URDU hosts guest speakers to prepare for supporting high school debate programs in the City of Rochester

February 2, 2023

This week UR Debate hosted three excellent speakers who shared their wisdom on debate, education history, and leadership. These speakers were invited for their expertise in these areas as guest speakers for the History of High School Debate community engaged learning course being taught this semester. Students are working to establish and support debate teams at several high schools in the City of Rochester, NY (our fair city!)

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UR Debate Hosts Fall 2022 Brad Smith Memorial Debates

September 26, 2022

This past weekend the University of Rochester Debate Union (URDU) hosted teams from across the northeast for the Regional Season Opener for Policy debate. We were again joined by Brad Smith’s wife, Jane Smith, who spoke about Brad, handed out our trophies during our awards ceremony, and honored the tournament by judging a debate for us on Saturday. We are thankful for Jane’s help in remembering Brad, and her own longtime support of our program!

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URDU Starts Season in New York City at the Social Justice Debates Opener

September 19, 2022

The UR Debate Union traveled to New York City to start off its debate season at the Social Justice Debates Opener. We rigorously debated on the topic of whether worker cooperatives are preferable over the traditional private firm model and learned a lot! The Social Justice Debates are a style of debate under the Civic Debate model, which sees debate as a public-facing activity meant to engage our communities and participate in civic discourse.

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2022-23 Season

September 6, 2022

The Debate Union has had a fantastic start to our season: Our pre-season retreat on Lake Ontario was informative and a great opportunity to jump-start research for the year and shake off the rust!

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URDU hosts public debate this Sunday

March 18, 2022

UR Debate is pleased to invite you to a public debate this Sunday, March 20th, at 2pm in Kessler Forum, iZone. The topic will be: "Should Harry Potter be canceled?" We look forward to an energetic debate about art, authorship, cultural production, social movement strategies - and many more issues! We hope to see you there!

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