In a debate between Harvard College students and those from any other college, some might guess that the Harvard students would win. And if the other side was a group of inmates at a maximum-security prison? Maybe even more so.
That would be a mistake.
Inmates from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility defeated the prestigious Harvard debate team in mid-September as part of the Bard Prison Initiative, a program run by Bard College to provide college education to qualifying prisoners, according to the Wall Street Journal.
If you knew the prison debate club’s record, you might have voted for the inmates. They’ve defeated a nationally ranked team from the University of Vermont and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. (They lost a rematch against West Point, and it’s become something of a rivalry.)
