Dec 19, 2023 At 12:45 PM EDT
When Mariah Griffin was younger, she wanted to be a princess when she grew up. But as she's gotten older, the freshman at University Heights High School in the south Bronx has her sights set on a different dream: becoming an attorney.
"I was like, 'How do I become an attorney? I don't know anything about public speaking or about law or about the things happening around me.' And I think that's what led me to want to join debate," she told Newsweek in November.
Griffin said she joined the debate team in fifth grade because she was "pretty theatrical" and a fast speaker who tended to stumble over words. By joining debate, she hoped to improve her speaking.
Now, four years later, Griffin has the opportunity to debate at a higher level with some of her former middle school teammates to potentially land a college scholarship.
At the beginning of the calendar year, the New York City Urban Debate League partnered with Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to create a team of NYCUDL debaters who can compete on the national circuit.
The main goal of the NYCUDL-Wake Forest Dream Team, as it's called, is to create a pipeline for NYCUDL debaters to attend college through debate scholarships.
Wake Forest has a very strong debate program and is the reigning national debate champion at the college level. One of the members of the championship team, in fact, is a former NYCUDL debater.
"They have one of the most competitive policy debate teams in the country and a lot of their debaters are students of color, so they look like our debaters," NYCUDL Program Manager Arielle Gallegos said. "They come from similar backgrounds as our debaters, so [NYCUDL debaters] could really see themselves in college spaces."
The NYCUDL already had a strong connection to the Wake Forest debate team and several NYCUDL alums are either currently attending or have graduated from Wake Forest.
To join the team, NYCUDL students must fill out an application, meet a household income threshold of less than $100,000 a year, have debated for at least two years in middle school and be interviewed by the league.
Many of the students on the Dream Team have been debating since middle school—when they were still attending school online due to the COVID-19 pandemic and extracurricular activities were scarce. Some joined debate because they were seeking something to do, some were encouraged to join by their English teachers. Others, like Griffin, were looking to improve their speaking skills or seeking an outlet for their loquacious tendencies.
In addition to Griffin, the team is comprised of five other students: ninth graders Freylin Abreu from Manhattan Bridge High School, Janiah Mensah of Beacon High School, Katherine Hernandez of Talent Unlimited, Kenzie Baiomy of Bard High School Early College Bronx and 10th grader Grace Wu from Midwood High School.
"I feel like it's really important to establish teams that target a young demographic of children who wish to pursue greater things in life, who don't have much or who just want to learn more because it creates an incentive and motivation," Griffin said. "It allows students to see more things within themselves and it also allows for a community to be bonded around something positive."
Up until this point, most of these students have only done public forum debate. But the Dream Team is piloting a new format for the league: Lincoln-Douglas.
Many college debate programs compete in the Lincoln-Douglas, or LD, format—which features two opposing debaters arguing for and against a resolution that usually focuses on social or philosophical issues, according to the National Speech and Debate Association.
With this new format comes new competition. The team has traveled beyond local in-league tournaments to face teams from other cities and states.
The program kicked off in January 2023, when Wake Forest debaters traveled to New York to meet the NYCUDL students recruited for this program. Training practices with the Wake Forest team began last spring, ahead of a summertime NYCUDL camp designed to prepare for the fall competition season. This cohort will be a part of the team until they graduate from high school.
Wake Forest Debate Director Jarrod Atchison said the NYCUDL wanted help from him and his debaters to transition from one debate format "into the newer, more challenging one that would give them more opportunities to get toward the college scholarship track."
By participating in this program, he said the NYCUDL students will connect with the right people—including those in college admissions, scholarship programs or on college debate teams—who can be their advocates for every opportunity.
"It's a very material implication of a time investment and a resource investment," Atchison said. "So these students are considered right alongside all of the elite prep school students who have the fast track to that process."
An application was sent out to Wake Forest debaters who were interested in participating in the program as mentors. Atchison said the students chosen not only had "an amazing" set of skills and previous experience teaching debate, but they also demonstrated a high motivation to lead this program.
Wake Forest debater Sebastian Cho, a college sophomore, told Newsweek that debate was "a completely life-changing experience" and said he wanted to participate in the Dream Team to ease certain financial barriers that "are pretty difficult to cross."
"I want to be a part of at least making it a little bit easier or providing opportunities for some people to be able to still get the same experience that I did," he said.
Nikita Tanguturi, a graduating junior on the Wake Forest team, also wants to make debate more accessible for students of color because her private high school in southern Florida "didn't really have a lot of diversity."
"For the four years I was there, I was the only woman of color on my debate team," she said. "And since then, I had a vested interest in opening up spaces of accessibility within the activity. It was so nice to have students who looked like me and had similar family situations."
Much of the initial trainings last spring focused on teaching the New York students about LD and discussing the moral and ethical questions this format tackles.
Cho said that rather than "bombarding" the students with esoteric information, he and Tanguturi prioritized asking questions and teaching the students to think for themselves. These skills will hopefully make them better competitors in debate rounds and better equipped to handle issues they may face out in the world.
"They're so hungry and passionate, they want to refine their argumentative skills and they're so willing to defend difficult concepts that they've never heard of before," Cho said.
Viveth Karthikeyan, 29, is one of the two NYCUDL coaches of the Dream Team. He debated at Emory University and coached at both Emory and Harvard University after graduation before connecting with the NYCUDL.
Karthikeyan said it took a while for the young debaters to warm up to the unfamiliar world of LD debate, which changes topics every two months. But they have all grown to love its structure and argument development as they have written all of their own cases for each debate.
"[LD] is a little bit more complicated," he said. "It requires a level of rigor that public forum debate doesn't necessarily require of everyone. It raises the level of all your competition [and] it raises the level that you have to perform [at] as well."
Freylin Abreu said LD has already helped him outside of debate. In his global history class, Abreu said he was able to give answers about ethics and how democracies work that "you wouldn't expect a normal 14-year-old to say."
"You can't live your life without arguing—everywhere we go, you have to argue," he said. "Normally, you don't have the opportunity to hear your own voice, so Lincoln-Douglas really helps you open up."
It was not always a smooth transition. The students had to adjust to the new competition—wearing suits and carrying briefcases—and gain the confidence to overcome their own insecurity.
With each win and loss, the students have noticed improvements after every round.
"Even if the debater is more advanced than me, I'm still going to come in and I'm going to do my best," said Katherine Hernandez. "I think it's just really important for us to go up against people who might have a little bit more experience with LD just so that we see how we can use those skills that they use and apply it to our own performance."
The next cohort of Dream Team debaters has already been selected by the NYCUDL on a trial basis. Those eight new students will make their official commitment to the team when the Wake Forest partners travel up to New York once again on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January 2024.
The current Dream Team's next competition will be in Newark, New Jersey, on January 5, 2024.
In addition to the increased debate competition and mentorship, members of the Dream Team have gained other invaluable experiences. To celebrate International Day of the Girl in October, the female members of the team got to ring the NASDAQ opening bell.
"I'm a 14-year-old girl from the Bronx—I'm not from somewhere special and [this team] makes me feel like I can do something special with my life," Griffin said. "While it can be stressful and can come with its own set of challenges, I know that at the end of the day what I'm doing will have a significant impact further on in my life. And that just fills me with pride."
