“It’s not like research doesn’t exist and that we can’t solve things,” said Cleo Shaw, a state policy debate co-champion and a junior at West High School. “It’s that we refuse to.”
This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.The two-partner teams talk so fast, it’s often incomprehensible to an untrained ear. Debaters do speed drills to practice speaking, or “spreading,” as quickly and articulately as possible. The purpose is to jam as many arguments into a speech before the timer goes off.
Mike Shackelford, the head coach of Rowland Hall, one of the most successful speech and debate programs in Utah, will be the first to say debate isn’t easy. He’s been involved in the activity for a total of 26 years, both as a competitor and a coach. Students who compete in policy are committing themselves to a year’s worth of research on a single topic. They’re forced to dig deep into a complex issue, cultivate innovative arguments for and against the selected topic, and pose solutions of all kinds.
“Living in a state that suffers drought or suffers pollution,” Rowland Hall policy debater Layla Hijjawi said, “I think it forced us to be a lot more nuanced in how we approached this topic and also forced us to recognize how it applied within our own lives.”Through in-depth research on water policy and practices, students essentially become mini-experts on the topic. Policy debate students are discussing the same issues Utah legislators have spent decades grappling with.
For Rowland Hall policy debater Aileen Robles, the topic opened her eyes to how water policy often leaves Indigenous communities out of the conversation. Prior to the topic, Robles says the Indigenous connection to water is something she “didn’t even think about.” “It’s not like research doesn’t exist and that we can’t solve things,” she said, “it’s that we refuse to.”At the Utah 5A state debate tournament in Tooele County this month, Salem Hills High School policy debate partners Sahaja Rutledge and Tate Roberts were ready to put a year’s worth of work to the test.
An argument Rutledge runs is requiring the federal government to create more federally or state-protected marine areas to preserve ecosystems, like fish populations, threatened by climate change and over exploitation of resources.
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