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- Hi, I'm Danny. I'm a junior at Harvard.
I study social studies and I'm president of the
Harvard debate team.
- My name is Sophia and I'm a sophomore on the
debate team. I study philosophy and on the debate
board, I am the equity officer, which means I'm
responsible for making sure the debate is
accessible to a wide variety of people.
- Hi, I'm Cameron. I'm a sophomore at Harvard,
studying molecular and cellular biology and
government. I'm the vice president of recruitment
on the debate team.
- I'm John. I'm philosophy concentrator here at
Harvard and I'm a sophomore on the debate team.
I mostly help with logistics and managing the team.
- I debated in high school. I did Lincoln - Douglas
debate and then it was just natural that I figured
I'd debate in college as well.
- I was a long-time high school debater.
I spent a substantial amount of time in
high school Lincoln - Douglas, and I knew
some members of the team going into the year
and so I was excited to try out a new format and
return to some of the more persuasive elements
that my high school debate format had left out
the system. In high school, I got involved with
debate because it was one of the activities at my
school that produced some of the people who I
really admired and, because I was very interested
in the philosophical elements that we were
introduced to.
- It's fun to talk about all these different
issues and always be able to voice an opinion.
- I actually love the competitive elements of
debate. I think it's great to, kind of learn how to
articulate yourself in a way where someone else
is convinced and believes you and I think that
that competitiveness really drives you to
articulate yourself better and push yourself
to come up with better ideas, better examples and
a more convincing version of your argument.
- Yeah, so, in high school debate, you know the
topic beforehand, and you're expected to research
and come up with evidence for it. Whereas, in
college debate, either you're getting the motion
15 minutes before you speak or even seven minutes
before you speak. So, you have to have a wealth
of knowledge about the world at large, philosophy,
social movements, economics, and then you have to
be able to come up with arguments on the fly
about those.
- You don't really get to research during that
time. You get what's called a matter file and so
you and your partner can put together resources
before a tournament but in that 15 minutes, it's
just information you already know or things you
can quickly look up in that binder of material
you have.
- The difference between public speaking I was
doing more when I was in high school and then
college debate, is that in college debate, its
a little more formalized and there's a lot of
lingo you have to get used to and also the aspect
of competitiveness and being the best person
person in the round or the best team in the round.
- A tournament is four preliminary rounds and then
a break to out rounds so the top teams with the
records coming out of prelims. will be arranged
in a bracket and will compete until you're down
to two finalists and a winner.
- If you know that you have a debate
tournament coming, you can always just
force yourself to sit down and plan things
out and schedule stuff but also, I think,
uniquely debate is incredibly flexible because
we have a tournament every week and you get to
pick what you want to go to. If you are always
having a busy week, you can just not go to the
tournament or, if you know you have an easy week
coming up, you know which tournaments you want
to go to so there's a lot of flexibility in your
debate schedule.
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- I think I want to be a lawyer, so in the
sense, that like, arguing and using evidence
applies in that sense.
- My future career plans are very much up
for grabs but I'm sure the skills that I
learn in debate will be helpful regardless.
- I think that any field can benefit from being
able to formulate ideas and argue a position, so
I think that I'm really interested in going into
global health.
- I think we've put a big emphasis on just
really being a welcoming environment for everyone.
We stress that you don't need to have debated in
high school to join the Harvard debate team and
we try to make a place for everyone.
- I think the emphasis they put on taking you
from whatever level you're at to begin with, to
a level where you're able to debate competitively.
So, it's not in the sense that you have to have
had "X" amount of high school experience to
benefit from the type of training they give
you but, if they think you're a good public
speaker, if they think you have potential,
they have training sessions ranging from the
very basics of what's debate 101 to, like, more
complicated topics and I think that really helps
you grow as a debater and you don't necessarily
need to come in with, like, a ton of
high school experience.
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- My advice for a student who is thinking about
debate but doesn't know, is to try it. I was
definitely apprehensive coming in. I didn't think
I would be good enough but I really enjoyed it
and I think that you should just go for it.
Give it a shot.
- I think I would recommend definitely trying it
out because there are a lot of people who aren't
sure and they've tried out and they end up liking
it. But also, and this is sort of true of any college
activity, it's better to try it out early than
a year later, feel like you should of tried
it out but you're too busy now to take on
something new.
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