UWG debate team wraps up successful season

University of West Georgia debaters had a strong 2011-2012 season, concluded by attending two national championship tournaments held the last two weekends of March. The teams of Osayame Gaius, a sophomore from North Miami Beach by way of Nigeria, and Vanova Robles, a sophomore from Ft. Lauderdale High by way of Venezuela, and Damiyr Davis and Miguel Feliciano, both first-year students from the Beacon School in New York City, capped a successful season with tremendous performances at nationals.

The first was the Cross Examination Debate Association Nationals held at the University of Oklahoma March 23-26. More than 150 teams from across the nation competed. The team of Gaius-Robles compiled a 7-1 record in the preliminary rounds, good for the seventh overall seed. The team of Davis-Feliciano was also 7-1 in preliminaries, achieving the fifth overall seed. Due to their high seeds, each team advanced without having to debate in the round of 64. And both teams won unanimous 3-0 decisions in the round of 32. In the Sweet Sixteen, the team of Gaius-Robles was upset by a team from the University of North Texas, while the frosh team of Davis-Feliciano won a Sweet Sixteen matchup with Harvard before falling to the fourth overall seed from the University of Kansas in the Elite Eight.

Based on their showing at CEDA Nationals and their success over the course of the year, these two teams helped UWG achieve recognition in the year-long CEDA points race. Based on the overall season, UWG was recognized as the top school in the Southeast Region, finishing ahead of Emory University and Wake Forest University.

After a 13-hour drive back from Norman, Okla., the teams had only two days to catch up with their classwork and get ready for the National Debate Tournament, hosted by Emory and held at the Marriott in Duluth, Ga., March 29-April 2. The top 78 teams in the country qualified to compete, and UWG had two of those teams. Each preliminary round at the NDT has a 3-judge panel. So in addition to having a chance to win eight prelim debates, a team has a chance to collect as many as 24 ballots.

The Gaius-Robles team compiled a record of 4-4, with 14 ballots. This means that while their win-loss record was .500, they actually had more judges vote for them than against them (14-10 in overall prelim ballots). Unfortunately, 5 prelim wins are required to advance to the elimination rounds, thus their season came to a premature end. But their achievements over the course of the entire year have set them up to be a top 20 team entering next season.

Meanwhile, the Davis-Feliciano team achieved a 5-3 record in prelims, winning 17 of 24 ballots. This earned them the 14th overall seed and a matchup with the top team from Dartmouth College in the round of 32. UWG defeated Dartmouth on a 4-1 decision, advancing them to the Sweet 16. Although they lost to eventual champion Georgetown on a 3-2 decision, their results received plenty of accolades and attention.

They became the first all-frosh team to advance to the octafinals of the NDT since 1993; and combined with their appearance in the Elite Eight at CEDA Nationals, the Davis-Feliciano team is poised to start the 2012-13 season among the top teams in the country.

During their two week run, the two UWG teams defeated teams from such schools as Boston College, Cal State-Fullerton, Cornell, Harvard, University of Minnesota, University of Southern Cal, UT-Austin and Wichita State. And best of all, all four debaters are maintaining honors-level GPAs (above a 3.2) while perpetuating UWG's status as one of the top programs in the country.

Debate Team Celebrates 40 Years

In debating you learn a lot; you get to discuss the great public policy issues of the day; and you meet a lot of people.

The members of UWG’s debate team have been doing that for the past 40 years.

It’s not an easy feat.

Dr. Michael Hester, associate dean of the Honors College and the director of the debate team.

“Each of our undergraduates will do the equivalent amount of research that a master’s student does,” said Dr. Michael Hester, the associate dean of the Honors College and the director of the debate team.

Hester started debating when he was in high school and continued when he was a West Georgia student. He graduated in 1993.

The school has had a team since the 1930s, but the current version has been on campus since 1971.

Current and past members of the West Georgia Wolves debate team recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with recollections and dinner at 103 West in Buckhead.

In the 1970s, debate students did their research by digging through books and magazines at the library. They took a lot of notes. Copy machines in the 1980s meant lots of copying, cutting and taping. Notes were carried to debates in a traveling “ox box,” a tub filled with file folders, Hester said.

Now, just about all of the research is done online and students use their laptops instead, he said.

Although the technology of research has changed, the debate format has remained largely unchanged.

Debaters take positions on public policy issues and make their arguments in intercollegiate competitions. They learn to argue both sides of an issue.

The Internet allows for more in-depth research. But debaters still have to think through their arguments.

“Just because we can take it in, doesn’t mean we can translate it,” Hester said. “In a debate we have to explain it.”

The debate topic for the competition season is the whether or not the United States should increase the number of visas in various categories, including employment-based and family-based visas, plus those issued to victims of human trafficking.

UWG’s team is in the heat of competition, Hester said.

The team is attending the Cross Examination Debate Association National Championship, from March 17 through March 22, in Binghamton N.Y.

In early March, Osayame Gaius and Natasha Godwin finished fifth at the Junior Varsity Nationals at Towson University in Maryland.

Last fall, the Wolves captured the varsity championship and finished as the runner-up in the novice division during the Vanderbilt Invitational Tournament at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The team is among the best in the nation, Hester said.

Although intercollegiate debate does have not the same kind of structured ranking that sports do, UWG had the longest streak – 38 years – for qualifying for the National Debate Tournament. The streak ended last season.

But, UWG is one of only three schools to win the Cross Examination Debate Association nationals back-to-back, in 2000 and 2001.

It had one of the top 10 teams in the nation from 2008 through 2010, based on the first round of at-large bids in the National Debate Tournament. This is the closest that debate competition has to a national poll.