The Power of Knowledge: Harvard Debate Team Loses to Prison Debate Team

Napanoch, NY – In a true testament to the raw talent, and stellar minds being wasted in American maximum-security prisons, three men incarcerated for violent crimes at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility defeated the elite debate team from Harvard University.

On one side of the stage sat three Ivy League undergraduates from the elite Harvard debate team, while sitting opposite them were three men serving felony prison sentences for violent crimes.

After an hour of intellectual sparing the fast-moving debate was over, with the judges declaring victory for the inmates after weighing the veracity of each teams’ arguments.

The audience, which included almost 75 fellow participants in the Bard College Initiative, burst into applause when it was announced that the prison debate team had bested the Harvard team.

Prior to the start of the debate, team members discussed hopes of inspiring other inmates.

“If we win, it’s going to make a lot of people question what goes on in here,” said Alex Hall, a 31-year-old from Manhattan convicted of manslaughter. “We might not be as naturally rhetorically gifted, but we work really hard.”

The prison debate team is the product of the Bard College Initiative, which began in 2001. The program is a rigorous academic experience offered to the men incarcerated at the Catskills, New York penitentiary through the Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

The forward thinking program allows motivated inmates the ability to develop their academic talents through hard work and dedication. Roughly 10 inmates apply for each opening in the program through interviews and written essays.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal:

There is no tuition. The initiative’s roughly $2.5 million annual budget comes from private donors and includes money it spends helping other programs follow its model in nine other states.
Last year Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, proposed state grants for college classes for inmates, saying that helping them become productive taxpayers would save money long-term. He dropped the plan after attacks from Republican politicians who argued that many law-abiding families struggled to afford college and shouldn’t have pay for convicted criminals to get degrees.
The Bard program’s leaders say that out of more than 300 alumni who earned degrees while in custody, less than 2% returned to prison within three years, the standard time frame for measuring recidivism.
In New York state as a whole, by contrast, about 40% of ex-offenders end up back in prison, mostly because of to parole violations, according to the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Members of the Harvard team were clearly impressed by the prisoners’ intellectual prowess.

“They caught us off guard,” said Harvard debate team member Anais Carell, a 20-year-old junior from Chicago.
The prison debate team has actually been scoring victories over some of the nation’s most elite debate teams.
In their first debate in spring of 2014, the prisoners beat the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, then defeated nationally ranked University of Vermont.

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/prison-debate-team-beats-harvard/#49kjj1PX6c3Gbjzd.99


Er ....   Quill?   LOL

Saw that on the news. S'wonderful. Well, my daughter already graduated from Harvard Law School, so she probably left a big vacuum.

Calls for a celebration. Lol.

I'll tell you why they won in a debate:

You learn more from living,
and doing,
and mixing with different people
and having different experiences than you do from simply reading about all of the above.

That's why.

eddie wrote:I'll tell you why they won in a debate:

You learn more from living,
and doing,
and mixing with different people
and having different experiences than you do from simply reading about all of the above.

That's why.

Nah...cons have more time on their hands to prepare.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:I'll tell you why they won in a debate:

You learn more from living,
and doing,
and mixing with different people
and having different experiences than you do from simply reading about all of the above.

That's why.

Nah...cons have more time on their hands to prepare.

Ah. I'm glad to know that all those hours that lawyers, psychiatrists, etc spend reading, Studies and theses....are all,forgotten within a few years lol

See, when you do things and live things and experience things, you have a better, all-around knowledge of what it is, you're deBatng.

Most topics are never simply black and white, but many shades of grey.

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Nah...cons have more time on their hands to prepare.

Ah. I'm glad to know that all those hours that lawyers, psychiatrists, etc spend reading, Studies and theses....are all,forgotten within a few years lol

See, when you do things and live things and experience things, you have a better, all-around knowledge of what it is, you're deBatng.

Most topics are never simply black and white, but many shades of grey.

Well, far be it for me to say that books are the best way. Obviously training doesn't do any good for policemen. All the military can do is blow shit up. And medical personnel do more harm than good, contrary to the Hippocratic Oath.

And for Christ sake, look at all the money we put into these institutions. Doctors charge too much. The military and local constabulary are the largest line items in the budget.

Give me a street-smart lawyer every time. One who never read the cases and could barely talk his way into a C- in law school. For he shall inherit the earth...great god almighty!

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:

Ah. I'm glad to know that all those hours that lawyers, psychiatrists, etc spend reading, Studies and theses....are all,forgotten within a few years lol

See, when you do things and live things and experience things, you have a better, all-around knowledge of what it is, you're deBatng.

Most topics are never simply black and white, but many shades of grey.

Well, far be it for me to say that books are the best way.  Obviously training doesn't do any good for policemen.  All the military can do is blow shit up.  And medical personnel do more harm than good, contrary to the Hippocratic Oath.

And for Christ sake, look at all the money we put into these institutions.  Doctors charge too much.  The military and local constabulary are the largest line items in the budget.

Give me a street-smart lawyer every time.  One who never read the cases and could barely talk his way into a C- in law school.  For he shall inherit the earth...great god almighty!

Er - thought you said your father and one of your daughters were doctors?

sassy wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Well, far be it for me to say that books are the best way.  Obviously training doesn't do any good for policemen.  All the military can do is blow shit up.  And medical personnel do more harm than good, contrary to the Hippocratic Oath.

And for Christ sake, look at all the money we put into these institutions.  Doctors charge too much.  The military and local constabulary are the largest line items in the budget.

Give me a street-smart lawyer every time.  One who never read the cases and could barely talk his way into a C- in law school.  For he shall inherit the earth...great god almighty!

Er - thought you said your father and one of your daughters were doctors?

Yes, they are.  But that doesn't help the medical establishment.  Nor are they responsible in this case.

The harm done by the medical establishment is more financial in nature.  Unless the US goes for a single payer plan, the health care system in the US is a slave to the market system.  That means you are either rich enough, or you die.  Healthcare is every bit as important as defense, yet the two are not treated as equivalents.  It is incredible, but no one in American questions the socialized military establishment; yet, there is fierce opposition in this country to socialized medicine.

But that's a side matter.  Eds is saying that no one--physicians included, presumably--benefits from book learning.  I shifted the subject when I suggested the problem with the medical establishment is the expense.  I believe eds was criticizing their skill and the necessity (or lack thereof) for their education.