Brown Debating Union

History

The Brown Debating Union has existed since 1824 and its many members include CNN founder Ted Turner, who was a vice-president of the Union. It began to organize formal debate tournaments with peer institutions, as well as on-campus disputes for student groups, during the early twentieth century. By the 1950s, the debate program had become part of the Brown University English Department. Competing on the National Debate Tournament circuit, the debate team was fairly successful.

However, in the 1980s the English department stopped funding the team, and the BDU became an autonomous student organization funded by the Undergraduate Finance Board. Without the funds to participate in costly policy debate, they participated in parliamentary debate. The Union currently competes in debate tournaments held by the American Parliamentary Debate Association. Their annual debate tournament is typically held during the last weekend of October every year.

National competition

The Brown Debating Union competes mostly in the American Parliamentary style of debate as a member of the American Parliamentary Debate Association, an intercollegiate debate association with roughly fifty member universities across the United States. The BDU competes at tournaments across the country that take place on Fridays and Saturdays each week. The Union is also involved in APDA governance, with Yidi Wu '17 currently serving as APDA VP, Finance, and Richard Cambo '16 currently serving as a member-at-large on the APDA executive board.

International competition

The Brown Debating Union also competes internationally with great success. The BDU has competed at the North American Debating Championship, the World Universities Debating Championship, as well as Inter-Varsity tournaments at Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale. The Brown Debating Union also won the inaugural North American Women's Debating Championship in 2015 and were semifinalists at the 2014 North American Universities Debating Championship.

Campus debates and community service

The BDU has hosted several on-campus events, sometimes in conjunction with other student organizations at Brown. In the fall of 2014, one BDU member debated PETA on the ethics of animal testing. In the spring of 2015, a member of the Brown Debating Union debated a member of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy on the question of full legalization of drugs. In addition, the BDU hosts the Radcliffe Hicks Debate annually during the spring semester. 16 sophomores and juniors are invited to compete against one another in a single elimination tournament format to promote discourse on current events on Brown's campus. Each round is judged by a member of Brown's faculty, with the final round being judged by a three judge panel that includes Brown's president Christina Paxson.

Brown debaters help the community in many ways, not least of which is the annual Rhode Island Urban Debate League Community Debate. You can find more information at the Rhode Island Urban Debate League's own website.