Seventeen Humboldt State students, their coach, and one HSU Debate alum drove south on March 1 and participated in over 9 hours of co-curricular critical debate practice between 8 a.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday. Our team included new folks and returning folks from the departments of English, Political Science, Environmental Studies, History, Communication, Philosophy, and Chemistry.
The topics we saw included the political unrest in Venezuela, the preservation of art that was meant to be temporary, social media corporations and their responsibility to combat "Anti-Vax" discourse, and the pros and cons of internet virality, and that was just Saturday alone! Every student who participated spent at least 90 minutes preparing to deliver at least 6-7 minute speeches during the weekend.
Our effort culminated in the most successful showing for our squad in years, 4 of the 8 teams advancing into the semi-final round and 2 of the 4 teams advancing to the final round were from Humboldt State University.
HSU students Olivia Gainer and Devon Escoto took home first place narrowly beating HSU students Fabian Cuevas and Sydney Verga who took second. Kim Nguyen and Josh Sales advanced to semi-finals (top 8), as did team novices Makaylla Rodgers and Tim Arceneaux (who was debating at his first event ever). Four of the 10 top speakers (Gainer, Escoto, Verga, and Sales) were Lumberjacks.
Some of you may remember 2 weeks ago when our first and only other full-team Spring event at Willamette ended before it began with us stuck in the snow on Grants Pass; we were very excited to get a chance to test our research, composition, advocacy, and critical listening skills since and I could not be prouder of how our team responded to that adversity and bonded together this weekend to produce such fantastic results. Hours (and hours) of additional work went in to practice and class time to make outcomes like these possible, we should all be very proud of our students.
Next, and last, is the National Championship in April at Clemson.