Breaking Down Barriers

On a recent Friday afternoon, students from Marlborough and Loyola High School gathered to do something that feels increasingly rare in the current moment: listen and understand one another across political divides. This inaugural Marlborough-Loyola Political Mixer, held in Marlborough’s Shari and Edward Glazer Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, represented years of research and planning by alumna Ella Dershewitz ’25, who organized the event as a culmination to her Honors Research Project.

The inspiration for the mixer came from a stark observation that caught Elle’s attention during her Senior year: Marlborough and Loyola’s 2024 mock election outcomes varied widely between the campuses. This disparity highlighted what Leonetti/O'Connell Honors Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Program Head Dr. Dan Lynch described as “profound differences” in political engagement and perspective between the two school communities. 

“Political polarization felt like a very difficult issue and I found myself looking for equally complex solutions,” Elle shared with the gathered students at the mixer. “But in my Senior year, I took a step back. I looked at the root of this polarization, which I found to be a lack of communication.”

The breakthrough came when Elle heard Dr. Alice Siu speak at an All-School Meeting in 2024. As the Associate Director of Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab, Dr. Siu’s presentation on deliberative democracy—a concept that emphasizes discussion among citizens to reach fair and reasonable decisions in politics—offered exactly the solution Elle had been seeking. Dr. Siu subsequently became Elle’s Honors Research mentor and the two worked closely together as Elle designed an event that would remove the obstacles to meaningful political dialogue, such as social media echo chambers or the tendency to self-select into like-minded groups.

The political mixer followed the structured format of the Stanford Lab’s proven model. Students were divided into small, ideologically diverse groups led by trained moderators. They spent an hour discussing six specific immigration policy proposals, examining the pros and cons of each in a respectful, fact-based environment. 

Each moderator emphasized that the goal was not to reach consensus or change minds, but simply to get people to talk and listen to one another. This philosophy comes from the research out of Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, which has documented that such events can reduce both ideological polarization (how people feel about policies) and affective polarization (how people feel about opposing political groups). 

The deliberation was followed by an expert panel featuring James Robb from NumbersUSA and Dr. Irasema Coronado from Arizona State University. While discussing the same policies and topics that students had just tackled in their small groups, Mr. Robb and Dr. Coronado modeled how to maintain respectful differences of opinion while discussing complex policy issues. 

The response was overwhelmingly positive. “Students found the experience productive and interesting,” reported Dr. Lynch, with many expressing surprise at finding common ground with peers from different political backgrounds. The success has inspired plans for future mixers, with students and faculty alike eager to build on this exciting momentum.

For Elle, who continued organizing the event even after graduation and planning the date so it would fall before she left for college, the mixer represents the power of turning academic research into real-world action. “The fact that all of you are here to engage in political discussion with each other, face to face, is incredibly significant,” she reminded participants. “We are able to provide meaningful democratic discussion, combating the political polarization that often asks us to mindlessly commit to a single political position.”

As students left that Friday evening, they carried with them not just new perspectives on immigration policy, but a model for how democracy can work when citizens commit to listening as much as they speak. In a time when political dialogue too often devolves into insults and misunderstandings, these high school students proved that another way is possible—one conversation at a time. What began as one student’s research project had come full circle—proving that when we create space for bold ideas, students can change not just their own communities, but the way we practice democracy itself.