Host A Program

Your campus. Our program. Students from your region.

A summer debate program brings motivated students to your campus and pays for itself. We build it and run it. You provide the space. Colleges, high schools, and middle schools all work.

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Why a Summer Debate Program

Debate draws academically serious teenagers. They are reading philosophy and policy for fun, their parents are already spending money on this activity, and a good share of them are two or three years from applying to college. A summer on your campus is the first extended experience many of them will have of a university.

The students a debate program attracts are the students you want on campus

It runs when your Classrooms are empty

Residence halls, classrooms, and dining are all sitting idle. A summer program turns fixed costs you are already carrying into revenue.

It puts your name on academic instruction

Families in the academic community talk about programs like this, and your name is on it. Your admissions and advancement offices get something to point at that a facilities rental would never give them.

We build for the students within driving distance

The national debate camps recruit from everywhere and cost accordingly. That market is well served. What is missing is the program a family can send a student to without a plane ticket and a residential fee, which is most families. Our programs are built to serve the region around your campus first, which also means the students who attend are the ones most likely to come back to it.

That works at a college and it works at a middle or high school.

What we handle and what you handle

This is where most partnerships land, and it is a starting point rather than a fixed arrangement. If you already host outside programs, whether that is a sports camp or a summer academic session, you have a process for this and we would rather work inside it than around it. Tell us how you handle registration, payments, staffing, and background checks for the programs already on your campus, and we will fit into that. We can take on more of the list or less of it depending on what your office wants to keep.

Debate Matters

We handle

  • Curriculum design and the academic program
  • Recruiting and hiring instructional staff
  • Marketing materials, built for your program and carrying your name
  • A recruiting plan for your region, worked out with you
  • Registration, payment processing, and rosters
  • Family communication before and during the program
  • Day-to-day operations for the duration of the program
  • Student supervision during program hours

Your institution

You handle

  • Classroom space, and housing and dining if the program is residential
  • Campus policies, safety requirements, and background check standards
  • Introductions to the schools, leagues, and families you already know
  • Getting the program in front of your own audience: your channels, your mailing lists, your community
  • Whatever your institution requires of any program operating on your campus

On recruiting. You know your region and we know how to fill a debate program. We produce the materials and run enrollment. You tell us which schools and communities are worth reaching, and make the introductions where you have them.

Whose name is on it. Yours, ours, or both. Some institutions want the program to carry their name alone, with us running it behind the scenes. Some want the co-brand, because our name means something to debate families. Either works and we do not have a preference.

How the money works. Every partnership is different, and the right structure depends on your facilities, your calendar, and what you want out of it. We can work from a revenue share, a facilities fee, or a flat rate. That is a conversation rather than a price list.

Decades of camp experience

Mike started his first camp in 1996. Chris started his in 2012. Between us we have been running summer debate programs every year since, and more than 10,000 students have come through them.

We have each done every job there is. Designing curriculum and writing lesson plans, hiring and training instructors, marketing a program and filling it, and negotiating with institutions of every size about what they can provide and what they need in return. There is not much about running a camp that either of us is learning for the first time.

Mike Bietz

Mike Bietz

Co-director

Thirty years in this activity, and two summer programs built from the ground up. He directed Victory Briefs for a decade, taking it from roughly 90 students a summer to more than 600, then built the Harvard-Westlake summer debate program from nothing to 300 students a summer.

Past president of the National Debate Coaches Association, on the Tournament of Champions Advisory Committee since 1996, and inducted into the Tournament of Champions Hall of Fame in 2024.

Chris Theis

Chris Theis

Co-director

Running debate camps since 2012, and Executive Director of Victory Briefs since 2014. He has run programs at UCLA, Loyola Marymount, the University of San Diego, the University of Texas, Swarthmore, and Occidental.

He has done every part of this job. Negotiating facilities, hiring and training staff, building registration systems, and running the operation once students arrive. If you have a question about how a program works on the ground, he has already answered it somewhere else.

On recruiting. You know your region and we know how to fill a debate program. We produce the materials and run enrollment. You tell us which schools and communities are worth reaching, and make the introductions where you have them.

Whose name is on it. Yours, ours, or both. Some institutions want the program to carry their name alone, with us running it behind the scenes. Some want the co-brand, because our name means something to debate families. Either works and we do not have a preference.

How the money works. Every partnership is different, and the right structure depends on your facilities, your calendar, and what you want out of it. We can work from a revenue share, a facilities fee, or a flat rate. That is a conversation rather than a price list.

Questions

  • It depends on enrollment. A program of 100 students needs classroom space for six to eight sections, a room large enough for everyone at once, and residential capacity if it is overnight. We can work from what you have.

  • Most run two to three weeks. We can talk about what fits your summer calendar.

  • No. We welcome day programs.

  • We recruit and hire them. They are coaches and former competitors, and they meet whatever background check and training standards your institution requires.

  • It depends on the scope. A residential program that recruits across several states needs a long runway, and those conversations start close to a year out. A local day camp can come together faster, though late January is the latest we would want to begin planning one for that summer. Families tend to lock in their summers by early spring.

  • Then you already know how this works, and adding debate may be simpler than you expect. We are glad to talk about how it would sit alongside what you have.

  • Yes. We build white label programs and co-branded ones, and we are glad to do either. If your institution would rather the program be entirely yours, we run it that way.

  • Yes. A day camp in your own building is often the better version of this, particularly for middle school students. You already have the classrooms and the families know where you are.

  • Chris is Executive Director there, and Victory Briefs runs national programs that recruit students from across the country. Debate Matters builds regional programs for the students near your campus. Different students, different price point, and no conflict between them.

Start a Conversation

If you have a campus and a summer, we can tell you what a debate program on it would look like.