Chase Urban Debate National Championship
Northwestern University
Chicago, Illinois
April 3-6, 2008
The Seattle and Tacoma Urban Debate Leagues just returned from the National Urban Debate League Tournament in Chicago where the top urban debaters from 21 cities in attendance.
We met and networked with some amazing leaders and celebrities including two actors from the movie The Great Debaters: Nate Parker and Voltaire Sterling! Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report on Comedy Central even gave a video address at the Awards Ceremony!
Field trips included: National Museum of Mexican Art, Freedom Museum, Navy Pier & Screening of The Great Debaters.
The Championship also featured a career and finance conference, as well as a youth leadership panel.
The teams that qualified for this tournament were:
Tacoma Urban Debate League: Kenya Adams & Jesus Jesus Genaro Pedraza Aguilar, Lincoln High School
Seattle Urban Debate League: Habiba & Zahra Mohamed, West Seattle High School
What is so exciting is that out of all of the teams debating from around the country, West Seattle High School Juniors, Habiba and Zahra Mohamed were the 11th place team and Habiba received 20th speaker!
The team argued that the United States Federal Government should use Ecofeminist ethics when providing public health assistance to Sub Saharan Africa.The team has poured over thousands of pages of evidence all year to make this case that no one in the country is running! What brilliant young women!
The two debaters have some of the best ethics I have ever seen. Not only did they help coach the Lincoln HS team from Tacoma who were competing at their second tournament ever; but also for every one of Habiba and Zahra's debate rounds, if their opponents did not have enough evidence, or were new to debate, Habiba and Zahra gave them evidence and suggestions on strategy. They said that it is about education and competitive equity, not just winning. It was amazing! They embody true leaders for their peers as well as for adults.
In addition, the only two rounds WSHS lost were to the two teams who were in the final round. What a team!
The two young women have also received a $1,200 scholarship each to attend the nationally renowned four-week long Gonzaga Debate Institute this summer (for more information on GDI see: gonzagadebate. com/GDI. htm). Now we only have to raise $1,250 for each of them for their tuition.
So many judges came up to me to say how incredible they thought Jesus and Kenya were in their debates...and couldn't believe that it was just their second tournament! When they were Affirmative, they argued that The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa by fully funding and administering Public Law 109-121 )The Water for the Poor Act) to Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Jesus and his experience at nationals:
"My debate career is not very long so I look at every debate as a chance to absorb and learn new things. What a better place to do that than a national urban debate championship. I have only experienced one other debate tournament, which was hosted in UC Berkley. This tournament was a very traditional one with very traditional debaters. The vibe that I got was mostly of exclusion and it made me uncomfortable.
This tournament however was full of open-minded debaters that, instead of excluding, invited me and my other fellow debaters to come together and exchange ideas and become closer as a debate community. I felt welcome and actually ended up rooming with debaters I met in my previous tournament. It is important that in a tournament everyone feels like a family or community instead of strangers. This allows for better debates where strategies and other things can be discussed afterwards without feeling embarrassed to ask. By simply creating this type of bond you invite hundreds of urban youth to participate in debate. They will not feel intimidated by other debaters and will be part of a national family."
According to Habiba Mohamed:
"Hi I’m Habiba Mohamed. I go to West Seattle High School. I live in low income housing in High Point. I’m in the eleventh grade. I came here straight from refugee camp in Kenya when I was 7 years old. I Didn’t speak any English. I started school in the first grade. But I was a quick learner and mastered English my third grade. I chose honor classes for my freshman year but for some reason the ESL program had already signed me up for ESL classes. I finally got out of them and into my honor classes.
My experience at Nationals was irreplaceable. I was able to meet with UDL students from all over the nation. I loved to debate. Every single one of my rounds either gave a chance to learn something or teach it.
My first round was with a team from Rhode Island. They asked us if we disclosed our case and we told them about it. They looked discouraged and so we asked them if they wanted the best way to attack our case. We told them that they could run topicality, a Counter plan or a counter advocacy.
Our second round was with Austin. They linked hard to our development discourse critique. Their whole case hard linked because it was about forgiving African debt. They pretty much argued that Africa could never pay it back because they were a subordinate other.
Our third and fourth rounds we’re real hard. We had one as affirmative and the negative ram a counter critique and one as negative where our critique didn’t link to their case. Those teams we lost against were the top 2 teams in the whole tournament. I feel happy that we lost to them because a person’s success is determined by how they respond to their failure. I’m going to review why I lost and fix that so I can have my success. Whenever I lost to a team. It of coarse didn’t make me happy. But I also felt proud that a fellow UDL team is that good! It gave me hope that I can be better than them!
Our fifth round was against a team from Dallas. They also didn’t know how to go about refuting our case and we gave them the same advice we gave the other team. The funny thing is that this team actually came very close to beating us on increase. They had a good argument as to whether we increased anything in the status quo. I’m happy we told them that strategy because now I can block up on it. It was a win-win situation."
Congrats and many many thanks to all of the excellent coordinators, coaching, support staff and partners for the Seattle and Tacoma UDL teams: Seattle/Northwest Debate Foundation; National Association of Urban Debate Leagues; Comcast Foundation; Stella Haioulani, Tacoma UDL Program Coordinator; Tiffany King, Seattle UDL Program Coordinator; Lincoln HS Debate Coaches and Administration: Principal Patrick Erwin, Amy Lavold, Ian McFeat, Bernadette Ray, Jose Gutierrez Jr.; West Seattle HS Director of Debate, Anne Louise Eades, WSHS Assistant Coach Brett Orlob, Joseph Swarner from Garfield High School who helped coach at the tournament; HERO Program Officers: Randy Riley, Jamila Jones, Noah Prince; and to the whole WSHS and LHS team and school for the national tournament. Every individual teams’ success is the result of the hard work of everyone on their squad: the debaters, the coaches, the school administration, volunteers, parents and all of our partners.