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PSA: I handed a student a fact-check sheet at our campus free speech table and it backfired on me
I run a table for our campus debate club at the student union every other Thursday, and a bit ago I tried something new. Instead of just handing out flyers about a speaker event, I printed a one-page sheet listing 5 claims from both sides of a protest we had here in Ann Arbor and asked people to mark which ones they could check for themselves. My plan was to show folks that most of the shouting points fall apart once you look them up. What actually happened is people grabbed the sheet, took a photo, and started arguing with each other right at the table for like 40 minutes. One guy said the sheet itself was biased because I put 3 items under one side and 2 under the other, which honestly I never even thought about when I made it. Another person told me it felt like a test, and she didn't come to a debate table to be graded. I think the thing I got wrong is that people came to talk, not to do homework, and giving them a task killed the vibe. Has anyone tried a setup like this and found a way to spark real back and forth without it turning into a worksheet moment?
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