Student Keystone Pipeline Debate

On Tuesday, February 7, in the Marvin Center Grand Ballroom the College Democrats and the College Republicans hosted a student debate on the Obama Administration's stance on the Keystone pipeline debate.

It may have been a student debate, but the discussion almost immediately took on a tense air. On one side you had the College Democrats and the other the College Republicans. The room was divided with members of each party on opposites sides of the room. Moderators walk around the room offering each person a small piece of paper to write questions for the debaters upon.

The Democrats slightly outnumbered the Republicans, but from the intensity of the debate, you wouldn't know it otherwise. The Democrat debaters each read an opening statement about why they opposed the Keystone pipeline-among which dealt with environmental impact and the fact the the jobs that it would create would only two thousand temporary jobs. The Republicans quickly countered with an estimate that the jobs wouldn't be temporary and would be numbered as many quarter million. Each cited different reliable sources.

However, once the debate quickly began to ignite with the Republicans going on the offensive. They began a very cohesive offensive on Keystone Pipeline and criticized the Obama administration. With one of the debaters referring to the President as "Your President" towards the College Democrats, with which one of democrats "He is your president too." This elicited a round of cheers from the College Democrat members present.

The College Republicans continuously assailed the Democrats bringing up the the Alberta Clipper Pipeline. This is a oil-sands pipeline that Obama previously approved in 2009. They stated that it was similar and that the only reason that Obama refused Keystone Pipeline was because it was in key swing states. The way it came was if the College Democrats hadn't heard of the Pipeline, but it may have had something to do with the fact that they had such little response time.

The College Democrats were calm, cool, and collected. They had asked the other side for a moment to respond, but they weren't readily granted it. The result was that they barely were able to successfully defend their views, much less counter what the Republican debaters were bringing up. The Republicans dominated the speaking time- command a significant about more time than them democrats themselves received.

The arguments and statements began to get slightly out of hand during an attack on Obama's decision with one of he Republicans stating "Now I understand why Obama went to Disney world, he's in fantasy land." The Republican side all cheered, but you could feel the silent shock on the Democrats side that such a brazen attack. Members of the Democrat audience even got involved when one of their debaters tried to respond to a comment the Republicans had just made, just to be spoken over. They wanted the debater to be able to speak and the Republican who had just interrupted told the audience members to let him finish.

It continued to get out of hand when the moderator attempt to stop the debate in order to ask a question. One of the Republican's continued to speak and interrupted him multiple times. The moderator stated when he was able to speak "now just let me interrupt this crazy circus."

The Republican displayed a significant amount of passion and knowledge about the subject and thus made a lasting impression. However, sometimes the interruptions and the passionate comments began to hurt there argument. It hurt their credibility. You could tell that they are both incredible intelligent, but there is a certain point where the passion begins to be mistaken for emotion. And if you speak on emotion, rather than facts. The argument is already lost. They just need to reign it in a bit.

The College Democrats had almost the opposite problem- if it is possible they came across as almost to respectful. They let the republicans speak when they asked, but were not rewarded with the same privilege. The Democrats really earned a significant amount of credibility, just from how they acted. However, you could feel that they might not have been able to make their whole argument in the limited time they had to speak. This is one case where they should have spoken up a lot more. They made valid points, but if debate team has half the time, then they won't be able to make an effective argument.

Both sides made this debate feel like the real thing- meaning it felt like they are elected officials off of a CNN debate. And most importantly, both sides made good points and displayed the best of there respective organization. It was an impressive debate.