Alonso Family Dialogue Series

The Student Life Center for Belonging and Social Change prides itself on proactively engaging the campus and Columbus community in ongoing opportunities to dialogue about various topics, ideas, perspectives and philosophies.

The CBSC is committed to creating space for members of the campus community to dialogue. Dialogue is collaborative, open-ended and not steeped in the desire to "win" or be "right." The Alonso Family Dialogue Series is a dialogue-based series of programs for individuals to engage with others, challenge themselves, hear other perspectives and make new connections. The CBSC encourages participants to have conversations that have an intentional breadth, depth and width of subject matter that interrupts, calls into question and discomforts what we think we know and believe. Join us as at any of our community dialogues as we look to respectfully challenge one another and grow in the process.

The Social Justice Engagement team in the CBSC will be offering five recurring programs through the Alonso Family Dialogue Series. Sustained Dialogue is also a key partner in this initiative, and students from this organization will regularly help to facilitate the dialogue programs. See below for more information about each program, and remember that each of these counts for 1 DICE Credit (more information about how to earn your DICE certificate can be found at go.osu.edu/dice). All programs are currently listed on our office's calendar and will be held in the Alonso Family Room within the CBSC.

Interfaith Dialogue

These monthly programs, facilitated in partnership with Student Life Counseling and Consultation Service (CCS) are dedicated to religious, spiritual and interfaith dialogue. The program will be based mostly in dialogue and will allow attendees to share their experiences with or without religion or spirituality while also hearing about others' experiences. Our hope is that attendees are able to deepen their perspective through discussions about meaning making, values and interfaith experience. Please consider joining us for one or multiple dialogues! 

Learning From Your Community

Learning From Your Community is a monthly program that provides students an opportunity to interact with Columbus community members. We invite non-profit, government and/or business organizations in the Columbus area to share their expertise and experience with students while also connecting their organization's mission to social justice issues. These programs provide students with many networking and learning opportunities.

What's Your Story?

What's Your Story? invites one member of the Ohio State community to share their research interests, publications and personal experience through a lens of social justice, identity and culture. The speaker is usually a staff or faculty member who will share their journey about why they do the work they do, how they got to where they are, and what identities have been most salient for them in that journey. 

Indie Lens Pop-Up

Indie Lens Pop-Up is a collaboration with PBS. It is a series that brings people together for film screenings and community-driven conversations, featuring documentaries seen on the PBS series Independent Lens. The films and screening dates will be announced throughout the year as we are sent more information about each film. Be sure to check back here or to visit the CBSC calendar for more information. 

Dialogue Across Difference

These programs will also be hosted by the student organization Sustained Dialogue, and will allow participants to engage with a contentious and often divisive topic. While debate sets up a dichotomous conversation between two sides, our hope is that dialogue will allow participants to actively listen, share and engage with their own and another perspective. We will select topics that will be announced closer to the date of each program. These will be hosted three times during Sustained Dialogue's meeting time (8–9:30 p.m.). 

Is there a new program or topic you want to see offered through the Alonso Family Dialogue series? Be sure to contact us, and we'll be happy to meet about it to come up with a plan.

For more information

Contact the Student Life Center for Belonging and Social Change at sl-cbsc@osu.edu.