Debate is the the cornerstone of democratic culture and a quintessential feature of University life. There is tradition of formal University-based debates in a number of Institutions in the English-speaking world and, following in this tradition, Volta has promoted its own Volta Debating Society (VDES) with the aim to offer students basic debating skills, foster internal debate on major topics and encourage an inter-collegiate debating context. The style of these debates will follow that of British Parliamentary debates and the ultimate aim of these activities is to assemble a University-wide team that will represent the University of Pavia at the annual World Universities Debating Championship due to take place in Belgrade in 2022 and in Madrid in 2023.
The College thanks Arianna Armanetti (currently an MSc student in Physics, earlier a College undergraduate) for promoting the debating culture inside Volta and for providing a basic course of debating sklls in the academic year 2020/21and for acting as the first secretary to the Volta Debating Society for the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/22. The following College students were the the first members of tthe VDES: Federico Bertelli, Giulia Bonasegale, Raffaele Castellucci, Andrea Cerbone, Mircea Codrea, Davide Gianatti, Giacomo Maggiorano, Chiara Mogliazza, Alessandra Ria and Marco Silvestri. Internal and inter-collegiate debating events will be reported in the News & Events section of the College web site and details of the 2021/22 'The Art and Technique of Debating' Course will be published alongside the details of other College Courses (personale development, language, computing, etc) in the earlier part of the 2021/22 academic year.
The following students enrolled in the VDES for the academic year 2021/22. Arianna Armanetti has agreed to act as Secretary to the Society for ths academic year.
Leonardo Beretta
Raffaele Castellucci
Federica Paparella
Elia A Perli
Ines Shopi
Mehdi Alipour Masoumabad
Arianna Armanetti
Annalisa Barone
Andrea Caiulo
Paolo Catarsi
Mircea A Codrea
Davide Gianatti
Abimbola C Ogunyele
Alice Salacrist
Marco Silvestri
Image: a debate of the Cambridge Union, the oldest known University Debating Society (founded 1815).
Volta Debating Society (VDES)
