Virtual Toolkit
In Fall 2025, DCP has developed two new guides, which are available on OSU’s Pressbooks platform!
Symbols and Public Spaces Amid Division
- A planning process can be most effective before conflicts over symbols divide people into opposing camps. By working proactively, leaders and others within a campus, city, region, or state – what we call here for simplicity a “community” – will also respond more constructively and collaboratively when conflicts over symbols or other divisive incidents occur.
Leading a Community During Times of Conflict
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Preparation ahead of conflict matters. Communities that invest in building resilience are better equipped to navigate conflict. This guide offers practical strategies to help local leaders strengthen community resilience and prepare for moments when conflict may escalate into crisis. It affirms the value of leaders modeling a constructive tone that does not dismiss differing viewpoints but welcomes them and fosters an atmosphere where their expression can occur safely and respectfully.
The Divided Community Project seeks to support community leaders as they identify and address issues tearing at the social fabric of their respective communities. Grounded in dispute resolution, mediation, and dispute systems design theory and practice, DCP brings together, community leaders, activists, law enforcement, and academics to develop practice guidance for community leaders in diverse communities.
Take a look at these DCP election-connected resources:
- A checklist for campus leaders during the 2024 election period, https://go.osu.edu/dcppe24.
- A checklist for bar leaders for ideas to speak out during the 2024 election period, https://go.osu.edu/dcpbar24.
- Consider this video with David Brooks, Becoming Weavers in a Divided Nation
- Developed in Winter 2022 - Ideas for Local Leaders while Listening & Reaching the Public on Intensely Felt Issues while Protecting the Safety and Emotional Well-Being of Staff and Their Families.
Take a look at DCP's Campus-Focused Guidance:
- A third edition of Leading a Divided Campus, https://go.osu.edu/dcpcampus (July 2024).
- A new guide go-published with DOJ’s Office for Community Oriented Policing Service and Community Relations Service, Navigating Conflicts (co-published with DOJ-CRS and DOJ-COPS), https://go.osu.edu/crscampus (August 2024). This resource focuses on law enforcement.
- For materials connected to our #CampusBridge project, click https://go.osu.edu/campusbridge.
For DCP's newest first edition report - co-published with DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and Community Relations Service - titled Tools for Building Trust: Designing Law Enforcement-Community Dialogue and Reacting to the Use of Deadly Force and other Critical Law Enforcement Actions, click https://go.osu.edu/dcpbuildtrust.
In addition to the materials in this toolkit, DCP offers mediation, facilitation and conciliation services to communities at no cost through our Bridge Initiative @ Moritz. In the past three years we've worked in dozens of communities across the country. For more information, look here.
DCP offers this toolkit designed for community leaders, campus leaders, faculty, dispute resolution practitioners and others. We include all of our materials on this site and offer them for your attribution and consideration.
As you read below, consider whether you are a . . .
For more about DCP and our work, reach out to Deputy Director Bill Froehlich at froehlich.28@osu.edu.