Well-dressed and intelligent a mass of high school students recently descended on Pepperdine to participate in the annual Pepperdine Invitational Debates held between Jan. 21 and Jan. 23. High schools from the area entered students in three different types of debate competitions that promote critical thinking and knowledge of world events.
More than 200 students from 25 different schools participated including students from the Los Angeles Metro Debate League (LAMDL) and Jefferson High School. “These teams give students from lower economic areas the chance to learn and compete in the most rigorous form of academic debate policy debate wrote Dr. Sarah Stone-Watt, director of forensics. Each year we offer these teams a fee waiver so that they have the opportunity to come to Pepperdine and compete in a college invitational.” The three types of debate this weekend were Policy Parliamentary and Lincoln-Douglas debates. In both Policy and Parliamentary debate students compete as either the affirmative or negative in teams of two about policy options and their implications on the world. Lincoln-Douglas debate is a one-on-one debate about individual values and morals similar to the 1858 Senate slavery debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.
The first two days of the tournament were devoted to six preliminary rounds determining which teams would advance into the elimination rounds on Sunday. Between rounds debaters work with their coaches to review their progress in the tournament and prepare their arguments for the next rounds. The awards ceremony was held Saturday night announcing the teams that continued on to the elimination round. Awards were given for the best speakers at the tournament in novice junior varsity and open divisions.
The tournament was run by Pepperdine’s own debate team which was responsible for judging rounds setting up for the tournament and cleaning up. “I think this was our smoothest tournament yet Stone-Watt commented. This year at the end of the awards ceremony a LAMDL student proclaimed with tears in her eyes ‘This was the best weekend of my life.'” Pepperdine hosts this popular high school tournament every January.
Pepperdine will again play host from Feb. 25 to 27 for the district qualification competition for the National Debate Tournament. The qualification tournament will bring some of the best debaters in the nation together on the way to compete for the prestigious national title from the American Forensics Association.