Debate Groups Merge at UNC

News and Observer, Thursday Morning, May 28, 1959

 

The long tradition of student debating at the University of North Carolina marked a new development last week when the Dialectic Senate and the Philanthropic Assembly merged.

 

Creation of the joint Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Society ended 164 years of separate meetings for the student orators.

 

Each group has been able to proclaim itself "the oldest active college debating society in the United States." When the university opened in 1795, students organized one "Debating Society."

 

This soon split into the Concord Society, which later became the Philanthropic Society, and then the Phi Assembly, and the Dialectic Society, alter known as the Di Senate.