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Debate: Centre officials say 'small-town' environment a plus

June 18, 2007|HERB BROCK
(Page 2 of 2)

"Our debate site, Newlin, is still a wonderful place to hold a debate and now Sutcliffe, which was part of our major construction and reconstruction project of a few years ago, is much more spacious and modern and will serve as an excellent media filing center and post-depate spin room," Trollinger said. "In 2000 Sutcliffe was just OK, if that. Now there is ample space."

Another plus for the college in the facilities department is that Newlin and Sutcliffe are only a couple of hundred yards apart, and that close proximity is important because a huge transmission cable is strung between the debate site and the media center.

"At one debate site, the debate hall and the media center were miles apart, while the distance was blocks in other cases," Trollinger said. "The distance for us is measured in just yards."

The debate would coincide with the beginning of Lincoln's bicentennial birthday celebration.

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President Lincoln was born in Kentucky in 1809 and there is going to be a celebration marking the bicentennial anniversary of his birth that will begin in 2008 and last through much of 2009. Wyatt sees that as an advantage.

"We plan to link the debate to the Lincoln bicentennial," he said. "We are saying to the commission and the candidates, 'Come to the state of Lincoln's birth.'

"The connection is a natural. Lincoln is one of our country's most revered presidents and he is from Kentucky, but he also made history as a participant in arguably this country's most famous and important debates, the Lincoln-Douglas debates."

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