While COVID-19 has taken a toll on virtually every activity at Barstow, the Upper School Debate team has efficiently adjusted to a safer, more secure method for debating students across the country: online debate. Due to these unprecedented circumstances, the Barstow debate team has experienced more flexibility in terms of tournament distances and number of participants but faced challenges in terms of overall tournament experience.
The popular communications service Zoom is responsible for constructing the productive debate environment for the 2020-2021 season. With Zoom, users can record sessions, collaborate on projects, and share or annotate on one another’s screens, all through one easy-to-use platform. This application has quite conveniently been implemented by the National Speech and Debate Association in order to limit face-to-face interaction, thus following the CDC guidelines.
Junior debaters Niki Adma (‘22) and Avisha Pandey (‘22) have expressed their optimism in response to these unusual conditions. “Zoom has given a lot more benefits for the Barstow debate team,” said Niki Adma. “We can debate against schools further away than last year, and so we are getting a lot more practice in.” Avisha Pandey added, “It is great that we can debate people from so far away, but it is still upsetting that we cannot see the friends we have made while debating.”
The Upper School debate team has done phenomenal in recent tournaments. At the Trevian Invitational Tournament, Meghana Lakireddy (‘21) and Noah Waldman (‘21) successfully cleared to doubles of the TOC (Tournament of Champions) division. At the Iowa Caucus tournament, Phoebe Brous ‘21 and Rishi Malay ‘21 won the quarterfinal round against Little Rock Central, securing a bid to the most prestigious high school debate tournament: the Tournament of Champions. They still need one more bid to attend this national tournament.
The novice, or first year, policy debaters have also found great success. Every single novice in policy debate this year has cleared to the elimination rounds of at least one tournament, and Ava Levin (‘24) and Paranjay Sharma (‘24) won the novice division of the New York Fall Faceoff Tournament.
These recent successes have shown great promise for the future of Upper School debate. Despite the unfortunate situation, Barstow debaters have still been able to successfully perform in each tournament. As the distribution of the vaccines continues, the question remains as to whether debate will return to its original format next year.
