2023 President's Cup Debate

On Thursday, November 9th, 2023, the second annual President’s Cup Debate took place at 7 pm in Memorial Auditorium. Last year, the first annual President’s Cup Debate was held in honor of President Adamson’s inauguration. The Erskine Debate Team, coached by Morgan Roberts (Resident Director), participated this year in honor of this recently established tradition.

The topic for this year’s debate, “The advent of social media has improved human communication,” offered a question of great importance for the rise of such technology among recent generations. Two freshmen students, Caleb Roberts and Carson Bleich argued for the negative position, while freshman, Laurel Reynolds and junior Annie Bruner argued for the affirmative position. Three judges presided over the debate, Bob Santee, Jordan Anderson, and Luis Keelin.

Throughout the debate, the affirmative position argued that the advent of social media has improved human communication. They illustrated this by explaining that social media has allowed for access to a wider audience. Out of the estimated 8.1 billion people alive on planet Earth today, Miss Reynolds claimed that 4.8 billion of those individuals have some form of social media. This mind-blowing statistic gave evidence of the magnitude of the question at hand. The affirmative also argued that social media increases communication through the decreased level of communication time from one person to another. They used the lengthy process of sending a letter in comparison to the ability to send a direct message to a friend across the world in seconds. This, they argued, improves social networking for those who use social media.

The negative position countered the affirmative position by arguing that the advent of social media has not improved communication. Their speech began with a discussion of the negative role that social media can play in cyberbullying. Following this, they discussed the negative impact that the advent of social media has on decreasing the population’s ability to pay attention for longer periods of time. They claimed that because of the instantaneous nature of social media, we no longer maintain the ability to pay attention for extended amounts of time.

After a period of deliberation, the judges submitted their votes, and their decision awarded the affirmative team with the victory for this debate.

Congratulations to the affirmative team represented by Laurel Reynolds and Annie Bruner on a job well done!

Article by Annaleah Gilreath

Picture from Erskine College Academic Teams Instagram