Brown Debating Union
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The Brown Debating Union (BDU) is a student-run debating organization at Brown University in
Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts ...
, United States. The team competes in American Parliamentary Debate and British Parliamentary Debate. Currently the team is ranked 2nd in North America.


History

The Brown Debating Union has existed since 1824. It began to organize formal debate tournaments with peer institutions, as well as on-campus debates 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 The National Debate Tournament is one of the national championships for collegiate policy debate in the United States. The tournament is sponsored by the American Forensic Association with the Ford Motor Company Fund. History of the NDT The ...
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 Parliamentary debate (also referred to as "parliamentary" or "parli") is an academic debate event. Many university-level institutions in English-speaking nations sponsor parliamentary debate teams. In addition the format is currently spreading to ...
. 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. Since 1882, the BDU has held the Radcliffe Hicks Debate, an annual contest for sophomores and juniors. First and second-place winners receive monetary prizes from the Hicks endowment.


Structure

The Brown Debating Union is run by a board of students elected every winter. The board is responsible for organizational decisions including handling finances, running tournaments and training students. The board consists of eight members: the president, vp of operations, vp of finance, vp of administration, vp of recruitment, logistics chair, social chair and communications chair.


National competition

The Brown Debating Union competes mostly in the American Parliamentary style of debate as a member of the
American Parliamentary Debate Association The American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) is the oldest intercollegiate parliamentary debating association in the United States. APDA sponsors over 50 tournaments a year, all in a parliamentary format, as well as a national champion ...
, an intercollegiate debate association with over fifty member universities across the United States. The BDU competes at tournaments across the country that take place on Fridays and Saturdays each week. It also hosts its own parliamentary debate tournament twice a year, and has been involved in APDA governance, with BDU members serving on APDA's executive board.


International competition

The Brown Debating Union also competes internationally, notably at the
North American Debating Championship The North American Debating Championship is the official university debate championships of North America. It is sanctioned by the national university debating associations in the United States and Canada, the American Parliamentary Debate Associati ...
, the
World Universities Debating Championship The World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) is the world's largest debating tournament and one of the largest annual international student events in the world. WUDC is held in the British Parliamentary Debate format (involving four team ...
, as well as Inter-Varsity tournaments at Oxford, Cambridge, and Hart House. BDU debaters won the inaugural North American Women's Debating Championship in 2015 and were semifinalists at the 2014 North American Universities Debating Championship.


Notable members

*
Ted Turner Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III (born November 19, 1938) is an American entrepreneur, television producer, media proprietor, and philanthropist. He founded the Cable News Network (CNN), the first 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he fo ...
was Vice President of the BDURonald H. Humphrey, ''Effective Leadership: Theory, Cases, and Applications'', Los Angeles: SAGE, 2014, .


References


External links


Brown Debating Union
{{University debating Brown University organizations Student debating societies Student organizations established in 1824 Youth organizations based in Rhode Island