Our mission is simple: empower young people to engage in constructive dialogue and disagreement to improve the quality of politics in this country. At a time when polarization often feels inevitable, BridgeUSA is grounded in a different belief. The belief that better politics starts with better conversations and those conversations begin right where students are. How we pursue this mission is what makes BridgeUSA unique. We don’t aim for one-off events or fleeting moments of civility. Instead, we focus on long-term culture shifts. We grow one chapter at a time, one conversation at a time. Our goal is dialogue that doesn’t end when the discussion wraps up but continues to shape how students listen and disagree long after. We want constructive dialogue to become the norm on college campuses, not the exception.
So how do we get there? What tangible metrics can we apply to measure our progress? BridgeUSA has dedicated many hours and resources to figuring that out. We believe we’ve come up with an answer: Our long-term strategic goal is to establish chapters on 800 college campuses. 800 may seem a surprising number, but there’s logic there. It represents one quarter of all US colleges and universities. And we feel that if one in four institutions of higher education in the US have a BridgeUSA chapter, an organized presence advocating for civil political dialogue, we will mark a significant cultural shift in our country’s discourse. Ambitious, right? Here’s how it’s going.
What started as a single chapter on the campus of UC Berkeley has now grown into a nationwide movement. And where there were just 80 chapters in our movement a year ago there are today more than 125 BridgeUSA chapters that have taken root across the country. Each chapter represents students who are choosing curiosity over certainty and engagement over avoidance and the results are tangible.
Long established chapters demonstrate just how powerful sustained dialogue can be. Over time, these communities don’t just host conversations. They help shift campus culture. Notre Dame University is home to one of our longest standing chapters. Just this past semester they got together 500 students for one event, a debate between the College Democrats and College Republicans of Notre Dame. It didn’t look the way most people would picture a political debate these days. Representatives from both organizations laid out detailed arguments and then responded to that of the other side without personal attacks and with deliberate, constructive rebuttals. The audience then got to question the debaters. All of this without the shouting and personal attacks that have come to define this cultural moment. All in all, about 18% of their undergraduate population was involved. Talk about shifting the culture.
What’s especially exciting is that the impact BridgeUSA is having isn’t limited to chapters like Notre Dame that have been around for years. New chapters are also seeing success, signaling a growing demand for spaces where thoughtful disagreement is encouraged. Take the University of California, Davis, for example. Our new chapter on that campus began hosting events just this semester and already more than 800 students have attended at least one of their events. That kind of early engagement speaks volumes to the demand we are seeing.
This is what the road to 800 chapters is all about. We are quickly building a resilient network of student leaders and chapters committed to strengthening our civic culture from the ground up. We have made incredible progress, but we’re not finished. Each new chapter brings us one step closer to our goal: a thriving political culture where leaders and citizens engage in respectful, productive dialogue.
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