Oct 19, 2023 At 03:10 PM EDT
Tonight kicks off the first event of the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues' (NAUDL) I RESOLVE public debate series for the 2023-2024 school year.
On Thursday, October 5, members of the Washington D.C. community will gather at the Cato Institute to hear two Washington Urban Debate League (WUDL) students engage in a debate showcase with real-world experts and professionals.
NAUDL has sponsored I RESOLVE events across the country since 2020. This year, students will present cases on economic inequality—the same topic that policy debaters across the country will argue throughout the 2023-2024 school year.
There will also be a panel of experts in the field of economics at the I RESOLVE event, who will give feedback on the students' arguments. Among them: Ryan Bourne, the chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at the CATO Institute, who has written extensively about economic inequality, and Abinash Mohanty, a senior statistician who formerly worked for the U.S. Census Bureau.
In typical competitive debates, students are trying to win; they take advantage of their opponent's mistake, they make strategic points and they engage in fiery cross-examination to convince the judges that their argument was the best.
For this event, however, there is no winner. This debate goes beyond competition and is more concerned with finding real-world solutions that will impact people's daily lives.
After they present their first cases, the students will engage in question-and-answer session with the panel of judges and incorporate that feedback into their final speeches.
"It really gets to putting our students in the room with the experts who have the ability to make some of the changes, or who are studying some of the problems that our students deal with every day, and elevating and advancing those conversations in ways that they wouldn't be normally," Sara Sanchez, NAUDL Director of Programs and Communication, told Newsweek.
This, Sanchez adds, is a powerful way for students to be advocates for the changes they want to see in their cities.
According to NAUDL's website, the event "showcases the power of debate for a public audience, exploring some of the most pressing issues in our society through the perspective, voice and values of the next generation of leaders" and highlights NAULD's mission of advancing debate education in public school to amplify youth voices and and help students develop confidence for future success.
The event is positioned as a more accessible debate, where students speak slower and use less debate jargon than they would in a normal competitive match, so that anyone sitting in the audience can understand and follow the arguments.
David Trigaux, the director of programming and development for WUDL, said the I RESOLVE event is a chance to bring together people who wouldn't normally engage with the debate community, as well as an opportunity for students to engage with the scholarly community. He said this event will highlight the students' debate and speaking skills, but will also add a layer of persuasion and appeal to different audiences.
Akesh Mallia, a senior at School Without Walls DC, said it also allows the students and the leagues to show the public "the fruits of debate."
"If you just went into a debate round, there's lots of jargon that's thrown around and we often talk at like 100 miles an hour," he said. "But in I RESOLVE, we're making it more conversational so that you can really clearly see the iteration that we do to improve our solutions or, like, the types of questions that we ask to think more critically about various problems that the United States faces."
Mallia has been involved in debate since sixth grade. He said his years participating in debate have exposed him to new perspectives and have allowed him to analyze various domestic and national issues through a more theoretical and philosophical lens. He decided to participate in this event to show off his debate skills and approach the activity in a different context.
The immediate feedback from the experts is a unique element of this event that Mallia said he's most looking forward to. In a typical debate round, students prepare for tough questions from their opponents. In this case, he's excited to know what parts of his speech stood out to the experts and to hear any suggestions they might offer.
"From the perspective of a debater, [I RESOLVE] is an opportunity for us to engage with experts on the field that we're discussing," he said. "In usual debate rounds, we have cards that we read from experts and we're engaged a little bit in that kind of discourse, but I RESOLVE is an opportunity to be standing right in front of the people who might be writing the articles that we're reading [for research]."
Each year, NAUDL leagues from across the country apply to be selected for I RESOLVE events in the fall semester. This year, WUDL was chosen, along with the Dallas Urban Debate Alliance (DUDA) and the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL).
Applications for leagues open at the end of the school year. Sanchez said they are looking for leagues who "are going to be good partners" and "have a vision for how they can make use of the public debate format" to appeal to new board members, school administrators and other potential partners in their community to gain supporters and take programing "to the next level."
On the student side, Sanchez said NAUDL was looking for debaters who "are really engaged in the process" and who had great writing skills based on samples they submitted.
Leah Pierce, a sophomore at BASIS DC Charter School, will join Mallia onstage at the Thursday event. She said she's been hard at working crafting her case and researching relevant studies for the topic. While she said it's "nerve-wracking" to debate in front of a large crowd, she is grateful for the opportunity.
"I got involved with this event because being able to engage with experts on a crucial and comprehensive topic is fascinating," she said.
Pierce's case with look into the way education can impact economic inequality and how to find longterm, equitable solutions to make education affordable and accessible from Pre-K to college.
During the prep process, WUDL programing associate McAlister Clabaugh worked with each student to craft their proposals. He said he gave the students "a lot of latitude" to develop their cases for I RESOLVE, asking them to argue for something the government could do to address economic inequality.
"I think they're gonna do really well," Clabaugh said. "I have a lot of confidence in their skills as debaters and also in their knowledge of the topics that they've decided to talk about."
This year's national policy debate topic, economic inequality, has invigorated many students who have crafted affirmatives inspired by firsthand experiences within their families and communities.
Mallia has been working on a case that discusses the barriers and red tape that make it difficult for people to access government benefits.
"This issue is personal to me because my mom over the past year has been facing challenges with receiving government benefits and facing lots of administrative issues in the bureaucracy," he said. "It felt really invigorating to see [that] what I'm saying isn't just an issue for my family. It's an issue that millions of Americans face around the country. I feel lucky and grateful to be able to research this topic—that's not something I've done in other debates."
Sanchez said NAUDL chooses a broad topic for this series so that students can craft their arguments to reflect how the concepts intersect with their communities.
She said that the cases from Mallia and Pierce are some of the best she's seen since the I RESOLVE program began in 2020.
"The cases this year, on their first pass, were some of the strongest that I've ever seen from any of the students," she said. "I am so impressed with the issues that the students raised and their clarity of what the problems in our society and how to fix them. And it gives me a lot of hope because I think that they are doing the work now that will hopefully solve those problems when they are older."
The WUDL I RESOLVE event begins at 6:30 p.m. EST and will stream live on the Cato Institute website. The Dallas league will hold its I RESOLVE event on Tuesday, Oct. 17, and the Silicon Valley league will host its on Nov. 19.
Update 10/19/2023, 3:00 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with Abinash Mohanty's correct title.
