Rutgers University Debate Union
Our Team
Our team generally has about 15-20 active members. Everyone has unique interests and personalities, making it an incredibly fun group to be a part of. From practices, to long drives to tournaments, to team socials, we spend a lot of time together and many of us met our best friends in college through debate.
Our League
We are a member institution of the American Parliamentary Debate Association, or APDA, the most prestigious collegiate debate circuit in the country. It's completely student run and operated with tournaments hosted by different schools every weekend. Having tournaments every weekend means that you'll get to know students from other schools very well, and you can even partner with non-Rutgers debaters!
Our Format
We compete in parliamentary debate. Debaters make arguments based on logical reasoning and warrants rather than statistics and evidence. This gives us incredible flexibility in terms of debate topics and arguments made. There are 2 sides, Government (which presents the case) and Opposition (which argues against it), with two people on each side. In parliamentary debate only your argumentation is judged, not your presentation (which means we dress casually for tournaments)!