The showdown took place at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club. Last month, they invited the Ivy League undergraduates and this year's national debate champions over for a friendly competition. 
 
 The Harvard debate team also was crowned world champions in 2014. But the inmates are building a reputation of their own. In the two years since they started a debate club, the prisoners have beaten teams from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the University of Vermont. The competition with West Point, which is now an annual affair, has grown into a rivalry. 
 
 At Bard, those who help teach the inmates aren't particularly surprised by their success. 
 
 "Students in the prison are held to the exact same standards, levels of rigor and expectation as students on Bard's main campus," said Max Kenner, executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative, which operates in six New York prisons. "Those students are serious. They are not condescended to by their faculty." 
 
 Students on the Harvard team weren't immediately available for comment, but shortly after the loss, they posted a comment on a team Facebook page. 
 
 "There are few teams we are prouder of having lost a debate to than the phenomenally intelligent and articulate team we faced this weekend," they wrote. "And we are incredibly thankful to Bard and the Eastern New York Correctional Facility for the work they do and for organizing this event." 
 
 Against Harvard, the inmates were tasked with defending a position they opposed: They had to argue that public schools should be allowed to turn away students whose parents entered the U.S. illegally. The inmates brought up arguments that the Harvard team hadn't considered. Three students from Harvard's team responded, and a panel of neutral judges declared the inmates victorious. 
 
 "The fact that we won is nice, but it isn't the most important thing," said Kenner, adding that the club is meant to help students articulate what they've learned. 
 
 Inmates can earn various degrees through the initiative, which is taught primarily by Bard faculty. About 15 percent of the all-male inmates at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility in Napanoch are enrolled. Graduates of the program have continued their studies at Yale and Columbia universities, Kenner said. 
 
 While in prison, they learn without the help of the Internet, relying instead on resources provided by the college. 
 
 "They make the most of every opportunity they have," Kenner said. ||||| It may sound like the writing of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but a Harvard debate team lost to a group of prison inmates. 
 
 A trio from the Harvard College Debating Union squared off against three men from the Bard Prison Initiative at a maximum security prison in Napanoch, NY. After an hour of debating, the inmates were declared the victors. 
 
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 “The prison initiative reached out to us to set up a debate, and we agreed. We wanted to be of any help we could be,” Dhruva Bhat, President of the Harvard College Debating Union told Boston.com. “The debating team thinks debating is a powerful tool, and we want to work with other organizations to try to get public debating in more public schools. Debating has changed our lives and this confirmed how powerful a tool education and debating can be.” 
 
 In one round, the three convicts had to promote the argument that “Public schools in the United States should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students,” despite disagreeing with it. According to the The Wall Street Journal , the three prisoners raised points the Harvard team didn’t counter. 
 
 Despite not having access to the Internet for debate preparation and research, the prison team has previously faced and defeated debaters from West Point Military Academy and University of Vermont, according to the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 “Not having access to the Internet definitely made it a lot harder for them,” Bhat said. “Clearly Bard has given them a very solid foundation.” 
 
 But did the Harvard team go easy on them? 
 
 “We definitely did not,” Bhat said. “That would have been incredibly disrespectful of their talent and work.” 
 
 This isn’t the first time the prestigious New England college has lost a debate to prisoners. A Norfolk Prison Colony team formed in the 1930’s defeated Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and even Oxford, in various debates. 
 
 Famous Harvard alumni ||||| NAPANOCH, N.Y.—On one side of the stage at a maximum-security prison here sat three men incarcerated for violent crimes. 
 
 On the other were three undergraduates from...
– Next up, a debate with the parole board? The Ivy League's finest debate team was defeated by a team of prisoners from a maximum-security prison in New York state. The three-man Eastern New York Correctional Facility team was declared the winner on Sept. 18 after debating for an hour with Harvard's team, which won the national title this year, the AP reports. In a Facebook post, the Harvard undergraduates said they were proud to lose to the "phenomenally intelligent and articulate team" of inmates. The prison team—which wasn't allowed to use the Internet for research—made the case against allowing undocumented children into public schools, a position with which they personally disagreed. The three inmates, who are all serving time in Napanoch, New York, for violent crimes, have been studying as part of an initiative led by nearby Bard College. Before last month's Harvard debate, they had already scored victories against West Point and a University of Vermont team, reports the Wall Street Journal, which notes that very few of the inmates who've earned degrees under the nearly 15-year-old Bard program have ended up back behind bars. "Debating has changed our lives and this confirmed how powerful a tool education and debating can be," the president of the Harvard College Debating Union tells Boston.com. Harvard didn't go easy on the inmates because that would have been "incredibly disrespectful of their talent and work," he adds. (The biggest-ever mass release of federal prisoners will happen later this month.)