On March 28 and 29th, the Harriton Speech and Debate teams attended the annual states competition at Susquehanna University. With 19 students attending and five won awards, the team brought immense pride and accomplishment to the Harriton community.

Throughout the year, the debate and speech teams meet once a week on Thursdays and compete in monthly competitions within the district. There are also more advanced university tournaments, such as the St. Joseph University Villiger Tournament in November and the University of Pennsylvania Liberty Bell Classic, that are open to the more accomplished debaters.

In meetings, the debate club meets to learn and discuss both sides of an argument and they practice debating both sides of it. There are four types of debate students participate in. Lincoln Douglas is a single person debate form, in which the debate topics center around moral values and change every two months. Public Forum and Policy debates both include two people and revolve around current events, yet the first changes topics monthly while the latter has the same topic for the entire year. Parliamentary debate is a newer form of debate, in which a group of three partners up to debate. This is the only debate form which is sometimes required to debate on whim, without any preparation or prior research.

The speech club focuses on public speaking as well, but takes a different approach. The members take part in a variety of activities such as writing, memorizing, and giving speeches, but they also are given a topic, time to research, and must deliver an impromptu speech.

Dr. Perry runs the debate club while Mr. Schweitzer runs speech. Both clubs help to raise a student’s confidence in the public speaking domain.

For the State Tournament, the Harriton debate team participated in all four debate types. Rochitha Nathan and Maddie Feldman both competed in Lincoln Douglas debate, while Public Forum debate was represented by Victoria Marks, Camille Stein, Allison Schwartz, and Aliza Berger. Won Chung, Gideon Haber, Matt Norris, and Evan Rhodes participated in policy debate and Lauren Mendelsohn, Laney O’Shea, and Emily Rush competed in parliamentary debate. Allison Schwartz and Aliza Berger placed as quarter-finalists in Public Forum.

Adding to the debate team’s victory in Public Forum, the speech club participated in a variety of events: persuasive (Rebecca Shapiro), commentary (Tristan Fogt), impromptu (Dan Olivieri), informative (Christy Bradley), and congress (Kate Saul). Harriton placed in almost all of these events. Tristan Fogt and Christy Bradley were both semi-finalists in Commentary and Informative speaking, respectively. Kate Saul was a finalist in congress.

Becca Shapiro, who typically competes in parliamentary debate, but for this tournament tried her hand at Persuasive Speaking, said, “We did very well! It is very rare for 5 people to receive awards!”

The team did an outstanding job, earning their five awards with months of hard work and a myriad of great members. The state tournament was the last tournament of the year, so these successes were a great way to end the season.

Interested? Join the debate and speech club next year!