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Columns::February 18, 2002
Senior VP Costello will step down March 1
State legislator will give Black History Month lecture
International symposium examines change in Europe
Holiday schedule remains unchanged
Public relations work wins awards
Taking the initiative
What went wrong: Accounting expert discusses accountability issues at Enron, Arthur Andersen
Campus Closeup
Kudos
Administrative changes
Bug’s-eye view
Under construction
Campus News
The British are coming: Oxford Union to debate team of UGA students
By Kim Cretors
kcretors@uga.edu
On Feb. 21 at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, a debate team from the Oxford Student Union at Oxford University in England will match wits with a team of debaters from UGA. The debate, “Genetic Research and Manipulation Has Gone Too Far,” will be judged by a distinguished panel, including UGA President Michael F. Adams, law professor Peter Appel, the Hon. Norman S. Fletcher (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia), Sen. Douglas P. Haines, political science professor Thomas P. Lauth, the Hon. Lawton Stephens and Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker.
The debate came about through UGA’s presence in Oxford. The UGA-at-Oxford Program was established in 1989 by English professor Judith Shaw; 13 students spent the summer at Oxford that first year. Over time, the program expanded to include history and political science, religion and biology classes. In 1991 a spring quarter of study was added, and in May 1999, under the guidance of President Adams, the university purchased a three-story Victorian house in North Oxford for use as UGA’s Oxford Residential Center. Approximately 160 students per year can live and study in the house.
“In the last decade, UGA at Oxford has become one of the leading study-abroad programs in Oxford, and it is now one of only three American programs--and the only program at a public university--to operate year round,” says Shaw, now director of the program. “Many UGA students join the Union upon arriving in Oxford, and, because of UGA’s status in Oxford as a respected sister institution (UGA students actually hold associate membership at Keble College during term), a healthy rivalry has developed between Oxonians and UGA students. This debate, then, should be especially exciting.”
UGA’s debate team, comprised of members of the Demosthenian Literary Society and the Georgia Debate Society, will argue that genetic research has not gone too far. The UGA debaters are team captain Carl Pyrdum, a graduate instructor in the UGA at Oxford Program; Todd Lewis, a junior from Montgomery, Ala., studying political science; Ph.D. candidate and assistant coach for the UGA Debate Union Ken Rufo; Mary Webb, an undergraduate from Lexington who’s pursuing a joint degree in English and political science; and team alternate Jack Cohoon, a senior from Augusta, studying history and political science.
Arguing in support of the idea that genetic research has in fact gone too far will be the Oxford Union Debate Team. Oxford’s team includes Fraser Campbell, treasurer of the Oxford Union, now reading law at Pembroke College; 2001 Oxford Union president Nick Mason, just back from a trip to Mount Everest where he raised funds for war orphans; Karen Price, president-elect of the Oxford Union and first female Head of School at Lancing College; and Dominic Wells-Cole, described as “a rising star of the Union debating world,” a student of modern history at St. Peter’s College, Oxford.
The Oxford Union was founded in 1823 as an arena for the free exchange of ideas among students and became the forum for political debate in Oxford. Many British prime ministers have served as presidents of the Oxford Union, and such world figures as Robert Kennedy, Mother Theresa, Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela have addressed its members.
As is the tradition for Oxford Union debates, members of the debate teams will appear in white tie.
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