Smith Simpson. The Smith Simpson Debate occurs in the Dome Room of the Rotunda. In addition to participating in inter-society debates, the Washington Society works to promote speech and debate more broadly. The Society hosts two literary competitions for University of Virginia students with a cash prize awarded to the winner. The Society used to sponsor an annual book drive and help coordinate a middle school debate club at Burley Middle School in Charlotteville. The Society used to jointly host a high school debate tournament alongside the American Parliamentary Debate Association organization at the University in February. History The Washington Society was founded sometime in the years from 1834 to 1836 from the merger of two earlier societies, the Academics and The Association for Mutual Improvement in the Art of Oratory. Like other student activities in the early years of the University, its interactions with the faculty were turbulent, at one point leading the Board of Visitors to forbid students from delivery of public speeches. A Literary society in nature, from the beginning the group utilized the name "Washington Literary Society" in popular parlance, but less often, and in certain contexts used its Greek letter name Sigma Beta Phi ( or ). Eventually the group settled in to use its nickname, "The Wash". In its early years, the society was active in University affairs with a literary focus, co-sponsoring from 1847 to 1851 (with the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, the Philomethean, and Aesculapian Societies) a literary magazine called the Jefferson Monument Magazine, whose purpose was both to raise funds for a memorial to the University's founder and to provide a literary outlet for the students. Following the collapse of the Jefferson Monument Magazine, the society co-sponsored the University Magazine with the Philomathean and Jefferson Societies, beginning in 1851. Like many student organizations at the University, the Washington Society was politically active in the secessionist cause in the years prior to the American Civil War. A resolution that had been in place since 1858 to avoid debate questions that "would bring up any of the political issues now distracting the country" was lifted in January 1860, and the society subsequently debated the questions of a state's right to secede (answering in the affirmative) and whether Virginia should secede from the union if Lincoln were elected president (also answering in the affirmative). In 1861, after the secession of Virginia from the