Middle School Tournaments
The New York City Middle School Debate League is the largest middle school debate league in the nation. We have also built several other local and regional parliamentary debate leagues. We offer the nation’s two largest debate formats of public forum debate and parliamentary debate. Each month we host a parliamentary and a public forum debate tournament. We also have a middle school debate club that meets every Saturday and the largest middle school summerdebate program in the nation.
High School Tournaments
Our high school debate program is one of the largest and most successful debate programs in the country. Our member schools have qualified and won top awards at every tournament from local tournaments to the National Tournament of Champions to the International Debate Championships. On any given weekend there are high school debate tournament opportunities for our students. We offer local, regional, out of state and national travel opportunities for our students.
Girls Debate
The NYCUDL created the first debate league in the nation comprised of only female-identifying debaters. The program was founded not simply as a competitive debate league, but also as a holistic program of education which offers workshops, mentorship, leadership preparation, women’s issues study, guest speakers, advocacy training, and other youth development activities.
MSQI
In 2014, the NYCUDL and the NYC Department of Education partnered up to bring curricular debate and after school debate programs to over 100 New York City middle schools to close the achievement gap. The MSQI debate initiative uses an evidence-based argumentation curriculum to increase student literacy, writing, public speaking, and critical thinking skills.
District 7
District 7 is our program in partnership with SONYC. Our topic for March was: Resolved: The U.S. federal government should require all American citizens 18 years and older to vote. We held our first coach workshop where we featured some of the top guest debate instructors, teachers and student presentations as well. Breakfast and lunch was provided.