CARA VAN METER
Living Editor
The five members of Pepperdine’s debate team returned yesterday with wins in half their preliminary rounds in a national competition in Dallas where they competed throughout the weekend in the final tournament for the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA). Freshmen Jonathan Jackson, Micah Martin and Nick Stewart joined sophomore Stevie Seibert and senior Chris Wolff in debating the United States’ foreign policy concerning China. While they were successful in the preliminaries, they did not advance to semi-finals.
Yet coaches and team members agreed that the tournament was a positive experience.
“Our competitive success was exceeded only by our growth in team unity,” said Sue Peterson, Pepperdine’s director of forensics. Peterson described the CEDA nationals as her favorite tournament of the year, “a reunion of old friends,” from her years on the collegiate debate circuit.
Cross-examination, or policy, debate teams were required to create and argue a policy based upon the topic, “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.”
Graduate Assistant Mike Shackelford praised the team for doubling its wins since the 2005 CEDA nationals, when the team was three winning rounds short of the 5-3 record necessary to advance beyond preliminary competition.
“Last year the team only went 2-6, and this year we went 4-4,” Shackelford said. “One more round next year, and we’ll have it.”
Monday night the team celebrated winning third place in the region’s annual sweepstakes competition as well as the individual triumphs of one team member and two of the team’s coaches. Chris Wolff was one of 30 students across the nation to receive the association’s Scholastic Debater Award in recognition of his academic achievement as well as his debating skill.
Kylie Robertson, the team’s assistant director and a visiting lecturer of communication, was selected to be on the judging panel for the tournament’s final round Wednesday, and Shackelford was named the region’s “Critic of the Year,” for his judging of rounds throughout the year.
“I expected it,” Shackelford said. He explained that the winner was selected variably by either all the directors or all the students in the region and added, “At least one group liked me enough.”
One advantage that the Pepperdine team had over other competitors was the help received from advisers and others at the university, according to Shackelford.
“We couldn’t have done it without our graduate assistants,” freshman debater Micah Martin said, and Robertson added, “They rock.”
Seibert said she is particularly looking forward to next year’s legal debate topic because of the team’s graduate assistants at the law school.
“We’re excited for the legal researchers we have at Pepperdine,” Seibert said.
Seibert was one half of a “hybrid” team that paired her with a debater from another school. Seibert and Rachel Levitt, a senior at California State University at Northridge, competed together throughout the year and at nationals. Seibert, in her second year now, will likely be the senior member of Pepperdine’s policy debate team when competition starts up again in September.
The young makeup of the team may have made nationals a little more challenging this year, but it has given team members and coaches high hopes for next year’s competition.
“They’re all young, but they took the stress pretty well,” Shackelford said. “For this tournament, it’s a two-prong approach: one, they get some good experience, and two, the judges get familiar with them.”
But Pepperdine’s policy debaters aren’t the only young members of the team. Peterson and Robertson are both in their second year at Pepperdine, and the three graduate assistants who helped coach the policy debaters are all in their first year with the team.
The 2005-2006 season was also the first in Pepperdine history in which the team competed in individual events as well as team policy debate. The addition of the individual events lengthened Pepperdine’s list of competitive areas to include dramatic and speaking events, and, according to Shackelford, it tripled the size of the team from eight students to 25.
“Next year should be a good year,” Shackelford said. “We have a lot of new recruits coming in so we’ll still be young, but we have a lot of talent.”
04-06-2006