While many students spent the week before Spring Break longing and complaining for some time off, three students on the debate team were busy at work in the IHSA Debate Finals at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Seniors Ankur Rastogi, Pooja Sajeev and Lucia Zhang each competed in the tournament. Rastogi made Octafinals (top sixteen) in the Lincoln-Douglas style debate (named for the popular political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas), where he also placed sixth on the all-state debate team. The all-state team is comprised of the best speakers.
“We focus on moral and ethical discussions,” Rastogi stated. “On a super basic level, we try and decide if something is the right thing to do, via moral theories (like utilitarianism, deontology, social contract theory, etc).”
Zhang and Sajeev competed as a team in the public forum debate where they placed in Octafinals as well.
“We debate on a lot of current issues. Anything from econ to politics to anything relevant in society,” Zhang explained. “It differs from other debate because we use a lot of facts; it is statistic-based. We have to back up our arguments so you really get to work with that warrant.”
The duo of Sajeev and Zhang have been together since freshman year. Their years of teamwork were instrumental in their run to the Octafinals in the Public Forum debate this year.
“The best part about public forum debate is that you get to work with a partner. Two heads are better than one. You get to combine both of your ideas,” Sajeev said. “You and your partner have very different ideas hence it makes your arguments stronger. Having a debate partner that is as good as Lucia makes our team very strong.”
A large part of what goes into debate is prep work. Going into each debate, the speakers are aware of the topic they will be presenting; however, they don’t know which side, either affirmative or negative, they will present. That is decided in the coin toss.
“As a team, we all get the same topic; either Lincoln-Douglas or public forum. At our practices, we split based on which format you are going to do,” Mr. Brian Voss, LHS Head Debate Coach said. “As a team we research both sides and write cases, basically a three-point thesis, and we divide and conquer the work to come up with our cases. As a team, we debate each other and we run through and attack each other and we refute each other.”
With all the work that goes into preparing debates, Mr. Voss finds the most appealing aspect of his team to be their dedication.
“Over the past year or two, we have seen the dedication, the commitment, the work ethic on our team grow exponentially,” Mr. Voss said. “We meet officially two times a week, both those who went to state and those that didn’t, are debating and practicing and working on cases all the time. Sometimes they only debate once but they put so much time into that one moment. The next month, they do it all over again. It’s cool to see and makes it fun for the coaches.”
Mr. Dennis Duffy and Ms. Sarah Greenswag also coach the team.
Mr. Voss finds that students who join the debate team also learn meaningful life skills as well as the reward of being part of a team.
“They become good speakers; they have a better idea about how they control and manage themselves in a room,” Mr. Voss continued. “They also research and come up with good arguments. That is a huge skill to be able to have an opinion and be able to support it. You don’t just have an opinion because that’s what you do, you have some reasoning for it. Regardless of what their opinions are, they have to have a pro and a con. We remove the emotional element of it so it is just the facts.”
