunity for students to speak up for their program since faculty learned about the playbook in January, a plan that could lead to multiple programs being cut.

“It’s really important for us to have these types of conversations and to have multiple ways to get input to make sure that this is a process that is effective, robust and attentive to the needs of students and our University community and the world that you’re going into,” Lawrence said. 

The playbook, created by the provost’s office ,involves yearly reviews of every program offered. After quantitative analysis, where programs are measured based on numbers like enrollment and graduation rates, low-scoring programs have to meet with the provost’s office and their college’s deans for a qualitative analysis to discuss the reason behind the numbers and the value of the program. 

Finally, the provost’s office will decide whether the program will be put in moratorium, meaning cut after all current students graduate from the program, downsized or merged into another program.

Lawrence, Student Senate President Maggie Bell and Senators Declan Roe and Elizabeth Kamminga hosted a discussion for students to give feedback on the playbook as part of UM’s Democracy Summit in the University Center North Ballroom. Around 25 students, faculty and other senators spread out in the large room, with the vast majority of students coming from the World Languages and Cultures department.

“A lot of us here are language majors,” said Kolter Stevenson, who is studying Russian and is UM’s first Rhodes Scholar in 30 years. “That’s been a hot-button issue for a while. The question is, how does cutting the Russian program or Chinese program or combining them into a degree where they’re only up for two years of language instruction help students?”

Chris Loret de Mola, a Spanish major, said he began at UM majoring in International Business, which required him to take two years of Spanish courses. During the summer after the completed Spanish 202, he landed an internship in Mexico.

“I can tell you two years is not sufficient to work fluently in a culturally immersed situation,” Loret de Mola said.

Learning the culture alongside the language is just as important, he said. Because of the amount of learning needed to fluently speak a language and understand the culture, downsizing the major or merging it with other languages will not work for students.

Lawrence said no final decisions have been made about cutting or changing any programs, and they won’t be made until next semester. This deadline has changed from the originally planned schedule, where UM was going to present proposed changes to the Board of Regents in May. 

She also said she has heard concerns from the language program in the last few weeks and as someone who studied the French, Norwegian, Swedish and Maori languages, she understands their importance. But she also said it might not be realistic for the University to keep programs with declining enrollment.

“I personally feel pretty strongly about the value of languages,” Lawrence said. “But I also recognize that we may not be able to do things in the way that we’ve always done them.”

At the end of the discussion, a link to a survey for students was presented on the screen allowing students to answer questions about their programs to help give feedback and participate in the qualitative analysis.

“Please share the survey with your friends, classmates, anybody that you see fit,” Maggie Bell said. “We really just want all honest feedback we can so that we can deliver the provost office the full student picture.”

Loret de Mola said he was glad students had an official time and place to present their feedback directly to the Provost, but still worries about the state of language programs.

“I’m really happy there was this chance for a back and forth with the Provost,” Loret de Mola said. “Cutting language programs would be such a disservice to the University and to the students. Language is unique and there really is no substitution.” 

(Corbin Vanderby)

Looking past gender: Discussing leadership with women in power

Two generations of leaders sat together on the Democracy Summit stage at the University last Wednesday. To a crowd of around 30 attendees, Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis and UM Student Senate President Maggie Bell shared their experiences in student and local government. 

The panel focused on women in leadership roles, and what it means to make decisions, get involved and take charge. 

According to the Pew Research Center, women make up 51% of the college-educated workforce, and in high-paying jobs like physicians, chief executives and pharmacists, women make up 35% of the workforce.

 In government, the Center for American Women and Politics reported women make up 25% of mayors in cities with populations over 10,000. In the 2023 Montana Legislative Session, women accounted for 32% of Senate and House members. 

Davis and Bell shared their own experiences of becoming leaders. With so many responsibilities, they spoke about the delicate balance between making decisions for large groups of people while letting everyone be heard. 

Kelly Webster, UM Chief of Staff in President Seth Bodnar’s office, hosted the discussion, asking the first few questions to start the conversation. “We honestly struggled a little bit, thinking about ‘how do we want to talk about women in leadership?’” Webster told the crowd. “How do we avoid asking questions that suddenly stereotype what it looks like for a female to be in leadership?” 

Webster focused on the broader overall experiences of being a leader, rather than asking questions about the experience of being a woman in politics.  

Davis, the second woman elected as mayor in Missoula, served as executive director at Homeword for over 15 years, a non-profit aiming to build affordable housing across Montana. Friends and coworkers encouraged her to run for public office, but Davis focused on Homeword instead. 

But after serving as the chair of the Montana Housing Coalition and working with legislators to get affordable housing bills passed, Davis reconsidered running for public office. During her campaign, multiple Montana legislators endorsed Davis. 

“I sat back and said, ‘My whole life has been committed to making a difference,’” she said. “If these people that I trust a whole lot think that I can do this, then I’m ready to step up.” 

Bell said serving as a student senator gave her “intimate knowledge” of the student government, alongside lobbying during the previous legislative session. Those experiences gave her the confidence to run for president. “It wasn’t really a question for me of if I was capable,” she said. “It was more if the students wanted to trust me.” 

Davis touched on her time at UM, where she studied communications and environmental studies. Davis said the skills she learned in her degrees “100% helped” in leadership roles following graduation including a glass recycling project requiring her to coordinate with multiple people.

Bell credited her time in student government, and positive campus attitudes for helping her build leadership skills. “Nobody’s ever telling you, ‘Don’t do that, you’re not fit for that,’” she said. “The environment is very nurturing toward success and leadership.” 

Davis spoke with the Kaimin afterward about participating in the Democracy Summit. “The opportunity to connect with the University is fantastic,” Davis said. She hoped people attending summit events leave knowing democracy is alive and well. “We are at a place in time where having these face-to-face conversations really matters,” she said. 

(Elle Daniel)

Theatre of the Oppressed: A gateway to recognizing power

Talking about social issues can be difficult for some but through Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” method, doors can be opened, according to Bernadette Sweeney, Professor of Theatre, who led a workshop on Wednesday at the University of Montana. 

“The work gives agency to oppressed communities and helps them be agents of change,” Sweeney said.

Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" is a theatrical and social movement aimed at empowering marginalized communities and promoting social change through interactive theater techniques. Boal, a Brazilian theater director, writer and politician, developed this approach in the 1960s and 1970s as a response to the repressive political climate in Brazil. The workshop was a means of engaging communities in political dialogue and action.

Boal’s techniques helped workshop attendees recognize where power lies and what they can do to change that.

The workshop started with individuals introducing themselves and how they define themselves through different characteristics like ethnicity, gender identity and relationships.  “Boal’s work requires us to engage with the knowledge of who is in the room with us,” Sweeney said. Identity becomes inherently important to recognizing power in our government institutions, she said.

Sweeney led attendees in several of Boal’s theater games. In one of her favorites, called ‘The Great Game of Power,’ attendees are told to use any furniture in the room and illustrate a story where one chair has the most power. After assembling the furniture, participants are asked to comment on the scene and why a chair, in its placement, has the most power. In response, attendees asked questions about power and its structures. 

“What if this chair was near a river? Does that change its power? What does the environment do to the power of something?” Sweeney said. 

Another game in the workshop used positional gestures to create a story. Two people start the game by shaking hands. Then one person changes a position. They have complete creative freedom allowing them to shift the story in whichever way they want, like cowering in fear, raising a hand, or chasing.  

Then the other person changes their position in turn changing the story in their own way. Observers take note of body language and identify where the power lies.

“There’s a power in shared action,” Sweeney noted when a group repeated the same position.

At the end of the workshop, attendees were asked for their thoughts. Liudmila Karaseva, a Theatre student at the University, said, “It’s so interesting how our body can tell a story and how it can change.”

Through these games, participants ask where power exists and what an individual can do to change that. For attendees, the games made talking about difficult topics such as social class, race and privilege approachable. The games brought a level of play and lightheartedness to harder themes. 

Past the games, Boal’s work leads to creating theatrical pieces such as short plays but for non-actors, Boal’s method helps with recognizing oneself and the institutions existing around them.

(Kairi Lising)

Mayor, Commissioner discuss affordable housing in Missoula 

Last Wednesday the University of Montana featured Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis and County Commissioner Josh Slotnick in a conversation about local government and its ties to the changing economy in Missoula.

Slotnick, who oversees local policies and represents residents within Missoula County, and the recently elected mayor took the stage in the University Center ballroom to talk about their role in ensuring more affordable housing for the future of Missoula.

Around 30 people attended the morning discussion with the mayor, who emphasized in her speech that city and county collaboration is moving toward a more affordable and safe city.

Some issues like affordable housing, Davis said, can be curbed through things like land use planning, which helps decide the best way to use available land in the city, when the government is proactive. 

In Missoula, a citizen-led growth policy, in place since 2015, anticipates the best use of land around Missoula according to what the community deems necessary. This puts pressure on the city to work, Davis said. For example, residents’ feedback currently focuses on building homes within walking distance of places in Missoula. 

Home prices have been passing the majority of Missoula residents’ income at an increasing rate, with home values increasing by 50% since 2020. Davis’s 2023 mayoral campaign focused largely on a plan to address the affordable housing issue through her experience at the nonprofit Homeward, which looked to build affordable projects.

Comments from the audience centered around the threat that national politics pose for Missoula, like funding cuts, tax reforms and limited resources, that have a ripple effect on local government and how Missoula plans to weather those trickle-down changes. 

Davis responded, saying their role is to manage the change, even though they can’t stop rising property taxes and home values.

Slotnick said a time like this calls for intervening and distorting the housing market, as dangerous as that language sounds, in ways not done before. 

According to Slotnick, creating a middle ground where affordable homes are accessible could create more opportunities for people to buy a home and gain equity in the long run.

Affordable housing concerns involve young people since they typically start from the bottom where accessibility can be hard but possible with the right tools, the panel said. 

“We need to create space for young people who are full of passion to make their dreams real, whether they’re entrepreneurial or cultural or in the nonprofit sector,” Slotnick said.

Davis said since taking over as mayor four months ago she knew these things were changing, but “boy you don’t know it until you’re in it,” describing local issues as an “edgy and really challenging space” with some national political issues, like extreme partisanship, filtering down to everyday people. 

Logan Colberg, a sophomore marketing major from Helena said putting a name to the face of the guests who appeared at Wednesday’s event made her want to become more involved with local and political issues. 

According to Colberg, the representation of influential speakers throughout the entire day made her feel inspired and hopeful about what students like her might take away from the event. 

Slotnick said he was optimistic about the future of local government in the hands of young people, including current UM students. 

“There’s so much space to be involved. It’s really fun that we’re small,” said Slotnick. “Before doing this gig I was a professor and the young people I interacted with were so interested in making the world better. In that way, I feel optimistic.”

(Melissa Dickson)

How rugged individualism is ‘literally killing’ Montanans 

Residents of Montana are often known for their “rugged individualism,” and while this high level of independence may seem like a good thing, the director of the social work master’s degree program at the University of Montana spoke about the negative impacts of the mindset.

“What I see a lot of is this sentiment that everyone just needs to be out there for themselves, and work, and pull themselves up and less government intervention is needed,” Amanda Cahill, social work professor and Medicaid lobbyist, said. “That is a very strong underlying message.”

Cahill’s discussion titled “Rugged Individualism is Killing Us: A Conversation About Democracy in Montana,” took place in University Center. Around 15 people circled the center table and the back wall, all facing each other for discussion. Cahill encouraged participation from everybody and began by having everyone introduce themselves and give their reasons for coming.

“This is not a presentation,” Cahill said. “This is a discussion. It's supposed to be a give and take and a place to share.”

The crowd consisted of employees of the Mike and Maureen Mansfield Center, UM Housing, social workers, professors and students who said that the topic was interesting and relevant to their field of work or studies.

Cahill defined rugged individualism as a mindset based on pulling yourself up from hardships and making it on your own without outside assistance. When it applies to politics, she said, it can result in completely rejecting any and all government help.

While this mindset goes against human nature to seek social interaction for survival, Cahill explained it gained popularity during the onset of the Great Depression in America.

“Around the Great Depression, President Hoover had some speeches that highlighted rugged individualism,” Cahill said. “He really emphasized private charity as the cure for the Great Depression versus government intervention, and emphasized building community but in a way that did not rely on the government.”

Cahill said when homesteaders headed west and settled down that mindset carried into Montana. 

“In Montana, there's a lot of homesteading and rugged individualism happening naturally,” Cahill said. “You're out, you got your own 10 acres and you're not seeing anyone for 40 miles.”

According to Cahill, this mindset may, in small cases, lead to someone not accepting help when they really need it, or in larger cases, not passing levies, like ones that could help fund a school, because it requires government funding. 

Skye Borden, deputy director for the Mansfield Center, shared that she grew up on a farm with a lifestyle people would often associate with a solo culture, but she said it was actually the opposite and that she often needed help to get by because of the lack of resources in her rural community.

“I grew up in a very isolated rural community on a farm and there is no closer or tighter social network that I've ever been a part of,” Borden said. “You forge very close social connections that are in some ways the antithesis of rugged individualism.”

Cahill said that one of the biggest negative effects of such a highly independent mindset is the increased suicide rates in Montana. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Montana had the second-highest suicide rate in 2021. Cahill said this is sometimes because of issues made worse by self-reliance because it leads to a stigma surrounding seeking people’s help. 

“When I say [rugged individualism] is killing us in Montana, it literally is,” Cahill said.

Because of this, Cahill said it’s important to push back against this mindset and although it’s hard to do, she said the best three places to start are getting to know your legislators who create laws for you, picking a specific issue that interests you, like housing or health care, and having discussions with people who believe in getting little to no help. 

“Be willing to have hard conversations and just plant thoughtful seeds in people that think differently than you,” Cahill said. “It doesn't have to ever be an argument.”

For Montana’s Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline call 988. The Curry Health Center at UM also provides counseling - for more information call 406-243-4712 or visit https://www.umt.edu/curry-health-center/counseling/default.php. 

(Corbin Vanderby)

Walking the line between comfort and truth: Panel discusses free speech on campus

Leslie Webb was only in her second day as Vice Provost for Student Success at the University of Montana when she started contending with what a “marketplace of ideas” on campus actually means.

Webb, who has worked at the University for around a year-and-a-half, said she spends a lot of her time working with different campus departments to define what free speech on campus means. 

“I move about campus so when the hardest topics come up, we can have a more productive dialogue about it,” Webb said during a panel on Wednesday at UM. 

Joined by University Spokesperson Dave Kuntz, Alicia Arant, acting Title IX coordinator, and moderated by Michael Rohd, director of UM’s Co-lab for Civic Imagination, the panel discussed finding the balance as a University between allowing free dialogue while still promoting a space free of discrimination and focused on inclusivity.

For Kuntz and Arant, creating a University that challenges students to engage in free speech comes down to exposure. Kuntz said he’s noticed a wave of students in the past few years who have spent their entire lives with a narrow set of ideas, free of challenge, so when they come onto campus, it can be their first time experiencing thought diversity.

A possible solution to overcoming these differences, Kuntz said, is allowing students and staff to sit down across from people they disagree with and get to know one another's ideas, but he didn’t offer a specific way to do this. 

Arant agreed, saying staff and students have approached her about how specific topics, readings or discussions in classrooms cause discomfort and therefore they don’t want to participate. For example, she said, some professors will refuse to use students' preferred pronouns because they disagree with it, or students will complain the syllabus includes, or doesn’t include, discussions of race.

But Arant said refusing to do something just because they don’t like or agree with it is not a solution. Sometimes, being uncomfortable and having difficult conversations can help staff and students learn to be productive and compelling while disagreeing. 

“I have seen people come to me and say ‘I’m unsafe, I had to do this thing or someone said this thing,’” Arant said, “And with all the grace I can sort of muster, I say ‘No, you are not unsafe, you’re uncomfortable.’” 

Webb built off what Arant said by explaining the University should try to focus on teaching students how to engage in disagreement, or discomfort, from day one. 

She ended the panel with a call for further discussion, as she said this session was only the start of many more she hoped to have around campus.

“What we should just do is put a pin in [this] and say, ‘Hey, let's keep figuring out how to have dialogue and proper communication,” she said. “And for me, the fundamental underpinning of this entire conversation is humanity and relationships.”

(Claire Bernard)