On Oct. 29, the DU College Democrats and DU College Republicans met in Davis Auditorium for their quarterly debate. For the fall 2014 quarter, there were three topics of interest. They included capital punishment, government financing of student loans and concealed carry on campus.
“The topics were chosen because they were important to the election in Colorado,” stated Connor Everson, the DU College Democrats President and a senior from Seattle studying public policy. “[Overall] the debate went very smoothly, everyone had great points and I feel that there was no clear winner. Both sides struck a balance between using evidence and emotional appeals – we all left the debate with more knowledge about these issues.”
There were a total of six debaters and two moderators. Everson served as one of the moderators, while the other was Tyler Dumon, the DU College Republicans Acting Chairman and a senior from Chicago, Illinois.
The Debaters included Josh Giacalone, a sophomore from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania studying public policy; Max Goldberg, a sophomore from East Hampton, Connecticut studying applied computer science and political science and Spencer Rivera, a sophomore studying finance from Arvada, Colorado.
Three of the debaters are also part of the DU Debate Team: Brandon Arnold, a freshman from Pensacola, Florida studying philosophy, Kelsey Betz, a senior from Bailey, Colorado studying political science and Meagan Wilson, a freshman from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The DU Democrat debaters were Arnold, Giacalone and Goldberg, while the DU Republican debaters were Betz, Rivera and Wilson.
The debate began with a discussion about capital punishment. “As society has evolved, the vast majority of the international community has come to view the state sanction billing of what it truly is: bad policy and morally wrong. It is time for Colorado and the United States to join nearly every other western democracy and eliminate the death penalty once and for all,” said Goldberg.
The DU Republicans disagreed with what the DU Democrats had to say.
“Capital punishment ensures the punishment fits the crime as well as creating a sense of closure for the victim’s family. Denying another person the full extent to their life is effectively a forfeiture of his own life,” said Betz. “Any less of a punishment does not do justice to the victim nor does it fulfill the goals of our beings. A lesser sentence such as life without parole drops murder to the level of non-lethal or violent crimes, and implies it is not a drastically worse offense.”
The debate then moved to the next topic: government financing of student loans.
“Today, the average college student will graduate with $26,000 in student debt. These numbers have been on the rise, along with college tuition for the past 50 years. However, these numbers reached their peak and started to level out in 2009 when the federal government stepped in and started issuing direct loans from the federal government. We believe that government funded loans are the best option that we should take into account,” said Arnold.
The DU Republicans disagreed with the effectiveness of government funded loans.
“America is the land of opportunity, and education plays a key role in that. We believe that higher education should be accessible and affordable but we believe that when going through the government neither of those goals are reached. What we see is [that the] government keeps handing out money and trapping people into expensive college loans,” responded Wilson.
The topic of concealed carry on campus began with the DU College Democrats asking questions of the DU College Republicans.
“College Democrats have no problem with challenging the status quo, but that challenge has to be rooted in some type of justification, said Giacalone. “So, I ask the College Republicans: Why do students need to carry guns on our campus? Is there a threat to the DU community that currently exists that is so great it can only be solved by allowing our students to carry guns on campus? We believe that there is not one problem that this campus has that is actually caused by a lack of armed students.” Rivera disagreed with the argument that guns would not help students fight threats on campus. “Eliminating our second amendment right is not a rational response. There [are] colleges such as Colorado State University and several technical colleges in Utah that have allowed concealed carry on campus. There has not been a single increase in violence. None of these twelve schools have seen incidents with the result of gun violence.”
At the conclusion of the debate, Everson thanked the audience for coming out and the debaters for putting a lot of hard work into their respective topics. The next quarterly debate is planned for March of Winter quarter, according to Everson.
