Pitt debate team takes on Oxford

The debate between Pitt and Oxford was a lot like a dinner theater performance. Friday… The debate between Pitt and Oxford was a lot like a dinner theater performance. Friday afternoon’s debate featured entertaining theatrics, witty wordplay and audience participation.

The two teams argued the merits of the recent smoking ban passed in Allegheny County, with Pitt arguing in favor of it and Oxford in opposition. Participants were encouraged to ask their opponents questions in the middle of their speeches, and the audience was encouraged to participate.

The audience knocked on the wooden chairs to voice approval, hissed their disagreement and called out “Shame sir!” (or madam) to display extreme disagreement as the sides laid out their points.

Pitt professor and director of debate, Gordon Mitchell, introduced the sides and the format to begin the debate.

Oxford students Gavin Illsley and Fraser Campbell argued in favor of lifting the smoking ban. Both students are originally from Scotland and are currently representing the United Kingdom in an international debating tour.

Campbell began the debate by taking a strong stance on the issue, claiming that government regulation of smoking facilities was “Draconian, unnecessary and patronizing.”

He said there is “no need for government intervention” and that “people make bad choices, but they make them independently and rationally and should be free to make these choices.”

Campbell illustrated his view of how detrimental it would be for the government to restrict smoking by suggesting that banishing smokers from bars would force them to resort to going to casinos to smoke.

He said sending smokers, who are likely to have addictive personalities, to gamble is akin to saying “people should be allowed to smoke dope, but only while operating heavy machinery.”

Then, Pitt students Carly Woods and John Rief offered their rebuttal. Both Woods and Rief are in graduate programs at Pitt. Woods, an experienced debater, competed with the U.S. national team in a tour of Japan in 2005.

Rief displayed his ability to think on his feet with clever counterpoints to the Oxford team’s assertions.

Woods began the rebuttal by sarcastically thanking Phillip Morris for “sponsoring and funding the British debate tour” and citing the good looks, charming accents and professional suits worn by the Oxford team as “a smokescreen for a bad position.”

She argued that the government “should be allowed to intervene when people’s rights are being infringed upon,” as they are when non-smokers are exposed to harmful secondhand smoke.

Gavin Illsley, of the Oxford team, responded to Woods’ remarks about the need for separate facilities by likening the smoke that she considered a nuisance to the recent influx of some “loud, obnoxious Americans” into his favorite bar in Dublin.

He claimed that the government cannot regulate the smoke or the obnoxious patrons, and that people may choose to put up with it or go somewhere else.

Rief rounded out the Pitt team’s argument with several examples of how smoking can affect more than one person.

Rief said his support of the ban was based less on health and more on protecting individuals from the negative effects of others’ choices.

Unlike smoking, Rief claimed that his personal penchant for pierogies could not negatively impact anyone but himself since, if he chose to eat one, there would be no fat transfer between himself and the people sitting around him.

The Oxford team gave their closing remarks, when Campbell said “the right to choose also includes the right to make a bad choice,” and government should not impose restrictions on smoking.

Pitt, led by Rief, finished by claiming that smoking is not a choice that only affects smokers. The point of government regulation of smoking is “not to constrain choice entirely,” Rief said, “but to constrain choices that negatively affect someone else.”

And just in case anyone in the audience was not entirely convinced, Rief concluded, “having smoking sections [in restaurants] is like having a peeing section in a public pool. It still disperses.”