The results were impressive when Union's new Debate Club participated in its first tournament at Brown University last month.
Coached by College Librarian Thomas McFadden, two Union teams competed. Team A won four of five rounds; Team B, three of five.
“For our first time competing, these results are phenomenal, and I am confident that we will be coming home with awards in the near future,” said Sara Renzulli '07, a team captain.
McFadden notes that the current Debate Club represents “the revival of a long tradition. As part of its mission to educate future leaders, Union College has encouraged and taught debating and public speaking skills from its earliest years.”
While much of the debating at Union was once done by such College literary societies as Philomathean and Adelphic, organized intercollegiate debate was also popular for many years, McFadden noted.
“Union typically debated other New England and eastern schools, such as Amherst, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, and Williams,” he said.
The new club competes in the prestigious American Parliamentaray Debate Association (APDA). Other schools in the APDA include Johns Hopkins, Williams, Boston University, Harvard, Columbia, Vassar and Brown.
In parliamentary debate, there are two sides, the government and the opposition. The government presents a prepared case while the opposition has to come up with counterarguments extemporaneously. At the Brown tournament, topics of debate ranged from the new NBA dress code to Star Wars, to private school vouchers.
The Club plans to attend eight more tournaments this year.