Nov 07, 2023 At 09:10 AM EDT
When he was in high school, Diego Flores said he was always in trouble for getting into arguments with teachers.
"And not in a good way," he told Newsweek. "I was either getting kicked out of class or sent to the dean's [office]."
But it was his sophomore English teacher who saw his potential and decided to put his argumentation skills to good use by introducing him to the school's debate team.
"I remember the first day, I walked in to a bunch of people with laptops right next to their faces, and they were all speaking really fast for no reason," he said. "I was very confused but I was interested. I sort of just stayed after school because I was able to stay away from home problems."
Flores, 21, is an alumnus of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Debate League (LAMDL) and is currently competing in debate at the college level at California State University, Long Beach.
If he hadn't joined debate all those years ago, Flores said he "100 percent" would have dropped out of school. Before debate, he wasn't invested in his schoolwork, had a penchant for procrastination and figured he'd start working after he graduated high school.
"I come from a low-income neighborhood," he said. "There's not a lot of people in my neighborhood that have a college degree, and I was probably going to be on the same path because I remember thinking that college was not really for me."
Flores credits the LAMDL leadership for providing academic mentors to show him that he could go to college and achieve more than he had ever expected.
Many LAMDL debaters go on to be first-generation college students who have to navigate the transition on their own, Flores said. But the emphasis the league puts on connecting students with alumni and other mentors makes the process less daunting.
"There is a really big network of professional people and people who care about you that are willing to support you every step of the way," he said.
Sara Sanchez, the director of programs and communications for the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL), said the shift from high school to college debate is difficult for any student, but it seems especially daunting for Urban Debate students. But she reminds students that they are not alone—they are following in the footsteps of many other NAUDL debaters.
"One of the things that's really amazing about the Urban Debate network is there are so many students all over the country who have done this thing," Sanchez, who debated for two years at the University of Utah, said.
One of those alumni in the NAUDL network is Deven Cooper, an alumnus of the Baltimore Urban Debate League who works as the current director of debate at Cal State Long Beach.
Cooper, 36, started debating in high school and fell in love with the spirit of academic competition and the ability to flex his intellectual muscles.
"To have people forced to listen to you was something that was very transformative in my life because I could have been doing a whole bunch of different things coming from Baltimore, and I felt that if I was trying to channel that into something productive, then it would probably pay off for me," he said.
When it came time to decide what his plans were after high school, Cooper was determined to compete at the next level of debate and "be somebody" in the activity. He was seeking out the debate experiences he lacked when he was in high school, like competing in the national circuit.
"I felt that I didn't get enough out of my high school experience, because at that time I was in a UDL [Urban Debate league] and UDLs were not necessarily going to a bunch of invitational tournaments at the time," he said. "Part of me felt like I was robbed, and I didn't get to get the experience that a lot of the people who are not in a UDL got."
Cooper went on to compete at the University of Louisville and Towson University in Baltimore, where he and his debate partner became the first pair of Black students to win the Cross-Examination Debate Association National Championship in 2008. He was also a finalist at the 2009 Cross-Examination Debate Association National Championship, and a quarterfinalist at the 2009 National Debate Tournament while he attended Towson.
Many students within the Urban Debate system only compete within their league or with other UDLs during their middle and high school debate careers. Only a few compete on the national circuit, where they face kids from public and private schools across the country.
For those who have only faced other teams within their league, transitioning to college debate can be tough. Flores said there were a lot of people who went to private school or who have debated since they were in middle school, which was a major culture shock for him.
"In UDLs, you are only debating against other people who look like you and also come from the exact same background that you come from," he said. "In college, you go from being the exact same as everyone else to being the minority, and people notice that immediately."
Debate has long been an expensive activity dominated by white, male, middle- and upper-class students, and it remains inaccessible for many students who are outside of those demographics. Flores said in college, he feels that people can tell he is not from prestigious schools and assume he and his partner are "ghetto" based on his looks or demeanor.
But Flores doesn't mind being the underdog when facing universities with more clout and resources.
"There's always this preconceived notion that Harvard is always more likely to win, and coming from a small school, you always have to try and beat those odds," he said. "I was afraid because I thought they could know my every move, but I think I've just learned to welcome that challenge."
Moving into college debate can also be difficult for Urban Debate alumni who are actually enrolled at those "elite" schools with large programs.
Nikola Stamenkovic Diez, 21, is a senior at Northwestern double-majoring in political science and gender and sexuality studies with a minor in critical theory. They are an alum of Chicago Debates and attended John F. Kennedy High School, a Chicago public school, where they started debating during their freshman year.
Stamenkovic Diez met the coaching staff at Northwestern after spending three summers at the university's Debate Institute. One of the coaches there, LaTonya Starks, is a Chicago Debates alum who was the first Black woman to debate for Northwestern for four years, back in the early 2000s. Stamenkovic Diez was unsure about their prospects but said Starks was their main motivator to apply.
"She was just like, 'You know, if I can do it, I totally see you being able to do it—come make your mark at Northwestern,'" they said.
But that did not mean the leap to college debate was easy. Stamenkovic Diez said the process was "rocky," and not only because they started college during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a learning curve for those who did not have experience competing at a high level.
"I think there's a kind of assumption when you are attending a suburban high school and then you go into a place like Harvard or Northwestern [or the] University of Michigan—for those types of students, it's really about fine-tuning the skills that you already know," they said. "While for me, it felt like the transition was almost like creating a new foundation and building block for me to figure out what policy debate actually looks like."
Stamenkovic Diez said that process took a lot of time and energy because of the disparities of resources between a small debate program in the UDL system and a debate powerhouse that is one of the most winning teams in the history of college debate.
The imposter syndrome came and went like a rollercoaster, Stamenkovic Diez said. There were times when they felt on top of their game and like they belonged, while other times they were confronted with the realities of wealth and privilege they never experienced growing up.
But just like Flores, they were determined to use their UDL background as an advantage. As a kritik debater, Stamenkovic Diez said it is very difficult to separate the personal from the political. They bring a certain level of lived experience and "embodied knowledge" to their philosophical and theoretical arguments as a form of advocacy.
"Knowing who I am and what I bring to the table, from originating from an Urban Debate league, I think that kind of motivated me to make sure I can carve out my own space at a place like Northwestern," Stamenkovic Diez said. "I think that intrinsically motivated me to go beyond the encounters of imposter syndrome and make sure I can make the most out of my time at Northwestern."
Part of overcoming the fear of not belonging comes with finding success and joy crafting arguments that would not have been possible in a UDL.
Stamenkovic Diez said they felt more encouraged to make kritik arguments in college than in high school. They enjoy hearing from expert judges who have studied the topics they are discussing in debate rounds.
"I think feedback is the point of debate—like how articulate those theories you are trying to explain are. I think reciprocal feedback, that back and forth, is necessary," they said.
As a college director of debate, Deven Cooper encourages young debaters who are thinking about continuing the activity in college to find their "debate identity," something he regrets he did not discover until college.
He said they should be exposed to many different types of arguments, including kritikal debates or performance styles, in addition to ideologies and philosophies, to understand who they are and who they want to be as debaters.
"I think [students] need to come in and see the different options," he said. "You need to dedicate yourself to it and make sure you do it well, as opposed to thinking that somebody is going to hand you something and dictate your [debate] career for you."
He added that students should also read as much as they can about the topic they're debating, to formulate their own arguments as "the things you read will help you much later in life [and] it'll help you craft arguments that help you learn how to research."
Cooper said he tries to recruit NAUDL debaters for his team at Cal State Long Beach as a way of "paying it forward."
"When I was a young debater, there wasn't a whole lot of debaters that I could look up to that looked like me," he said.
He is also reminded of the obstacles he faced when applying for college debate programs that seemed to only care about how many Tournament of Champions (TOC) bids debaters had. Cooper said the University of Louisville was one of the only schools he found at the time that incentivized Black students to go into higher levels of debate.
Now on the other side of the recruitment process, Cooper said he isn't looking for the "most talented person with the highest TOC bids." Rather, he focuses on recruiting UDL debaters.
"I feel like a lot of people don't give them a chance to do things that are in their heart's desire or aspire to be someone in debate," he said.
While Cooper noted that UDL students are "undervalued," they are not as underrepresented as they were when he was competing in college in the early 2000s.
The desire to give back to the Urban Debate community is something many NAUDL alumni share. Flores said LAMDL's former Executive Director, Cameron Ward, called this the "unpayable debt" that the league gives to its debaters through community and skills that they will use for the rest of their lives.
It is common for Urban Debate alumni to stay connected with the UDL community long after they've stopped competing in the leagues. For many, it is a way of passing on the skills and joys they've enjoyed from their years debating. For others, it is a way to help the next generation of kids find their place in the debate world.
After he graduates college this coming spring, Flores will join Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that places recent college graduates to serve as K-12 public school teachers across the country "so they can transform education and expand opportunity with children, starting in the classroom," according to the organization's website.
Flores said he was inspired to pursue teaching after he helped LAMDL set up a debate team at Huntington Park High School in southeast L.A., where he shared his skills and experience and saw the students grow to become great debaters over the course of three years. This experience inspired him to create debate programs in whichever school he's placed.
"It really showed me that I want to provide sort of a mentorship [or] teaching role to a lot more people," he said. "I feel like throughout my life, I'm always going to be tied back to debate and I feel like it would be a disservice to myself to not give back these skills."
