Wednesday March 29, 2006
Who Does Have the Best Debate Team?
The recent spate of flawed articles claiming Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University has the best debate team in the country has drawn me back into the world of college debate. So I was wondering: If Liberty doesn’t have the best college debate team, who does?
The question is more difficult to answer than you would think because there isn’t just one style of college debate—and each style is governed by more than one organization. Considering only team debate—where two-person teams compete head to head—there are two formats currently being used: policy debate and parliamentary debate.
Policy debate is an increasingly fast-paced, evidence-driven activity in which teams spend the school year debating a single policy resolution. This year, it’s “Resolved: The United States Federal government should substantially increase diplomatic and economic pressure on the People’s Republic of China in one or more of the following areas: trade, human rights, weapons nonproliferation, Taiwan.”
Policy debate is governed by both the National Debate Tournament (NDT) and the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA). While the history of national debate topics goes back to 1921, the first NDT was held in 1946. CEDA was founded as a competing organization in 1971—originally debating value propositions rather than policy proposals—but reunified with NDT in the late ’90s. Today, NDT and CEDA tournaments debate the same topic and each organization holds a national tournament. (The American Debate Association (ADA), which has been mentioned in some of the articles about Liberty, was founded in 1985 with an emphasis on sanctioning junior varsity and novice tournaments. It also uses the NDT/CEDA topic.)
Then there is parliamentary debate. In this British style of debate (which probably most closely resembles the public’s idea of college debate) competitors argue extemporaneously based on a resolution provided fifteen minutes prior to each round. No outside documents, other than the debaters’ own notes, are allowed.
The oldest organization governing this style of debate in the U.S. is the student-run American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA), which was established in 1981, primarily to provide structure and scheduling for existing competitions at elite colleges in the northeastern and western U.S. The National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA), which is faculty-sponsored and more topic-centered than APDA-style debate, held its first national championship in 1994.
So, which college has the best debate team? Several recent stories have claimed that Liberty University has the best team in the country, based on its position in the overall NDT and CEDA rankings. These rankings, however, include points for junior varsity and novice squads, which might be a good measure of a school’s participation, but not necessarily of its competitiveness.
The fundamental unit in debate is the two-person team, rather than the “squad,” which includes all of a school’s debate teams. The closest you can come, then, to naming a top team in the country is by looking at the reigning champions from the major national tournaments.
At the 2006 NDT—which was held this weekend at Northwestern—Michigan State’s Ryan Burke and Casey Harrigan defeated Jamie Carroll and Brad Hall of Wake Forest to win MSU’s second title in three years. Since 2002, the tournament has been won by teams from either Northwestern or MSU.
Meanwhile, at last year’s CEDA Nationals—this year’s tournament begins Friday—Stacey Nathan and Craig Wickersham of UC Berkeley defeated Dartmouth’s Kathryn Clark and Brian Smith in the finals. Nathan and Wickersham also made it to the finals of the 2005 NDT, where they were defeated by the Northwestern team of Josh Branson and Tristan Morales.
On the parliamentary side, the 2006 NPDA tournament (which was held last weekend) was won by Josh Anderson and Rachel Safran of the University of Puget Sound, who defeated Mike Dorsi and Darryl Stein of UC Berkeley in the finals. Anderson and Safran were the dominent team in so-called “Parli” this year. They had the best overall record and the pair also won the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence.
Meanwhile, the 2005 APDA Nationals were won by Alex Potapov and Alex Blenkinsopp of Harvard. The Alexes can enjoy their title for a few more weeks until this year’s tournament begins on April 7.
Of course, which of these titles is the most important is still a matter for debate.
Posted by jim at 11:54 PM ||