Texas A&M University senior Caroline McCall has sat in enough classrooms to recognize a moment a conversation breaks down. Someone digs in. Someone shuts down. The room gets quiet in a way that signals nothing good.
“I wish we could bring respect back into politics,” she said.
For McCall and senior Kathleen Parks, civil discourse isn’t just a theme for a one-day event. It’s something they’ve had to wrestle with in lecture halls, in leadership positions and in the everyday moments where differing opinions collide. On April 20, they’ll bring those experiences to the stage as moderators for Texas A&M’s Civil Discourse Symposium — an event built around a goal that sounds simple but rarely is: helping people actually talk to each other. The symposium will feature former Vice President Mike Pence as its keynote speaker.
John Sherman, dean of the Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, said the effort comes down to something fundamental in Aggie culture.
“What’s the first one in RELLIS? Respect,” he said, referring to the Aggie core values of respect, excellence, leadership, loyalty, integrity and selfless service.” If we can’t engage in civil discourse, how can we have respect for one another?”
Hosted through the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School the symposium brings together students and national leaders at a moment when productive political conversation feels out of reach, particularly on college campuses.
Students also will moderate a bipartisan fireside chat with U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, but organizers say the focus remains firmly on students themselves.
That’s by design.
Parks, who is serving as Texas A&M’s student body vice president, said when the initiative came out and they started to plan the event, Sherman gave some advice.
“He wanted to make sure that students and their interests were at the heart of everything that we were doing and that this would be an event students really wanted to attend,” Parks said.
The result is a symposium that doesn’t just ask students to listen, but to engage to step into conversations that might feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and even challenging.
For McCall, that kind of engagement is exactly what’s missing. Her concern is one shared broadly among students navigating a hyper-connected, highly polarized world. It’s easy, she said, to surround yourself with people who think the same way — and harder, but more important, to step outside that space.
“I think it is dangerous to be in an echo chamber of people who just have the same ideas as you,” McCall said. “America is built on different ideas, and those ideas make us stronger.”
That belief sits at the core of the symposium’s mission. Civil discourse, as organizers and moderators describe it, isn’t about avoiding disagreement it’s about learning how to move through it with intention.
Parks said her four years at Texas A&M, studying society, ethics and law, shaped her understanding of what civil discourse actually requires.
“I’ve gotten to practice civil discourse and learn its true value in every single one of my classes,” she said. “It is an invaluable skill that I think every student at Texas A&M should have.”
For McCall, it’s also about responsibility and what it means to participate in a system built on individual rights and shared dialogue.
“You have those unalienable rights, and you should exercise them,” she said. “Take a leading role as an Aggie and engage in civil discourse.”
That call to action extends beyond politics. Both students frame civil discourse as a reflection of principles more than politics.
“Remember your character, your respect, excellence, leadership, loyalty, integrity and selfless service when you approach everything you do,” McCall said.
It’s a message that echoes far beyond the walls of the Bush School. In a national moment where headlines often highlight division, the Civil Discourse Symposium offers a different model, one rooted not in winning arguments, but in understanding people.
And that, Sherman suggests, is where real change begins — not in Washington, but in everyday interactions, in classrooms, conversations and campus events like this one.
Registration for the Symposium is open to current Texas A&M students. The event is scheduled for April 20, with opportunities to attend sessions in person or virtually from branch campuses and teaching sites.
For McCall and Parks, the hope isn’t just that students show up, but that they leave thinking differently about what it means to engage.
“I hope that people just remember that being a person of character comes before being somebody who’s political,” McCall said.
Published: April 8, 2026
Written by: Elizabeth Drake ’26
Video by: Bobby Etheridge
