Cheyanne Rider is a force, not so much to be reckoned with, but to have a real conversation. Though perhaps when the gavel is in her hand when she sits as chair for a Civil Discourse debate, her power is a bit more noticeable.
Rider holds many titles. She is a dual-enrolled student with LBCC and Oregon State. Rider serves as a student leader with Civil Discourse and a student advocate for LB’s Cornerstone Program. She also has a fellowship with the college’s Debates and Discourse Program, a national program that recognizes LBCC in their alliance. Linn-Benton is the only community college in the program. She is also a sister and daughter, and on the weekends works back-to-back 12-hour shifts as a wax assembler at Pacific Cast Technologies in Albany.
Rider, with a passion for honest discussion and a desire to hear more than be heard, has come to encourage healthy discourse on the LB campus and beyond.
Sarah: How is the college’s Debates and Discourse Program separate from your role with Civil Discourse?
Cheyanne: They’re sort of connected, they have similar values or goals and what they do, but these are two separate things. I got to the fellowship through Civil Discourse. I want to say it’s 16 schools included in the program. That includes the Virginia Military Institute, Duke University and Texas A&M Corpus Christi. We have partnered with ACTA, Braver Angels, and Bridge USA, which are all groups that work to make sure there is campus free expression, student voices, and freedom of speech on campus, and everyone feels comfortable sharing their opinions.
The whole point of the program is to have our Braver Angels debates, which we do through Civil Discourse. So that’s how that connects. We pick topics that are controversial and that people on campus have differing opinions on. Then we hold these debates that are non-adversarial so everyone can share their opinions and listen to others in a respectful way. Hopefully, they will take that mentality outside of the debate and be more comfortable talking to people who disagree with them.
Sarah: As a part of your fellowship with the college’s Debates and Discourse Program, what are some of the goals that you’re achieving or things that you carry out as part of that?
Cheyanne: So through the fellowship, we try to have two Braver Angels debates per term.
Sarah: And you’re able to do that through Civil Discourse?
Cheyanne: Yeah. So we had one online debate just last week, and then we want to plan an in-person debate later in the term. Last term, we did one online and one in person. That was our first in-person debate since COVID. It was awesome. We had it in the Fireside Room. We had some free pizza and stuff like that. More people showed up than I was expecting, which was great. It was also my first time getting to chair. That’s my other role with this fellowship is that I chair or moderate the debates. So that was my first in-person chairing.
It was a little bit nerve-wracking, but the format that we use has been tried through so many controversial topics, and it works every time. There’s always that little fear that somebody’s going to not follow the rules. And on Zoom, you can just mute them. But in person, you can’t. So I was a little bit nervous, but really, that was like a low-stakes problem because the format just works so well that people are sort of, I don’t know if disarmed is the right word, but they feel less defensive.
Sarah: Can you tell me just a couple of those bullet points that make it an excellent way to do these debates?
Cheyanne: With the Braver Angels format, we alternate affirmative or negative on the proposition. So that way both sides get heard equally. The biggest thing that we do is after you make your speech, the audience can ask questions, but they’re addressed to the chair, not to the person who spoke. At first, it sounds kind of awkward, but you would say the example we always use is, “Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question because the previous speaker said that cat people are better than dog people. Do they really believe that all cat people are better than all dog people?” And it’s like a little thing.
But instead of saying, “You said that all cat people are better than dog people. You don’t really believe that, do you?” That makes people feel defensive. And that’s what escalates things. Addressing all of the questions to the chair makes a big difference. Both sides are heard equally. Then the fact that it’s non-adversarial, nobody’s trying to win the debate. We don’t have a vote at the end to see which side did better. It’s what we say is “the collective search for truth.” We’re just trying to find solutions and understand each other better.
Sarah: How have you used all of this skill set in your personal life when you hear someone say something where you feel another opinion needs to be shared on that topic? How do you translate this skill or how have you found that experience for yourself?
Cheyanne: I get to practice that skill a lot during these debates, so I feel a lot more comfortable doing it, I say “out in the wild.” People ask me that all the time, “How do you talk to people that you disagree with?” I’m not a superhero. It’s still hard. But paraphrasing is a big one. Stop, listen to what they said, and then try to say it back to them without my own editorializing to make sure that I understand what they’re saying.
Then I try to figure out what their value is, where they’re placed in the hierarchy of values, and where they’re placing the highest value. Because in these debates and in these conversations, what I hear most often is everybody has the same goal and just different ideas of how to get there. So when I’m out in the wild, and I hear somebody say something that offends me or I feel like I need to comment, I’ll say, “Why do you believe that?”
And I’m not asking that this is tricky because you can’t say like (with an accusatory voice) “Why do you believe that?” You have to say genuine, good faith, curiosity. “What makes you feel that way?” “What experiences have you had that lead you to believe that this is true? Because, in my experience, that’s not true.” The biggest thing is to be interested and not defensive. And that can be really hard sometimes.
Sarah: What advice would you give to somebody who says, “I always feel like I want to speak up” or “I have a lot of trouble in my workplace when there’s conflict and I know I need to have this hard conversation.” If someone really wanted to get better at having difficult conversations, where would you point them?
Cheyanne: I would tell them to take communication classes at LBCC (laughter). But really. I would say trust yourself. Take a day or two to think about what you want to say. Write it down if you have to. You can send it in an email because talking directly to people is really challenging for some people. Especially in today’s world, like the younger people who’ve had this sort of mediated communication with phones and stuff, I get it.
I have severe anxiety, so if you have an issue that is clearly bothering you enough to think about that you want to say something, ask yourself, “Why do you have this issue?” And then trust yourself enough to talk to that person or communicate it written, however you can get through it. But trust yourself. Most people are not out there to purposely make your life harder. So if you’re having a problem at work, the person who’s making it harder probably doesn’t know that they’re making it harder.
Sarah: You took a seven-year break from school. What initially drew you back?
Cheyanne: I got laid off from my job. I started working at what is now Pacific Cast Technologies here in Albany after I dropped out of school the second time. And I was making good money, it was a really high-paying job. I still work there. It’s a good-paying job for somebody who doesn’t have a college degree. Then COVID hit, and we made airplane parts. So when travel stopped, people stopped making airplanes, and they laid off, I think, 500 people between the two plants.
I realized that while that was a very good job, the skills were not transferable to anything else. I thought, “I have a mortgage to pay. I have to do something.” and “Well, I guess I’ll go back to school and finish my degree.” And then I picked communication because, this sounds so silly, but it was that I didn’t want just to get a general degree. Communication was the degree I was the closest to finishing. That’s how I picked my major. It turns out I love it.
Sarah: You’re working now while you’re in school back at Pacific Cast Technologies. I know that balancing work and school can be really challenging, then add the other stuff with your fellowship and role with Civil Discourse. Have you found a way to balance it?
Cheyanne: No, I have not. I only work Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but they’re 12-hour days. I try to get classes that are either one or two days a week so that I can have one day during the week off. But last term that did not work out. And I’m so close to finishing my bachelor’s that I don’t have a lot of flexibility in my classes. I had no days off for 10 weeks. But that’s just how I function, I guess. I perform well under pressure.
Sarah: You have said in your Cornerstone bio that your dad was a machinist and your brother’s a pipefitter, mentioning the influence you have concerning STEM. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means for you?
Cheyanne: I come from a really blue-collar family. And I’m a first-generation college student. I am a liberal arts major, so I like to talk about my feelings. I want to understand things, that’s just not the environment that I come from. Now that I’ve been in higher ed for a little while, I see that there seems to be this sort of rivalry between the liberal arts and STEM. They sort of devalue each other sometimes. I don’t know how intentional that is, but you know “Psychology is not a real science” and “What are you going to do with that liberal arts degree?” kind of thing?
STEM jobs are what put food on the table for me as a kid. I have a blue-collar job right now. That’s what has allowed me to come back to school, have a house, and pay my bills. Those jobs are just as valuable to our economy, and to our community, as anything that you can do with a liberal arts degree.
Part of what we do in Civil Discourse is just trying to bring both sides together. I guess bringing STEM and liberal arts and what we do with Cornerstone is like me trying to do that with my own life. It’s taking the blue-collar side of my family and life with my sort of liberal arts, liberal hippie life of my own, and trying to marry those together in some way.
Sarah: You’ve mentioned Cornerstone. Can you explain what Cornerstone is?
Cheyanne: Cornerstone is a program that I’m a student representative of. Cornerstone brings transformative texts into classrooms to give a more well-rounded education to students.
Some of the required classes that you have to take, like Writing 121 or I think Communication 114 they’re trying to not homogenize, but bring in a text that could be discussed in all of those classes to give a shared experience to all students that have to take those required courses.
It’s Mark Urista, Dio Morales, Isabelle Havit, and Paul Hibbard. I’m forgetting people. But all these faculty are getting together and working to pick out these transformative texts and trying to just give a more holistic education to the students. I get to chime in sometimes.
Sarah: How do you see that helping towards the goal of bringing STEM and liberal arts together?
Cheyanne: If you’re here to get a STEM degree, let’s say mechatronics, you’re only taking that Writing 121 class because you have to. I mean, I guess I can’t speak for everybody, but likely, you’re only taking that class because you have to. But if there’s some really engaging portion of that class where you get to read this text that might resonate with you, now you might talk to the other students in that class who are liberal arts majors about what you’re reading.
You want to talk to somebody about what you’ve read because it’s just so interesting, and then that widens your network, right? And now you have this shared experience beyond just sitting in this classroom for a couple of hours a week. You have this shared experience with someone that’s really different from you. The idea is to kind of mix the groups a little bit more in places where they have to be together.
Sarah: You have said before that you believe education and communication hold the key to solving many of the world’s problems. Can you elaborate on that a little bit or give me some examples?
Cheyanne: I grew up in Lebanon, a pretty rural community. My family, in particular, is not overly political. And I just really regurgitated a lot of what I heard around me. And I didn’t really put a whole lot of critical thought into any of it. I just kind of said, “Yeah, that makes sense. These people that I respect and care about, this is what they believe, and I respect and care about them, so that tracks, I’ll believe that.”
Then I got older, and I got a little bit more experience in the world. I started going to (college), and I realized, “Okay, so there is some merit to this, but also I don’t actually agree with all of that.” There’s more context and more history to this situation than I had been presented before.
Education is going to expand your mind beyond what you already know, no matter what kind of education it is. I don’t know anything about welding. If I go into a welding class, I am now a smarter, better person because I’ve learned this thing. It’s also going to expose you to people of different races, socioeconomic classes, and political backgrounds. You’re going to meet people who humanize them. It’s really easy to alienate and demonize someone that you’ve never met. Once you meet somebody from that culture or that background, it makes it a lot harder to hate them.
Education provides the history and the context, and communication provides the contemporary friendship, and connection-making, it doesn’t even have to be friendship, really just a connection. My super close friends that I hang out with on a daily basis or weekly basis are fairly liberal. They’re the opposite of where I grew up. Sometimes I have some more conservative ideas than them, and we have open discussions about it, and we talk about it, and we disagree. We agree to disagree on some things.
The same with my more conservative friends now that I lean left. I still love and respect them the same way that I loved and respected them before my ideas changed. They still love and respect me the same way. Our conversations look different, but we know each other better now, and we understand each other better.
Sarah: There’s this line in the sand that can be drawn in those situations, am I hearing you say it doesn’t have to be that way?
Cheyanne: They are still human beings. Are they people that would I want to hang out with outside of my personal time? Probably not. You have some beliefs that I’m like, “That’s pretty messed up.” But you’re still a human being, and I still value the fact that you are here. In the country that we live in, you can still vote just as much as I can still vote. I would rather know where you’re coming from than make up a story about how you got there because I would rather you know where I’m coming from than make up a story about how I got here.
Sometimes I feel really idealistic about it because interpersonal communication isn’t hard for me. But I know and I recognize that it is really hard for some people. Listening is way more important than talking. And everyone can listen.
So part of me feels like it’s really idealistic and, maybe, it’s not actually going to solve all the world’s problems. But everybody can listen. Everybody can try to understand.
Sarah: Do I understand that law school is on the horizon?
Cheyanne: I go back and forth on it a lot. My initial plan was to get my degree and to get into law school. To apply to law school, you have to have a bachelor’s degree, and they don’t really care what it is. You just have to have one. I wanted to be a public defender. Part of me still really wants to do that.
But I am an overly emotional person, I have really bad anxiety, and I think that job would burn me out really quickly. I just really love communication. I want to do good. I feel like because I do believe that communication and education can solve most problems, I think I can do more good teaching communication. But I would still love to go to law school. I’m not writing it off.
But my plan has changed to grad school for speech comm. I would like to go to work for ACTA, which is who I have the fellowship through, and get to keep doing the college debate program, just as not a student anymore. That’s my plan A, plan B is to get my master’s and maybe come teach here. I want to teach at a community college. Obviously, LB would be my first choice. But I feel like community colleges are undervalued, and I would like to give back a little bit.
Sarah: I feel like that’s going to resonate with a lot of people, like a lot of students with this moving target idea where there is some trepidation in either naming what your goal is or in telling everyone, “No, no, I might be changing my plans” or “I don’t know.” What would you say to them?
Cheyanne: Man, stuff happens. I started college right out of high school with a psychology major, which I think is really common. Then I changed. I was like, “This is actually way more science than I thought it was going to be … this is too much math.” Then I wanted a history degree. I didn’t want a history degree. I like history, but I didn’t want a history degree, so I dropped out again.
Then I thought I was going to be working in this factory forever. That was genuinely my career plan, and then I discovered communication. Communication has a lot of opportunities that come from it. You can kind of take it and do whatever you want with it. I was nervous to tell people that I wanted to go to law school, especially since I said that in the newspaper when I like hadn’t even finished my associate’s degree yet. I was like, “Man, it’s going to be really embarrassing if I don’t actually go to law school.” And it’s not. It’s not embarrassing at all. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve realized more about myself, that I think I would burn out doing that job.
I’m super proud of people who actually go through law school, but that’s a really hard thing to do. And I am proud of myself for getting my associate’s. I’m proud of myself for being this close to finishing my bachelor’s, and I don’t plan on stopping. Even if I did, those are accomplishments that I should be proud of.
So if someone said they wanted to do X, and they only make it to whatever, why can’t I think of what letter comes right before X? L, M, N, O, P, W! If they only make it to W, if W is where they want to be, if that’s what makes them happy and fulfilled, they shouldn’t be embarrassed at all that they changed their mind and didn’t get to X. If I didn’t want to go to law school, I wouldn’t have picked communication and then who knows? Life happens. Things change.
Sarah: What are some of your biggest personal challenges or triumphs in your educational journey?
Cheyanne: The biggest challenge would be time management. I procrastinate a lot. And with working full time, going to school full time, and having extracurriculars, it is really easy to feel overwhelmed. So remembering to make a list and just take it one deadline at a time. That’s worked pretty well.
My biggest accomplishment, just doing everything with Civil Discourse. I’ve had so many opportunities with this program. I got to go speak at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., for Constitution Day. I thought I was going to do a phone interview. And then they were like, “Yeah, we’re going to fly you out here.” And I said, “I’m sorry, what?” That was surreal.
I’ve gotten to record two podcasts. I got to go to a summer symposium in Denver to learn how to chair debates. I’m really proud of all of that. I’m really proud that at the end of all of our debates, the people that have never come to a debate before say, “Oh my gosh, this wasn’t what I expected, and I feel like everybody was heard.” Those are my biggest accomplishments, bringing people to realize that communication is good.
Sarah: What are some of your hobbies or interests? What do you do when you have free time?
Cheyanne: I play D&D every Tuesday with my best friends in the whole world. Our campaign has been going for like two years now. I go to concerts whenever I have time. I love concerts. I play with my dog. I play a lot of Stardew Valley, like an obscene amount of Stardew Valley. And I take naps.
Sarah: What do you hope that people will get out of just hearing a little bit about your story? What would you want to convey to them?
Cheyanne: Trust yourself. Trust that you can do whatever it is that you want to do. Trust yourself that you’ll find a way to make it happen. Talk to someone that’s different from you. I think those are probably the two big ones.
Trust yourself and talk to somebody that’s different from you.
Sarah: Is there anything else I should have asked or anything else that would be interesting for people to know?
Cheyanne: I feel like it is maybe a little cliche, but my background would not on paper lead someone to believe that I could get my bachelor’s degree on my own, I will be 32 when I graduate, and to be where I am.
I want people to realize community college is a wonderful step for people. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of about it. It is not a lesser education. It is not like, “Oh, I just went to community college.” There are so many opportunities here. I’ve been at OSU for two years. I have had way more opportunities careerwise through LB than through OSU, hands down.
Be proud to get your certificates or your degrees or just furthering your education, even if you’re just here to take a couple of classes. A lot of these professors work at OSU, and they come here and teach a couple of classes. You’re getting the same exact education and paying a whole lot less for it. I guess that sort of goes back to what I would want people to take away: Be proud to go here.