The new Piedmont
College debate team includes, front from left: Rhani Lott, Chevy Anderson,
Jessica Moon, and Luke Burpee; back: Bennett Bryan, Dr. Janice Moss, Dr.
Ed Taylor, Anthony Baldridge, and Chelle Mooers. Not pictured is Jeremy Bishop.
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It's no argument – new Piedmont
debate team on a roll
(12/1/03) Imagine that Piedmont College has a football team.
Now imagine that they travel to Athens and beat the UGA junior varsity team—five
times. That's sort of what happened in the even more competitive arena of
intercollegiate debate, where a rookie team from Piedmont has knocked off
teams from Emory University, Florida State, the University of Louisville,
and the University of Alabama at Birmingham in their first weeks of competition.
Until this fall, Piedmont had not had a debate team for about 30 years. Dr.
Janice Moss, an associate professor of mass communications who teaches public
speaking at the campus in Demorest, founded a new team after Anthony Baldridge
and several other students expressed an interest. Before long they had eight
members, enough for four, two-person teams. Their coaches include Moss, who
had previously worked with debate classes while teaching courses in graduate
school at the University of Louisiana at Monroe; and Dr. Ed Taylor in the
school of business, who earned a debate scholarship while at Morehead State
University. They also got help on debate tactics from friends of Moss', Michael
Davis, a debate coach at UGA, and his wife, Alysia.
"I've always believed that to be the best at debate you have to compete against
the best," Moss said. So for their first match the team traveled to Georgia
State University Sept. 27-28, for a tournament featuring some notable heavyweights,
including Harvard, the University of Miami, and Emory University. Moss said
the Piedmont team was really just hoping to get some experience under their
belt. Instead, the two-person teams of Jessica Moon and Luke Burpee and Baldridge
and Jeremy Bishop, each won matches against FSU, which has a long-established
debate program.
In their next match Oct. 17 at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Rhani
Lott and Bennett Bryan beat the University of Louisville twice and picked
up one win against Emory, a debate powerhouse for the past 40 years. Moss
said the wins at GSU and UAB were even sweeter because the Piedmont teams
competed at the JV level, one step up from their regular novice class.
On Nov. 1, the team traveled to Vanderbilt University, where Lott and Chelle
Mooers won six matches in the novice division, beating Vanderbilt, Samford,
Louisville and a previously undefeated UAB team to take home the first place
trophy.
Taylor said collegiate debate teams are organized by CEDA, the Cross Examination
Debate Association, which is to debate as the NCAA is to other college sports.
CEDA provides a list of about seven topical issues each year, and teams must
be prepared to argue for and against both sides of the issues. This year's
topics include stands by the U.S. government on genetically modified foods,
economic assistance to foreign countries, participation in NATO, and placement
of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, among others. The teams then spent
weeks researching the issues and practicing their debating techniques.
Taylor said that in a debate, one team chooses the topic and argues the affirmative
side. Each team has a set time to put forth their arguments and then time
to counter the other side's evidence. A judge scores the match based on the
quality of the evidence and how well each team counters the other side's
arguments.
"It's really hard," said Lott of her first debate. "I was intimidated in
my first match. It's very fast paced. You have to go through your evidence
and refute anything they bring up. You're tense when you're up there, and
you have to be thinking every single second. We were all exhausted by the
end of the day."
What makes the Piedmont team's early success most remarkable is that none
of the members participated on debate teams in high school, Taylor said.
In fact, team member Luke Burpee is still in high school at Habersham Central
and takes the public speaking class at the college through the Joint Enrollment
Program.
"Our goal now is to become the number one newcomer team in the nation," Taylor
said. And in a few years, he hopes the team will be able to move up from
the novice level to the varsity division. "Debate is a lot like basketball,"
he said. "It's possible for a small school to compete with much larger schools
because the team's are small."
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