Our speech and debate team competed in the “Blue Key” debate on Oct. 31st. Each event debated or spoke about a different topic, for example a couple categories this competition featured whether there should be back doors to encryption and weather plea bargaining is just or not.
Before a debate, it is normal to be a bit anxious. “Before a debate, I feel a bit nervous, but we know the topic well,” club member Savannah Baker (’28) said.
Before the debate day, the teams learn about their assigned topics, so they can be experts on it and debate or speak about the topic correctly.
“We learn partly in practice and partly from your own research,” Nikhil Khanna (’28), another member of speech and debate, said.
In the beginning, the team categories broke off and did what is called a tropicality, where they do a big practice focused on researching their topics. Later on, the teams got more practice and learned through something called a mock debate, which are basically mini debates against your team to get the feel of what the real debate will be like.
“Speech and debate is a large time commitment. We have mock debates, so we’re ready for our real debates,” Baker said.
The club only meets on Thursdays after school, but there is a lot of additional work involved that you must do on your own time. Lots of your research, speech planning and writing is done on your own.
“Speech and debate is a great club to join, and colleges really like it,” Baker said.
Even though it is a club that colleges love seeing, it is far from boring.
“I like debate because it’s really cool to learn about new topics… and learning all the nuances of specific events,” Khanna said.
On Halloween, debate traveled to the University of Florida for their competition.
“In previous years, they have traveled to Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Emory, etc,” Khanna said.
Competitions give the members an opportunity to not only be in the competition, but have a fun time seeing what it’s like at universities or in other cities/states, although the competition did not leave much exploring time.
Club members had to wake up early everyday to compete in their events, with schedules keeping them booked throughout the day. If there was not an event to be done, then you could be supporting other RHS members, watching other debate and speech as a learning experience, do any preparations or practices for your next event, or explore around campus.
“My favorite part of Blue Key was the breaks we had in-between debates, where we could hang out with our friends…. It was like team bonding,” club member Avani Madabhushanam (10th grade) said.
If anything or everything mentioned about debate sounds like something you would do and could enjoy, consider joining Robinson’s Speech and Debate club next year.
