The Chimes

Issue date: 10/30/08 Section: News

Capital University's debate team has completed five tournaments with
positive results this year. Debate team may attend as many as 14
tournaments over the course of an academic year, and this equals
nearly three athletic seasons.
Thus far, the team has attended tournaments in Pennsylvania, Indiana,
and Tennessee. This week the team competed in Detroit, Michigan.
The debate team is coached by Dr. Steven Koch, along with three
assistant coaches.
Garrett Crane and Alyssa Chenault are co-presidents of the team:
other debaters include Deanna Toops, Jake Nickell, Sarah Wills,
Haleigh Lanham, Jennah Lalley, and Jessica Seckel.
They compete in two styles of debate. The National Educational Debate
Association uses lay judges and emphasizes audience persuasion.
The Cross Examination Debate Association has expert judges,
emphasizes highly documented sources and careful research.
"We researched the topic very thoroughly for hundreds of hours and
then organized all of our research into affirmative and negative
categories," Wills said.
Each team is notified of which side they will be arguing only a few
minutes before the debate begins.
At the tournament Oct. 10 and 11, first-year debaters Nickell and
Wills as a team scored first place in their division at Anderson
University in Indiana.
This competition consisted of 70 debaters. Success was also achieved
at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, as Crane and Chenault placed
and made it to the quarterfinals Oct. 17-19. Approximately 180
debaters competed in this tournament.
This past Friday and Saturday, the debate team hosted a tournament,
where Lalley and Seckel placed second, just behind Ball State
University.
The team consists of first and second year students. The third and
fourth year students are not competing at this time because two are
studying abroad and one is working for the presidential campaign.
"Nonetheless, these younger team members have taken on the challenge
to prepare themselves to be a real force in regional competition, and
we hope to have a substantial national presence by the second semester
when our more experienced team members have returned," Koch said.
The debate team has been a fixture at Capital for more than 80 years.
Debate competition benefits students in a number of ways.
"Critical thinking, research, analysis, leadership, and communication
skills are honed well beyond the levels accomplished by even the best
students coming from the best classrooms undergraduate education can
produce," Koch said.
aroshon@capital.edu

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