Renovation Redux!

One of our goals here on HSPDS is to help debaters, novice and varsity, current and former alike, keep in touch with what is being done on the team with respect to training, board decisions, and more. In this light, we will be expanding greatly upon the News and Alumni News sections of the website, so check back often for ongoing news about the team! Additionally, we will be working on putting together contact lists, alumni news, the newsletter, and so forth.

As always, feel free to email with any questions that you have!

Website Renovation

As some of you may have noticed, there have been a few changes in our site's layout and content--hopefully, for the better! Since the site is being expanded, there may be certain pages which don't have much content, or which even feature broken links; we ask for your patience while we work on rectifying this.

If you have any suggestions for the site, feel free to contact the team, or to email me directly at diannawu (at) fas.harvard.edu. Thanks!

Welcome to HSPDS

The academic year is just beginning, and new and returning arrivals on campus are busy shopping and exploring extracurricular opportunities. That makes this the perfect time to join the Harvard Speech & Parliamentary Debate Society! We are a competitive debate organization: we travel almost every weekend all over the northeast (and occasionally to Bangkok) discussing every topic under the sun and providing our debaters with opportunities to hone their public speaking skills.

If you are a prospective member of the team and you'd like to ask a question about joining HSPDS, please contact our Comp Director, Kyle Bean '10, at comp (at) hspds.org. We are always excited to welcome new members, whether they'd like to join us to compete in tournaments across the country, help us plan high-profile campus events, or simply attend our workshops and practice rounds.

Please join us at our information session and demonstration round:
Wednesday, September 17, 5-6 PM, Lamont Library Forum Room

General Meetings

Time: 7:00 - 8:00 PM, every Monday, followed by practice rounds
Location: Lamont Forum Room, 5th Floor of Lamont Library

The HSPDS Mission

The Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society is Harvard University's premier competitive debating organization, bringing students to American Parliamentary, British Parliamentary, and other tournaments across the US and the world. We have won more APDA National Championships than any other university and we consistently field one of the strongest and deepest teams year after year. In addition, we bring public debate and discourse to the Harvard student community, including last fall's wildly successful debate between Professors Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz.

We are proud of our constitution's purpose statement: "The intent and purpose of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society (HSPDS) is to develop and pursue excellence in public speaking and oration in the Harvard community, and to represent Harvard University in intercollegiate speech and parliamentary debate competitions. In addition, HSPDS will seek to sponsor, organize, and run speech and parliamentary debate tournaments, public speaking events and demonstrations, and community service projects in the best interests of public speaking."

To these ends, we allow members of the Harvard community from any class, any school (including graduate schools), and any debating background to join our organization following the completion of a simple "comp" process. We put a high premium on training, practice, and commitment, but we strongly believe that unnecessary exclusion damages the potential of our organization.

If you would like to find out more, please e-mail our Comp Director, Kyle Bean, at comp (at) hspds.org.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

We would like to thank all our individual sponsors for their generous contributions! Their support will help us work towards creating an endowment for the team. If you are interested in learning more about making a tax-deductible contribution to HSPDS, please contact us at finance (at) hspds.org.

Last Update: November 3, 2008. E-mail us at debate (at) hspds.org with any corrections or technical issues.
The Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society is a registered student organization of Harvard College.