Heartfelt thanks to everyone who chose something better than what Donald Trump and his Project 2025ers tried to sell us in Tuesday’s election.
The GOP, which might as well rename itself the Trump/Project 2025 Party, gave us compelling reasons to oppose it: its record-long government shutdown, gobsmacking blunders by its Department of Government “Efficiency,” its haphazard tariffs, its economy that’s approaching stagflation, its war-mongering and its totalitarian schemes, to name several.
But maybe some voters just wanted to bring back kindness and decency.
This administration scorns both, and some Young Republican leaders took hate speech to new levels when they thought they were texting privately, Politico reported.
Elected officials from both parties condemned these bundles of malice, but JD Vance shrugged them off as “young boys” doing “stupid things,” even though some of the “kids” are in their late 20s and early 30s and were holding government positions.
Well, they are children compared with Trump, who at 79 has probably done more to normalize racism, sexism, bigotry and bullying than anyone else in this century. And he and his administration treat DEI like a four-letter curse word instead of an acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion.
So it was wonderful to watch those ideals promoted to real kids in my red part of Pennsylvania just eight days after the Politico story broke.
About 120 students from 13 Schuylkill County high schools spent three hours at our local Penn State campus to examine their own biases and practice tolerance, open-mindedness and respect for others. They also laid the groundwork for developing projects and activities to encourage their classmates to practice those principles, too.
Over the next six months, each school will choose one of its students to receive $500 from the Arnold Delin Education Fund, which has been sponsoring this annual Youth Conference for more than 20 years.
After attending the awards ceremony last April, I wanted to see how universal virtues are taught when so many in power are extolling cruelty.
At least some of the students were already involved in diversity clubs, but adult facilitators also laid out plans for a respectful and caring environment for “conversations that you don’t typically get a chance to have.”
Students were asked to speak for themselves only and to refrain from judging and generalizing. From what I saw, they followed the guidelines, participated when asked and were attentive, polite and friendly.
Icebreakers and icebergs
After a half-hour orientation, the students were divided into three groups. Each was led by a facilitator and followed the same format, beginning with several rapid-fire exercises where students were to find common ground with each other on innocuous subjects like favorite foods and hobbies.
Steve Scaduto, who ran the group that I observed, didn’t hesitate to prod. “Move around!” he called. “Meet new people! That’s what this day is about!”
From “icebreakers,” the group moved on to “the iceberg,” which showed there’s a lot more to someone than what others see.
Scaduto asked the students what they noticed about him. His eyeglasses, good posture, left-handedness and some gray hairs were among their responses.
Surprisingly, nobody mentioned that he’s white and male, even though his fellow facilitators are Black women. Perhaps no one wanted to bring up subjects like race and gender. Or as Scaduto later pointed out to me, the group was fairly homogenous – overwhelmingly white like the county as a whole.
But the exercise literally went deeper as students listed what might lie beneath the surface, such as fears, religious beliefs, traumas, insecurities, home life and a disability that isn’t readily apparent.
The students said someone can be unfairly judged by their grooming or where they live, as well as by one bad act that they committed.
Conscious and unconscious biases also came up for discussion after most students wrongly assumed that a coach in a story Scaduto told was a man. They attributed their mistake to scant information as well as their own observations and experiences.
Bias against a specific group leads to stereotyping and alienating those in it from everyone else, a student said, adding that this also puts pressure on them to act a certain way – if they can.
‘A battle for the soul of this nation’
Among the many thought-provoking comments from this conference, facilitator Brandyn Campbell’s raises an important question.
“You are here because you are leaders already in your schools and your communities,” she told the students. “And we really are just going to be facilitating what’s already within each of you.”
So would the Young Republicans have behaved differently if, when they were younger, they were led to self-examination instead of indoctrination and to accept rather than scapegoat those different from them?
“I think there is a battle for the soul of this nation going on right now,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said in August. “I think there is a battle for making sure that here in America, we still respect everyone, no matter what they look like, where they come from, who they love or who they pray to.”
Fortunately, Shapiro, the Arnold Delin Education Fund, our local schools, Penn State Schuylkill and so many others are on the right side.
Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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Photo: Canva
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