Inmates at a New York prison are generating a reputation for their debate team that has defeated teams from West Point, the University of Vermont, and now Harvard.
According to The Associated Press, the Eastern New York Correctional Facility has an arrangement with Bard College that allows inmates from the former to take course with professors from the latter. The result has been a prison debate team that is quickly building an impressive resume.
After winning the National Title this year and the World Championship the year before, Harvard's renowned debate team took a trip to Napanoch at the prison's invite. The Ivy League debate team left as graceful losers.
"There are few teams we are prouder of having lost a debate to than the phenomenally intelligent and articulate team we faced this weekend," the team wrote in a statement posted to Facebook. "And we are incredibly thankful to Bard and the Eastern New York Correctional Facility for the work they do and for organizing this event."
One argument the inmates had to make in their victorious effort was to argue in favor of undocumented students not being guaranteed enrollment at U.S. public schools, The Wall Street Journal reported. But debating is about having the discipline to make good arguments about matters one might not agree with, which is what the inmates were able to do.
Alex Hall, a 31-year-old incarcerated for manslaughter, told the newspaper the debate was partially about educating the public on the lives of prison inmates.
"If we win, it's going to make a lot of people question what goes on in here," he told The Journal before the debate. "We might not be as naturally rhetorically gifted, but we work really hard."
Max Kenner founded the Bard Prison Initiative in 2001 in order to offer a basic liberal arts education for inmates. Furthermore, it costs the inmates nothing and its funding comes from private donors.
"The most important thing that our students' success symbolizes is how much better we can do in education in the U.S. for all people," Kenner told The Huffington Post. "Our program is successful because we operate on a genuinely human level."
