Campus Debate - SUNY Brockport, NY

On Tuesday February 17th 2007, The SUNY Brockport Democracy Matters chapter hosted a student debate between the College Democrats and the College Republicans. This was the biggest political activism event organized on campus. Many students felt that is was informative and very necessary because of the lack of civic engagement on campus.

We started to plan the debate two weeks before finals last year. It was at that time that we brain stormed ideas. We discussed varies topics including, abortion, the patriot act, The War in Iraq, inflation on tuition, clean money clean elections, and media bias. We decided that we were going to split the debate into three topics, which was between inflation of tuition in recent years, media bias and the War in Iraq. It was interesting how the topics unfolded during the debates because we didn’t want to follow traditional debate guidelines. In a traditional style debate the regulators assign positions and enforce the rules of the debate strictly. Our goal for the debate was simply to promote students to become involved with this issue. We wanted to advocate civic engagement and show how these political issues have an effect on everyone’s life.

We started to prepare for the debate in late January, when we got back from winter break. We reserved a room, and decided to table in our student union to promote the event. The student government and the American Democracy Project helped fund us by printing flyers and posting them on campus.

The day of the debate we set up the room so it would help invite guest. We posted some Democracy Matters flyers on the wall and positioned the tables so that I would it easier for a student to hear the speaker. The group also made introduction/itinerary packets for the students. In each packet there was a brief discussion about the topic, we found the information on the Internet. (i.e., for media bias we included the story about Obama and his accusations brought against him concerning attending a Muslim terrorist school).

The debate began with an introduction about democracy matters and the clubs. We showed the Public Campaign video so students could understand the basics about our club. Then after the video I gave the structure about the debate. Our chapter decided that we were going to have three separate rounds with an opening and rebuttals with the two organizations. We limited the opening speech to 5 min, and each rebuttal was three minuets. During the debate over the War in Iraq, I stood up after the teams had exhausted their rounds and ask the two teams to continue for another two rounds because it was a hot topic with many students becoming happy or angry. The emotion drawn form each student showed the success of the debate.

When the debate was over we had a question and answer session so that we could, open the floor to the audience and get them involved. It was shocking with the level of interest the students had. The crowd at the peak of the debate reached nearly 100 people. For the most part most students where their for their personal interest, however some professors at the college awarded extra credit, for attending. This, in combination with the flyers and word of mouth promotion, proved to be an effective way.

Some advice for any chapter that might want to set up a debate on their campus would be, had an official timekeeper. It was hard for me to keep time while concentrating on the regulations. I would also think of a way to get pizza or food to the debate. I believe that puts the extra motivation in students, to attend any event. Over all, the debate gained the attention of the whole campus and as a leading organization we plan to continue this success by hosting another debate in late April before finals.

Randall Franklin
DM Campus Coordinator
SUNY Brockport