Saturday was the fourth Boston Debate League tournament of the 2006-07 season, the last before our two-day City Championships event. It got off to a rocky start. I had to bring coffee, donuts, awards, a computer, and a printer with me, which meant that I had to borrow my girlfriend’s car and drive to Dorchester, where the tournament was held.
Driving in the Boston area is something that I usually avoid, and with good reason. Streets rarely run in a straight line for more than a few blocks, and they are known to change names or make sudden turns such that by going straight, you might leave Cambridge Street and end up on Dorchester Avenue. If you were later to find a road called “Cambridge Street”, it might not be the same road you left, as you may have crossed into Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, or another neighboring city that re-uses street names Boston has already used for other streets. That, of course, assumes you find a sign at an intersection at all.
An intersection might well be the convergence of six roads, two of which come to an end, one of which changes names, and one of which doubles back on itself at a two hundred degree angle. Needless to say, when there are signs at all, they are a confusing maze of circles and arrows that cause motorists to slam on their breaks and veer suddenly across three roads of traffic. It’s a delight.
After picking up five dozen donuts, twenty-five Munchkins, and three Boxes o’ Joe from the local Dunkin’ Donuts, I began what should have been a twenty-minute drive to the Dorchester Education Complex. Armed only with Google Maps directions, I arrived forty-five minutes later to find a handful of students, one volunteer judge, and one of the teachers from the Academy of Public Service (our host school), standing around outside. “I take it you aren’t just enjoying the fresh air?” I asked them.
Dan, the teacher, shook his head mournfully. “I just called the headmaster, he’s going to be here in a few minutes.” Fortunately, it was a nice day, already in the fifties at 8AM and sunny. I broke out the coffee and donuts, only to find that Dunkin’ Donuts had not given me cups, cream, sugar, or napkins. A lot of coffee was about to go to waste.
A few minutes later, Zac, the headmaster, showed up to let us in the building. In my five years of working around urban education, I’ve rarely met anyone as capable and dynamic as Zac. He took over as headmaster when Dorchester High School, with the help of a Gates Foundation grant, broke down into three small schools inside the same building. One of those schools, the Academy of Public Service, got off the ground just one year before the Boston Debate League, and was still searching for its identity. To my delight, I learned that Zac wanted to build the school around forensics and public speaking, and we had several conversations about how debate might fit into that vision.
I’ve never seen a headmaster as committed to his school’s debate team. Despite working what are probably sixty hour weeks, he comes to all of our competitions, walks around to watch all of our students debate, stops to talk to me about his school and the direction of the League, and as a member of the Boston Debate League’s Advisory Board, does what he can to advocate for and promote our organization.
The results of his commitment and dedication are plain to see. The Academy of Public Service, despite its geographical location in what is derogatorily known as ‘Dumbchester’ among Boston youth, has the largest and one of the most competitive teams in the League. They’ve got a great coaching staff who certainly deserve a lot of the credit, but Zac’s fingerprints can be seen as well. He treats the debate team as a component of the school culture that is every bit as important as the football or basketball teams. He buys embroidered vests for the team, prominently displays their trophies in a case in the hallway and in his office, and meets with them all individually every week.
This isn’t necessarily a replicable model. Zac is a young, charismatic, deeply caring black man. All of those characteristics help him to relate to his students in ways that other headmasters, no matter how competent and well-intentioned, might not be able to do. But what he does works, and his team is better off for it.
Once I’m inside the building, it’s time to tackle the next problem. The coach of each team submits to me on the Wednesday prior to a tournament the names of the students who will be competing for her school. As you might guess, however, there’s quite a bit of variation between the students registered on Wednesday and the students who show up on Saturday morning. For instance, I was still trying to find the school when I got a call from a coach telling me not one of the five students she had registered would be competing today.
Then there are other students who don’t show up, or show up late, or show up but were not registered on Wednesday. Technically, I am supposed to turn all of these students away. But our participation has been low enough this year that I can’t afford to do that, so I delay the start of the first round (our schedule has time built into it for just such delays) and redo the schedule that I put together last night. The only reason I bother doing it the night before is so that I will have something to work with in the event that my computer breaks or we’re locked out of the building for over an hour in the morning or anything else catastrophic happens.
We finally get the first of three debate rounds underway about fifteen minutes after their scheduled start time. A debate round consists of two students from one school arguing against two students from another school for nearly ninety minutes while a volunteer evaluates their efforts and chooses a winner at the end. Many of our volunteers are college debaters or former high school debaters now in college, which presented a problem, as many universities are on Spring Break this weekend.
There was a silver lining, however, in that this forced me to reach out to some new sources of volunteers who had not worked with the League before. In particular, we got two black students from Boston University Law School, one of whom had eight years of debate experience between high school and college! Of course we appreciate any volunteers we get, but I’m always conscious of the fact that so many of the coaches, judges, and administrators, myself included, are white, while so many of the debaters are not. It definitely helps to dispel common myths and stereotypes about debate when we have more diversity among our adult employees and volunteers.
On a similar note, I was glad to have back as a volunteer judge an alumnus from the very first season of the Boston Debate League. Two years after graduating from high school, Chris is pursuing a BS in Culinary Arts at Johnson and Wales College. I called him largely out of the blue because Zac had invited some important people from Boston Public Schools to the tournament and wanted to have some alumni from the League for them to meet. In particular, he said, they would want to meet young black males, a key demographic in urban politics.
I hadn’t seen Chris in two years, and frankly one thing I’ve learned from putting this League together over the last few years is that even people whom you’d expect to be very reliable often fail to come through for you in crucial ways. So I was happily surprised when he immediately agreed to drive up from Rhode Island for the afternoon. Although in my opinion a former debater in the League ought to feel some responsibility to help out after graduating, this has generally not been the case, and in fact I’ve had a lot of difficulty staying in touch with our alumni. I was really touched that Chris was willing to go to such great effort with so little prompting. It’s so rare that you find people who really will come through in a pinch, and I have great respect for anyone who does.
Chris wasn’t able to make it in time for the first round, but was happy to judge the second and then be on hand to speak with any dignitaries who came. The only guest we ended up having was a woman invited by me, not Zac, but because she was the vice-president of the Boston Schools Committee, she was quite an important guest. I told Chris she was around and he told me he’d seek her out and schmooze her.
I found the two of them watching the same debate and went to introduce them. Before I could say anything, Chris blatantly pointed at her and said, “Is this that lady you wanted me to talk to?” Subtle. They seemed to hit it off well, though, and I think she was generally impressed with what she saw. She stuck around for the awards ceremony and announced some of our winners, so we were able to get a lot of good pictures of her with our debaters.
The event was a little bittersweet for me because, since I won’t be at the City Championships (I need to take two of our debaters to a national competition in Atlanta the same weekend), this was the last time I may see some of the debaters there. I didn’t make a big deal out of it, because that’s not my style, but I did wish them all well and tell them how proud I was.
That’s no exaggeration, either. There are few things that people fear more than public speaking. Jerry Seinfeld tells a joke that, since public speaking is America’s number one fear and death is number two, most people, if at a funeral, would prefer to be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. I’m thoroughly impressed by any high school student, especially one from a school, home, and/or neighborhood culture where academic pursuits are sometimes discouraged, who is willing to join her school’s debate team and share her opinions in public.