Part 1 - The Presidents: Debate

In this new series, we interviewed the presidents of some of the biggest clubs on campus to get an insider look into each one.

Q: Why did you join debate?

A: I’ve been doing debate since 6th grade and it’s always been a huge part of my life. In 9th grade, I was like I’m gonna join this club and be president and change it all up, and then I saw current management and I saw the state of things and I was just like no I’m over this, so I didn’t show up to more than three meetings the entire year. I blew it off. [...] Sophomore year was when we got 5 or 6 freshmen to join and because of that, I was pretty much the only experienced member like I had more experience than juniors and seniors at the time, so I was the one who took on the role of teaching. Even though I hadn’t been given the position of captain, from sophomore year I was teaching the people in my branch, and just because of that, it was like having a sense of purpose that encouraged me to rejoin the club again in sophomore year.

Q: How do you run such a big club?

A: The biggest thing is when you have 80 people that you’re running in a club, you want them to understand your rationale for decision making, so you’re not constantly being questioned at every turn.

Q: What’s one of your proudest moments in the club?

A: A lot of the role I had this year was teaching the freshmen. For example, there was this one girl, she was so shy at the beginning of the year She would barely talk and speak. And then at Stanford, she broke. And she was a complete novice and we taught her the bare bone basics of debate, and within the span of 6 months, she became someone who broke at one of the most competitive tournaments like that was nationally ranked. And I was like wow, that’s insane. Seeing that transformation like going from someone who was frankly intimidated by the activity, cause debate is a lot of work and then being competent at it, even more than competent, like she broke, like she was like top 25% at the tournament, and I feel like that was a really interesting arc to see.

Q: How would you market this club to a freshman?

A: I think it’s honestly just making them realize the skills you pick up from debate, cause it’s not just a singular thing. Like you learn how to research, how to take a point, and effectively turn it against the person who tried to use it against you, how to use a few key pieces of evidence to create devastating rebuttals and cases that can completely tear down a person’s viewpoint. [...] It’s those skills you’ll always carry with you, cause it doesn’t matter if you don’t break at a single tournament as long as your speaking skills and research skills increase by a little. As long as the way you process information and manage to use the information to create viewpoints that you can use to persuade other people, you gain something. So even if you don’t get the trophy, even if you don’t get the reward, there’s always gonna be something better that you’re gonna take from it.

Q: What has debate taught you?

A: I think it’s a lot to do with emphasizing, and seeing the other side of things. Like we’re forced to look at tenuous and really controversial issues like the prison industrial complex, our ventures in the Middle East, and foreign policy. We have to take these big abstract concepts and evaluate them from all sides and think about viewpoints that maybe never even crossed our minds. Maybe philosophical frameworks to view such issues. Being able to think about things that are way bigger than yourself and the stories of people who would’ve never even crossed your mind, like now whenever I read about the Saudi Arabia Yemen thing, I just think about 8 million people who are dying and that’s just like something that’s going on that not a lot of people know about. But because of debate, it was something I was able to be exposed to. [...] I think it’s so important cause we all, especially at Monta Vista and in this area, we’re all so stuck on ourselves. But when you do an activity like debate, where you’re arguing about resolutions that don’t personally affect you but affect millions of people on a global scale, it makes you realize, not how unimportant you are, but how in the grand scheme of things there are things that matter way more than this, and I just think that’s just a good perspective to have.