Parliamentary Debate Workshop Underway

Faculty pose: Bojana Skrt from Slovenia, Nicole Colston from Vermont, Steve Llano from St John's in NY and Debbie Newman from the UK (coach of England World Schools team). Alfred Snider from Vermont not shown.

The World Debate Institute's 2008 College Parliamentary Workshop is well underway. The intensive five day program is training students in the basics of parliamentary debating by using the WUDC or "worlds" format.

Each day features a mix of lectures, drills, elective classes (several different subjects offered at once) and two debates.

Steve Llano said of day 1:

The first day wasn't just housekeeping matters and such - we managed to get right into the material and had a very nice practice debate on the motion "This House would ban consumption of tobacco products." The round I saw was quite good even though it featured one team that was new to the format, and another that was totally new to debate.

For those of you interested, today's schedule is:

WEDNESDAY

9-11:30 AM
9:00-9:45 AM Lecture: Proposition-Skrt
9:45-11:30 AM Coaches: Session 4
9:45-10:00 AM Prep for debate
10:00-11:30 AM Debate 4 with Critique

11:30-1:30 PM Lunch

1:30-4:30 PM
1:30-2:30 PM Elective 1
2:30-3:00 PM Prep for debate
3:00-4:30 PM Debate 4 with Critique

4:30 PM End of Day