Consensus: group decision-making & community organizing #3

 Your group is multicultural, including some from marginalized groups

Even if you are not engaging in a formalized consensus-based decision-making process, a partial consensus process can help reduce the inequalities that marginalized members feel and, in their reticence to participate, participate in some ways in perpetuating that marginalization. One study of this intersection of phenomena revealed by post-process discussion to be perceived by all as a helpful tactic. In this particular case a professor noticed that some students participated far more and some not at all--including some who were likely self-censoring out of caution of being silenced by others. The professor simply wrote a name on the board when a student raised a hand and wrote the next name underneath when a different student raised a hand. Students quickly began to enforce a no-talking-out-of-turn process and later told the professor they liked that process very much. It's not pure consensus (the professor is still responsible for the process) but it gave far more agency to students and felt much more empowering to them as they later expressed (Johnson, 2023).

References

Johnson, S. (2023). From free‐for‐all (free‐for‐some?) to speakers’ list: Using consensus‐based decision‐making practice to enhance student participation in the theological classroom. Teaching Theology & Religion, 26(4), 129–134. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1111/teth.12650