The Dartmouth Forensic Union (DFU) is the College's 2-person team, policy debate program. It is one of the nation's strongest competitive debate squads. Dartmouth has won the National Debate Tournament (NDT) six times, most recently in 1993. In addition, Dartmouth teams have placed second at the NDT three times, and they have been semifinalists on nine occasions. At least one Dartmouth team has been ranked in the nation's top sixteen (automatically qualify for NDT) for the last twenty-five years; frequently, several of the teams been ranked, and in 1996 four of Dartmouth's teams were in the nation's top sixteen. The DFU has been recognized with awards like "Coach of the Decade," "Debater of the Decade," and "Team of the Decade."

While most Dartmouth teams are nationally competitive, the DFU program is open to anyone with experience in team, policy debate. The full squad involves debaters with varying levels of experience and different levels of commitment. Any experienced debater is welcome to participate. The College is very generous in its support of debate, and we are able to travel debaters to tournaments at appropriate levels of competition, even if that means sending everyone to the best national circuit tournaments. All debaters compete equally often, but the level of competition is determined by experience and degree of commitment. It is usually the case that those with less experience when they arrive at Dartmouth are soon capable of competing with the best in the country.

Debaters return to campus at the beginning of September to finish preparations to begin debating. Tournament travel starts in late September and continues until late March or early April. The competition schedule corresponds to Dartmouth's Fall and Winter terms. The NDT, usually in late March, is the only tournament that is ever in Spring term. Most teams attend three or four tournaments in the Fall and a similar number during Winter term. With this schedule, debaters are able to schedule demanding classes, off-campus programs, and leave terms in the Spring.

The director of the program and head coach is Ken Strange. He has several assistant coaches, who are usually former successful debaters who are taking a year off before going to graduate or professional school. The coaches have no teaching responsibilities during the debate season, so they are fully available to the debaters for practice, discussion, and assistance.

A full commitment to successful debating requires a lot of time, but even those who are most devoted are quite capable of doing well in classes. Evidence of this is that Dartmouth Debate has a long tradition of its hardest-working and most successful debaters graduating with honors and going on to attend the nation's best law and graduate schools. Classes always come first for the debaters. Debate work and travel are adjusted to academic schedules. If there are doubts whether a debater can perform well in both competition and the classroom, they should try debating. Since classes come first, their academic performance should never suffer and they will benefit from whatever level of commitment they are able to make to debate.

The DFU is not involved in Lincoln-Douglas style debating or in individual events competition, but there are other programs on campus, like the Parliamentary Debate program, that can satisfy those interests.