In a raucous debate last night, conservatives and liberals squared off on the issue of school voucher programs in front of 40 students in Rockefeller Center.
Representatives from the Conservative Union at Dartmouth and the Young Democrats argued the topic "Resolved: Parents should be granted the right to send their children to any school, public or private, using a government-sponsored voucher system or similar plan."
The debate, which pitted CUaD's Scott Rowekamp '97 and Bill Hall '96 against David Melaugh '97 and Tim Edgar '94 of the Young Democrats, was often punctuated by angry shouting matches and roars of laughter from the audience.
The argument centered around money, segregation and politics.
The Young Democrats criticized the voucher system for eroding public schools and causing segregation while helping only a small segment of middle class children.
But Rowekamp and Hall disagreed. "Like there's not segregation now ... there is almost complete segregation in the inner city now," Hall said.
Rowekamp said, "The problem is the public schools that are not doing the job educating the children."
Rowecamp accused the Democrats of wanting more spending, and called school vouchers a "feasible and practical solution."
But Hall said much of the new spending was going to "an entrenched bureaucracy," citing a statistic that teachers represent only 53% of public school employees.
Melaugh accused proponents of the vouchers as "looking at it with blinders on," and called the system "a policy which has inherently race-based elements in it."
Robert Binswanger, a visiting professor in the Education department, moderated the debate and criticized the audience for its perceptions of inner city schools and families. "It is a mistake to label poor districts, parents ... be careful in how you look at inner city schools," he said.
