The Levan Center at Bakersfield College has started a series called Conversations, where relevant topics are discussed by faculty, students and people of the community.

“In terms of my time on the campus, other than just in the classroom, it was one of the nicest things I’ve been involved in,” said BC philosophy professor Reggie Williams.

Williams explained that Conversations is looking to be a once a semester event.

The first Conversations already took place on Oct. 20, where Williams was asked to be the faculty member to run it. Williams brought up the topic of the wealth gap between black and white Americans.

“It went really well. There were 130 people there. There were almost no seats. There was fantastic participation from the audience,” said Williams.

The Gadfly Cafe events at BC are a similar series. The difference between them, as explained by Williams, is that the Gadfly has a faculty member explain the topic of discussion for about five minutes then the faculty member is to facilitate discussion for the remainder of the event. In Conversations, the faculty member is to play a larger speaking role throughout the whole event.

Williams explained that he believes that the first Conversations was beneficial to the students and others who attended, and the future Conversations events will be beneficial as well. He said that he got a lot of good feedback from the event from students and members of the community.

The next Conversations event will take place in the spring semester, and the topic of discussion will be about artificial intelligence, robotics and other areas of futurism.