Two days before I walked into round 1 of extemp at the UT Longhorn Classic, my parents told us that they were probably going to get divorced. I thought it happened at the worst possible time. My sister, brother and I were about to start studying for finals. My brother, a self taught pianist, had a huge competition coming up. My sister was (and still is) attempting to get her art into a competition that would get her recognized. And I had the Longhorn. I kid you not: my first thought was “I can’t let this hamper my performance, I just need to forget about it for four days”.

As an extemper with few resources in Texas, the UT tournament was one of my only chances to get into the “big leagues,” so to speak. My parents were unwilling to spend, forcing me to pay for anything the school didn’t cover, so Glenbrooks, Blue Key, Yale, and virtually every open out-of-town tournament was out of the picture due to the sheer costs of entry, bringing a judge, flights, and hotels being beyond my capacity to pay often. I was able to compete at NSDA Nationals only through pressure-washing driveways until we had the money to get to Arizona, where we had a relative willing to save us the hotel and car fees. I had managed to earn enough money to get to the Longhorn, one of the only major tournaments my team goes to, and certainly the cheapest.

My school is not poor. In fact, it is quite the opposite. While we have plenty of disadvantaged students, a good number of families are millionaires. The district pulls in some of the wealthiest homes in the city; just go to street view on Google Maps anywhere in the southeastern region, you’ll see what I mean. Our theater budget regularly runs over 100,000 dollars for the main production, and anyone will tell you that it has the quality of a decent professional show. The debate program, however, is not. We ended last school year over five thousand dollars in the red, preventing the school from paying for nationals or virtually anything else. If you wanted to compete, you would need to pay, and pay for everything.

The tournament was split into two divisions: Foreign Extemp, and Domestic Extemp. In my first round of Foreign Extemp, I thought I gave good analysis. My delivery wasn’t perfect, but I thought it was fine for a prelim. However, despite earning first place in the next round, I would not advance. I had gotten a dismal rank in the first round, ruining my chances of breaking to the quarterfinal. 

Domestic Extemp went much better. After giving two speeches I was very proud of, I was excited to learn I had broken at my first natcirc, even if only in one of the two categories. In the quarterfinal, however, I drew a question I was not super familiar with. I gave a speech that was not my best. To be honest, it wasn’t my second best. And, with poor ranks across the entire panel, my hopes of advancing further were finished.

I am not here to complain that I didn’t break. Without incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, I have no choice but to believe that the other people in the round simply gave better speeches than me, and that is why they earned the higher ranks. That is how extemp works.

At the same time, I still felt extremely jealous. Not only of my friends in the semifinal and the final rounds, many of whom had private coaches or came from established schools with years of extemp success, and none of whom had their parents break up two days before the most important tournament of their careers, but also of my teammates. When I expressed frustration at not having broken further, I was told to “shut up” and be “grateful” that I was “lucky” enough to even get to quarters. Most of the people on my team were not even prepared for the tournament. One had written Congress speeches at 11 pm the night before, one gave a half-memorized POI that lasted for a cool 3 minutes, and one wrote their Oratory three days before the tournament. All of them had their parents pay the 200 dollars the school required to come, not even needing to give it a second thought.

When I finally got home, my friends having cleaned out the top ranks in both events, I just broke down crying. I put so much into becoming a good extemper, and it was frustrating that my one opportunity to “make it” was now gone. Granted, given the circumstances, not all of those tears were for extemp, but I still felt absolutely crushed. Since I couldn’t go to Harvard, my next opportunity was the state championship, months away.

I consider myself lucky to have even had the opportunity to go to the Longhorn Classic, but, given the fact that others who had more opportunities were getting loads of recognition compared to me, I felt ignored. Equity is something that is constantly preached of in this activity, but in order to do what we consider “well” (make it to MBA, on the National Points Race, etc.), one has to spend thousands of dollars on plane tickets, hotels, and judge fees, without exception. I am not the first to raise this issue, and certainly will not be the last, but it irks me that after reading one of the many articles written on the subject, the majority of people in forensics just shrug, say “that sucks”, and move on with life, continuing to reward those able to sink thousands of dollars into an extracurricular. I can understand why people do this. Because of the nature of how tournaments work, and that they cost money, it is easy to just see the issue as unsolvable. But we at least have to try.

First, online tournaments should play a bigger role in the “prestigious” circle. I won’t lie. Online tournaments are nowhere near as fun as in person ones. They have many flaws, not the least of which is that it is just harder to care about what a person is talking about when they are not in front of you. But given that they, by design, are not as hard to go to, they can and must play an important role in equity in speech and debate. As of now, the only online tournaments counted in the National Points Race are the UK Season Opener and Stanford, with both being fifth-tier tournaments at that. This is something that the National Points Race could easily change; they should elevate the status of the Season Opener, Stanford, and other online tournaments, which would, in itself, cause the attendance to skyrocket. Online tournaments could also be a starting point for bigger, in-person tournaments, by allowing scholarships to be awarded to those who have talent but would not be normally able to travel. Mechanisms to do this already exist; the UK TOC runs the smaller, online season opener, which is open to independent entries  and the NSDA has the online springboard tournaments. Those that placed highly in the season opener could be awarded scholarships to the TOC, and the springboard tournaments could provide scholarships to NSDA Nationals or even stipends to go to other tournaments. Harvard, UT, Glenbrooks, and the other large tournaments should start their own online scholarship qualifiers, providing resources for underprivileged competitors to go to their respective tournaments.

Next, tournaments need to be more accommodating when it comes to fees. Most large tournaments require lone-wolf competitors to provide a judge and pay huge school fees, presenting a significant barrier of entry given that these fees are often spread out over dozens of competitors. On the advice of an extemper who has attended nearly every natcirc, I scrolled through countless tabroom pages looking for a tournament not requiring judges for single competitors, so that I could possibly go with another school should they be crazy enough to let me. After checking every big name, though, I couldn’t find even one. Tournaments should allow exceptions to judge policies and fees, if they actually want to make sure that everyone who deserves to be there and wants to be there can be there.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, competitors need to stop focusing solely on successes at huge tournaments. Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who wins, or even finals, at a tournament like Glenbrooks, Harvard, or UT has worked hard to be there, and deserves our respect. But that’s not to say that someone who hasn’t does not. After commenting to an acquaintance on the exceptional quality of a speech from a relatively unknown competitor at UT, I was simply told that “if we haven’t heard of her, she’s probably not that good.” As someone who could have also been easily classed as “probably not good” myself, the words stung, and stung badly. We, as competitors, need to call this out when it happens. Maybe, if enough people do so, an unknown competitor at a large tournament could be seen as an equal by top extempers, rather than just a part of a "probably easy room".

Equity in speech and debate is a complicated issue. But if we decide we can’t possibly achieve it before even trying, we have effectively told disadvantaged competitors that they aren’t worth it. Speech and debate is all about advocacy, whether on a small or large scale. It is time we put this advocacy into action.