MSU debate team competitive season begins Friday

The Michigan State University debate team will begin its 2018-19 competitive season on Friday with a tournament in Atlanta.   

This season’s debate topic is “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase statutory and/or judicial restrictions on the executive power of the president of the United States in one or more of the following areas:

• authority to conduct first-use nuclear strikes;
• congressionally delegated trade power;
• exit from congressional-executive agreements and Article II treaties;
• judicial deference to all or nearly all federal administrative agency interpretations of statutes and/or regulations;
• the bulk incidental collection of all or nearly all foreign intelligence information on United States persons without a warrant.”

“There are so many different arguments that can be made about this year’s topic, so it will be interesting to see what direction debate teams go with it,” said Will Repko, head coach. 

This year, the team consists of 13 undergraduate students with majors ranging from accounting and finance to international relations and zoology.  

The full debate team schedule for the fall semester is as follows:

• Georgia State University, Sept. 14-17
• University of Kentucky, Sept. 28-Oct. 1
• Wayne State University, Oct. 20-22
• Gonzaga University, Oct. 26-29
• Wake Forest University, Nov. 16-19

The MSU debate team is a part of the Honors College.