Contact: Helene Snihur, Public Relations, (716) 275-7800
March 16, 1998
'TALKING' THEIR WAY INTO THE 'FINAL FOUR'
Debaters From Across the Country Gather in Rochester for National Tourney
At the same time top college hoopsters seek the national basketball crown this month, more than 700 of their fellow collegians will battle in a competition that's as intense, demanding, and grueling as anything in the NCAAs.
For four days, from March 20 to 23, the forensic version of March Madness comes to the University of Rochester in western New York. Two-person rather than five-man teams will advance through eight preliminary debates and seven elimination rounds in their quest to be named the top college debaters in the country.
And instead of strategizing with a fast break or slowdown game, they'll use fast talk, quick thinking, critical analysis, and a wealth of current events knowledge gained outside of the classroom to beat their opponents. They'll literally take over the University's serene River Campus, supplanting classes on Friday afternoon, the first day of competition, buzzing among 100 rooms throughout the campus as they argue, review, and move on to meet new teams.
The Cross Examination Debate Association's (CEDA) annual championship, one of the largest events of its type in the world, caps seven months of near-obsessive preparation and travel to weekly regional tournaments. Since the topic for the debate season was announced last August, students have researched and argued whether the United States should substantially increase its security assistance to 10 southeast Asian countries.
It's a routine that demands upwards of 20 hours of research each week, sending students to libraries and online to refine arguments and create new cases after each tournament. Research means buttressing your own arguments, anticipating your opponent's reactions and developing counterarguments. Every bit of salient information, every supporting newspaper article is noted, copied, written down, indexed and filed away in household storage tubs -- up to 150 pounds of precious information that gets hauled to meets each weekend.
Each team becomes a model of multitasking at tournaments: listening and taking notes on rapid-fire presentations that can reach speeds of up to 300 words a minute while strategizing rebuttals and finding supporting cases in research materials.
The huge national tournament will feature some 200 teams from schools like the University of Missouri at Kansas City (last year's top-ranked team), the University of Miami, Florida State, Cornell University, University of Alabama, Syracuse University, and others from the 250-member roster of CEDA.
The national tournament will also provide an opportunity for the host school to trumpet its own team's accomplishments. A little more than five years ago, the University of Rochester's debate team consisted of three students without a coach, struggling and unranked in competition. Today, its 50 members make the school one of the largest competitors with a team that ranked in the Top 10 last year.
There are varied reasons why students make such a commitment to an activity that doesn't get the same media coverage as sports.
"Debate is one of the few times when you can argue and be evaluated on a fair basis, on a level playing field, " comments University of Rochester debate coach Sam Nelson, explaining that students can't get a level playing field for appraising their arguments with parents or professors. "It's very liberating."
"What I love about it is the ability to win an argument based on what's creative, and to be able to beat somebody using your head, not your body," says Ria Dimalanta, a University of Rochester senior and debate team vice president.
But all the students share the same commitment and zeal to their "sport." Alfred Snider, Director of Forensics at the University of Vermont and president of CEDA, counts off what he has seen in students: "It appeals to students who have an intellectual hunger to learn more, to do more, to be more. It's so very different from classroom instruction -- they learn by being active, by giving information, by doing and being done to. They get into the competitive aspect of it, they like the recognition, the self-esteem, and the prestige it brings to their school. And they develop close friendships not just with students at the school, but with students at other schools, so that it becomes a social environment as well that they're committed to."
And as in basketball, they're looking to be No. 1 this month.
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