Crime, trade and the Trump administration — today’s top issues took center stage at this semester’s debate between the NYU College Republicans and College Democrats on Thursday. At the event, the College Republicans introduced its new president, who took over as head of the group when its previous leader resigned after making national headlines for comments about Stern first-year Barron Trump.
The debate, hosted by the Politics Society at NYU in the Kimmel Center for University Life, featured three representatives from each club who discussed heightened security on the subway, tariff policies and the Russia-Ukraine war. Gallatin senior Isabella Karpuzyan, the Politics Society’s events director, said the group encouraged each team to choose “politically neutral” topics in an effort to avoid the contention of last semester’s debate.
“We hope that this could continue on and this legacy can continue to foster because it’s so important, especially in this current political environment,” Karpuzyan told WSN. “It’s just a good way to get students to listen to what their actual peers think about what’s going on.”
Karpuzyan and CAS senior Maanika Gupta, the communications director at the Politics Society, agreed that efforts to calm the quarrel were successful — noting that compared to the last debate, there were fewer insults, interruptions and other aggressions. They also attributed the shift in dynamic to the calming of post-election tensions and being in an auditorium with a more formal stage, compared to a large classroom.
The on-campus political groups have been hosting their biannual debates for decades. Karpuzyan told WSN the tradition remains the Politics Society’s biggest event of the semester, and which generally sees an audience of several dozen students.
“It almost humanizes that opinion on the other side, and in a way where it’s close to you,” Gupta told WSN. “It’s not like watching the presidential debate, where the ideas feel so radical — it’s people who have a shared identity as NYU students, and I think that it humanizes the political landscape in a really special way.”
Heightened security
The debate kicked off with the most controversial topic of the night — New York City’s deployment of law enforcement on the subway and in train stations to conduct random bag checks and enforce MTA rules. While the College Republicans argued that the measures promote safer travel, the College Democrats quickly raised concern about racial disparities in policing.
The College Republicans’ president — who requested to remain anonymous — argued that violent crime declined by 20-25% after New York City implemented stricter surveillance following 9/11. Democrats’ representative Chloe Williams disputed this argument, claiming that these stop-and-frisk tactics were disproportionately affecting minority groups and that 90% of the people stopped were people of Black or Hispanic descent.
“I have been racially profiled, I have been followed through stores because of my race, I have had white women tell me that I am not supposed to be in a store,” Williams said during the debate. “So if this is not about race, I don’t know what it is. New Yorkers deserve a transit system that is both safe and just — the time for action is now.”
Williams’ fellow Democrats added that the risk of racial profiling is a risk to health and safety, and referenced George Floyd and Eric Garner’s deaths at the hands of police as examples of potential dangers. The Republicans garnered uproar from the crowd when they refuted that Floyd’s death was justified, stating that he had “fentanyl and shot a pregnant lady.”
The College Republicans said they “agree that statistical disparities exist,” regarding who is policed, but that they don’t override concerns about citizens’ safety. The subject comes after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in December that an additional 250 National Guard members will be deployed on the subway to strengthen security.
Trade
Debaters then turned to a discussion about President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape foreign relations by augmenting tariffs by up to 200%. Trade has been at the forefront of Trump’s orders since he took office, having imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, 20% tariff on imports from China and 25% tariff on steel and aluminum.
Jesse Schuman, a speaker for the College Democrats, argued that tariffs act as a consumption tax that disproportionately affects low-income Americans and jeopardizes alliances with key trading partners like Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
“We don’t need to threaten our allies to get what we want,” Schuman said. “Organizations like NATO exist so people can sit down in a room and talk things through — so this whole idea that we need tariffs to get what we want from other people is not the world we’re living in.”
The College Republicans’ president refuted this argument, saying that tariffs will help domestic producers. They cited a 2019 U.S.-Japan trade agreement where the United States threatened to impose higher tariffs on Japanese goods, subsequently pushing Japan to reduce its tariffs on American products and boosting sales of American goods in Japan.
“I believe that tariffs made this country great,” the College Republicans president said during the debate. “We can go back to imposing tariffs on industries that we need to protect in the long term because tariffs are a great thing for America and it’s what built this country up to become the superpower of the world.”
The Russia-Ukraine war
The debate concluded with a discussion on Trump’s suspension of foreign aid to Ukraine and attempts to create peace talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While Democrats representative Caio Martins Lanes called for Trump to declare a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, Republican representative Daniel Chen argued that his current approach will “quickly resolve the war.” Chen asserted that limiting aid and signing an agreement to create a U.S. stake in Ukrainian land, while urging peace talks — such as the 30-day ceasefire — is the best way to save lives in both countries while mutually benefitting the United States.
“Zelenskyy wants to not be seen as a weak leader who betrays his people,” Chen said. “Trump’s plan provides both sides with an off-ramp by placing the heat on Trump.”
Lanes countered that Trump’s pause on foreign aid and push for a minerals deal — a joint investment in Ukraine’s critical minerals — undermines the U.S.-Ukraine alliance, threatens Ukrainian sovereignty and fails to acknowledge that Putin has consistently rejected several offers for peace talks and deals to end the war.
“Trump misunderstands how international work functions. You cannot get peace without security guarantees, especially when you’re considering someone like Putin,” Lanes said. “It will make our own allies not trust us and rely on other powers such as China or the EU.”
Contact Amelia Hernandez Gioia [email protected].
