The Problem with Hostility in Debate

As a teenager in the mid-2000s, many would have expected to see me enjoying the finest parts of the decade: actually talking to people in person, patriotic country music on my off-brand MP3 player, and avoiding Twilight fans at my Kansas high school like the plague.  Fortunately, that was not my life. I was an introvert, enjoying the dulcet tones of American Idiot, and spending my evenings and weekends doing one of two things: Speech and Debate and working at my local fire station. 

My path to becoming a competitor and coach was not a typical one. I did not follow my siblings or parents into the activity, nor was I privileged enough to live in a school district that did middle school competitions. I found the activity because I liked reading about history and politics, and the course description of my 9th-grade Debate 1 class sounded cool. 

I came from an immediate family who were ardent blue-collar public servants. My dad was a 3rd  generation firefighter, and my stepmother was a paramedic. My baby half-brother would later become a cop. I was NOT your typical recruit to a team, and I kept my foot in the family profession of firefighting until college showed me that coaching could be a viable career. I grew up in fire stations, both full-time and volunteer, and I got to see the bonds they made in ways that typical speech and debate competitors may never see. The fire departments I grew up in were aggressive in their nature. The job was deceptively simple: arrive on the scene, assess the situation, resolve the issue, and go home alive and healthy. It should be the same mentality with our activity, right? 

Over the past 21 seasons, I have found that to not be the case by any stretch of the imagination. I have seen scandals rock our community. I  have seen teams be shuttered for innumerable reasons. I have seen ill-planned transitions that have caused the folding of teams and entire circuits.  I have seen well-meaning people and organizations start strong, and then fade into the background.

In short, the house that is our activity has been smoldering for a hot minute, and those who can prevent this smoke from becoming an inferno are either ill-equipped or unwilling to do so. My life in the fire service taught me to always have a plan, and ALWAYS fight for what you believe in. Our activity today is at a crossroads, and the paths are simple: wax or wane. The real question for coaches and competitors is simple: What can we do to stop this fire from taking down the house we love? In the fire service, a good leader, regardless of rank, is not simply measured by their performance leading their department on the fireground, but in how they maintain the station between calls. Cleaning, cooking, paperwork, advocacy, and training are all mundane, but vital, components of making sure fire apparatus and their crews arrive on scene in a condition to perform at 100%, 100% of the time. 

To be clear, I am NOT here to bash student leadership and coaches. They undertake often impossible tasks without clear direction and commonly are unsure of the resources they have to execute their vision. On the other hand,  we must hold our higher organizational leadership up to a more rigorous standard. While organizations like the NSDA talk a big game and provide some of the marquee elements that unite the community, doing the gritty day-to-day work may be an area where improvement and, dare I say, risk-taking needs to occur. It’s time for hard truths to come to the surface. When someone’s full-time career is the professional development of the activity,  they should be invested in growing that community, and not just coast. 

More needs to be seen regarding investment in new teams and districts and make the path to Nationals easier for those schools who are not in well-developed circuits (see Dani Scantlin’s article, An Ode to the Death of Rural  Debate, for a firsthand perspective). Also, we need to ensure the resources exist to provide an equitable baseline for students to engage in the activity. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, the NSDA and others don’t just need to show us the money, they need to prove they can RAISE the money. 

My wife has given me a phrase that I have taken to heart for the last decade: no person is an island. The same is true for the fire service. No single department can tackle every emergency. When that occurs, we rely on a simple system: mutual aid. You call others for the resources you need,  knowing your neighboring departments will be there to help and vice versa. I  am gladdened to see this is a place where we have a strong positive start.  Organizations like Equality in Forensics and NAUDL have shown how both students and organizations can advocate for our activity and support those teams in need.  

Raising a 2-year-old has taught me the real strategy we need to adopt: it takes a village to raise someone. We do this for our competitors from their first day on a team, so why not apply it to how we interact with the community? This could mean forgiving tournament fees for schools in need or being willing to host workshops for neighboring schools when you have the facilities to do so. Who knows, it might be those people you helped down the road that come save you eventually.

It may surprise you to know that the most important piece of equipment in a fire station is not the apparatus or our bunker gear, but the humble kitchen table. Many weeks, I spent more of my free time here prepping events than in the speech room. This slab of wood, often handmade by the firefighters who consider the kitchen to be the heart of the firehouse, is a rallying point for a crew.  Jokes, insults, and knowledge were traded over cups of coffee and food that was often cold after calls interrupted our meal. Training, observations, life problems outside the station, and the infamous “War Stories” were all fair game for discussion and deliberation. This free-wheeling slice-of-life forum gave me a greater appreciation of the benefits of advocating for yourself and your team. 

One quickly learned that simple complaining was not acceptable: when you spoke up at the table, it was to contribute and illicit solutions for the problems and challenges you faced. We need to do the same in our activity as well. We are all talented talkers, and there is strength in numbers.  Having forums like Equality in Forensics is a great start. What comes next is harder:  organization and structure.

 As a community, we need to present a united front to our administrators, state and national organizing bodies, and a public that is often more harmful than helpful in allowing the creation of spaces of acceptance and advocacy for our competitors. By having those hard talks at our proverbial table now, we are ready to respond to the demands of the world waiting outside. 

Firefighting is often boiled down to a single idea: putting wet stuff on the red stuff. As we know from our experiences in the activity, getting a competitor in front of a judge is anything but simple. My rather unique journey to coaching was not easy or intuitive. I can say that I did okay for an introverted, Green Day loving, firefighting teenager from Kansas. However,  my fire service journey gave me some valuable tools to help me along the way. As a community, we can embrace these tools too. Holding leadership to a higher standard, practicing mutual aid, and simply talking to each other honestly about our shared challenges are all real-world things we can do to prepare for our next season as not only public speakers, but as advocates for an activity that has become a second family for so many of us.