Hawks Debate at The New School in Manhattan

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