The University’s Debate Team competed in a tournament at the New School in Manhattan, NY this weekend, Friday, Feb. 22 through Sunday, Feb. 24.
Nineteen students participated in the event, with eight new debaters who competed and all of them won a round. Landon Myers, Captain of the Debate Team and a senior political science student, noted that the new-comer’s performance is very impressive. “I’m proud of all of them for only having been experienced with debate for a few weeks,” he said.
In the tournament, the team competed against other students from universities including Binghamton University, Cornell, Columbia, Liberty, Rochester, Rutgers-Newark, New York University, and the U.S Military Academy.
“The tournament was more difficult for us because the last time we debated was all the way back in the beginning of November,” said Landon Myers, Captain of the Debate Team and a senior political science student.
With so much time since a tournament, there were many new arguments we had not seen before. While this did pose some challenges, we were still able to win rounds and make others very close.”
The topic of debate was the executive power of the President of the United States. Two of the main points that the team debated this weekend were limiting surveillance capabilities of the government and limiting executive agency rule making interpretation. “Both can become very technical in certain rounds with many specific details,” said Myers of the debated topics.
The team had eight different sub-teams compete. The experienced team included:
Myers, junior political science students Julia Bialy, Chase Petras and Madeline Doe; Chyna Walker, a sophomore sociology student; Anastasia Francisquini, as sophomore political science student; Matt Cohen, a junior computer science student; Michael Scognomillo, a junior clinical lab sciences student.
New members compromised another Monmouth team that competed in a non-experienced level: junior political science students Brittany Van Lenten, Esther Wellman, and Liam Crowley; sophomore business adminsitration students Sierra Shueib and Ziah Rowe; Billy Siefert, a sophomore English and political science student; Ryan Cohen, a senior music student; and Christina Balacco, a senior business administration student;
“This was my first Debate Tournament and it was a lot of fun, it was a new experience to compete academically I had never done it before,” said Siefer.
Siefer continued, “It was a very rewarding experience, even in the rounds that I didn’t win I learned a lot and improved because of this. I had a lot of fun competing and I’m really looking forward to future tournaments.”
Among the eight teams, eight new debaters won a round individually. “This was very impressive and I am proud of all them for only having been experienced with debate for a few weeks,” said Myers.
The next competition will be at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA on March 8 to March 10.
PHOTO TAKEN by Joseph Patten