Thinking Outside the Box
Cornell Speech and Debate Society members have a busy few weeks coming up as they prepare for the national championships and prelims.
On top of that, the students are trying on new roles -- as actors.
On April 19, the ILR-based speech and debate team is hosting the second annual “Debate at the State” at Ithaca’s State Theater. The event is a play inspired by a classic debate held in 1965 at Cambridge University between William F. Buckley and James Baldwin.
Last year, the first Debate at the State saw Cornell’s debate team take on Harvard, on the topic “Is Technology Driving the U.S. in the Right Direction?” Cornell won.
“This year we decided to try something a little different,” said Sam Nelson, senior lecturer at ILR and debate team director. Tickets are $10 and are available at stateofithaca.org or at the door.
The team is partnering with Civic Ensemble, a local theater company, to put on the play. The subject matter of the play is timely, given the heated rhetoric permeating today’s political debate, according to Godfrey Simmons, Jr., senior lecturer in Cornell’s Department of Performing and Media Arts and artistic director of Civic Ensemble.
“This play offers a window into one way to deal with our [societal] issues,” Simmons said.
“Debate allows you to have important conversations and have public forums.”
The collaboration between the Civic Ensemble and Cornell’s debate team is a natural fit, according to Simmons.
“We always do work that is politically engaged, and I thought it’d be a good fit with the campus community – debate is a tentpole thing at Cornell,” Simmons said.
Working with Civic Ensemble to cast and stage the play was a new experience for the debate team, according to Nelson. “We were thinking outside the box,” he said.
“We wanted to do something a little different and put on a play about a debate.”
The team is taking on another event May 1, when it goes to Norfolk, Mass., to compete against the Norfolk Prison Colony Debating Society, of which Malcolm X was a member. The team is based at the medium-security prison MCI-Norfolk.
Nelson emphasizes that debate is an essential part of a civil society.
“Debate is what we need right now given our current political dilemma,” he said.
“We need to learn how to argue with people, but not hate them. We need to eliminate contempt from our rhetoric. We need an opportunity for people who disagree to exchange ideas, and debate is the way to do it.”
Big Red Speech and Debate has members from across the university. It’s headquarters and debate space are in ILR’s Ives Hall. The coaching staff includes ILR staff members Armands Revelins, Johanna Richter, Estefania Palacios and Brandon Johnson, as well as current ILR graduate students David Altorre Lopez ’20, Chris Fielder ’19, Ryan Marx ’20 and Daniel Yoon ’20. There are more than 100 students on the team.