What's the toughest thing to get people to talk about? Crime? Race? How about commercial development? Funding city services? These are the types of social topics that are being tackled around the country in "study circles," an approach to community-building and public forums championed by the Topsfield Foundation of Pomfriet, Conn., which created the Study Circles Resource Center in 1989.

The concept of study circles, a guided approach to community dialogue and problem solving, was presented at a "brown bag" lunch sponsored by JSU's Department of Urban Planning on April 10. The presentation was given by Carolyne Miller Abdullah, a professor at Alcorn State and a senior associate with the Study Circles Resource Center.

"Everybody in the community is a valuable insider," said Abdullah, laying out one of the principles of the program. With study circles, the idea is to get people from all walks of life to meet as citizens and discuss things frankly, while gaining mutual respect. The Study Circles approach is in contrast to top-down "town hall" meetings, run by administrators and politicians. It's also different from a typical grass-roots approach, which generally does all of its discussing and coalition-building before taking answers to the powers-that-be.

Instead, a Study Circles (http://www.studycircles.org) approach includes people who don't necessarily agree with one another discussing issues not with the goal of reaching a consensus, but rather to simply find some common ground.

A single study circle is comprised of eight to 12 people who meet over a number of weeks to discuss a particular issue. The Study Circles meetings are guided by booklets provided by the Study Circles Resource Center, with titles such as "Building Strong Neighborhoods," "Police and Residents Building Relationships to Work Together" and "Facing the Challenge of Racism and Race Relations."

Along with the materials, which are provided at low cost, each study circle has a trained facilitator—a local who has been through a Study Circle Resource Center facilitator seminar. That facilitator is expected to act impartially, working to foster respect among the louder participants and include quieter folks in the discussion.

Abdullah said that the Study Circles system had worked to great effect in other communities. In Delray Beach, Fla., a group called "Mad Dads" organized study circles to find solutions to youth crime; the result was a program to rehabilitate the houses of older neighbors, a parent's support group, a youth basketball program and the creation of an after-school center. In Buffalo, N.Y., a study circle initiative to improve community and police relations resulted in a new "Park and Walk" program that encourages officers to walk their beat, getting to know residents.

Study circle meetings don't happen in a vacuum—to take on a community-wide problem, a diverse coalition of groups must sponsor the study circles. Then, diverse individuals need to be enlisted to participate—it's when hundreds of people participate that the approach casts a wide enough net of diversity and inclusion that it starts to see results.

But the quality of results might be worth it. With regular citizens airing differences, a community might be more tolerant, effective and democratic when it comes to making decisions.