Daniel Webster Debate Society Triumphs at St. Paul’s Tournament

By KAYLEE GONG, RICK OSEI-ADDAE, MELIA THIBAULT, JADE YOO, and SERENA YUE

On Sunday, Nov. 3, sixteen members of the Daniel Webster Debate Society traveled to St. Paul’s for the annual debate tournament there. They had spent hours of their past month dedicated to this one day, and for many it was their first ever debate tournament.

Prep and novice debater Eilena Ding explained, “At first I was a bit nervous because I’ve never debated before. This was my first time being in a debate tournament. However, I just told myself that I prepared really well, and then I just calmed myself down.”

Another novice debater, prep Avni Muraka, elaborated on her nerves as well. “I was excited to be chosen for the tournament and get my first experience in high school debate, but I was nervous because it was a different style and type of debating, one that I had not done before.”

Not only was the St. Paul’s Debate Tournament a first competition for many, but its style also varied from Exeter’s own debate format: parliamentary.

Lower Victor Angeline described, “St. Paul’s was a prepared debate tournament. It was under a style called Oregon style, which means you come in, are given a side, have evidence, and you prepare everything for it. There are no POIs and it’s more like a cross examination at the end.”

Upper Jinmin Lee, a debater on the Advanced A Team, noted that he “loved it because it’s a good mix between the great sides of Parliamentary debate and also the great sides of more preparatory debate like Lincoln Douglas or Public Forum.” 

He added that “it allows you to really go deep on your research and therefore get a better understanding of the topic, so you get more depth instead of just the breadth of debate.”

Although this tournament only lasted one day, the preparation began almost a month in advance. Angeline detailed the preparation timeline. “It started off with a meeting with Joonyoung, who’s our co-head. He gave us the style and how to prepare for it. And then I met with my partner, Blakeslee Krusen, and we created our contentions and found evidence. Then we did a final practice against another Exeter team.” 

While preparing their cases, each pairing had different experiences. For lower Minnie Kim, there was quite a bit of research required. “We had to prepare one case because the sides were predetermined,” she said. “So we had to research extensively about that. We had to prepare a lot of research and some of the advanced A team members gave us their general case line so that we could look at that and adapt our case.” 

For others, like Ding, it was a bit harder to do research. “I was speaker two, and my partner, Alex was speaker one. For Alex’s speech we could basically write down everything she was gonna say. But for me, you can’t really prepare for it because you don’t really know exactly what they’re gonna say. We thought about the possible contentions that the other side would have, and then we just prepared like that.” 

However, Ding elaborated how many upperclassmen assisted in the process. “Andrew and Jinmin wrote some contentions and gave us some evidence cards.” 

Lee, who alongside upper Andrew Gould gave great assistance to the debaters while they were preparing, explained, “Andrew and I had debated the resolution already when we used to do LD so we wanted to share some of our research and I’m very thankful that the people that we share it to were very receptive and actually used a lot of it.”

Besides assisting lowerclassmen, Gould and Lee were preparing themselves too. They competed together as a pair in the advanced division of the tournament, and ended up winning first place! Gould and Lee also participated in a four person advanced team along with Kim and Shay Kashif. The four of them also finished second in that division. Prep duo Alex Eggers and Ding ended up in second place in the novice division, and placed second and third respectively overall.

Eggers described, “Placing an award at this tournament was very special for both Eilena and I, we both put a lot of effort into our arguments and matches, so placing well felt rewarding.” Ding continued, “It felt like our hard work paid off.”

After many weeks of work and a successful award, Eggers reflected back. “From this experience, I learned a lot about what it means to prepare well for a tournament. You have to work diligently with your partner on your case and really understand and believe in what you are arguing for.”

In her final comments, Kim laughed and concluded with, “I learned that Parliamentary format is better.” 

Senior and cohead Emma Sordi reflected that it was also “a good opportunity for Daniel Webster Debate Team to get more well-acquainted with the DANEIS circuit, since Exeter is ramping up our tournament involvement this year, and going forward.”

After a lot of successful wins at St. Paul’s, all of Exeter is waiting to see what Daniel Webster Debate Society accomplishes next.