Towson U. debaters take national championship
Thanks Melvin!
First African-American duo to win title are grads of city high schools
Sphere: Related ContentDayvon Love and Deven Cooper don’t object to being called argumentative. They thrive on it.The two members of Towson University’s debate team happily accepted congratulations yesterday after winning a national championship — the Cross Examination Debate Association’s five-day tournament in Wichita, Kan. — and making history by being the first African-Americans to do so.
Cooper, who turned 22 yesterday, and Love, 20, emerged victorious Monday night from a field of more than 180 two-person teams in the tournament, during which they overcame top-seeded debaters from Missouri State University, the University of Northern Iowa and elsewhere. In the final round, Love and Cooper beat a team from the University of Kansas by a decisive score of 7-4.
“We didn’t really expect to win it,” Cooper, a graduate of Lake Clifton High School in Baltimore, said yesterday while traveling to Fullerton, Calif., for another tournament this weekend. Asked how they had celebrated, he said, “We went to IHOP.”
But what made the duo’s achievement not only remarkable but groundbreaking was that they had turned debate traditions upside down deciding not to argue their chosen topic — whether the United States “should constructively engage with a Middle East country.” Instead, in a direct challenge to the judges and the system under which they operate, the pair made their central premise the notion that, as Cooper said, “the problems of exclusion in the debate community need to be addressed first.”
By that, Cooper said, he meant the “racism, sexism and homophobia” that pervade the kind of tournament at which they were speaking. “We have a responsibility to talk about these things,” he said. “We talk about racism the most because it’s the one we’re most affected by. Even at awards banquets, they make jokes that the community laughs at, but the people who they affect don’t laugh.”
In addition, Cooper and Love used various forms of expression, including hip-hop, clips of songs and “spoken word,” to accentuate their points, a far cry from the more straightforward, evidence-laden presentations of some of their competitors.
“They debate in a style that is definitely outside the conventions of most teams,” said Darren Elliott, president of the Cross Examination Debate Association, which oversees policy debate competitions for two- and four-year colleges in the country. “It’s a very nontraditional style. That was clearly their strength.”
Elliott, who is director of the debate program at Kansas City Kansas Community College, said the Towson team showed courage in trying to “engage the community in changing how we talk about things, how we deal with these issues of race and sex and socioeconomic class.” In doing so, Elliott said, Love and Cooper confronted their judges, the tournament’s organizers and other debaters by “telling them that what they’re doing is not as productive as some alternatives.”
From Love’s point of view, it did not initially appear to be a winning strategy at the tournament, whose previous winners have included Northwestern and Harvard universities.
“There were people talking about how we were going to lose,” said Love, a graduate of Forest Park High School who, like Cooper, learned his debate skills under the tutelage of the Baltimore Urban Debate League. “If people had told us a couple of days ago that we were going to win, I would have said, ‘You’re lying.’”
The experience, he said, was “intense,” especially waiting for judges to make up their minds in each of the rounds, a process that he said sometimes took as long as 45 minutes.
Pam Spiliadis, director of the Baltimore Urban Debate League, which was founded in 1999 as part of an Open Society Institute effort to bring debate into urban classrooms, said it was the “first time in history that two young black men have won this tournament.”
She said it was also a “momentous day” for Baltimore and for “young people from urban communities all across this nation who are too often the voices that are never heard.”
Andres Alonso, chief executive of the Baltimore public school system, was equally pleased by the news from Kansas. “This extraordinary achievement is testimony to these amazing young men, to the Baltimore Urban Debate League, and to the community of the Baltimore City public schools,” he said. “We are proud, excited and inspired to have Baltimore’s young people leading the nation.”
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April 3rd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Um… I sent that to you for different reasons. I appear to have incorrectly guessed your take on it.
But my pleasure, still. Glad you enjoyed it.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I’ll be honest with you Melvin I honestly don’t have any specific opinion or reaction to the story, other than maybe I sometime feel like I do a significant amount of what I would call “Negro” bashing.
People must understand my rants about black folks are not because I hate my race or anything. I said in another post that all black folks have this innate sense of kinship and will distinctively circle the wagons around each other in certain circumstances.
I want the best for black folks, can’t help it. What makes me different is that I also want what is best for all of America as well.
I love good news, particularly when it involves young black men and in particular educational endeavors, also the fact that these young men came from inner city schools.
In this case it was simply a cool story.
I’m very curious why you sent it and/or what reaction were you expecting from me?
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Well first off, I don’t think for a second you hate your race. We’ve debated before when I thought you were a bit over the top in fact. If I thought you did I wouldn’t read your page. I have zero interest in that.
And believe me, I’m all for good news. Like my namesake, I do tend to dwell on the bad, though.
In this case I will fully admit my possible prejudice. This could be entirely based on my predisposition to see liberal bogeyman when they sometimes don’t exist. That’s actually part of the reason I ran it by you.
Here’s what I got from the story.
They deliberately violated the debate format.
They did so in stereotypical “urban” fashion.
They refused to answer the actual debate question, choosing instead to pick their own topic, that of how the system is oppressing minorities.
And they won.
Correct me if I’m wrong but The Great Debaters was about debate, about stepping in where it was presumed they didn’t belong, and succeeding. Overcoming adversity and prejudice. It wasn’t about showing up to violate all “the Man’s” rules, lecture him about his perceived failings, and be rewarded for it.
Again, maybe Wright and Obama have me seeing things that aren’t there, but this sounds like what the screenplay would have looked like had Wright written it instead.
I’m sorry this ended as such a downer, and that I inadvertantly set it up as such. I took for granted you’d focus on the same points. Now I feel like an ass.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:19 am
I live near Baltimore. I went to UMBC right down the street. So far in that fair city, 51 people have been murdered this year. More than 275 last year. Those young men chose to direct their energies towards accomplishing something positive, and not destructive. I may not agree with what they had to say, but I applaud their courage in getting out there and presenting something important to them in an innovative and apparently very effective way. I applaud them being successful.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Oh Mel you nailed it. I got that too.
Let me give you a quick take on what that was using myself as an example.
Back in the 5th grade I had this hippie teacher. I was really fucking up in class and my grades reflected it.
At the time I was one of only 4 black students in the class. On almost every report card in grade school I was labeled a classic underachiever. I hated school with a passion.
During an art project I did this hand painting of some mountain scene and my teacher Mrs. Summerville just lost her fucken mind and raved about it.
She somehow managed to have my piece displayed at the Oakland Museum as part of some young artist exhibit and it was one of the feature pieces.
Dude, I’ll be honest, my piece sucked, I NEVER KNEW what she or anybody else saw in it.
This was her way of motivating me, shit I knew it even then. She hovered over me in school. As an adult I appreciate what she was trying to do.
But it’s like these kids in the debate. Young black kids, black men, in today’s perceived racist world, keeping young black people from succeeding, they worked so hard. So what if the presentation is a little out of the debate format.
I don’t know. Like I said I got your vibe on the story, I just did not go there.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Web, if your benchmark for accomplishment, as appears to be the same for the debate organizers, for young black males is, “Well, at least he’s not a murderer,” you are part of the problem.
See Chris Rock’s brilliant Bring the Pain.
To paraphrase:
“I take care of my kids.”
“What? You want a cookie. That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do.”
Snoop. I see what you’re saying. For an individual 5th grader, more power. For adults in a debate competition (a vital part of which involves structure), who watched two people win doing the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to do, I can’t see how that worked out for anyone. Most especially, I fear the forms of debate just went down the crapper for all time. This seems like bringing checkers to a chess match and getting applause. In another decade debate will involve interpretive dance as a rebuttal. I can’t imagine how the losers felt toward the winners.
That all said, I do admit I may be reading too much into this. And I’m glad you enjoyed the positive message from it. I do sincerely hope good comes from it.