Showcase Oct. 20 will introduce growing debate club to community

Published 10:17 am Friday, October 16, 2015

While most students get nervous or scared by the prospect of public speaking, the debate team competes in it. The Mount Si Speech and Debate team, a very successful club at Mount Si High School, will host a public showcase debate to raise money to travel to tournaments, raise awareness and possibly attract more students to the club.

The showcase is set for 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 20 at the Mount Si High School auditorium. Two teams of two will be debating on a monthly topic set by the National Speech and Debate Association. Lauren Zinkan, treasurer of the club, explained that the discussion prompt they will be debating relates to the refugee crisis in Europe.

“In response to the current refugee crisis, a government should prioritize the humanitarian needs of refugees over its national interests.” Zinkan read aloud.

Dana Korssjoen, co-president, said the club is using the showcase to help get people to notice them and to show how the debate process works.

“Basically what we are doing with that event is we are trying to get a lot of community visibility and we want to open debate up to the rest of the community in hopes that they see what’s going on here and what kind of a change it can make for people,” Korssjoen said.

Ruary Thompson, co-president, said the club started small, but grew exponentially in a short time. Current membership is 73.

“It grew over 1,000 percent,” Thompson said. “We started with four members two years ago, membership has gone up exponentially.”

Korssjoen thinks that the club’s consistent success at tournaments has made more people interested in joining than ever before.

“Last year we got first and second in state, we had two teams go to nationals, myself and Ruary, and two people who graduated. We did really well at all the national tournaments we competed at,” Korssjoen said, noting that at one event, Zinkan was named first speaker from all of the students competing. “We had a lot of success and it has spread via word of mouth.”

Thompson said the team has never performed poorly at a tournament. In fact, they usually bring back some sort of accolade from every tournament they attend.

According to Thompson, the showcase also acts as a practice session for the upcoming tournament season and as a lesson for the new members of the club.

“All the new members get to come and watch, so everything that they’ve been learning gets contextualized with an actual debate,” Thompson said.

Korssjoen, Thompson and Zinkan all agreed that joining the speech and debate club was one of the best decisions they’ve made.

“If there is one thing that I could take away from this, it’s that all the accomplishments are great, but what debate does for you as a person and the things it teaches you are things that are really hard to learn if you don’t have that experience. You are doing all this research and trying to find both sides of something that you might not agree on. It really opens up your mind as a person and it really allows you to put all those thoughts into one area and be able to say what you think.” Zinkan said.

“I think debate is the best decision I’ve ever made,” Thompson said.

“Yeah, I second that,” Zinkan said.

Korssjoen agreed. “I third that.”

Dana Korssjoen, Ruary Thompson, and Lauren Zinkan will lead this years Speech and debate club.

Last year’s speech and debate club pose for a photo at a tournament at UC Berkley.