Students representing the major political parties will go head-to-head tomorrow during the Campus Political Group Battle Royale. Presented by Stanford in Government, the event will kick off at 7:30 p.m. at the History Corner. The debate will feature students from the Stanford Democrats, the College Republicans and the Greens at Stanford and will tackle a range of current issues.

“We are organizing this event in order to allow students and other community members to get a glimpse at campus political groups and the issues that are important to them,” said debate moderator Aron Kirschner, a sophomore. “We hope that those who come might be inspired by the issues being discussed.”

Pairs of students representing each group will deliver opening and closing statements and field questions pitched by the moderator. The issues discussed will include both domestic and foreign policy concerns, Kirschner said.

“The debate will primarily contain national issues, but may hit on some state issues as well,” he added. “Foreign policy will definitely be an important part of the debate, including the current situation in Iraq. As far as I know, there has never been an event of this type on campus.”

Students participating in the debate said they chose to throw their hats into the ring because they enjoy arguing with peers and feel like they have knowledge to share on relevant issues.

“College students are apathetic, and given the current political climate, inaction is a privilege we can no longer afford,” said junior Anne Friedman, who will represent the Stanford Democrats. “The next four years could mean the reversal of Roe v. Wade and reinstitution of the draft. These are issues that matter both on campus and off.”

Junior Will Hudson, who will represent the College Republicans, also expressed his hope that the debate will reach students who don’t follow the political scene.

“Stanford is fairly uneven in its political landscape,” he said. “On the one hand there are a lot of students who talk about and who are interested in politics, but if you’re just posting flyers or holding protests it’s all sort of impersonal and unthinking. Debates are more fun and a lot more productive given the upcoming election than just drawing lines in the middle of White Plaza and having supporters of the various candidates stand in their respective boxes and shout their tired slogans and accusations at one another.”

Many of the debaters cited foreign policy and national defense as key issues they hope to address during tomorrow’s event.

“Our generation has no idea how bad things can get,” said Stanford Democrats representative Kai Stinchcombe, a first-year graduate student in political science. “We’ve never seen drafted young people dying for a war America can’t win. We’ve never seen back-alley abortions going wrong. We’ve never seen financial crisis or international depression, which is what we’re going to get if we keep running up the debt like this.”

Hudson said he hopes to clear up confusion related to America’s involvement in the Middle East, especially Iraq, since this information is often misinterpreted.

“It’s a poorly understood area that doesn’t receive much help because politicians have to whittle down theories and policies into easily digestible morsels,” he said. “If we could have a frank discussion about it, I’d be happy.”

As a representative of the Stanford Greens, freshman Daniel Herriges said he hopes to broach issues of corporate domination, environmental conservation and fossil-fuel dependence.

While debaters will refer to the candidates in the upcoming general election, several of them emphasized that they will express their own political views tomorrow, and not simply those of their respective parties.

“I’m not interested in towing the party line or rephrasing White House press statements,” Hudson said. “I think it’ll also be very apparent that Republicans can have different ways of dealing with the same problems, and while that may surprise some people, it really shouldn’t. There’s a lot of room for diversity of thought and perspective.”

In recent years, campus Democrats and Republicans have clashed over a variety of issues from war to employee rights, begging the question whether this debate will spark hostilities between the varied parties.

“There will be areas of difference, to be sure,” Hudson said. “No doubt the Democrats and Greens will have contrary perspectives when it comes to tax cuts, for example, but in other areas I think you’ll see that we agree in a lot of ways.”

While other candidates said they didn’t foresee conflict, Stinchcombe said he predicted

a clash.

“We will wipe the floor with Bob Sensenbrenner [the other representative of the College Republicans], but we’ll do it respectfully,” he said.