Emerson Debate: Creating A Legacy
The Emerson College debate team was founded in 1948, and within 6 years developed a national reputation for its members' fierce competitiveness as well as their powerful and persuasive arguments. In the 1950s and 1960s, the team triumphed over groups from Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton which were considered among the best collegiate debate teams in the country.
Emerson was consistently rated one of the top ten schools in the United States for debate, resulting in the team being selected to attend an international Expo in 1967.
The team won multiple competitions, including the New England Forensic Conference, the Eastern Championship, and the American International College Tournament. They were lauded as the most competitive and successful organization at Emerson College. By the end of the 1970s, the team had won hundreds of awards: between September 1974 and January 1975 alone they were awarded 35 trophies.
