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发帖数: 9531 | 1 It may sound like the writing of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but a Harvard
debate team lost to a group of prison inmates.
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A trio from the Harvard College Debating Union squared off against three men
from the Bard Prison Initiative at a maximum security prison in Napanoch,
NY. After an hour of debating, the inmates were declared the victors.
“The prison initiative reached out to us to set up a debate, and we agreed.
We wanted to be of any help we could be,” Dhruva Bhat, President of the
Harvard College Debating Union told Boston.com. “The debating team thinks
debating is a powerful tool, and we want to work with other organizations to
try to get public debating in more public schools. Debating has changed our
lives and this confirmed how powerful a tool education and debating can be.”
In one round, the three convicts had to promote the argument that “Public
schools in the United States should have the ability to deny enrollment to
undocumented students,” despite disagreeing with it. According to the The
Wall Street Journal , the three prisoners raised points the Harvard team
didn’t counter.
Despite not having access to the Internet for debate preparation and
research, the prison team has previously faced and defeated debaters from
West Point Military Academy and University of Vermont, according to the Wall
Street Journal.
“Not having access to the Internet definitely made it a lot harder for them
,” Bhat said. “Clearly Bard has given them a very solid foundation.”
But did the Harvard team go easy on them?
“We definitely did not,” Bhat said. “That would have been incredibly
disrespectful of their talent and work.”
This isn’t the first time the prestigious New England college has lost a
debate to prisoners. A Norfolk Prison Colony team formed in the 1930’s
defeated Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and even Oxford, in various debates. |
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