Gustavo Zeno Gavilano had an idea. He wondered why there wasn’t a debate team at Osbourn High School. So he decided to go to Mr. Paul Whitley, a history teacher with his idea which caused the first debate team for the school to exist. There are around 30 members. A debate team is a type of competitive sport that allows people to converse about controversial topics with their peers. Debate teams also enter tournaments with other debate teams from other schools, it works the same as debates with peers, so essentially your team says one thing while the other team says something different and explains themselves. “I had a student who came to me who wanted to start this thing. His name is Gustavo Zeno,” Whiteley confirms.

“The debate team is about not only traditional debate but also includes short plays, such as humorous and dramatic interpretations. As for the traditional debates, we do public forum, where two teams of two debate each other on a specific topic, Lincoln Douglas, where two people debate each other over a topic, and Student Congress, where a group of students discuss public policy,” are some things that Gustavo thinks that the debate team is in his opinion.

“It’s actually debate and forensics, it’s a competition team that competes in debates and in performance events. Debates are two on twos, two debaters versus two debaters, one on ones, and student congress. Performance can be anything from humor presentations to poetry,” are the intentions of the debate team according to Whiteley. Everyone in the debate team can contribute in several types of ways such as, the debate team has people who discuss public policies, make presentations for an argument they are sided to, or when two teams debate and try to win.

“I think for our school specifically, the debate team lists mainly just the way we as teenagers are becoming more aware of politics,” is what Michael DeRoche said about the debate team which essentially means that as students get older, they want to know more about politics so they can understand current situations better.

 Tiffanni Garcia-Palencia, a student who is a part of debate team said, “We start with our research and write our speeches, after that we go to different tournaments against many different schools, we get two different rounds, one where we have a speech for the affirmative side and negative side. After our arguments, there is an award ceremony and that’s when you get to find out if you won or lost of course the more you win the higher in ranks you go so we have a few members who made it to varsity because of our first tournament we went to,” to sum it up, the debate team does their research and write their speeches to then participate in tournaments that have other debate teams from other schools, one part of the speech will be affirmative, or the idea they side with, while the other part will be for the negative side, the part that mentions the cons of their side.

“We intend to compete and win for Osbourn High School at debate competitions,” is what the intentions of the debate team are during competitions according to Gustavo Zeno Gavilano. So in order to win, their argument has to be very well developed and has to be agreed more with. Overall, the debate team is one of the newer sports of Osbourn High School, having many ways to enjoy it like performing your argument, speaking about your argument, doing research on your argument, or simply writing your speeches.

If you like the idea of debating, perhaps you should join the debate team next year.