What is Columbia Debate?

The Columbia University Parliamentary Debate team is one of the most successful in the nation. As a team, we are members of the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) and compete at tournaments throughout the nation nearly every weekend. Our team meets every week on Tuesday evenings at 8:00 PM in Lerner E569. We encourage any Columbia student interested to attend. In addition to intercollegiate competition, the team hosts a plethora of events on campus. These events include exhibition debates, student/faculty debates as well as three tournaments a year! The Columbia team hosts the APDA Novice Tournament, Columbia University Parliamentary Debate Tournament and our annual High School Forensics Invitational.

What is Parliamentary Debate?

Parliamentary debate is an off-topic, extemporaneous form of competitive debate which stresses rigorous argumentation, logical analysis, quick thinking, breadth of knowledge, and rhetorical ability over preparation of evidence. It is patterned after the style of platform debate first made famous at Oxford University. The format pits two two-person teams against each other in a contest of argument, wit and rhetoric which roughly simulates debate in a House of Parliament. The Government (proposing) team prepares and presents a case for debate based on a topic or resolution announced only 15 minutes before the beginning of the round. The Opposition attempts to rebut the Government's proposal through counter-argument and refutation. The use of recorded evidence during the debate round is prohibited. A different resolution is debated in every parliamentary debate round. Resolutions are chosen from a wide variety of political, philosophical, economic, cultural and humorous topics, and debaters often have a broad scope in which to define the specific case for debate which is drawn from the resolution. Hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and over thirty other nations participate in parliamentary debate. It is the fastest-growing form of intercollegiate debate in the world.

More about us...

Columbia University is universally considered to have one of the strongest Parliamentary Debating teams in the nation. We are perenially a contender at every tournament we attend. In addtion, we are one of the few tournaments to host an APDA meeting (we host two, one at Columbia Novice & the other at Columbia Regular). Our team's success has been non-stop throughout the 1990s and continuing into the 21st century.

What are some of our accomplishments?

You can find full results from Columbia's debating prowess here. I am also the webmaster of that site and you may consider it part of the project. A summary of our historical accomplishments follows:

World Universities Debating Championships

- Placed teams in the top 50 at 8 different Championships. This ranks us as the 22nd best College/University to compete at the Championship in the entire World!

- In the last 12 years, we've broken to outrounds a total of 6 times! This places us 20th amongst Colleges/Universities that have ever competed in this prestigious, world class event that draws well over 600 debaters from 5 different continents.

North American Debating Championships

- The Columbia team of Jeff Williams (CC '02, Law '05) and Harry Layman (CC '02) competed in the Final Round at the 2001 NorthAms held at Cornell University. The team placed second overall.

- The Columbia team of Evan Mayo-Wilson (CC '03) and Maxim Mayer-Cesiano (CC '03) competed in the Final Round of the 2003 NorthAms held at Johns Hopkins University. The team placed second overall.

- Columbia has broken at least 5 times at NorthAms.

APDA National Championships

- Columbia won the title in 1993 & 1999. In 1993, Morty Dubin & Thanos Basdekis took home top honors for alma mater. More recently, Carissa Byrne (CC '99) and John Castelly (Law '02) won the Championship held at Fordham University in 1999.

- Columbia consistently breaks teams to outrounds in the championship and nearly always has a team in the top 20.

APDA Regular Season

- Over the past three seasons (1999-2002), Columbia has broken to 31 Final rounds, 50 Semi-Final rounds and 94 Quarter-Final Rounds.

- Columbia won the Novice of the Year (NOTY) award in 1999. We placed third in Team of the Year (TOTY) in 2002 and 2000. We placed fourth in TOTY in 2001, and another team finished 5th in 2002. We placed a team second in 1999 in TOTY as well.

- Follow our full results on the Timeline or Results Page.