The Story of How Bentley Speech and Debate Society Went to its First In-Person Debate Tournament in Over 3-Years, At Princeton
Image Sourced from Isaac Volan
Bentley Speech and Debate Society just went to its first in-person debate tournament in over 3 years, at Princeton on Friday March 31st and Saturday April 1st. Planning for the tournament wasn’t easy. In fact, until the night before the tournament started, we didn’t know if we were going to get any funding from AIA for a place to stay. Gritting my teeth about whether or not we would get the funding, I persevered and with the help of the BSDS Eboard, we trained 4 debaters and 2 judges to go and be successful at the tournament. Luckily, the night before the tournament, I appealed to AIA, and they gave us the funding we needed.
How did we train people? First, we invented “Tournament Boot Camp” which meets from 7:30 - 9:30pm on Wednesdays in Stu 353. These meetings are mandatory for those who want to go to tournaments, but are also optional for people who want a more formal debate training. In these meetings, led by our current vice president Emmi, who was president of her high school debate team, we go over how to format debate speeches, how to keep track of what the other side is saying, how to define aspects of the debate in your favor, etc. Second, the night before the tournament, which in this instance was Thursday the 30th of March, we do a few hours of intense debate prep so that we’re sharp and ready to go for the tournament. At this meeting, we try to make it kinda fun by having pizza, chips, and drinks to lighten the atmosphere.
Once we were prepared, we obviously had to figure out how we were getting to the tournament. For Princeton, we decided to do the 5 hr drive there in a couple of our Eboard members’ cars. We left really early, at about 7:00 am, to ensure we had plenty of time to check into our hotels, change, do some last minute prep, and arrive at Princeton for the tournament in time for check in at about 3:00 pm. During the drive we passed by New York and got to see some amazing views of the city from afar, before we finally arrived in Princeton, adding to the positive experience of the drive. Regardless, as debaters, the drive wasn’t painful at all as we had no car trouble, had great music playing in the car, and had plenty to talk about. We got to Princeton safe and sound, and checked into a good hotel, close enough to Princeton that we wouldn’t need to worry about waking up too early to get there in the morning on Saturday for the continuation of the tournament.
Eventually the time finally came for us to go and debate. Myself, and 5 others on the Bentley American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) team waltzed into Princeton’s campus in full suits Friday afternoon, only to realize that… no one else was wearing suits. Luckily for us, we actually got quite a few compliments on our fancy attire, though some people did catch onto the fact that this was our first in-person tournament in a while. Though somewhat embarrassed to start off our journey, we all decided to persevere through the Friday debate rounds wearing the full suits, as it was kind of funny and judges couldn’t base their decisions on our attire anyways. Even then though, there was a plot twist. To understand this plot twist you’ve got to understand American Parliamentary Debate and how it works.
Teams that compete within the American Parliamentary Debate Association can compete in 2 types of tournaments, case tournaments and motions tournaments. All American Parliamentary debates involve 2 teams, with 2 people on each team debating against each other back and forth for about an hour. Case tournaments involve one of those teams bringing written prep for their first speech, and bringing the topic of the debate. Motion tournaments on the other hand, are more similar to British-Parliamentary debate, in the sense that neither team knows the topic going in, the school hosting presents the topic, and then the two teams get 15 minutes of prep-time to form a good argument for their side of the debate.
So back to the plot twist. Basically, we thought that the Princeton tournament was a case tournament, but we quickly realized we were wrong, it was motions! This wasn’t a big issue, just an adjustment. Having never been to a tournament before though, I was shocked and somewhat disappointed. A lot of the prep we had done was prepping cases for the tournament, which we now couldn’t use. Despite having to try out a new style we’d not done prep for, both of our 2 teams ended up winning a round! So, while the debate team at Bentley is still small, new, and learning, I’m hopeful that our talent will only continue to grow and shine as our debaters get more experience. We already have some good debaters, but we’re always looking for more people to join us. If anyone is interested, feel free to come to one of our tournament boot camp meetings on Wednesdays in Stu 353 @ 7:30pm. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to come with us on our next adventure.
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