Speech & Debate Practice Sessions

Seminars

Debate Tournaments

Party!

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WEEKLY GATHERINGS:

• Once a week we meet on campus to practice our rhetorical and analytical skills. Even though you are not obliged to attend our weekly meetings, we highly encourage you to attend them to become a more persuasive and intelligent public speaker. During our weekly meetings we will be discussing/debating cases, record you on video, develop analytical models, and demonstrate effective presentation styles.

SEMINARS:

• Every other month a special meeting may be set for a presentation by a guest speaker providing us with inestimable insights into logical and organized argumentation, the way lawyers break down cases, stylistic devices and much much more. Frequently the CDS invites distinguished professors of other colleges, politicians, and lawyers to lecture on various topics in history, world politics, and rhetoric, e.g. "Classical Theory in Contemporary Debate", "Fallacies en mode", "Ethics in Business", and "Russian Politics in the 90s".

DEBATE TOURNAMENTS:

• Every other weekend (Friday, and Saturday) the Carnegie Debate Team competes at debate tournament at other colleges and universities in the United States or other parts of the world as part of APDA (American Parliamentary Debate Association). To find out more about this year’s tournament schedule, browse the official APDA site at http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/debate/Debate.html

   

  This season we plan to attend the following tournaments

  : CDS Tournament Schedule

• In addition to parliamentary debate, CDS competes at several mock trial tournament, and several other public speaking competitions.(Almost) every year, the Carnegie Debate Society hosts its very own tournament, drawing competitors from all around the world. In the past, we co-hosted one of the smallest, but also one of the largest debate tournaments in the US.

WE SAID PARTY!

Life, Universe, Parties, and the Rest of the World: Traveling around the country, CDS debaters make use of their time between debate rounds and frequently have been seen to go to the movies, visit a museum, see a Bulls or Knicks game, attend a rock concert, see a musical, or to just simply co-mingle with the debaters from other colleges at the aprés-debate festivities arranged by the tournament hosts.

Once in a while, the members of CDS are also caught on the basketball and squash court running behind some obnoxious ball that refuses to remain in our hands even if we use our most elababorate vocabulary to cast the ball’s existence.

Some other members attending a debate tournament at Columbia University in the Big Apple, have been observed entering a culturally offensive play, called "Cats". "I drink, therefore I am", is the famous saying of a CDS alcohol destruction mafiosi.

One CDS debater has been mugged in Philly. (It’s not supposed to be enticing, but we thought that it should be mentioned. Hehe.) Some female CDS debaters have been seen in a New Haven coffee shop contemplating the content of the "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy". In summation, we are students just like you. We may be a little more obnoxious, eloquent, and quixotic, but that’s why we debate....

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