About Us
We accept new members all year round!
Joining the Team
There are no tryouts. Anyone can join the team and participate to the extent that they want to. However, your expected commitment increases with your level of tournament participation: debaters who want to travel to tournaments will be expected to attend practice regularly, put in work outside of our scheduled practices, and contribute to team research.
Format of Debate
We compete in the British Parliamentary (BP) debate format. In this format, there are four teams of two debaters, with two arguing for and two arguing against the resolution. Resolutions change every round, and teams are given limited time (about 15 minutes) to prepare their arguments, without the help of Internet resources. The teams debate in front of a panel of judges, which will then determine the ranking of the teams from 1 to 4.
Tournaments
The team attends both online (ex: Oxford, Yale, University of Seattle) and in-person tournaments (ex: USC, UC Berkeley). Each year, we also send some debaters to national tournaments. In the most recent history, we have had multiple teams and judges break to finals and win at these prestigious tournaments. To see a video of one of our teams winning Novice Nationals at USUDC 2020 please click here.
To learn more, come to practice from 6-8 PM on Tuesdays. Check our Instagram (@ucladebateunion) for up-to-date practice location.