First-year students restore campus debate club
After an eight year break, the "CSB/SJU Dynamos," a new debate club, was officially founded last week. They hope to inspire student discussion and attend competitions.
First-years Canaan Cooper, Dariq Chase, Jahmai Bastian and Antonio Thompson started work on the CSB/SJU Dynamos after learning that there was no debate team at the Involvement Fair, nor has there been a debate team since 2013.
“I told my friends, ‘I’ll be back; I’m going to find the speech and debate booth.’ Little did I know, there was not one to begin with,” Cooper said.
Cooper spoke about starting the debate team from there, recruiting others to be co-captains and moving quickly to seek out an advisor in political science professor Christi Siver. Almost unexpectedly, he became a part of the movement to resurrect the forgotten organization of speech and debate at CSB/SJU. The love for debate is rooted deep in the heart of everyone involved, and it shows.
“I always love that aspect—the audience. The audience I get and the response I get from my words. That’s always been a part of it,” Cooper said.
His co-captain, Thompson, also talked about his debate skill.
“For me, what I do is look at both sides of the argument… because at the end of the day, the topic needs to be discussed… it’s more about bringing awareness to a situation,” Thompson said.
Siver agreed with Thompson, indicating that the debates commonly displayed in media are different than a true debate.
“Presidential debates are not debates; media debates are not debates,” Siver said. “Debate is about a clash of ideas and engaging each other’s arguments. It’s more about learning than it is speaking. I do feel like sometimes because of the adversarial nature of debate and currently the way competitive debate is structured, [others] feel excluded. I do think it’s really important that we make sure that debate is a space where all voices can be heard.”
Siver stressed the importance of having a debate club on campus.
“I feel like anyone can succeed in debate… I think it’s a great way to see all the sides of issues. My goal is to help students go to the Social Justice Debates National Championship”, Siver said.
Cooper, in talking about debate, also brought up the concept of uncomfortability. He said he likes to make points at the end of his debates in order for people to take away what they want from them. His mission is to bring up things that aren’t mentioned in class, things that people don’t want to talk about.
He wants to give the audience a call to action, and he says that is why he does debate.
“You say… ‘What are you going to do now?’ I already told you my way. I already told you what the facts are. I already told you what my statistics are… I am giving you the choice to decide”, Cooper said. Are you going to change what surrounds you that makes you uncomfortable, or are you going to change yourself? If you’re uncomfortable, is it you? Or is it your environment?”
