Debate Society
About
With over 50 members, the William & Mary Debate Society is the only active Debate organization on campus. The team is composed from a broad range of academic years and majors from Math to Government, Computer Science to pre-Med and everything in-between.
There's no such thing as a "standard"-type of William & Mary Debater and our teammates include members of Club Sports teams, Monroe, Murray and Sharpe Scholars, sorority sisters and fraternity brothers, members of Student Government, Young Democrats and College Republicans, editors and writers for campus journals and publications, and a wide-variety of individuals active in all corners of campus life.
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The William & Mary Debate Society participates in tournaments throughout the country through the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) and on the British Parliamentary (BP) circuit. APDA is a debate league with members across the country that hosts weekly tournaments from September to April each year, culminating in an annual national championship featuring the best teams in the country. We also compete at BP tournaments regularly in order to prepare to send teams to the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC).
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American Parliamentary Debate is a format of competition pitting two teams, each with two-members each, against each other. One team is slotted as the "Government" team (Gov) while the other becomes the "Opposition" team (Opp). The Gov team may start a debate by presenting a motion on any topic of their choosing; motions may be traditional such as "This House believes the United States should conduct airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities," historical such as "It is 1939. You are Adolf Hitler, and we believe you should refrain from invading Poland," or even whimsical: "You are the Rapper from the Kanye West song 'Blame Game," and we say you should honor your word and go out and shoot a bootlegger." After presenting the motion, the Opposition team will have time to ask questions of the topic before the teams engage in 6 alternating speeches with the Gov defending the proposition and the Opp advocating against it. For a full description of Parliamentary Debate, see APDA's about page here.
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British Parliamentary has 4 teams: Opening Government (OG), Opening Opposition (OO), Closing Government (CG), and Closing Opposition (CO). At these tournaments, motions are set by the tournament organizers, and cover topics from social justice to economics to international relations to philosophy. For example, "This House Opposes the ideal that one ought sacrifice themselves for the greater good" or "This House Believes That re-incarnation is better for the individual than an eternal after-life." There are 15 minutes of preparation time, then 8 total speeches, two from each team. While closing and opening teams are arguing for the same side of the motion, they must make distinct cases and distinguish themselves from each other. For more details, you can find more details here.
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If you have any questions for us, you can contact us on social media (William & Mary Debate Society on Facebook, or @wm_debate on Instagram), or email us at debateteam.wm@gmail.com.