I wake early on Saturday morning in order to get to Faneuil Hall by 8:45. The event doesn’t start until 11, but I’ve arranged for the debaters to come in early in order to work with some volunteers who will help them “put finishing touches” on their presentations. This is a nice way of saying that I have reason to think some of them will be massively underprepared, and I don’t want them to embarrass themselves (or, by extension, me).
I’m on my way out the door when my phone rings. I’m terrified that this will be someone canceling on me at the last minute, but it’s just Ho asking for directions by public transportation.
When I get to Faneuil Hall, I’m relieved to see that Carla, who I am expecting to be the least prepared, is first to arrive. Better yet, she tells me she’s got her whole first speech written and wants me to look at it.
It turns out to be a very detailed and dry history of Supreme Court litigation concerning school segregation. A lot of it does not appear to be in her words, though there are no quotes or citations. (By the way, I hesitate to call this plagiarism, though I guess technically it is, because I don’t believe it was her intent to pass off the work as her own. When I pointed out that she needed to cite her sources, she was happy to do so, and in general I’ve noticed a lack of knowledge about proper research and citation among the students I’ve worked with. Once teacher showed me papers he was grading where bibliographies included sources such as “termpapers.com”.)
I explain to Carla that she needs to cut out a lot of the history and focus more on making arguments about the current state of affairs. She’s surprisingly calm about the fact that I’ve just told her to rewrite her speech two hours before show time. Conveniently enough, the volunteer I wanted to have work with her shows up just then, so I introduce the two of them and then get to work preparing the stage for the public debates.
The good folks at Faneuil Hall have provided us with two long tables and a beautifully carved wooden podium. I ask if it’s alright to move the podium, and the property manager tells me, “Just be careful, it’s only held together by wooden pegs.” I shove it gingerly across the stage, all the while worrying that with my luck, I’ll be the one to destroy Samuel Adams’ lectern.
Surveying the stage now, it occurs to me that a single high school student might get pretty nervous sitting at the long table all by herself with dozens of people staring at her. So even though these debates will be one on one (unlike most of our competitions, which are two on two), I decide to suggest that each debater invite another student from her school to sit at the table with her during her debate for moral support. Carla in particular looks relieved when I suggest this.
It’s now 9:15, and nine of my ten debaters are here. The only one missing is Ho. His teacher is here, but she hasn’t heard from him. Just then, my phone rings again, and I answer to hear Ho tell me, “I just want to tell you, I am going to be fifteen minutes late.”
“You’re fifteen minutes late now, Ho.”
He’s silent for a minute. “I am going to be thirty minutes late.”
“Alright,” I can’t help but laugh. I know he’s plenty prepared already, so I’m not too worried about it, though Carla is really antsy to meet him and find out what exactly he’ll be arguing. Unlike the regular debate tournaments our students attend, this event is intended to be more about drama than debate. I don’t want the students worrying about who wins or trying to make each other look stupid on stage, so I’m giving them a chance to meet their opponents and run through their debates ahead of time. This proves very popular, as everyone is nervous and quite willing to strike a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” deal with her opponent.
When Ho finally arrives (nearly an hour late), he is looking very sharp in a dark suit and handsome tie. I’m wearing a Brooks Brothers that set me back a couple hundred dollars at 50% off, but I can’t disagree when he looks me up and down, straightens his tie, smiles, and says, “Ah ha, now I show you up!”
With about a half hour to go, I take all the students up on stage with me to show them where they’ll sit and stand and when. The sound guy we hired gives them a quick tutorial on how to adjust the height of the microphones, how close to put their mouths to them, etc., which is a great idea and something that hadn’t occurred to me. As he pointed out, it’s one less thing for them to be nervous about when they’re up there.
The last thing I explain is how to handle the audience. They are accustomed to being cross-examined by their opponents after a speech. For the public debate, however, the audience will also have the opportunity to ask questions, which means they could be asked pretty much anything. We go over some strategies for dealing with off-the-wall questions or things they just don’t know how to answer.
“First off, don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. If a question is really tangential, everyone will realize that, and you won’t look bad for saying, ‘I’m not prepared to answer that,’ or, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have that information,’ or something along those lines.
The other thing you can do is have some talking points. Have you ever seen politicians answer questions? “
“They don’t,” Ho interjects.
“Exactly. They smile, nod, say ‘Very good question,’ and then just say whatever they want to say, even if it has nothing to do with the question. So I’d suggest that you each think about important points you want to emphasize during cross-examination, and then if you get any questions out of left field, you can just brush it off and go to your talking points.”
As of 11AM, our scheduled start time, we still don’t have much of an audience. I take a look outside, and heavy winds are gusting heavy snowflakes through the crisp Boston air. Nothing’s sticking on the ground, but it looks and feels like a blizzard. No wonder so few people have chosen to come out. Oh well.
The emcee for the event, the headmaster of one of the schools in the League, thanks everyone for coming and then introduces the guest moderator for the first debate. As much preparation as we’ve done with the students in the debate, we’ve done very little with the guest moderators, and it shows. Despite my wild gesticulating from the back of the room, she lets the cross-examination of the first speaker go on for way too long, then thanks the students for a great debate and starts giving her closing remarks.
I run over to the foot of the stage and wait for an opportunity to interrupt her and tell her there are still three more speeches left. She blushes a bit and introduces the second speaker, who gives her four minute speech and then takes some questions from the audience. Now, with two speeches left to go, the moderator says, “Sorry about trying to cut you off prematurely before, now thank you both for a great debate,” and starts to leave the stage. I don’t have the heart to embarrass her again, and we’re already behind schedule, so I just mouth, “Don’t worry about it,” to the students on stage, who are shooting me confuzzled looks. Neither seems too disappointed to leave the stage without delivering a rebuttal speech, though.
After that things go smoothly, and the audience fills out a bit more. Mostly they are friends and family of the people in the debate, but occasionally some tourists come in and sit for a speech or two, which is very cool. Faneuil Hall is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Boston, and though it’s technically closed to them for our event today, we told the officers outside to invite anyone who came to see the building to come in and watch a bit of the debates. Faneuil Hall is, after all, of interest to the tourists precisely because it was a public forum where issues of pressing national importance were debated.
As the fourth debate is drawing to a close, I pull Carla and Ho out of the audience and line them up at the foot of the stage, ready to be introduced. Ho is fine about going up on stage alone, but Carla, even with a friend at her side, is shaking like a leaf. “Andrew, I don’t know this!” she whines. It’s very, very tempting to make a comment about she maybe could have started preparing before last night, but that’s not going to make a difference now, so I just tell her she’ll be fine. She looks less than reassured as the guest moderator for her debate announces her name and she takes the stage, clutching at her friend’s hand.
Ho is the first to speak, and he does a great job. We worked together on a brief opening, but he’s revised it since Thursday, and it’s better than ever. He introduces himself and his school, provides some quick background on the desegregation cases now before the Supreme Court, and dives right into his arguments against forced integration.
“Although forced integration schemes were intended to desegregate schools, the have ironically caused more segregation by driving students out of urban school systems,” he begins, and I smile. “Take my school, for example. In the 1970’s it was a white school, like 90%. Now, only 7% of students are white.”
This is killer stuff. For these debates, I tried to choose topics that were of national interest and importance but still personal and relevant to the students. Frankly, there’s nothing all that special about getting some people to talk about a random issue. This event is supposed to be a celebration of the voices and opinions of Boston’s young people, and it’s really, really good to hear some personal experiences brought into the debate.
When his four minutes are up, Ho confidently announces, “I am open for cross-examination.” Carla lobs him a few softball questions, and I can see immediately that his answers are scripted. Fine by me, but as soon as the floor is opened to the audience, things get rough. One of Ho’s teachers is in attendance, and with an impish grin, he rises from his seat.
“You argue that as America becomes more diverse, schools will naturally become more integrated. But the country is much more diverse than it was in 1954, yet schools have not been as segregated as they are now since the Brown decision. How can you be sure that this trend will change in the next fifty years?”
“Could you repeat that please?” I know damn well that Ho understood the question the first time, and I can see the wheels spinning in his head as his teacher struggles to rephrase.
“What assurance do you have that more diversity in the country will mean more integration in schools? Haven’t we seen just the opposite in the last fifty years?”
“Ah! That is a very good question. But I feel it is better to let integration happen naturally, because when you force it, you can actually make schools more segregated.”
With a knowing smile, the teacher sits back down, seemingly satisfied with his student’s stalling and evasion tactics.
Now it’s Carla’s turn to speak, and there’s an awkward silence as she fumbles to adjust the microphone. Once she starts talking, though, she sounds good, real good. Remnants of the history lesson, with proper citation, remain, but her speech is now chock full of strong arguments as well. The only indication of her nervousness is some slightly excessive pausing between sentences, and I’m confident that 75% of the audience doesn’t even notice.
Carla handles her cross-examination gracefully, turns over the floor to Ho for his rebuttal, and then concludes the debate with a strong rebuttal of her own. Now it’s my turn to take the stage for the first time all day to join Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year and keynote speaker at the event, in handing out medals to all of the participants. “Nice job,” I tell Carla as I shake her hand and Dr. Khazei drapes a medal around her neck.
“Shut up, I sucked,” she smiles, taking her place alongside the others.
Afterwards, there is a lot of milling around and picture taking. As a way of reassuring them, I had promised the debaters that they’d have a sympathetic audience, since everyone would be there because they were interested in the debates. That turned out to be not entirely true, as Ho’s teacher had offered extra credit to her students if they came to the event. About half a dozen of them showed up and were (understandably) completely disinterested in the debates, sleeping or whispering quietly to each other the entire time. I didn’t really care since they filled out the audience and weren’t disruptive.
What was surprising was the way they treated Ho afterwards. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was a rock star: they all wanted to have their picture taken with him, shake his hand, congratulate him, etc. To the best of my knowledge, these were not friends of Ho’s or members of the debate team or even honors students, they were just random kids who knew him from school.
It’s a common assumption, one that I’ll admit to harboring when I first started working with the Chicago Debate League, that urban public schools students would have no interest in a debate team. In an environment where kids are supposed to be ‘hard’ and show no interest in academics or education, who would want to join a debate team? Even other nerds at my suburban high school poked fun at me on occasion.
But the truth is that you’ll find as many bright, articulate, outgoing, and/or intellectual students as you would anywhere else. And unlike at schools in more affluent areas, where college-bound students are offered multiple AP courses and a bevy of academically-oriented after-school activities, these students have fewer outlets. Sometimes you get these kids, sometimes even ones who have never done well in school before, who just fall in love to with debate because it is so different from anything that’s been available to them before. It’s tough and rigorous but it also very open-ended, so they can pursue arguments they are interested in and really be in control of what they are learning and doing in ways that they can’t in a classroom.
OK, tangent over. Bottom line: the event went well in a lot of ways, and the students surprised me by demonstrating some skills that I wasn’t sure they had acquired. I wish there was more of an audience, but now that we’ve done it once and ironed out the kinks, hopefully in future years we can put more effort into publicizing it.