In the latest ranking of universities released by timeshighereducation.com, Harvard University ranked 6th, indicating the high quality of learning in the institution. However, inmates from New York City’s beat the Harvard debate team in a competition held on Friday at the maximum security Eastern New York Correctional Facility.

Members of the prisoner’s debate club are those who attend classes inside the jail taught by professors from the nearby Bard College, reports The Guardian. They debated over the proposition that public schools be allowed to deny enrollment to undocumented students.

The inmates opposed the proposition. Because the Bard-educated prisoners raised strong arguments that the Ivy League team failed to consider, the three-judge panel favoured the inmates.

The Bard team proposed that non-profit organisations and richer schools could intercede and offer the undocumented students better education if the public schools, often referred to as “dropout factories,” refuse these young migrants. Mary Nugent, one of the judges, notes that the Harvard team, made of undergraduates, did not respond to all aspects of the argument, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Harvard debate team was humble in its defeat. A few days after the event, the team said in a statement, “There are few teams we are prouder of having lost a debate to than the phenomenally intelligent and articulate team we faced this weekend.”

It was not the first win for the Bard team which previously beat the cadet team from West Point Academy and students from the University of Vermont. However, in April, the prisoners’ team lost to West Point in a rematch. Since their debate has become an annual event, the Bard team is preparing to match wit against the future military officers in spring.

Preparing for the debate is more challenging for the Bard team since members can’t use the Internet to research. Requests for reading materials are coursed through the jail’s administrators which could take weeks to approve.

“Debate helps students master arguments that they don’t necessarily agree with,” explains Max Kenner, founder and executive director of the Bard prison initiative. He adds that debate pushes people to learn not only to be better litigators but also become more empathetic.

Bard offered the inmate liberal arts education programme in 2001. Besides Eastern, the school offers it also to five other prisons in the Big Apple. It has 60 academic classes each semester at its satellite campuses in New York. Applicants must have a high school degree or equivalent and must pass written essays and a personal interview. For every available spot, there are 10 applicants, Kenner says.

The purpose of the programme, according to Kenner, is not to reform criminal justice but to engage and relate to inmates “who have great capacity and who have the dedication and willingness to work hard.” However, it has also helped cut return rates since among the over 300 ex-convicts who earned degrees from Bard, less than 2 percent returned to prison within three years which is the benchmark of recidivism. In contrast, the statewide rate has been higher than 40 percent for decades.

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