“At the end of the debate round I think it’s probably a good idea to incorporate under evidence of minorities in the debate community and so I vote affirmative”.

That judge made me so angry. From what I could tell in the round, the negative team was clearly winning, and they weren’t arguing that whoever has the most evidence is who should win the round, they were arguing that modern debate is about theoretical ideas, and shouldn’t be based on personal connection, as the affirmative team had suggested. As one boy had stated, they were a team of two white males, there’s no possible way they could connect to their arguments.
The biggest problem was pointed out by the last judge that spoke. The Long Beach team was arguing that the current structure/style does not offer the best education, and puts far too much emphasis on winning, then they proceeded to blatantly state that they should win because their idea is better for reasons a, b, and c which are in fact voting issues, (voting issues being part of the thing they said they were concerned with because they diminish the connection between the debater and their arguments.)

Another thing that bothered me is that the judges were talking about how impressive it is that the Long Beach team had spoken without evidence and made logical explanations of their ideas. This is an unfair assessment, because Louis and Richard are saying the same things every round. No matter affirmative or negative, they just say that they want to change the way people debate. It would be easy to go up and give a speech with no notes or evidence if that’s all you’ve been saying the whole season.

It’s also unfair to the opposing teams. They spent days, weeks, or months researching the resolution, collecting evidence, competing in practice rounds, and doing whatever they could to prepare them for the tournaments ahead. They do not, however, have any preparation for the arguments made by Richard and Louis. The Long Beach team has their non-traditional arguments already planned out. They spend their time practicing the use of the same persuasive words over and over again, until it becomes second nature. And, because raw persuasion and personal connections with arguments is not the purpose of policy debate, traditional teams do not practice it. This makes it unfair for teams opposing Richard and Louis to present adequate arguments. I mean what can they even say? They put together a case, prepared negative files, extensions, and all of the other necessary arguments, and the Long Beach team just tells them they aren’t debating the right way. They don’t attack the affirmative’s case at all, and they never provide an actual plan to resolve the year’s issue. These opposing teams just have to freestyle, given no preparation in advance for the kind of arguments Richard and Louis are presenting.

Lastly, just the fact that they were trying to change debate upset me. Obviously people like it, that’s why it’s become as popular as it has. They were making bigoted arguments. The fact that they might not have the money or the time to prepare is not an argument that should be made in policy. It’s simply not the point. As the boy in the elimination round brought up, if they don’t have time or money to amass large quantities of evidence, then why are they competing in policy debate? They could easily try LD or Pufo, because those types put less stress on evidence, and more on principles, values, and real life situations.
I’m totally disappointed that so many of the judges failed to overlook these things. It shows how subjective the activity is. Nonetheless, I will continue my new age, spreading, policy ways, in contrast to the Long Beach boys approach.

This film has impacted me both positively and negatively, however, due to my personal experience in this world has been so long and am still active, the most powerful part of this film to me is the nonverbals of the film and what wasn’t said.

Bravo to the breakthrough achievement of Louis and Richard, and their coach David Wiltz, who showed the way to open up the field to more diverse participants. Let us not overlook the great effect that the Urban Debate League has had in recent years in drawing in minority schools to debate competition. Yet it took Louis and Richard to show that it is not enough simply to recruit minority students into an elitist activity. Their living example of Pablo Friere’s educational philosophy, and their apt use of it to ground their entire arguimentative strategy, will ultimately revolutionize interscholastic and intercollegiate debate. Hopefully, the activity will become much more important to students than as a boot camp in preparation for laws schools, but a real liberalizing of public policy deliberation for everyone.

Finally, I want to say that as a film teacher, I’m very happy that the movie succeeds in portraying an esoteric activity like high level HS debate competition in realistic scenes, yet still manages to keep the narrative simple and clear enough to hold the interest of uninitiated viewers.

In other words, watch this movie, and you will probably enjoy it. Not only that, you’ll encourage your teenagers to try out for debate, and you’ll actually enjoy attending their contests when they do.