Winning the 2014 Marquette Tournament, Speech and Debate members reached the final or semi final rounds in all forms of debate.
“Our team ended up placing first in sweeps overall, so we basically won the tournament,” senior Jennifer Romine said. “Individually, we did really well too. We ended up taking first place in Champ Public Forum, and ended up getting to final or semi final rounds in all other forms of debate too.”
It was the first time the Central team won the tournament, according to senior Jessica DeMunbrun. There are several different forms of competition in which participants compete, including Public Forum debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate, Champ Policy debate and Prose and Poetry.
In her winning category of Prose and Poetry, DeMunbrun learns to become an actress, dialoguing a short story.
“I compete in the Lincoln-Douglas debate and Prose and Poetry, where you act out a story for eight minutes. The work I performed was about a school shooting, called 19 Minutes, by Jodi Picoult,” DeMunbrun said.
After practicing her story many times, DeMunbrun competed with it at the Marquette Tournament.
“You’re not technically supposed to memorize it, but you practice it enough to,” DeMunbrun said. “You have a memorized intro, and then you pretty much just act it out. You’re not allowed to walk around, though, so you have to stand still and perform it.”
Lincoln-Douglas debate is a one-on-one debate over moral issues, like justice and utilitarianism. DeMunbrun also debates in the Lincoln-Douglas category. Junior Ani Gururaj competes in Public Forum.
“In Public Forum debate, which is partner debate on current issues, you have to prepare both a pro and con side and be prepared to argue both,” Gururaj said.
The process behind preparing a case to debate in Public Forum is a time consuming one, according to Ani Gururaj.
“You first write a case, based on your resolution, you edit your case, and then you have to find evidence supporting your case,” Gururaj said. “Some forms of debate require more evidence than others, but the bottom line is you have to have good evidence. After that, you engage in practice rounds with teammates, and then that should be enough to prepare you for the tournament.”
Typical debate topics range from issues all over the world, in which Gururaj works to form several educated opinions.
“The most recent topic I have debated is whether or not developmental assistants should be prioritized over military aid in a region of Africa,” Gururaj said.
Senior Jennifer Romine, a three year veteran of the debate team, competes in Champ Policy debate.
“It’s a partner event, so I debate with junior Samiksha Mailarpwar,” Romine said. “We discuss legislative policies, so this year we’re talking about engagement with Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. We all purpose plans; our plan is talking about electricity grids. Then, we all provide evidence to debate back and forth as to whether or not we instate that.”
Champ Policy is often considered one of the more difficult fields to understand in Speech and Debate competitions.
“Policy is kind of complex in the sense that we have many different arguments and lots of different ways you can structure them,” Romine said. “You could go with the classic form of policy, which is what we mostly do, and we did that when we purpose and debate electricity grids. You can also talk about theory arguments, so you can talk about crazy stuff.”
Romine enjoys this creative aspect to the competition, as it differentiates it from other fields.
“We went to Indiana and we debated that because Debate is a game, we should play a game of Life to decide who wins. We ended up winning a couple rounds like that, which was really cool. It ends up being really fun,” Romine said.
Upcoming in the next two weeks are a couple competitions with post-season implications, including the NFL (National Forensic League) Districts for Congress and qualifying for the MHSAA state tournament.
“This upcoming weekend, we have our NFL Congress qualifying tournament and so we’re all going to go to Jefferson City for that. Then, the two weekends after that we have state qualifying and then national qualifying, and we’re hoping to make it to both of those tournaments,” Romine said.
Individuals qualify in their respective competitions for both the NFL and MHSAA state tournament, and the Central Speech and Debate team looks to qualify as many as possible for both the national and state competition.
