UH Debate team takes down weekend tournament

The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa debate team competed in the Warrior Intramural Debate Tournament this past weekend at the Shidler College of Business, arguing about topics that included a tax on fatty foods, change and the Obama administration, and legalizing gambling in Hawai‘i.

The UH Debate and Forensics Society competed with teams from Hawai‘i Pacific University and Honolulu Community College.

“We’ve connected with (HPU) over the last year and spent a lot of time scrimmaging with them, and we also participated in the fall in their debate tournament, which featured 10 universities from the mainland as well,” said Robert Boller, assistant professor and director of forensics department of speech. “Then HCC has just recently got involved in the debate circuit around here, so we’re sort of building a university and college debate community which basically didn’t exist two years ago.”

The debate was in a “modified Austral-Asian” format, in which teams of three competed against each other. Two teams from UH made it to the final round of the tournament, where they encountered the topic “college is overrated.”

Debaters only had 15 minutes to prepare their arguments before the debate. The judges decided that Maria DeGuzman, Kyle Dahlin, and Eliot St. John defeated Eric Lackey, Heather Frey and Andrew James, but the audience decided otherwise in an informal vote.

Boller said that the judges decide debates based on “manner versus matter.”

“Manner being the way the information is presented – so style, rhetorical eloquence – things of that nature, versus matter … (the) use of evidence and ‘clash’ with the other side,” or how the teams counter arguments made by the other side.

Boller said judges also look for how witty, engaged and well-organized debaters are, as well as and how well team members support each other.

In addition to two UH teams making it to the finals of the tournament, Christian Gilbert, a UH Mānoa speech major, was the fourth highest rated speaker at the tournament and the top UH speaker.

“Each round (judges) award a win and a loss on each side of the debate and they also award speaker points,” Boller said. “Over the course of the debate tournament you get an accumulated score that gives you an indication of how you rank relative to the other debaters.”

Gilbert said one of the “coolest” things about debate is that debaters don’t have a lot of time to prepare their arguments.

“A lot of it is on the fly,” Gilbert said. “It’s really about articulation and eloquence under pressure. I’m not sure I’ve experienced that in any other class or club.”

Boller said debating is all about “a combination of playing a rhetorical and non-verbal public speaking style and actual engagement with evidence and solid arguments and representing a united front.”

There are many benefits of debating, including “critical thinking, actually getting engaged in all kinds of different ideas and world events, international politics, philosophy, history, analysis of language and analysis of evidence for reasoning," according to Boller.

Debating also creates teamwork, said Boller, and helps debaters become knowledgeable about a variety of different subjects.

“Generally good debaters are people who know quite a bit about a lot of different things instead of taking a huge specialized dive in one particular area,” Boller said.

One big challenge of debating is having to argue topics that debaters may feel the total opposite way about.

“It gets you to have a more open mind and forces you to consider other perspectives that you may not hold instead of just having a knee-jerk reaction to something you really have to consider other points of view,” Boller said.

Over the past three semesters 30 UH students have joined the UH Debate and Forensics Society, according to Boller. He added that before the debate team was established at UH students who came from the Hawai‘i Speech League to UH used to have “no outlet for organized debate.”

“Anyone is welcome to participate and we encourage students with an interest in debate to check us out,” Boller said.