In what many thought would’ve been an easy win for Harvard University’s debate team, an Eastern New York Correctional Facility’s inmates, beat them in a debate.
Here are the details via Essence:
Three inmates, all incarcerated for violent crimes, defeated the esteemed Harvard debate team, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The prisoners are a part of the Bard Prison Initiative, a Bard College program providing college education to qualifying convicts.
The two sides debated whether U.S. public schools “should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students”—the inmate team disagreed.
Following the debate, inmate Carlos Polanco, who is in prison for manslaughter, said he appreciates that he got a chance to earn an education while incarcerated. “We have been graced with opportunity,” he said. “They make us believe in ourselves.”
In my opinion, Harvard shouldn’t be set as the standard anymore. There are a lot of men, especially black men, locked up who are intelligent, but made a bad choice or ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. I feel like some of the best minds of our generation are locked up. People shouldn’t think of Ivy League schools as the place where only smart people go because truthfully there are people smarter than them who don’t have the opportunity to attend such institutions. Congrats to the NY Correctional Facility’s debate team.
