First
Diversity Recruitment and
Retention
in Debate Ideafest
Edited by Gordon R.
Mitchell
University of Pittsburgh
Published by Office of
the Dean
University of Pittsburgh
Ideafest convened at
Emory University
Atlanta, GA
June 10-11, 1997
Pittsburgh (PA) and Louisville
(KY) Activism
Gordon Mitchell and Ede Warner
Gordon
Mitchell: This
has really been an inspiring day.
Melissa and Bill should be commended for putting this conference
together. More than an ideafest,
it is also a powerful springboard.
I know I will leave this conference more energized than ever and excited
to pursue the ideas we've been discussing. I want to take this time to call for more meetings of this
kind, with people gathered together to talk and plan ways to extend the
potential and reach of the debate activity. Conferences such as this one are an ideal setting for this
sort of interchange, but I think that similar meetings can also take place at
debate tournaments, if the schedule is set up to permit it. That's why I want to make a plea for
six round intercollegiate policy tournaments. The Robinson Crusoe effect is far too common in our activity
on the collegiate level, where teams build little islands to house their
respective debate shops. This
effect occurs when debaters and coaches rise at 6 a.m. in their hotel rooms,
travel to campus for four debates that last until 10 p.m., then eat dinner and
return to the hotel. There is very
little space in this type of schedule for reflection on how to take the
arguments to wider spheres of deliberation, i.e. collective thinking in a
broader contextual register about how debate fits into the world beyond speaker
points, link turns and elimination round seeding. Each person (and team) tends to operate on an island, making
connections and hooking up with other folks outside of contest rounds only
rarely. What I want to do in the
rest of this talk is to describe how what we've been doing at Pittsburgh is in
some ways a response to this.
After this, I'll end up by putting some issues on the table for
discussion.
*
Activist Debate Network: collegiate program
The Activist Debate Network (ADN) is an organization that is
run under the umbrella of the William Pitt Debating Union (WPDU) at the
University of Pittsburgh. The ADN
operates alongside a traditional intercollegiate policy team that has been
prominent on the national circuit for over eighty years. While the WPDU has continued its
commitment to the highest-levels of intercollegiate policy competition in the
last three years (clearing teams at the NDT, CEDA Nationals, Chicago and Towson
Novice Nationals), the ADN has brought a flurry of new debating activity to
Pittsburgh that complements traditional contest-round competition. The ADN is activist because what we try
to do is to go beyond traditional debate pedagogy. We emphasize debaters' roles as actors in and beyond contest
rounds, and aim to make debate
practice more relevant in the public sphere. It's a network, because it's not a team in strict sense; the
organization includes more than just students--it also includes community
groups, media representatives, politicians, and interested citizens. The common bond that brings these
people together is belief in the power of public argument to educate and
emancipate. In teaching and coaching,
we de-emphasize the technical. We
don't start out with the stock issues and counterplan theory; instead we jump
right into topics and work outward, developing theoretical concepts later when
helpful. The aim is to build up
experience and develop expertise in public advocacy; to refine and amplify the
public voices of students, and bring students into public conversations with
interlocutors inside and outside the university. The format is designed to maximize participation, and we
tend to draw students who have other obligations that prevent them from
traveling on long weekends and don't have much experience.
In the college program, we've had 8 public debates since
1995, using a variety of formats, engaging a number of different kinds of
audiences, and addressing controversial topics such as university unionization,
affirmative action, terrorism policy, and police accountability. To give an idea of the process in
action, it would be useful to discuss our most recent effort to organize a
series of debates on the issue of police accountability in Pittsburgh. You may have heard about the Jonny
Gammage case. Jonny was a 31-year
old Black man pulled over by white police officers right outside Pittsburgh for
a questionable traffic stop. After
being pushed to the ground and having a night stick held against the back of
his neck for over two minutes, Jonny died of asphyxiation. This case galvanized a groundswell of
protest in the city against police brutality, and a citizen group pushed for
the establishment of an independent review board to field citizen complaints
about police behavior. This
proposal touched off a heated controversy regarding the appropriateness and
effectiveness of such a board for dealing with the problem of police brutality
in Pittsburgh. At our
organizational meeting early in the second semester, students involved in the
ADN met and selected this topic for debate. We gave out initial research assignments, asking some
students to canvass the library for materials, while assigning other students
to contact organizations and individuals involved in the controversy for their
viewpoints on the debate. After
approximately two weeks of research, we met to begin drafting individual pro
and con speeches. Incorporating
the evidence they had gathered, students worked on crafting arguments, using
evidence, and polishing their delivery skills. At the next session one week later, we held a practice
debate in which students further worked on their speaking and began learning
the concepts of refutation and cross examination. After a series of further practice sessions, we scheduled
our first public debate, where the students debated with each other for an
audience made up mostly university students and professors. Following this first public debate, we
then solicited outside advocates to join us in debating the same topic in a
more ambitious debate for a wider audience including members of the general
public. We secured commitments
from two members of city council, the president of the local police union, and
a representative of a local citizen action group to participate in the public
debate. We used a three-on-three
format in which one student was placed as an advocate on each side of the
resolution, and three other students assembled as a panel of questioners that
queried the advocates following each opening speech. The local media was very enthusiastic about the debate. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave us space to
advertise the debate two weeks prior to the event, and then devoted a full page
of coverage to the debate in the Sunday paper following the debate. In Pittsburgh newsweekly published a
partial transcript of the debate, and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review ran a story on the
debate the day after it occurred.
Two local television stations also attended the debate, with WPXI-TV
even making the debate their lead story on their 11 p.m. newscast.
In retrospect, there were roughly three positive aspects of
this event. First, it provided a
forum for students to confront "real world" public advocates in a
debate about a pressing and salient local topic. This provided an occasion for the students to hone their
public advocacy skills in a meaningful political context. It should be pointed out that not all
students participating in the debate were of the same political persuasion or
even favored establishment of the citizen police review board. There was one student debating each
side of the question (joining two other outside advocates for each side), and
the three person panel of student questioners featured representation along a
broad spectrum of political views (ranging from conservative to radical). Debate activism in the public sphere
does not automatically mean special-interest, partisan public advocacy
campaigns; I have been trying to dispel this illusion by designing projects in
Pittsburgh that clear spaces for students to cultivate and express their own
political opinions (whatever they may be), all the while building on their
abilities to amplify these opinions in wider spheres of public deliberation.
Second, the event served as a forum in which the entire community, not just the
university population, could participate in a robust and informative discussion
about an important and timely issue.
Third, the debate served as an organizing venue for the social movements
pressing their agendas in the public sphere. With an audience of over 100 people convened to hear the
arguments, partisan activists had an opportunity to canvass for petition signatures
and network with other groups sympathetic to their cause. Next year, we plan to launch a series
of national public debates on environmental justice, partnering with the United
Church of Christ and numerous other universities, community groups and
corporations to promote robust, wide-open and constructive dialogue in affected
communities across the country. In
addition, we will also be organizing a slate of local debates in Pittsburgh
dealing with salient public issues such as the recent proposals to deregulate
the electric industry and raise the sales tax to fund new stadium construction.
*
Activist Debate Network: high school program
When I debated at the high school level in Pittsburgh in the
early 1980s, there was a thriving policy debate circuit. However, in recent years, participation
in Pittsburgh high school debate has declined precipitously, and in large part,
this drop in interest is due to growing disenchantment with policy debate. The goal of the ADN at the high school
level is to restore enthusiasm for debate and increase participation. More specifically, we are seeking to
expand the ADN network to include high schools currently without debate
programs, particularly those schools in the Pittsburgh public school system. In pursuit of this goal, we have
started modestly, focusing on one Pittsburgh city school, Langley High
School. Last year, we visited
Langley for two two-week segments, once in the Fall and once in the Spring,
linking up with 9th and 11th, and 12th grade English classes.
In the Fall, we embarked on a project which dovetailed with
our work on the college debate topic dealing with environmental cleanup. Our affirmative case called for federal
support for cleanup of so-called "brownfields" sites, i.e. abandoned
lots littered with pollution from vacated industry. We introduced the debate process to the students with an
initial demonstration debate on brownfields, then spent a week working through
basic debate concepts (argument, evidence, plan, advantage disadvantage), and
assisting with the research effort.
Our pedagogical philosophy was to build up understanding and exuberance
for debate in a step-by-step fashion.
First, we asked the students to simply make an argument, then find a
piece of evidence to support the argument, then combine arguments together to
form a speech, then refute a classmates' speech, and finally, conduct a
debate. At the end of the two-week
period, we arranged a field trip for the students to attend a national
conference on brownfields held in the David Lawrence Convention Center in
downtown Pittsburgh. This
conference, called "Brownfields '96," featured speeches by prominent
figures in the policy debate such as EPA Director Carol Browner and HUD
Secretary Henry Cisneros. We
arranged for the EPA to pay for the field trip and scheduled meetings with U.S.
Representative Bill Coyne, and Bo Mills, EPA's Region III Director, so the
students could present their argument briefs and ask questions about
brownfields policy. The field trip
provided a channel for the students to connect their research and debating to
actors directly involved in the controversy they were studying, and also
presented the brownfields policy-makers with fresh perspectives on the issue by
members of affected populations.
*
Concluding remarks
I would like to end by tossing out some general ideas that I
hope will provoke some critical reflection and discussion. Initially, when contemplating the
notion of debate outreach, I would like to suggest the importance of taking a
reflexive turn and problematizing the very concept of policy debate
itself. The features of policy
debate seem stable and comfortable when the activity remains confined to a hard
core of participants traveling to tournaments on the elite national circuit. However, you start to see strains and
weaknesses in the format and assumptions when you begin to push policy debate
beyond the hard core. One of the
greatest benefits of outreach is that veterans of policy debate might be able
to learn from the experience by seeing debate in a new light, interrogating
assumptions that have been calcified because they have been taken for granted
for so many years. In this light,
I would like to toss out three general propositions for your consideration.
First, in order to broaden the participatory base of
intercollegiate debate, it may be necessary to invent new forms of debating in
college programs. Specialized
policy debates with finely-calibrated plan inclusive counterplans and esoteric
intrinsicness battles can be enthralling, but they also court triviality. It isn't wise to do a bunch of outreach
on the high school level, but then fail to transform college debate in a way
that makes intercollegiate debating an attractive activity for newcomers. We don't want to shut the door on those
who get excited about the general debate process in high school, but then look
to continue in college but find the Robinson Crusoe effect stultifying. One way to address this dilemma might
be to think seriously about coupling high school outreach with creation of new
opportunities for debate in college programs. This kind of initiative would have the most traction if the
prestigious college debate teams that concentrate exclusively on policy debate
consider expanding their range of debating activities to include, for example,
parliamentary or public debating.
Second, it is possible to go beyond thinking of debate as a
remedial tool to redress educational inequities to start seeing debate as a
political activity that has the potential to empower students and teachers to
change the underlying conditions that cause inequities among
schools and communities in the first place. In this task, the public advocacy skills learned by debaters
can be extremely potent. The
ability to present ideas forcefully and persuasively in public is an incredibly
powerful tool, that becomes even more powerful when coupled with the research
and critical thinking acumen that comes with intensive debate preparation. I believe that a crucial element of
this transformative pedagogy is public advocacy, making debate practice
directly relevant to actors which are studied during research, and making the
topics researched relevant to the lives of students and coaches.
In this vein, public debates represent sites of social
learning where the spirit of civic engagement can flourish, ideas can be
shared, and the momentum of social movements can be stoked. Unlike one-way communication engineered
by mass media news outlets and public opinion polling, the interaction that
occurs in public debates is a unique form of dialectical communication. Dynamic, back-and-forth exchange pushes
issues beyond shallow lines of sound-byte development. The drama of debate draws in interested
audiences, creating the possibility that dialogue will spill outward beyond the
immediate debate venue and into communities, schools, universities and other
civic groups. Furthermore, because
public debates are flexible, students and teachers can creatively tailor
formats and topics to fit local needs, as well as experiment with new forms of
debating.
Third, entering wider public spheres of deliberation is a
risky endeavor. Many actors
outside the immediate debate community find the debate process very attractive,
and this makes it easier to organize and promote public debates. But the political effects of debate are
not automatically emancipatory or progressive. The debater's instinct is that more discussion always
good. This is a nice principle,
but when you're talking about on-the-ground social change, it depends on type
of discussion that debate enables.
Institutions use debate as a legitimating tool. They can point to their participation
as evidence of commitment to the community, as proof of their democratic pedigree. The danger is that if your goal is to
use debate as a tool to challenge corrupt or regressive institutions, the
possibility exists that you can make them stronger. We have heard this warning from Charles Lee, of the United
Church of Christ. As a partner in
our project to organize a series of national public debates on environmental justice,
Mr. Lee emphasized the importance of coupling public debate initiatives with
the aggressive pursuit of partnerships with grassroots activists and members of
affected populations.
At a recent dinner held
in his honor, Brent Farrand (Debate Coach of Newark High School of Science)
gave a brilliant and moving speech that touched on many of the themes discussed
at this Ideafest. Looking back on
his own career, Farrand offer a poignant charge for the future. "Perhaps the time has come for
each of us to consider choosing a road that travels to other places than just
between practice rounds and tournament sites," Farrand reflected;
"Through some admittedly dark times when each of us felt like voices in
the wilderness, we cradled, protected, refined and polished this gem of
education. It is time now to carry
it out into the world and share it."
I agree with that.
Ede Warner: 20 years ago, I started
debating at Hammond High School.
We always seemed to come in second. Our coach discouraged us from saying that we didn't win
because we were black, so we always invented other rationales for losing. When I watched the Therrell debate
video, it was empowering. Those
debaters have swagger. They have the
confidence to say "we got screwed." This was different from my experience. I wound up in Sioux Falls, SD, working
as a funeral director. My friends
said "you're mighty white."
In 1990, I got back into debate, and when I looked around, I saw that it
was the same as 1981, when I left the activity: there weren't any faces like
mine. Then I hooked up with George
Ziegelmueller's Urban Debate League, and coached Detroit inner-city teams to
success. This gave me hope, and
learning about what Melissa Wade has been doing gave me energy. Then Tim Hynes at the University of
Louisville said that the school was losing its debate program, but that there
was a black initiative at the school, and that if I came, we could get it all
back. George Ziegelmueller, my
thesis advisor, said don't go without your dissertation being done, but I went
anyway. Of the 40 units of
scholarship given out since I've been at Louisville, 11 have gone to women and
people of color. Since that time,
we've had black speakers among the top twenty at the NDT, and an all-black team
cleared at the NDT.
* The Jefferson County
Debate Club
Tim Hynes of the University of Louisville
started the Jefferson County Debate Club back in the 1980s. The Lieutenant Governor dropped a 1/2
million dollar endowment on the program.
At that time, there were one day tournaments on Saturdays, and the
program wasn't really going anywhere.
I went to the coaches, and said, "Let's do a week-long
institute." They said that
was too long. So I had $11,000 to
spend on a two-day coaches workshop.
That was just too much money.
I didn't want to administer the tournaments, but with this excess money,
it made sense to bring tournaments under the program endowment. So we went to two-day tournaments. There was a huge backlash, because
football games were played on Friday nights. My response was to ask "Do football players say they
can't play because there's a debate tournament on Saturday?" So you can see that there were many challenges
in building this league.
Eventually, we went to a short-term solution of an all-county team as a
kind of quick fix. We plan to hire
a coach with real experience to come in an coach. We haven't worked out all the plans in practice, but it
looks like it will work, since 90% of the regional tournaments accept hybrid
teams.
Will Baker: I was wondering if
anyone had ideas about how to change the reward structure so high school
teachers want to participate?
Gordon Mitchell: At Pittsburgh, Tom Kane
has been running an excellent program for years that gives high school teachers
college credit for teaching classes dealing with argumentation and debate in
the high schools. Since this
credit can be used for professional advancement, it's a very popular program.
Melissa Wade: We do this at Emory,
too. One other issue I'd like to
follow-up on, reacting to Ede's comments about the difficulty of building a
community among high school programs.
In the Urban Debate League here in Atlanta, the leadership has insisted that there be
community. When something goes
wrong, people get a "visit in the night" from the powers that be, who
explain the importance of a supportive community structure.
George Ziegelmueller:
You've
got to take the long-term view.
You're not going to revolutionize things overnight. What I'm most pleased about with the
Detroit Debate League is that the students and teachers have started debating,
even with little or no experience.
It's not reasonable to expect national-circuit competition right away,
especially if you want to run a broad-based program. You need to have progressive levels, to gradate the options
for participation.
Tuna Snider: I'm very disturbed about
resources. Targeting all of a
team's resources toward six debaters is bullshit. It's an offense to the people discussing these issues in this
room. It's important to keep in
mind the number of students that you're helping, and how much you're helping
them. It's not how high, but how
many and how far.
Rob Tucker: If the goal is to
include the maximum number of people, you shouldn't be surprised when the top
level of NDT is not integrated.
There is a tradeoff.
Melissa Wade: After researching this
for fifteen years, one thing that I've learned is that you have to have role
models. Shannara was so proud to
reach the octas at CEDA nationals, not because of the trophy, but because by
doing it, she has succeeded in making it easier for someone else to do in the
future. These are not all the
options available, though. Every
program has something to offer.
Some are going to be more bombastic, some are going to be more
behind-the-scenes.
Les Lynn: Speaking as a high
school teacher, I'd like to return to the point that Ede made about asking for
high school teacher volunteers.
Teachers must be paid. It's
hard to communicate that to a room with so many people who are philanthropic and
altruistic. It just seems
impossible to build a league solely with volunteers. It's not so much the money; it's a matter of respect. If you're building a debate league,
you've got to allocate resources.
I believe in an approach where the colleges are involved, training the
high schools to do it themselves, rather than bringing debate to the high schools. If you train the high schools to do it
themselves, the teachers are closer to the students; they are professionals who
work with the students directly. I
started teaching at Whitney Young High School two years ago, and I tried to get
the administration to recognize debate.
It's important to have a debate team that's organic to the high school,
something fully legitimate within the high school, not something where you are
taking the kids out of the high schools.
Ede Warner: I believe the main
object is to get as many students to participate as possible. When I lecture to African-Americans, I
like to say: You can get some of this stuff (scholarships, etc.), too. Shanara and Kenya were in my lab at one
summer workshop, and when the rest the rest of the lab was cutting up, they
kept working. They saw it as a way
out.
Shawn Whalen: I think the key is the
high school debate coach. All the
Emory debaters have been instilled with the teaching ethic.
Melissa Wade: Some programs are
institutionalized. For example, in
Texas, debate is required. We're
involved in a fight every 3-4 years, when the school board decides they want to
cut debate. It seems inherent in
education. We need to understand
that education itself needs to be overhauled. I liked Will's comment that we need to pay more attention to
marketing ourselves. We don't
exploit alumni as much as we could.
Karla Leeper: Texas is sold on debate,
but there's a big problem--retention.
We get some teams up and running, but then the coaches get robbed by
bigger schools. We need to
communicate what teachers do academically--why it is beneficial, academically,
to do debate. We need to
communicate that what we do is important and why others should do it for their
students. One phrase keeps coming
back today, and that's self-esteem.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that there are people alive
today who wouldn't be alive without debate.
George Ziegelmueller:
One
thing that inspired us all today was the idealism. Young high school teachers need to know that in addition to
critical thinking and research, [this idealism] is what keeps us all in it.
Paula Nettles: I've been a cockeyed
optimist all my life. But now I'm
going into a retirement/sabbatical because it feels like I've been doing two
full-time jobs for 20 years. If
people like me are getting out now, I don't know what's going to happen next.
Beth Breger: When I was first
researching in this area, I went to Atlanta and was bowled over. Then I went to Detroit, and was bowled
over again. The board members at
the Open Society Institute fear that there's a risk of giving too much money, that somehow
money will lessen the goodwill and effort that you folks are putting
forth. So that's a question we
face--how will the money help beyond your own goodwill.
Melissa Wade: I've made copies of a
speech by Brent Farrand from the Newark School system. He got the debate budget there in the
$300,000 range, with no college support.
He just found a superintendent and converted him. The activism in this speech is exactly
what we need to do.