“We will need to not sleep for a week,” Captain Amanda Fuller ’07 warned the 35 members of the Wesleyan Woodrow Wilson Debate Team this week.
After hosting a widely-acclaimed tournament this fall, the Debate Team has been elected by the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) to host its annual National Tournament from April 8-10. The Debate Team now faces the daunting task of preparing for the tournament, including fund raising, finding housing for visiting teams, and organizing all the events and entertainment.
“Nationals is a huge deal,” Fuller said. “It is the last step to becoming an important and respected team”.
Fuller also noted that the Wesleyan Debate Team did not exist three years ago, making the accomplishment even more impressive.
“We’re the up-and-coming team,” said President Sara Williams ’06. “We’ve already earned a lot of respect in the debate circuit.”
According to Williams, getting into Nationals is a complicated process. It involves strategic political maneuvering within the APDA organization itself.
“There’s a lot of politics,” Williams said. “There are big rivalries between northern and southern schools, and between Harvard and Yale. These are people who want to be lawyers and politicians.”
“It’s soft-core intrigue,” Fuller said about the cooperations and occasional scandals between debate teams. “A lot of people date within APDA. Many team alliances exist because of dating members. Wesleyan, however, won Nationals because we had the support of both Harvard and Yale’s voting blocks.”
In addition to hosting the National Tournament, the Wesleyan Debate Team is currently helping establish and train a debate team at the University of Connecticut. Wesleyan will sponsor UConn’s admission into the APDA and help run their first tournament.
“New schools don’t draw a lot of people to their tournaments unless they’re backed by big names or schools,” Williams said.
Three years ago Wesleyan’s first tournament was personally backed by an individual with significant influence and clout within APDA. Tournaments backed by single APDA members go against the norm of an established debate team’s helping new schools get started. By helping UConn get established, Wesleyan is also ensuring the school’s political loyalty within the APDA organization.
Despite the politicized nature of the debate society, Fuller was careful to note the fun and rewarding aspects as well.
“Debate is sheer brilliance,” Fuller said. “It allows you to be a much more effective communicator and thinker. I love it.”
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