Wesselmann advises a change in political perspective

For the second straight year, leadership speaker Paul Wesselmann, the Ripples Guy, spoke to CSC students in the Student Center, this year with the topic of “Shut Up You Stupid Crazy Meany: Changing how we fight about politics, religion, and everything else.”
With roughly 80 students attending, many repeats from last year, Wesselmann immediately began his talk by making the point that he wasn’t trying to change who you vote for in this year’s election, but was curious to see if he could change the way we look at people who support different candidates.
“Not everyone is as rational, informed or as nice as they could be,” he said. “But that is still no reason to not like them.”
He said no matter what, the election is going to happen, someone will win, someone will lose, and all hell is going to break loose.
“Paul did a great job speaking last year and Student Senate voted to have him return this year,” Chris Green, associate athletic director and event organizer, said. “With the upcoming election I thought this would be a great topic for students and staff to hear.”
As there is in this year’s election, there’ are always people with different views. Wesselmann talked about Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg and the late Justice Scalia. Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia had opposite views when it came to politics, but were said to be best friends. They were never seen disagreeing with each other no matter what the situation was.
Wesselmann proceeded to ask, “Who is your Scalia; who is your friend with different views, but you still are good friends with?”
He also said if you want to learn and grow, you need to find the strength and courage to step away from people you know and surround yourself with people who are different than you.
At the end of the presentation, Wesselmann gave every student two separate cards with inspirational quotes on them. Before looking at the cards, students had to swap each card twice with other students. One of the cards that the students received was for themselves, while the other was meant for a friend of their choosing.
In closing, Wesselmann asked the students to leave remembering two things. He reminded the students the definition of empathy, trying to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, and sympathy, feeling sorry for someone. With the upcoming election, we need to show empathy. We need to try to get an idea of why someone believes the way they do about a candidate and not get mad about it.
The second thing Wesselmann asked students to remember was that every single person in the world has a different story. Not everyone is as rational, informed, or as nice as they could be, but neither are you.
“Try to spread some ripples on campus tonight,” Wesselmann said, “Spend 30 seconds of your night trying to make someone’s day better.”