Youth: Meet David, a Former National Collegiate Debate Champion in Kansas

How did you get into debate? What are some of the benefits of the activity?

I got into debate by accident. At my High School it was mostly an after-school activity. I had some friends who did forensics and were signing up to do debate. One week later I was competing at my first tournament as a novice. We won and I sort of stuck around. It wasn’t until I got to college that understood the benefits of debate. In High School, I debated for fun and because of friends. In college I realized that I basically spend my free time doing undergraduate level research. Putting together an 8-minute speech with less than 8 minutes of preparation time really helps with organizing and writing papers. The research skills I learned helped make me more efficient as an undergrad. As I continued with debate, it got harder. I sort of just grew along with it. By the time grad school came around I felt more prepared for the research and writing focus than the other students in my program. Beyond school, debating has just been a good life skill. I work in I.T. and the presentation skills help me every day. The critical thinking skills help me understand and navigate the political landscape. I use those tools to be an educated voter. There are a lot of things that kids could be doing with their nights and weekends in High School. I’m really glad I spent a good number of mine thinking about and working on debate.

"There are a lot of things that kids could be doing with their nights and weekends in High School. I’m really glad I spent a good number of mine thinking about and working on debate."

Why is there a transition to online debate? Has a similar transition ever occurred? If so, do you think there is a unique aspect about this one that distinguishes it from the others?

Online debate has sort of grown out of necessity. When schools closed down and learning went online so did debate. There have been some growing pains in terms of taking a speaking activity and putting it on video. But we adapt and figure it out. I’ve not seen a transition like this in debate in the 30 years I’ve been involved with it. There have been a lot of new formats, changes to formats, and argumentative changes over the years but none of those changes force a focus on the core parts of the activity like online debate does. Part of debate is persuasion and rhetorical force. Posturing, bluffing, and the way judges perceive rounds are all changed in the new environment. The things that make a speech good and the way we determine that needed to change to reflect the new ways they’re being presented.

How will tournaments be conducted in the new virtual setting?

Instead of traveling to the host school and going to a different room for each round, we’ll all be at our respective houses with video and audio hardware. Everything will take place online. The round pairings will be released online, the coaching will happen with online chat and zoom calls. The speeches will be given in a virtual space for the debate. Lots of the changes are small changes in the way the game of debate is played. The real changes take place with the video-based format for giving and watching speeches.

How has the transition to online debate changed the local and national debate circuits?

[It is] Too early to tell. I suspect that since tournaments don’t have room requirements, we may seem some regional tournaments grow in size. There is still a size limit in terms of how many rounds you can fit into a day and how many rounds you can have in a weekend. From that respect, most High School tournaments on the national circuit are 3 days and most local tournaments are two days. I think most tournaments will follow that practice, but there is no reason why you couldn’t have asynchronous rounds at night over the course of a month to determine a tournament champion.

What are some of the downsides of having a communicative activity such as debate go entirely virtual?

You lose some things and gain some things. It’s hard right now to gauge what of those will be the most important to the long term health of the activity since we have such a small sample size. However, I think that everyone pretty much agrees that not being in the same room with the speaker changes the requirements of the speech act in order for it to be considered good. This is a judged activity. It’s sort of incumbent on the judging community to determine what we’re looking for in good speeches and how that differs from what we expect of in person debates. It’s incumbent on coaches to figure out how to get students to do those things in a way that results in wins.

Why is there a transition to online debate? Has a similar transition ever occurred? If so, do you think there is a unique aspect about this one that distinguishes it from the others?

Online debate has sort of grown out of necessity. When schools closed down and learning went online so did debate. There have been some growing pains in terms of taking a speaking activity and putting it on video. But we adapt and figure it out. I’ve not seen a transition like this in debate in the 30 years I’ve been involved with it. There have been a lot of new formats, changes to formats, and argumentative changes over the years but none of those changes force a focus on the core parts of the activity like online debate does. Part of debate is persuasion and rhetorical force. Posturing, bluffing, and the way judges perceive rounds are all changed in the new environment. The things that make a speech good and the way we determine that needed to change to reflect the new ways they’re being presented.

"Part of debate is persuasion and rhetorical force. Posturing, bluffing, and the way judges perceive rounds are all changed in the new environment."

How do you think various organizations can assist with increasing the accessibility to resources needed for online debate?

The barrier to entry for online debate is internet access for the most part. The audio and video capabilities are pretty much there for relatively little amount of money.

School districts can help by enabling the software that gets used by debaters so that they can use school issued laptops and other hardware to compete. The tech tree for the debate community is pretty homogenous. It has to be because we have to share our evidence in a format that everyone can use. For the overwhelming majority of teams that’s dropbox, Verbatim (a set of macros for word), and some sort of group messaging platform like teams or slack.

Sanctioning organizations need to recognize the outdated model of regional and national travel sanctioning. If the tournament is virtual then why does it matter where it’s located? Enforcing travel restrictions for virtual tournaments seems shortsighted. Recognize that live debates have value and that we should return to them when it’s possible. I don’t know how that will look, or when it will happen, but there is value in debating in person. We should not be quick to jettison these benefits in the rush to embrace new technology or cost cutting.