Harvard's prestigious debate team loses to New York prison inmates

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Also, you get free room and board.

Hat tip, Patheos: Prison debate team dominates Harvard champs

Harvard's prestigious debate team loses to New York prison inmates

Prisoners participating in Bard College initiative to provide them a liberal arts education beat Ivy League students who won national title only months ago

Lauren Gambino in New York and agencies
@LGamGam

Wednesday 7 October 2015 13.47 EDT

Months after winning a national title, Harvard’s debate team has fallen to a group of New York prison inmates. ... The showdown took place at the Eastern correctional facility in New York, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club. Last month they invited the Ivy League undergraduates and this year’s national debate champions over for a friendly competition.

A three-judge panel concluded that the Bard team had raised strong arguments that the Harvard team had failed to consider and declared the team of inmates victorious.

“Debate helps students master arguments that they don’t necessarily agree with,” said Max Kenner, founder and executive director of the Bard prison initiative, told the Guardian. “It also pushes people to learn to be not just better litigators but to become more empathetic people, and that’s what really speaks to us as an institution about the debate union.”

The inmates were asked to argue that public schools should be allowed to deny enrollment to undocumented students, a position the team opposed. ... One of the judges, Mary Nugent, told the Wall Street Journal that the Bard team effectively made the case that the schools which serve undocumented children often underperformed. The debaters proposed that if these so-called dropout factories refuse to enroll the children, then nonprofits and wealthier schools might intercede, offering the students better educations. She told the paper that Harvard’s debaters did not respond to all aspects of the argument.

Prison vs. Harvard in an Unlikely Debate

[NightWatcher]

1. The inmate's retort of "or else I'll stab you in the shower" proved to be the winner

It's hard to argue with lifers with nothing to lose.

[olddots]

2. what is your excuse oh NightWatcher ?

[NightWatcher]

3. Excuse for what?

[GreatGazoo]

4. Imagine an America where we honor and use the talents of all of our people.

Beyond divide and conquer, beyond Fox's "culture war", beyond the highest per capita prison population in the world, beyond religion, racism, sexism and everything else that holds us back.

[Historic NY]

5. So whats a Harvard education going for these days...???