In the past few years, politics has been more divided. The Political Discourse Assembly, a group of students who meet bi-weekly, is an attempt to bring back the similarly-themed club, Keeping Our Public Politically Informed, or KOPPI, which was permanently halted after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The previous leader of KOPPI, Brayden Stalcup, who is the current co-leader of the Political Discourse club, oversees the meetings of the group.

“The purpose is so that we can talk about politics and share our different views and hopefully understand the other side a little bit more and the different nuances of current events,” Stalcup said.

Stalcup has a vision of what he wanted the Political Discourse Club to be: a place for people of all political beliefs to be welcome.

“You do not have to be a liberal or a conservative. I want it to be that you can just show up, and you don’t have to have a certain political stance and can just be interested in politics or government and you can just talk and listen,” Stalcup said.

As the head of the club, along with senior Nya Schank, Stalcup has certain responsibilities to make the club as engaging as possible.

“The leaders are present at the beginning. We obviously schedule the meetings, and we are hoping to bring some food in so it is a bit more fun and laid back. No one is required to talk; some people just like to listen. It’s just very laid back; there is nothing super rigid and no one has to do any speeches,” Stalcup said.

The presentations often include the latest political topics of the week which the meeting will be about. The first official meeting was focused mostly on establishing new members and on the current large topic of the week.

“This [last] meeting was about the two reconciliation bills. We just talk about different political views and have some banter between us, eat some snacks and it’s a good time,” Stalcup said.

For the rest of the school year the objective of the club and the leaders of it is to have an open environment for political discussion of a wide range of topics, though the club is looking for the

“Well, we all kind of expect to learn about opposing views and see what the other sides believe and maybe think about things that we have not thought about before with other people’s beliefs,” Stalcup said.