A student calls across the room as another scrambles to quickly respond before the clock runs out.
At Northwestern, debates don’t just happen in classroom settings: They unfold in meeting rooms, practice rounds and tournaments across the country. For dozens of students, debate isn’t something they left behind in high school. It’s a passion they continue to pursue across campus.
In both the NU Debate Society and the Parliamentary Debate Union, students gather each week to research arguments, practice speeches and build a community around the love of persuasion.
Decades of debate in the Hardy House
Founded in 1855 within the School of Communication, the NU Debate Society is one of the oldest student organizations on campus and has won a total of 15 national championships.
The team competes in the National Debate Tournament-Cross Examination Debate Association debate, a format based on a single national controversy, which is selected at the beginning of each academic year. That topic guides every tournament round through the Fall and Winter Quarters. For the 2025-2026 year, the topic is collective bargaining rights.
Communication Prof. Daniel Fitzmier said the topics are broad and open-ended, allowing balanced controversies to develop throughout the year.
The team attends eight to 10 tournaments annually, starting with one hosted at NU before traveling to universities across the country. Typically, about 20 undergraduates are active members at any given time. Fitzmier speaks with students before they arrive on campus, but the team size remains steady as seniors graduate and new members join.
Recruitment happens in several ways. Some high school debaters reach out directly to Fitzmier, while assistant coaches often spot talent when judging high school tournaments.
The team is based out of the Hardy House, a house gifted by debate alumni in 1980 and located on Chicago Avenue. The house functions as the center of the program, Fitzmier said. It’s a practice space that contains the coaches’ offices and hosts much of the team’s daily life. Two floors of conference rooms feature large tables where members gather to prepare for debates and hold practice rounds.
“There are debate conversations happening at the house almost 24/7,” Fitzmier said. “If you went there at 10 a.m., there would be people getting ready to do practice speeches. If you went there at 10 p.m., the staff would be gone, but there would be people studying for an exam tomorrow or watching videos from a tournament they were just at.”
Practices are largely individualized and centered on two-person teams. Rather than holding regular full-team practices, debate pairs schedule meetings with coaches based on their availability and goals.
Students on the team are able to devote as much as they want. While members are expected to produce at a minimum one research project each year, many take on additional work as they progress through their time at NU.
“We have high competitive expectations in the sense that the students who want to devote a significant amount of their undergraduate efforts towards debate are really putting a lot into it,” Fitzmier said. “They want to win debate tournaments and try to win the national debate tournament.”
Preparation for the season starts with a three-week-long preseason before the Fall Quarter begins. During this time, students research the year’s debate topic and begin building arguments for the upcoming competition season.
Weinberg first-year Sophie Leonard said the preseason was also an important opportunity to build community within the team.
“There were a couple of upperclassmen that really reached out and forged this awesome team atmosphere of inclusivity. We would go out to lunch all of the time and hang out outside of just doing work,” Leonard said. “It was a really great chance to bond not only with other incoming freshmen that I had sort of known before but with everyone on the team.”
She added that many of her closest friends at NU have come from the debate team.
For her, debate has become more than just a competitive activity. The experience, she said, has given her a place on campus where she can spend time with people who share the same interests.
“I have found such an amazing sense of community through debate,” Leonard said. “Just having a place to come and be surrounded by people with similar interests and a similar hobby as me has been such a great part of my experience.”
A newer organization on campus
While the Debate Society focuses on research-heavy policy debate, NU’s Parliamentary Debate Union offers a different format with less barriers.
The club competes in British Parliamentary format, where competitors receive the topic just 15 minutes before the round and must build an argument using their existing knowledge within those 15 minutes.
The club is relatively new but has seen significant growth in recent years. McCormick junior Alex Arnold said that during his first year, the organization had fewer than five members.
“It’s been pretty heartwarming to see this club grow,” Arnold said. “When there were just a few people in the club, we had to think about whether there was any actual longevity in the club. It turns out we just needed the right leadership.”
Today, the team competes mainly in international tournaments, both online and abroad.
Over the past two years, members have attended the World Universities Debating Championships, traveling to Panama City in 2024 and to Sofia, Bulgaria in 2025.
“It’s so cool to be able to compete against people from so many different places. We’ve made a lot of friends,” Arnold said. “In Panama, we became friends with some people from Davidson College, because why not? Some of us are still friends with them to this day.”
The club has around 20 to 25 members who come to weekly meetings. Early in the Fall Quarter, meetings feature introductory lectures to teach new members the fundamentals of debate. As the year goes on, the club holds practice debate rounds during meetings.
The Parliamentary Debate Union allows members to decide how competitive they want to be. Some students attend tournaments and prepare by reading the news extensively and practicing outside of meetings. Others simply show up to meetings, participate in practice debates and leave it at that.
Co-President and Weinberg junior Natalie Roots-Nowakowski said the team is intentionally designed to be completely barrier-free.
“Everybody is welcome,” Roots-Nowakowski said. “Everyone is able to simply show up to our meetings, have a good time with friends and talk about things that really matter.”
Looking ahead, the team hopes to expand into American Parliamentary debate, a format where one side prepares a case ahead of time while the opposing team has only 15 minutes to respond. This would mean travelling around the country to debate.
At the same time, members plan to continue competing internationally in British Parliamentary tournaments and hope to return to the World University Debating Championships again.
“We’re definitely hoping to go to worlds again. This year it’s in Ottawa, Ontario,” Roots-Nowakowski said. “We’re really looking forward to that opportunity and hopefully being able to bring more people because it is so much closer.”
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