Next Friday, the British are invading American soil again, but, instead of bullets, they will exchange words with Missouri Southern debaters. This year, Missouri Southern was one of few colleges who won the bid to have two British debaters come and debate with two Southern students.

Southern drafted Whiney Hart, junior political science and communication major, and Matt Snyder, senior business and economics major, to take on the British in a parliamentary-style debate.

“The British team is obviously an extremely skillful duo,” said Richard Brown, sophomore political science major and fellow debater. “But Whitney and Matt aren’t going to give them an easy win, that’s for sure.”

The Southern debaters have their work cut out for them. Alex Just is a former president of the University of Oxford Union studying history and politics. He has also taught debate in several different countries including Australia, France, Qatar and the United States. Just has also debated in the World schools championship in Malaysia.

Supplying even more arsenal for the British is London’s, Alistair Cormack. Cormack just graduated from the University of Durham with an honors degree in history and politics. Cormack was ranked in the top 10 European speakers of 2006 and is a finalist at the English national championships. Cormack was also the president of the Durham Union society and represented Durham at both the European and world championships.

“I believe that the audience will really enjoy the debate,” said Kelly Larson, director of forensics and associate professor of communications. “The British debaters tend to have a more ‘witty’ style of debate and so there should be lots of clash,”

Larson said the audience will have an active role in the event. They may ask questions to either team or interject comments after the round and interact with the speakers.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Hart said. “We would really enjoy support from the students.”

The Southern debate team decided the topic this year. The topic chosen was “This House will scrap the Olympics.”

The debate will take place at 7 p.m. on Oct. 12, in Webster Hall. Admission is free.