In its 150th year, Debate Society still teaching students the power of discourse

David Romanelli likes to tell the story of the first Harry Potter debate held at Loyola University Chicago in 2015. Romanelli, an instructor in the School of Communication, has been coaching the Debate Society at Loyola for nearly 30 years.

“That year,” Romanelli says, “I had a student in his class who wasn’t interested in debate, had never seen or read Harry Potter. But she came because we have free food. All of a sudden, the topic got on the portrayal of women in the books and films, and she got into it.”

That student’s experience captures the broad allure Romanelli has built into the program. “I approach it with an open door,” he says. “Students come and go as they want. Some will come to events like the Harry Potter Debate or the Great Food Debate, where we just open the doors, have some snacks and kids sit around and debate things like ketchup is horrible and deep-dish pizza is overrated. But there’s usually 15 to 20 people who really commit to the competitive side of it. We really try to have space and programming for everyone.”

Ever since it was established in 1875, as the Chrysostomian Debate Society, named for Archbishop John Chrysostom who was known for public speaking, the team has drawn broad interest, with 107 students signing up for the group last fall. And while their reasons for joining may vary, each student brings a curiosity and motivation to explore and discuss current social issues in the long-held Jesuit tradition of open-minded discourse. According to Romanelli, Jesuits were among the first to practice debate in the United States.

Their tradition was on vivid display at the Civic Debate Consortium’s Social Justice Debates Fall Championship. Held at Loyola for the first time last November, the event was the culmination of a fall series of debates focused on housing justice. The largest Social Justice Debate Championship ever, the competition drew scores of students from 18 universities across the country and one visiting international team.

The goal of the two-day event, held in Corboy Law Center on Loyola’s downtown campus, was, “to provide an educational opportunity,” Romanelli says. “The tradition of academic debate is part of who we are as an institution.”

Loyola’s oldest student organization, the Debate Society remains dedicated to its mission to “promote the cultivation of eloquence, the acquisition of sound knowledge, and a taste for literary studies,” but has evolved from its origins. Once a largely homogenous group consisting of white men, today’s team represents an eclectic mix of genders, ethnicities, and academic disciplines.

This year, engineering major Isabel Gliniecki (BS ’27) serves as club president. Sociology major Astrid Palardy (BS ’27) is treasurer. They were the two “returners,” or varsity team members, representing Loyola at the championship. Other debaters included Megan Zarndt Buettner, Anna Ciancone, Justin Conrad, Kylan Elliot, Sirus Munjak-Khoury, and Gavin Ros.

At the championship, the students debated the impact of housing policy and its relationship to homelessness and housing justice. Gliniecki estimates she spent 20 hours preparing for the debate and developing her position that zoning law reform would help decrease homelessness by permitting higher density housing.

In addition to learning about housing justice, the students had to learn a new debate style. The Civic Debate Consortium, the umbrella organization for the championship and intercollegiate debate at large, uses a form of the Cross-Examination Debate Association (CEDA) format based on traditional pro-con argumentative structure.

Typically, the Loyola team practices British Parliamentary debate style, which, Palardy says, doesn’t require a lot of preparation. For those, she keeps up with the news and “just shows up. It forces you to think on the fly and gather your thoughts really quickly.”

The CEDA format was, “the exact opposite,” she says. “It was a lot more research based. You pre-write the topic months in advance.”

She and Gliniecki felt ready on the morning the event opened. “I was feeling confident,” Palardy says. “There were a lot of familiar faces but also less familiar faces. It was like a new league.”

“We were very confident that we had won the first round,” Glinieki added. “And then we didn’t. The judges said I was using too much technical jargon.”

But, “we learned the limits of our case,” she says. “We thought we had prepared really well, and, obviously, it’s unfortunate we lost. But we got very helpful feedback. You still learn a lot, and that’s the most valuable part. That’s always been Loyola’s paradigm for our debate team. We don’t particularly care about winning. We want to learn about these subjects and be more well-rounded and better public speakers.”

Romanelli expressed a similar view. The true value of competition is, he says, “what we learned about housing policy from hearing the other teams and their research and perspectives. They say things we wouldn’t hear if we didn’t do this.”

The insight and encouragement of expert judges also proved immensely valuable. “Dan Burke (JD ’84), adjunct professor in public interest and former Director of HUD’s Multifamily Midwest Region, was phenomenal,” Romanelli says. “He was talking to students about jobs, saying, ‘This is something that could be your career. If you’re interested in helping with the housing crisis, there’s a space for you.’”

It’s a message Romanelli hopes students will take to heart. “Trophies are nice, but you can’t lose if you do debate.”

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