How do debate clubs work?

I don’t know if clubs is the right word, I’m talking about the debates that college students participate in that are formalised in some way, like a sport. So when Harvard travels to Princeton to do battle in the debating chamber, what are the rules?

Specifically, is it an exercise in classical dialectic - lose ten points for a logical fallacy kind of situation, or is it more about oration and entertainment? Or both?

For university-level debating competitions in the UK, the rules are usually as follows: each debate is contested by a number of two-person teams, who are split equally between “proposition” and “opposition”. So the proposition side may be two teams of two, who are in competition with each other and with the two opposition teams. The motion is tabled and then the teams have 5-15 minutes to prepare. Each person speaks for 4-6 minutes, in the order: 1st prop. (why we should vote for the motion), 1st opp. (why we should vote against the motion), 2nd prop. etc., with the first and last minute being “protected” i.e. no-one can interrupt with a question (which they may do in the remaining time).

When everybody has spoken, sometimes there are questions from the “floor” (i.e. those spectators who have not taken part in the initial debate) and/or a further (protected) minute for each team to sum up. Then the judges will decide who has won on the basis of scores in a number of areas, typically: style, content, relevance, delivery, teamwork (combining well with your team-mate) and/or other similar criteria.

So in answer to your specific question, both - though the scoring is of course largely subjective.

I’m not entirely clear on how it works at the college level, but I can explain high school (National Forensic League) debate formats (there are several) pretty well, if you’re interested.

For what it’s worth, we described ourselves as a debate team; for me the distinction is in whether the debate is part of a competition.

Well, for one there are different systems of debating, but this is the basic idea which I don’t think changes much (if at all).

Basically, it is about oration and logic. Don’t give up any ground–if there’s a logical fallacy in your argument it’s the other team’s job to expose it. Tem members take turns, and in at least some forms the first person to speak also gets the last word (I’m only familiar with parliamentary style debating, can’t comment on other forms.) So generally–

-Each team takes turns speaking.
-Each person has a specific time allotted to them–you want to get as close as possible to this time, and being way under is almost as bad as going way over, though there is a cut-off point for the latter.
-Each person has to rebut the points of the person before them, rebut any rebuttals to their own team’s points, and bring in new points during this time frame. The last person doesn’t bring in any new points though, and obviously the first person doesn’t do any rebuttals.

Scoring is about how well you argued–if your opponent points out a fault in your argument it’s better for him but not necessarily worse for you. It grades kind of like an essay really, except you can’t get a perfect score, and you can’t do really badly either. (I have no idea why this is, but though the scoring for our tournaments were out of 42 or whatever the number was, there was only a certain range within that that judges were allowed to score–so a 24 might as well be a 0, and 41s and 42s were very definately earned).

I can’t really say more than that–there are different systems of debating, I’m only familiar with one of them and I somehow doubt it’s the one Harvard uses. Some styles give out a subject ahead of time, others it’s on the fly, with a resolution given that usually has absolutely nothing to do with whatever the team decided the subject chooses to debate on. (Be it resolved that monkeys grow on trees. Why does that matter to us? It doesn’t! But I’ll tell you what does…)

Actually, on preview, I think Dead Cat’s response is probably a lot more helpful.

Thanks for the replies. Can you give me any examples of motions for debate? I’m interested in how much political topics play a part, it would be fascinating to hear people debating issues that are widely seen to cause controversy and upset, with their performance being literally judged on their adherence to logic and reason.

Look here or here for some more info on high school debate. :smiley:

Well, I don’t know about other systems, but for us it was at the whim of the Government team. We’ve done everything from “The government should subsidizes tertiary industries*” to “We should lock out the third little pig and let the wolf have him.” I’ve seen debates on censoring video games, mandatory military service, abolishing government above the local level, and whether or not certain breeds of dogs shoudl be banned (We only won that one because the other team committed debating suicide). I’ve also been in debates about moving the moon colony three craters to the left.

If the topics are chosen beforehand, then you’re probably less likely to get the whisical motions.

This’d probably be informative to the thread:

How does one “commit debating suicide”?

You deliberately do or say something that makes it impossible for you to win (because your score would be too low). In this case, the opposition got up and said, much to the annoyance of his partner, “I hate dogs. I was bitten by a dog as a kid. I think all dogs should be banned.” Yeah, good argument there buddy.

Heres how it works in Australia and apparently most of SE Asia at the university level.

There are 3 people per team with 2 teams, the Affirmative and the Negative.

Speaking order goes 1st Aff, 1st Neg, 2nd Aff, 2nd Neg, 3rd Aff, 3rd Neg. Speakers speak from n to n+2 minutes where n is usually somwhere between 4 to 8 (ie, typical times would be 6 - 8 minutes) and substantive comments by non-speakers are not allowed although a formalised heckling in the form of “shame” and “hear hear” is allowed. One clap/ring/thump is made by the ajudicator at n minutes and 2 clap/ring/thumps are made at n+2 minutes and then continual clapping/ringing/thumping is made after n+2.5 minutes. The ajudicator is supposed to ignore everything you say after n+2 minutes.

The role of the 1st Aff is to come up with the foundation for your case and, if appropriate, bringing up a model as to how you would solve the problem proposed. He next lays out the team split which details how you have decided to split the arguments between the 1st and 2nd speaker of the team. Finally, he presents the arguments and then finishes with a summary.

The 1st neg does much the same thing except they also rebut the arguments produced by the 1st aff.

2nd Aff then rebuts everything the 1st neg said and presents the 2nd part of the team split.

2nd Neg rebuts/argues.

3rd Aff then sums up their entire case, shows why the neg’s case is clearly riddled with errors and then tries to convince the audience why they are so clearly correct.

3rd Neg then proceeds to do the same except that it is considered a major faux pas to introduce any new material into the debate as 3rd neg since the other team cannot rebut it.

Scoring is by some utterly byzantine and illogical system which survives by dint of tradition with scores out of 100, 20 for matter (your arguments), 40 for manner (How you laid out your arguments), 40 for method (how well you presented your arguments). In reality, scores are never outside of the 70 - 80 range with a 72 being very poor and a 78 being very good.

In international tournaments, the BP (British Parliment) system is used)

If your argument is a tautology, if your argument rests on geographic or personal knowledge of which the other team is not expected to posess or if your argument has clearly nothing to do with the topic are automatic grounds for losing. Interestingly enough, in Australian university level debating, anything the affirmative proposes which does not fall under those categories must be engaged by the negative.

If you choose to deliberately engage in a debate that is obviously not the intended one, then it is called “squirriling the debate”. For example, 2 debates that I have personally squirreled are:

“That war is effective as a method for regime change” - We argued that the Iraqi war caused the toppling of the Spanish govt and greatly weakened the British, Australian and American govts and would probably (this was pre-election) cause them to lose power.

“That the govt should support gay marriages” - We chose to define gay as happy and argued that the govt should be in support of happy marriages.

The formal debates that have been described are specifically policy debates. In the States there are at least two styles: the team style (whose name I can’t recall) and L-D (Lincoln-Douglas). In the team style the emphasis is on evidence and argument structure, with weight going to speaking ability/style; in L-D the emphasis is on oration, but it hinges on evidence and argument. For example, in the team style everything leads to nuclear war or global catastrophy (sp?), whereas in L-D the arguments are more reasonable in a common-sense sense.

But enough about that. Policy debate:

There are four stock arguments: Harm, Inherency, Plan, & Solvency.

Harm: There is a problem that is harming people. E.g., global warming is going to wipe out life on earth.

Inherency: Absent the affirmative’s plan, the problem will not be solved. E.g., if we don’t paint every building roof white, global warming will not go away.

Plan: The affirmative has a plan that won’t be too harmful. E.g., painting every building roof white isn’t going to cause more problems than it solves.
(This is where the Disadvantages come in: the negative tries to show that the plan will be too painful relative to the harm it purports to solve. E.g., painting all the roofs white will not only wipe all life on earth, it will torture us first as well.)

Solvency: The affirmative has to show that the plan will solve the problem. E.g., painting every roof white is going to save us from global warming.

The affirmative must win every one of the four Stock Arguments to win the debate. If there is no harm, there is no need to adopt the plan; if something else can solve the problem, why adopt the affirmative’s plan? (this is important because the negative can offer a Counter Plan by admiting that there are harms, but their plan is better!); if the plan will do more harm than good, it should be avoided; and if the plan won’t solve the problem, then why bother?

That is the essence of debate.

There are subsidiary arguments such as Topicality; i.e., the affirmative’s arguments don’t actually address the resolution. There are arguments over definitions. They can call into question the evidence offered.

So an affirmative case might be like:

I. Harms: 1. Global temperatures are rising; quote some fact or expert to attest to this. 2. This temperature rise is man made; quote some fact or expert. 3. This temerature rise will cause a shift in where grains grow best; quote fact or expert. 4. This will cause an imbalance in the U.S.-Russian power balance; quote expert. 5. This imbalance will cause nuclear war; quote expert.

II. Inherency…

The arguments continue like this.

The negative will have tons of pre-prepared briefs and arguments for every conceivable argument—being able to come up with something no one else has thought of can leave your opponents with nothing and you win.

From these they lay out counter arguments, hitting every argument made by the affirmative. E.g., the increase in CO[sub]2[/sub] will increase world crop production and ultimately be beneficial for humanity could be used to counter the link where the affirmative claims that the crop zones will shift.

Any argument that you fail to hit is “dropped,” and your opponent automatically wins the argument you have dropped. Because the affirmative has its last constructive and first rebuttal speeches back-to-back, one tactic is called “spreading.” When one tries this, they attempt to put down so many arguments that the first negative rebuttal simply cannot cover them all. When my team was negative, I was the guy who did the first negative rebuttal and I succeed by being good at figuring how to group the affirmative arguments, by talking fast, and by not wasting time on pointless arguments.

The judge tracks all these threads of argumentation, judges who won what, and from that declares a winner. Points or whatever (I can’t recall) are awarded for speaking ability.

Thems the basics of policy debate.

Last thing to note: I am convinced that there ain’t no way to get smarter faster than by joining your debate team. You’ll embarrass the hell out of yourself; but debaters don’t care about that—they know who’s good and who’s not and they have a good sense of humor about it all. But it is an outstanding way to learn to actually think about much of our world. Working for local government, I wish more people debated simply because it could help avoid so many idiot policy decisions.

At the high school level, Lincoln-Douglas debate refers to one-on-one debate of value propositions, not policy. The team policy debate format is simply called policy debate (or C-X at some competitions, though every NFL-sanctioned debate format features cross-examination).
Of course, these definitions may be exclusive to high school debate, and I never did either of these formats competitively (I did student congress and impromptu speaking), so I’m comparatively worthless when it comes to describing how the average L-D or policy debate goes.

Couldn’t agree more. Joining the debate team was the best thing I did in high school. Besides being a great way to hone reasoning and public speaking skills, it puts you in contact with intelligent, articulate people. Also, getting dressed up and walking around looking like hot stuff isn’t a bad way to spend a weekend. :smiley: