2008 Woodie Awards
Debate team argues for new beginning
Rebuilt debate program seeks to renew strong tradition
Ariel Barkurst
Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: Trinity Life
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Last year, Trinity's debate program died. It had been great in the past, strategically training a select few students to be top debaters in the nation, but in recent years had lost its momentum. The coach retired, and the program was suspended for the 2006-2007 school year.
But starting this year, debate is back: The University hired a new coach last April, Jarrod Atchison, who was a debater himself and has coached debate before, and gave him his orders: Create a legion of cross-examination debaters. And so it began. Atchison, with some help from Junior Nicholas Burr, who attends Trinity on a speech scholarship and carried the debate torch through last year, spent last April madly recruiting high school seniors with debate experience, luring in First Years Brendon Bankey from Round Rock High School and Michael Hart from Westwood High School. Then, at the beginning of this year, Atchison and his growing team dutifully attended every activity fair, ultimately amassing a team of 18 excited, if sometimes inexperienced, debaters.
"Historically," Atchison said, "Trinity has been extremely successful on the [small team] model because you can invest all your resources into [a few kids]. But the idea this year is to spread the resources around and to ultimately make the students the resources for each other."
The activity that these 18 students have committed themselves to is policy or cross-examination (CX) debate, a style that few outsiders take the time to understand. It is not primarily about shouting. Nor is it about flowery speech. And no, it is not primarily about flipping your pen. It is about thinking quickly, marshalling as many good arguments against each of your opponents points as possible, as fast as possible; It is mental sparring.
CX debate is partner debate, and it takes its name from the fact that there is a cross-examination of the speaker directly following his speech throughout most of the CX round. The content of the debates focus upon U.S. policy, with a yearly resolution proposing a general direction of governmental action that the debaters must be prepared to both affirm, through proposing a specific action that accomplishes the goal of the resolution, and negate, through listening to an opponent's specific proposal and demonstrating that it is an unsound idea. Tournaments take place on weekends; dozens and sometimes hundreds of caffeine-fueled debaters collect at a host school and debate randomly assigned teams from other universities. The atmosphere is extremely competitive. In fact, there is such a compulsion in the air at a debate tournament to do research and to create arguments that Atchison has been forced to create a rule: no working on arguments after midnight.
But starting this year, debate is back: The University hired a new coach last April, Jarrod Atchison, who was a debater himself and has coached debate before, and gave him his orders: Create a legion of cross-examination debaters. And so it began. Atchison, with some help from Junior Nicholas Burr, who attends Trinity on a speech scholarship and carried the debate torch through last year, spent last April madly recruiting high school seniors with debate experience, luring in First Years Brendon Bankey from Round Rock High School and Michael Hart from Westwood High School. Then, at the beginning of this year, Atchison and his growing team dutifully attended every activity fair, ultimately amassing a team of 18 excited, if sometimes inexperienced, debaters.
"Historically," Atchison said, "Trinity has been extremely successful on the [small team] model because you can invest all your resources into [a few kids]. But the idea this year is to spread the resources around and to ultimately make the students the resources for each other."
The activity that these 18 students have committed themselves to is policy or cross-examination (CX) debate, a style that few outsiders take the time to understand. It is not primarily about shouting. Nor is it about flowery speech. And no, it is not primarily about flipping your pen. It is about thinking quickly, marshalling as many good arguments against each of your opponents points as possible, as fast as possible; It is mental sparring.
CX debate is partner debate, and it takes its name from the fact that there is a cross-examination of the speaker directly following his speech throughout most of the CX round. The content of the debates focus upon U.S. policy, with a yearly resolution proposing a general direction of governmental action that the debaters must be prepared to both affirm, through proposing a specific action that accomplishes the goal of the resolution, and negate, through listening to an opponent's specific proposal and demonstrating that it is an unsound idea. Tournaments take place on weekends; dozens and sometimes hundreds of caffeine-fueled debaters collect at a host school and debate randomly assigned teams from other universities. The atmosphere is extremely competitive. In fact, there is such a compulsion in the air at a debate tournament to do research and to create arguments that Atchison has been forced to create a rule: no working on arguments after midnight.
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