Paul Hansen, a teaching assistant and graduate student of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he conceived the idea for an interactive student debate broadcast series largely as a response to what he was seeing in the classroom.
“I had all these really smart, thoughtful students with interesting opinions and they were really good at communicating their ideas,” Hansen said.
According to his current vision of “Campus Debate,” UW-Madison will serve as a host for students from different universities across the country to engage in “argumentative conversation” on controversial issues such as gun control and abortion. Viewers will, in turn, be able to interact with the debaters in real-time, using social media to provide immediate feedback.
While Hansen is the architect of Campus Debate, a private company he started several months ago, he said he hopes the series will eventually be run entirely by UW-Madison undergraduates.
Hansen said one of his goals for Campus Debate, which he sees as an evolving entity, is to give students from all areas of the university an opportunity to get involved, whether through creating computer software for the interactive platform, constructing business plans or compiling topics for discussion. He plans to test his concept later this semester and officially launch the series next fall.
Moreover, Hansen said he hopes to combat the absence of young people in the national dialogue through what will be a televised platform for students to deliberate over “hot-button issues” relevant to them.
“Even when the topic is something like student loans, that conversation is still being had by people who are in their 60s, which doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said. “I want to see college students be more a part of the national conversation and I would like to see that happening here at Madison, on the UW campus.”
Hansen said he is excited to observe the responses to some of the contentious issues he anticipates students will tackle.
“They’re not professional journalists on television, they’re sophomores and juniors,” he said. “At some point somebody’s going to say something that’s going to be received very differently by different people watching around the country and I’m just really looking forward to seeing how those reactions map across age, education, locations.”
