Established 1850 Website www.literific.org | President Ben Murphy | |
Institution Queen's University Belfast | ||
The Literary and Scientific Society (commonly referred to as the Literific) of the Queen's University of Belfast is the university's debating society. The purposes of the Society, as per its Laws are to "encourage debating, oratory and rhetoric throughout the student body of the University and beyond".
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The Society was founded in 1850 as a paper-reading society for students of the new Queen's College, with its first president being Edwin Lawrence Godkin. The Literific was also used, during its early years, as a democratic body which could negotiate with the College on behalf of the students until the formation of the Students' Union Society and the Students' Representative Council in 1900. The Society established itself as the principal debating body of the University, however in the 1960s the Literific came under fire and was banned for several weeks in 1964 "in view of the disorders and improprieties of conduct and obscene language". Later in the decade the Society merged into the Union Debating Society (later the Debating and Mooting Society) from which it re-emerged in 2011.
Currently the Society operates as the debating society of Q.U.B. with an affiliation to the Queen's University Belfast Students' Union as well as to the University itself. The Society holds weekly meetings on a particular motion of interest during term, frequently these include guest Chairs or speakers from the worlds of academia, politics, law and the arts.