Monday Evenings

On Monday evenings, we get together at the Erasmus University for debating and workshops. We use various debating styles, like British Parliamentary and American Parliamentary. Besides that we often organize workshops during which we deal with skills such as presentation, argumentation, logic and debate strategy.

Why is debating useful?

By practising debating, you develop your public speaking as well as your persuasive and analytical skills. And whatever your study is, skills in presentation, argumentation and analyzing are always very important. The students in our society practise various studies, like law, IBEB, economics, public administration, sociology, physics and medical science.

The skills we train by debating are not only very useful during your study, but also in your future (international) career. Besides that, we debate in English a lot and that of course helps you to improve your English speaking skills.

What do we debate about?

On our Monday evenings, we use various debating formats to discuss both real and relevant subjects. From world politics to genetics and from ethical questions to national holidays, we debate about everything! These are examples of motions that we have been debating about in the past:

‘This house would limit the right to vote to tax payers.’

‘This house would not allow political parties to be based on religious ground.’

‘This house would mandate multinationals operating from the EU to provide a reasonable level of education for their workers form the third world.’

‘This house would ban cosmetic surgery.’

‘This house believes that the Turkish military should stop enforcing the separation of church and state.’

‘This house believes that we should privatise education.’

Tournaments

Besides debating on Monday evenings, we participate in (inter)national tournaments like the Oxford, Istanbul and Paris Intervarsities. Members have won the 2006 World Universities Debating Championships and European Universities Debating Championships in the English-as-a-Second-Language category, as well as the Dutch Nationals. Tournament schedules for the coming months can be found at the 'Tournaments' page on the homepage.

Moreover, the EDS organizes a couple of tournaments on the Dutch debating circuit each year. They are open for all to join.

EDS BP Tournament

In this tournament, the participating teams debate in Dutch and according to the rules of British parliamentary debating (BP). It is the only tournament in the Netherlands that debates in Dutch and follows the rules of BP. Hereby, the tournament offers the unique opportunity to practise BP in Dutch. 

DAPDI

DAPDI stands for Dutch Anglo-Saxon Parliamentary Debating Institute and was first held in 1989. Hereby, DAPDI marked the beginning of Parliamentary Debating in the Netherlands. DAPDI is a five day summer course in which tutors from the Oxford and Cambridge Universities come to Rotterdam to teach debaters parliamentary debate. The summer course consists of three days of workshops and closes with a two-day tournament. The particpants are divided into groups according to there experience and abilities in debating. This guarantees a good training experience for every participant, whether you are just beginning or have already won some tournaments.  

EDS/Cicero Beginners Tournament

This tournament is usually organized in the beginning of February. We provide this tournaments for the group of new debaters that join the debating societies in the Netherlands. The debaters can only participate if they have been a member of a debating society for less than one year.

Socials

Next to being a very educational society, we also have a lot of fun! Our members come from various studies and are not only Dutch students, but we also have a lot of international student members as well. Besides the fun we have at the tournaments that we attend as a society, we also organize a lot of socials for our own society as well. We always close our Monday evenings with drinking beers in the Locus Publicus.