By Yasmina Araman ---

The Debate Club has a long and dynamic tradition of dialogue, but it was inactive during the post-war years. According to current President Mohamad Elfakhani, the club was revived in 1998 with the devoted hard work of its former president,Tarek Soueid. Soueid worked on the reopening of the organization--which was very active in the seventies, at a time when powerful freedom of expression prevailed. Indeed, Soueid compiled a representative book of the club including a constitution any debate participant should follow. By respecting simple but nevertheless essential points, "a constructive debate" may be held for the benefit of all the audience. Elfakhani explained that the club has two events traditionally repeated annually. During the student election period, the Debate Club invites all the candidates to present their different platforms and discuss them in order to provide an interactive process linking the students to their future representatives. The second yearly activity of the Debate Club is an assessment, usually held at the end of the academic year, of the performance of the Student Representative Committees, However, this activity met some problems in 1998 due to the "bad behavior" expressed by the SRC members present at this sort of evaluation. Therefore, the experience was not repeated. "When it comes to the organized debates," Mohamad explained, "we sometimes invite speakers who usually support contradictory points of view, but that all depends on the topic agreed to debate upon." However, most of the activities supervised by the club interest numerous students and attract a large audience. For example, among the successful debates was the one held last year featuring former MP Najah Wakim and MP Mohamad Beydoun on sensitive issues such as the Syrian presence in Lebanese territory. The last meeting was scientific in nature, as it opposed convinced creationists to evolutionists. The views differed, but, as Mohamad explained: "Our mission, as a club, is mainly to give students a chance to express their views as well as listen to the views of others on issues of wide interest. It is a very rich two-way process because we are not only able to speak openly, but also to listen to others." This stand supports the Debate Club motto, lines written by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: "They can kill all the flowers of the world... But they cannot forbid the spring to dawn."