New York Prison Inmates Trounce Harvard University’s Debate Champions

A debate team of three inmates, convicted of violent crimes including murder and currently incarcerated at the maximum security Eastern New York Correctional Facility, have just stunned and defeated the prestigious Harvard debate team that had won three of four American Parliamentary Debate Association national championships.

The three inmates, Carl Snyder, Dyjuan Tatro and Carlos Polanco, were tasked with arguing that public schools in the United States should be allowed to deny enrollment to undocumented students (students whose parents entered the US illegally). They effectively made the case that the schools which serve undocumented children often underperformed. The debaters proposed that if these so-called dropout factories refuse to enroll the children, then nonprofits and wealthier schools could step in, and teach them better. A three-judge panel concluded that the team had raised strong arguments that the Harvard team had failed to consider and declared the inmates victorious.

The Harvard team members said they were impressed by the prisoners’ preparation and unexpected line of argument. “They caught us off guard,” said Anais Carell, a 20-year-old junior from Chicago.

How easy or difficult was it for the inmates to prepare for the debate as they didn’t have access to the Internet?

“The debaters of the Bard Debate Union at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility are methodical in their approach to their craft. They take the stacks of materials they are provided [by the prison administration] and carefully comb through each item, extracting the specific pieces of data they will use to support their claims. They are critical of one another and push each other to improve. They practice constantly… Our debaters spend hundreds of hours preparing in the three to four months they usually have to get ready for a debate, in addition to carrying full course loads.”

A debate team of prison inmates given access to education programs beat the Harvard debate team yesterday! Knowledge wins.

— Tai Lopez (@tailopez) October 8, 2015

Who’s smarter than a Harvard Debate team? New York inmates: http://t.co/bJcOJuwWcu pic.twitter.com/tDvCLVyWyA — CNN (@CNN) October 7, 2015

The prison debate team in 2014 first defeated the US Military Academy in West Point, New York. It went on to beat a nationally ranked team from the University of Vermont. But the Harvard victory is the biggest of them all.

The convicts were part of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), a program run by Bard College that seeks to provide college education to qualifying prisoners at Eastern New York Correctional Facility and to give a second chance to talented and motivated inmates hoping to build a better life. BPI leaders say that of more than 300 alumni who earned degrees while in custody, less than 2% returned to prison within three years, the standard time frame for measuring recidivism. According to the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, about 40% of ex-offenders end up back in prison, mostly because of parole violations.

BPI, which is funded through private donors, offers more than 60 academic classes each semester across its satellite campuses located at six medium- and maximum-security prisons in New York State. Inmates with a high school degree or equivalent apply for the program with written essays and a personal interview. Admission is competitive, with nearly 10 inmates applying for every spot available.

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