The Great Debaters - A Great Opportunity
If you are in the debate community and you have not yet heard about the movie The Great Debaters, you must have been living in a cave recently! I am excited to see the movie as it looks like a great story and an inspiration, but I am even more excited to have this opportunity for lay audiences to get to know the amount of work and effort it takes to do this activity successfully. The Urban Debate League has worked hard to use this movie as a method of networking amongst past debaters, the regular public and current debaters. The website, Greatdebaters.org includes a lot of great resources for individuals wanting to use the film to make connections. In addition, you can register to sign up to win passes to screenings, explore the social networking sites dedicated to the film, get involved in community activism that relates to the film, and read news and blog entries about the film.
I have already had multiple people on my campus bring up the film and how exciting it is for debate in general, so I think it is really going to be a touchstone for programs across the US to draw attention from and make connections with individuals in their communities.
In addition to these great resources, there was a post in the news/blogs section about an online debate contest that the Princeton Review is hosting. Here is that information:
Submitted by jdkittre on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 04:22.
The Great Debaters is inspired by a true story and underscores the extraordinary power of debate. As ideas traverse our world more rapidly than ever, the need for debate has grown in our lives. To celebrate the purpose and potential of debate, The Princeton Review, for the first time ever, is hosting an online debate contest for anyone who has a voice and wants to be heard.
Two people–an affirmative and a negative debater–put together a debate on one of two topics, film it, and post it on Princeton Review’s site. The topics are:
Topic 1
Universities should use affirmative action to encourage minority enrollment.
Topic 2
MySpace is Your Space: It is ethical for colleges, parents, or employers to get information about people from social networking websites
Contest prizes include free video rentals for a year (from Blockbuster Video), plane tickets (from jetBlue Airways), an autographed poster (from The Weinstein Company), and many others.
If you have ideas about how to use the film to make community and campus connections and encourage more participation in our activity, please include them in the comments section!
