During the renovation of Takena Hall in 2023, a construction worker on his break noticed a large whiteboard near the entrance to the First Resort office. Curious, he walked over to take a closer look. The top of the board posed a question in large font, below which a plethora of multicolored answers were scrawled beneath.
Reading the replies, and the etiquette guidelines posted nearby, the worker deduced that these were the thoughts of students passing by the board as they went to and from classes. As he mused on this, an LBCC professor walked by and noticed the worker’s inquisitive glance.
By sheer coincidence, this happened to be one of the board’s founders, communications professor and advisor to the school’s Civil Discourse Program, Mark Urista.
He stopped and struck up a conversation. As they talked, Urista remarked that the worker had quite a few meaningful insights on the board’s question and invited him to add his thoughts to the board. The worker was reluctant, saying he was not part of LBCC’s staff or student body.
“Bulls—, the board is for everyone!” Urista replied.
Indeed, the community discussion boards set up around LBCC’s Albany and Corvallis campuses are designed for an open, honest discourse with anyone who walks through the halls. Set up in 2017 by the Civil Discourse Program at LBCC, the aim is to get people talking about key issues facing the school, community, country, and world at large.
This endeavor began with a controversial artwork display in North Santiam Hall during 2017, graphically depicting a sexual act between two male subjects. Despite it being hand-picked by the art department faculty, this display caused an uproar amongst some students, faculty, and public visitors to the gallery. The debate surrounding it garnered so much attention that a story about it ran in the local newspaper, the Albany Democrat-Herald.
Inevitably, the controversy was brought up for discussion by a student in Urista’s communications class. He allowed the class to use it as the topic of an upcoming debate assignment, on one condition: Despite the overwhelming support among students to remove the artwork, one side of the debate had to make a good faith effort to argue for keeping it displayed.
His students reluctantly agreed, and in the course of their research something interesting began to happen: support for the artwork to remain actually started increasing. While not everyone supported the art directly, a growing number of students did start to have concerns about censorship and the slippery slope it could lead to. This led to a lively debate in class, and later on two students organized a community “debate” event that the public could attend. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and even though those in attendance may have had differing views, almost everyone agreed that this sort of public discussion was a positive thing.
This positive feedback encouraged Urista and his students to create a student club based on open communication, and the Civil Discourse Program was born. The specific idea for the board came from another faculty member, Hailey Adkisson. Her previous institution, North Dakota State University, had implemented something they called a “democracy board”: a large whiteboard where questions were periodically posted, and students could come over and write responses.
“It’s just really hard to find a time and place where you can bring lots of people together physically. But we thought, ‘Hey, a whiteboard, we could probably actually encourage some discourse where people can participate in a manner that’s convenient for them,’” Urista recalled.
This convenience solved another issue that Urista had noticed early on with the art controversy. While his diverse friend groups were all talking about it, they were not talking about it with each other. Each group was isolated in its own echo chamber, simply reinforcing things they already believed and felt.
“We often talk about the importance of diversity and interacting with people who are different than us,” Urista says, “but I don’t really know how we are supposed to benefit from that diversity if we’re not actively engaging with each other and having these open, honest, authentic conversations.”
And so, anyone can borrow a whiteboard marker to add their thoughts anonymously, without fear of reprisal. There is a code of etiquette to curb off-topic or intentionally inflammatory responses; the club has had to erase comments in the past, but Urista could not recall a specific instance. This anonymity allows all to share open, honest opinions to facilitate a larger discussion in a way that is convenient for all.
However, there may still be room for improvement. One person who sees the board regularly (and who wished to remain anonymous) stated that, “sometimes the questions posed are too binary, too polarizing.” They remarked that many of the prompts, while thought-provoking, seemed to lean towards a “black and white” discussion when issues in the world are often more “grey” and nuanced.
All in all, the Community Discussion Board has become so popular that other institutions, including some not in education, have begun setting up their own version of the board. In addition, the Civil Discourse Program has been invited to host statewide forums at Oregon State University regarding various issues affecting the community. And Urista hopes that this success continues to spread beyond the local community.
“There’s a phrase, the ‘laboratories of democracy’; cities and states can run experiments and when they find something that’s successful, then they can share those ideas with other cities and states across the country. We have an environment that’s ideal for creating a ‘laboratory’ for civil discourse, and now we’re just trying to help others do the same.”
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 edition of The Commuter.