Students looking to ignite political discussion on campus have founded a Political Union, expected to start its activities next year, said Aartik Sarma '08, one of the group's organizers.
The members hope to create a forum where they "could have an emphasis on discussion and communication," he said, with "less of an emphasis on scoring points" than on creating dialogue.
Sarma said the inspiration for the group was his cross-partisan friendship with his freshman-year roommate, who tended to vote Republican, while Sarma was a "centrist Democrat." The union is modeled after groups at other campuses, such as the Oxford Union at Oxford University in England, the Yale Political Union and the Columbia Political Union, Sarma said.
Some students think there really isn't a need for the group, said Zack Drew '07, president of the College Republicans, because formal debate-scoring points are rarely used in debates between the Brown Democrats and the Republicans.
But Tor Tarantola '08, who is president of the Brown Dems and is involved in organizing the union, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the group "will hopefully serve to increase both the quantity and quality of political debate on campus. Right now there's no true forum for students to debate these issues outside the opinion pages of The Herald."
Tarantola added that he hopes the group becomes "a vital part of campus culture."
Group members are in the beginning stages of planning the organization and will meet tonight to set the rules of their debates.
