The emergence of people wanting somewhere to debate at the OU, from an idea to a Monday night. There is something deceptively simple about a regular Monday evening. How a regular weekly meeting changes something from an occasional activity into a sense of community belonging.
At 7pm (UK time – be sure to check your device time when it adds to the calendar!) people arrive. The Chair welcomes everyone to our online space for practice and to develop our verbal communication, and introduces a motion. Speakers take their places. The on-screen clock starts. Arguments are made, challenged – online hands go up and reaction tools/ emoticons effectively utilised and debaters reconsider their audience’s points and questions. The active audience listens, questions and eventually votes.
Then, an hour later, it is over. But creating that hour every week is rather more complicated than it looks.
The OU Debate Club began with a straightforward idea; create a space where Open University students could come together to debate. Not everyone arrives knowing exactly what they think. Not everyone is comfortable speaking. Not everyone studies law or politics. And not everyone even wants to take the floor, but everyone is welcome and opinions can be shared. That was part of the point.
The early club was about creating an opportunity to practise discussion, research different perspectives and explore what happens when we are asked to argue both for and against a proposition. A debate could involve speakers, a chair or members of the audience, with each role contributing to the discussion. The ambition was there, but an idea only becomes a community when people keep showing up. That is where the importance of regularity comes in.
For an organisation such as the Open University, where students can be spread across the UK and beyond (reason to check your device time zone!), meeting regularly is not necessarily as straightforward as it might be at a traditional campus university. There is no lecture theatre where everyone happens to be at the same place; instead, an online meeting has become somewhere that people deliberately choose to go.
Monday at 7pm can therefore become more than a time in a diary; it’s a meeting point.
Over time, the club has developed its own rhythm. Motions are suggested by the community, discussed and selected. Debate nights follow a structure, with a chair, timed contributions and an audience vote. There are rules to help keep discussions respectful and give different voices space.
The subjects have ranged widely. Debates have considered questions about the United Nations, MPs’ salaries and patriotism, among many others.
That variety is important because the club is not about having a particular set of opinions. It is about having somewhere to test them, or to challenge yourself to critically think about your own viewpoint!
There is also something satisfying about watching a student activity develop from an idea into something reliable. A club does not become a community simply because it has a name, a webpage or a meeting link. It becomes one because people participate, contribute ideas, take on responsibilities and come back. That may be the most interesting part of the OU Debate Club’s story.
It is not simply that there is now a debate every Monday. It is that Monday has become a place to meet.
And perhaps that is how many university communities begin, not with a grand institution, but with a small group of people deciding that they will keep turning up.
You can see when the next Debate Club meeting will take place on the Open SU events page.
