David Saveanu
Reporter
After much success, Parkland moves on to compete at the national level at the International Public Debate Association (IPDA) National Championships and Convention, in Spokane, Washington.
Emma Gray, a Parkland debater, is the only one on the team who debates in the IPDA style, so she will be going alone to the National Championship, going against around 200 other schools.
“We typically go to a tournament that has 15–20 schools. This will be the biggest tournament she’s ever been to,” said Brian Cafarelli, the Parkland debate team coach.
“They break the debates down to novice, junior varsity, and open, and Emma will compete in the junior varsity division,” Cafarelli said.
The competition is at the college level, with students competing anywhere between, “graduate students to first year freshmen,” Cafarelli said.
Cafarelli trains with Gray once a week, sometimes twice.
“We have practice once a week during the season. We tried to practice twice a week, but with all the viruses that have been going around, at least one of us was always sick,” Gray said.
A majority of practice happens at actual competitions and tournaments, where she debates for around five hours a day.
Gray will also prepare for competition on her own by “keeping up with current events and making sure we understand both sides of each issue,” Gray said.
“When we’re at a tournament we’re given a huge assortment of topics and we don’t get to pick which side we’re on, so we have to be able to argue for both sides and adapt examples to multiple issues,” Gray said.
Right now, the debate team only consists of two debaters that travel, Emma Gray and Ben Roberts.
Cafarelli, who has coached debate since 1993, uses an exposure program.
“Our first goal is to expose people to argumentation and debate, peaceful resolution and rhetoric,” Cafarelli said.
The team gets a mix of students who show interest, some “who come in, do a practice or two and never travel,” and others who have passion for the competition, Cafarelli said.
The debate team has anywhere from two members to 10. These past two semesters have been smaller.
The team travels between five to seven times a year, competing mostly regionally. They compete in two styles of debate, parliamentary debate which is a team debate and IPDA which is single person debate. The two styles are fairly similar, with some technical differences.
A range of topics are debated, anywhere from the #MeToo movement, to socialized medicine, to Taylor Swift.
The topics are also unknown up until 15–30 minutes before the actual debate.
“Typically, what you do is you get a topic, and you get about 15 minutes to think about it with your partner or you[rself]. Some tournaments […] let you get on the internet and see what’s going on with the topics so it’s [a] more informed debate, but most of the time it’s just what you know going into the round,” Cafarelli said.
Gray started debate because she loved to argue and have small debates with her family. She sought a challenge and a place where she can argue with people that don’t share the same opinion as her and where she can learn to argue the opposite position.
Cafarelli’s goal when teaching students debate is to teach them to be able to argue from different points.
“The biggest thing I get out of debate is education…I also have learned to be a lot more confident in myself and my speaking,” Gray said.
The Parkland debate team has seen a lot of success this year.
“The debate team did quite well at the state tournament this year. We got four trophies in total: two for being one of the teams in the open semifinals for parliamentary debate, one for top speaker in the two-year division for IPDA and one for being the top speaker in the two-year division for parliamentary debate,” Gray said.
For more information on debate, contact Brian Cafarelli at bcafarelli@parkland.edu
