Alec McKinley

Physics professor wins raft debate

By: Jordan Bloom

Posted: 10/7/09

Amidst rousing cheers from a jam-packed Commonwealth Auditorium, a William & Mary tradition continued last Wednesday. This year, physics professor David Armstrong won the debate and the last boat off the island, supported by an enthusiastic audience of aspiring scientists.

The Raft Debate pits three professors representing the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities against each other, each arguing that, in the hypothetical event that they were stranded on an island, they deserve the one-person escape raft more than the other. The fourth, education professor Jeremy Stoddard, plays the devil's advocate, arguing that none of them deserve saving.

Each maroon is given ten minutes of speaking time, including a seven-minute expository argument and a three-minute rebuttal.

Mr. Armstrong, coolly confident in a Hawaiian shirt, led off with a metaphor comparing academia to Gilligan's Island. Ginger represents the humanities, nice to look at but mostly impractical, and the bumbling, useless Gilligan is, of course, sociology. The savior of the island -- and by implication, academia -- is the precocious Professor, the natural scientist.

Economics professor David Feldman followed. Arguably, he had the toughest job of the night, trying to convince the audience of his discipline's superiority in the midst of the current economic climate. His argument was apologetic, contending that the social sciences "answer human questions" and "work with issues" rather than figures and so couldn't be counted on for precise predictions.

Dr. Giulia Pacini went for the throat even during her expository time, addressing the irony of seeing an economist submerged or stranded like so many mortgages and foreclosed homes. She railed against the failings of science, citing the 1999 crash of a NASA orbiter due to a unit conversion error. She didn't shy away from cheap shots, either; she asked who was more likely to procreate, "the inventor, the number cruncher, or the storyteller?"

Props figured into the devil's advocate's time, and he ridiculed the very premise of setting a nuclear physicist, an economist, and a scholar of French culture against one another. "It reads like a bad joke," Mr. Stoddard said. He poked holes in Mr. Armstrong's metaphor, noting that Gilligan actually got them off the island and that the Professor never did anything useful. Addressing Ms. Pacini, he handed her a graph predicting a world with more French scholars; it showed higher STD's and lower productivity, if you couldn't guess.

Despite some modest ribaldry, the tone remained friendly. Mr. Feldman even offered several high-fives to his competitors. After winning over the crowd, Mr. Armstrong graciously commented, "I attribute my modest success in the debate to my adoption of the classic technique of "proof by obfuscation," and the audience being stacked with physics graduate students!" He also made sure to mention his "great respect and affection for the humanities and the social sciences."

There really isn't a more unique tradition than the Raft Debate; it's part lecture, part absurd intellectual exercise, part comedy. It lets us take pride in our chosen disciplines, cheering along while our professors engage in some good-natured rhetoric, and we get to see our professors out of the classroom, accessible and having fun. Totally frivolous, but a damned good time. And there was cake after.