Full story:
It may sound like the writing of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but a Harvard debate team lost to a group of prison inmates.
A trio from the Harvard College Debating Union squared off against three men from the Bard Prison Initiative at a maximum security prison in Napanoch, NY. After an hour of debating, the inmates were declared the victors.
“The prison initiative reached out to us to set up a debate, and we agreed. We wanted to be of any help we could be,” Dhruva Bhat, President of the Harvard College Debating Union told Boston.com. “The debating team thinks debating is a powerful tool, and we want to work with other organizations to try to get public debating in more public schools. Debating has changed our lives and this confirmed how powerful a tool education and debating can be.”
In one round, the three convicts had to promote the argument that “Public schools in the United States should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students,” despite disagreeing with it. According to the The Wall Street Journal , the three prisoners raised points the Harvard team didn’t counter.
Despite not having access to the Internet for debate preparation and research, the prison team has previously faced and defeated debaters from West Point Military Academy and University of Vermont, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Not having access to the Internet definitely made it a lot harder for them,” Bhat said. “Clearly Bard has given them a very solid foundation.”
But did the Harvard team go easy on them?
“We definitely did not,” Bhat said. “That would have been incredibly disrespectful of their talent and work.”
This isn’t the first time the prestigious New England college has lost a debate to prisoners. A Norfolk Prison Colony team formed in the 1930’s defeated Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and even Oxford, in various debates.
As far as what I think, I find it impressive, more than impressive really, that inmates with no access to the Internet were able to out debate these college students who had all of the resources in the world at their disposal. While I'm certain that the inmates, themselves, are quite intelligent, it just seems like an incredible challenge. Congratulations to the Bard team are in order, though. This just shows how a little education, and rigorous study, can go a long way. Hopefully the initiative is spread to other prisons or its processes are adopted by others.
What do you all think about this? Do you think there should be more programs like the Brad Prison Initiative available to prisoners?
Also, for anyone interested, I first saw this story on The Young Turks. In their video on the story they offer stats on prison recidivism rates and the effect education has on them. I'd recommend watching it.
