Lynn Hosts Statewide Debate Tournament
How Things at Lynn Got Heated
By Connor Markey, Co-Editor-in-Chief
From Feb. 23 to the 25, 2024, students from universities all across Florida gathered at Lynn University’s Ronald and Kathleen ASSAF Academic Center to compete in the Florida Speech and Debate Championships.
Beginning at 9 a.m. on Friday morning, the contest was a bracket style tournament with rounds of debate and speech going on throughout the weekend. Topics ranged from politics, economics and philosophy, to pop culture and sports. Contestants were given approximately 20 minutes to prepare for each debate.
“So probably the most difficult thing is when you have teams who are both good and you’re looking for that one thing that differentiates and puts one over the other,” said Dr. Eric Hamm, an associate professor and the Director of Lynn Forensics. “Sometimes you just want to say everyone did a good job, but you can’t. When I teach debate in the classroom, if I have a good debate I can say great, both sides get A’s, that’s fine, but here, I have to say one side wins and one side loses.”
The difference between winning and losing can come down to a minute detail in one team’s argument.
“This last round that I judged, it was on increasing military aid to Taiwan, and I felt that the team that said we should increase military aid to Taiwan did a better job and was better at being debaters, but they didn’t quantify exactly how much more money we should be giving to Taiwan,” said Hamm. “The other side pointed that out. So even though they weren’t better debaters, I ended up voting against the better team because of a lapse in their argumentation.”
Jonah Cole, 2023 Debate Championship Winner and iPulse Staff Writer, shared his thoughts on that particular debate as well.
“We just had a debate over whether the U.S. should increase funding for the Taiwanese military,” said Cole. “That’s a really complex topic because there’s a lot of geopolitical consequences as well as domestic political consequences that come with that, so it was a really interesting topic, but it was ultimately very evidence based, and you had to come prepared with facts.”
Debate students also shared their preparation strategy for the event.
“I think my general strategy is just to keep things simple, a lot of times what happens, especially in a high-level debate is good teams will try to just be more clever, and what happens is they’ll just end up outthinking themselves,” said Cole. “Their positions get too complicated. Ultimately if you’re able to build out simple, solid positions with good arguments, as opposed to trying to get creative and clever, you end up winning the round just based on solid arguments.”
Another Lynn Debater, Gianlucca Lima, shared his strategy.
“I just try to have my mind clear and also think about different perspectives, like, I think that’s the most important, trying to put yourself into different shoes and be empathetic,” said Lima. “Preparation is very important, before the speech we have like 20 minutes, but also the night before, going to bed early, because we’re here from really early in the day and we also stay until like 5 p.m., 6 p.m., so that whole system is really important.”
The winners in each division were the University of Florida in IPDA, Florida Southern University in Lincoln Douglas, Tallahassee Community College in NPDA and University of Miami in British Parliamentary.
