Oakland Student Debaters Flourish at National Championship
Duo from Skyline, Excel high schools bring home trophies from New York tournament
Oakland Student Debaters Flourish at National Championship
Duo from Skyline, Excel high schools bring home trophies from New York tournament
New York City, New York, April 23 — Jet-lagged and far from their homes in East and West Oakland, high school seniors Rashid Campbell and Tanesha Walker were ready to do a little site-seeing in their first visit to the Big Apple and then scoot out to the airport Sunday morning ahead of an incoming storm. It had been two long days of debating solutions to poverty at the Chase Urban Debate National Championship held April 21-23 in the J.P. Morgan Chase building in Midtown.
"We were having a good time and it was a great experience to meet with some of the best debaters in the nation," said Campbell, a 17-year-old graduating from Skyline High School this June. Campbell, who has earned a full-ride scholarship to debate at the University of Oklahoma next year, had already earned a 14th-place speaker's gavel trophy for his unique blend of rap and high-speed oratory which was on display through the six 84-minute debates held in polished-wood boardrooms Friday and Saturday.
"Tanesha and Rashid were able to build his raps into an argument about how important it is to include the voices of common people — the people for whom this year's topic is trying to solve — into policy discourses," said EXCEL Coach Sebastian Castrechini.
Then, Saturday night, they found out the "bad news": They had made it into a semi-final bracket for teams from "building" leagues that are less than four years old. This meant they had performed in the top 20 percent of their category — and they would have another 84-minute debate.
No Empire State Building visit now, it was time to return to the hotel for more practice ahead of an 8 a.m debate. Sunday morning, "running" their "aff plan" of solving poverty through prison reform, Campbell and Walker defeated a pair of boys from Denver in a 2-1 split decision.
"I'd say that was the performance of a lifetime, except I believe these two have a lot more in them," said Skyline Coach Christopher Scheer. "Seriously, I almost cried, that was an amazing blend of passion, performance and intellect."
The pair then moved quickly to the next room to face a female duo from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, ranked in 2006 by Newsweek magazine as one of the nation's top high schools. Pushing an affirmative "plan" proposing the liberation of poor women from a system of patriarchy, the girls took a few good-natured shots at Campbell's raps on the way to winning a unanimous decision.
Nevertheless, the trip was considered a huge victory, both for the Oakland students and their Bay Area Urban Debate League, now in its second year of "creating and maintaining debate teams in under-resourced urban schools" in order to "create and promote best practices for the recruitment, retention, and training of a next generation of leaders."
"Just being invited to participate in an event as prestigious as this one is a tremendous honor for our students," said BAUDL Director Blake Johnson. "Tanesha and Rashid's success is simply extraordinary — bragging rights on a national scale!"
