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Most first-year students arrive at school knowing how to follow a schedule, but not necessarily how to enter an academic community. They learn where the dining hall is before they learn how to disagree with a classmate, ask an instructor a serious question, or listen to someone whose experience is not their own. For that reason, the proposal to require two moderated civic forums in every first-year seminar is worth defending. Schools should require a short civic forum sequence for first-year students because it builds a shared academic habit, gives isolated students a reason to belong, and teaches disagreement before conflict moves online.

The strongest objection is not that civic forums are useless; it is that required attendance can make them feel like another compliance exercise. Students already sit through orientation sessions about safety, advising, technology, and conduct. If a civic forum is designed as one more lecture, students will treat it as background noise. That concern matters. A required event can become empty if the school uses the requirement as proof of learning. But the answer is not to make the forums optional. Optional events are usually attended by the students who already feel confident joining campus conversations. A required forum creates a common starting point, and the quality of the assignment depends on what students are asked to do there.

The first reason to require the forums is that they turn participation into a visible academic habit. One study of first-year seminars found that students who attended structured campus events were more likely to talk with faculty outside class. That matters because the hardest part of school is often not the reading itself but the student's belief that they are allowed to enter the conversation. A moderated forum gives the student a script for that entry: prepare a question, hear a disagreement, and respond with evidence rather than volume.

The second reason is belonging. Schools often talk about belonging as if it were a feeling that appears after students receive enough encouragement. In practice, belonging is built through repeated contact with people who expect a student to show up. Bell hooks argues that engaged classrooms ask teachers and students to become responsible for the learning space together. A forum sequence creates one small version of that shared responsibility. The forum is not valuable because every student changes their mind in one evening. It is valuable because the class practices the slow work of listening while the stakes are still low.

Finally, required civic forums teach disagreement before students retreat to faster, harsher spaces. A student who only encounters disagreement through comment threads learns to answer quickly and defensively. A student who has to sit in a room, summarize another person's point, and then make a claim with evidence learns a different habit. The school is not forcing agreement. It is requiring practice in the form of attention that academic work already demands.

A first-year requirement should never be defended just because the school can enforce it. It should be defended only if the requirement teaches a habit students will use beyond the event itself. Civic forums meet that test when they are moderated, connected to course readings, and followed by reflective writing. A school cannot promise that students will agree with one another, but it can teach them how to stay in the room long enough to learn.

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994.