Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

KU fans disappointed by another first-round loss in Men’s Basketball can take solace in the national dominance of a very different kind of team: The University of Kansas Debate Team.

At the conclusion of the season last month, KU’s varsity debaters finished as the top ranked squad in the country based on National Debate Tournament points. Dartmouth and Harvard placed second and third.

Although it may be surprising that Kansas students are competing with and defeating Ivy League students, it is certainly no accident.

“Partly it’s tradition,” said Scott Harris, KU Debate Coach. “Debate has been an active program at KU for more than 100 years. The institutional support for debate has been fairly consistent.”

Indeed, Kansas has always been at or near the top in number of high school debaters and currently has more active college debate programs than any other state.

Despite the team’s undeniable success, some former debaters and coaches, as well as outside observers, think that the current style of debate at the college level is destructive to the educational value of the activity.

“I think college debate can get ridiculous,” said Daniel Singer, Leawood junior and former high school debater. “People make arguments that I don’t think they even understand. There are real-world reasons that any Affirmative plan is a bad idea. Why can’t teams just try to find those?”

Singer was successful in high school competition and would have loved to continue to debate in college had he seen the same value in the activity as he had before.

“I would have absolutely debated in college if it was just the best debaters from high school arguing with each other about concrete issues,” Singer said. “But arguing about whether a plan is anthropocentric is just a waste of time.”

The debaters don’t see things that way.

“While people say that it’s not real-world, the skills we learn are real-world,” said Lindsey Lathrop, Overland Park sophomore debater.

“The research we do and the critical thinking skills we develop are extremely beneficial,” Lathrop said.

Harris argues that the addition of critical arguments, when well-applied, can make the activity even more educational.

“With this year’s topic on increasing pressure on China, questioning the whole notion of how we conduct foreign policy and if leveraging another country is really something we ought to be doing seems to be an important, relevant question to ask in how we conduct our foreign policy,” Harris said.

“I think it is useful they are constantly being pushed to learn new things,” he added.

Everybody in debate agrees that the activity now involves more of a discussion of philosophy and procedural issues. Also common is the use of generic strategies for both the Affirmative and Negative sides in a round. But perhaps the most divisive characteristic of college debate today is the sheer speed at which the participants talk.

“Speed is traditionally not what we have promoted here in Kansas,” said Max Brown, a high school speech coach and frequent debate judge. “I think it not only leads to bad speaking style, it leads to bad thinking.”

Brown said that he judged the top six high school teams in debate at the National Forensics League national tournament in 2003, but was unable to vote for any of them because they spoke too rapidly.

“It gets to the point where it’s not about arguing, it’s about how many arguments you can get out before your speech is up,” Brown said.

The KU debaters think that this, too, is an unfair criticism.

“I think it (speed-talking) is probably more educational because it requires you to learn to think efficiently,” said Andrew Jennings, Silver Lake sophomore debater.

As for the argument that debate fosters a poor speaking style, Harris said that is simply not true.

“I’ve never seen an ex-debater give a public speech and not be effective,” he said.

Harris pointed out that competitive debate should not be viewed in the same way one would view a debate for the general public. College debates are judged only by qualified judges, often coaches, who are able to understand what the competitors are saying.

Despite this, the contemporary style of debate makes some former participants long for the old days.

“It was beginning to speed up,” said Bill Davis, a former debate coach and Washburn University debater, of his collegiate experience. “There was a team from St. Anselm's that was speaking rapidly and losing a lot of debates with irritated judges. The debates were still oriented towards the topic and not generic.”

Davis, who won four consecutive State Championships while coaching at Blue Valley North High School, says that the changes in college debate are hurting high school debate.

“I think it is destructive of high school debate, because the arguments are far beyond what any high school debater knows, or for most high school judges to understand,” Davis said.

On this point, Davis and Harris are in agreement.

“They learn buzzwords, they use catchphrases, they don’t learn the concepts themselves,” Harris said.

Still, Harris embraces the changes to the activity and rejects the view that the “old way” is somehow better.

“It’s not the form of an argument that makes it good, it’s whether the argument is good or not,” he said. “Debate is an activity that has always changed. Those changes have been incremental and based on what works.”

Harris explained that, unlike sports like basketball or football, debate is a competition with rules and practices that are created by the participants. Debate has no governing body and it has no rule book. Harris said that these characteristics allow for the opportunity to explore new possibilities and perspectives with each round.

“I’ve been in debate for 30 years now,” Harris said, “and every year I learn new things.”