Brooks Quimby Debate Council hosts annual high school tournament

Bates News — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:19:55 +0000

For the fifth consecutive year, the Brooks Quimby Debate Council hosted a Maine high school forensics tournament at Bates College. Approximately 170 students and 70 judges from 23 schools took part in the all-day event, the Bates College Forensics Tournament, on Saturday, Nov. 17. A scheduled tournament in the 2007-08 season of the Maine Forensics Association, the judged competition featured events in speech, debate and Student Congress.

Schools receiving top tournament honors from the Brooks Quimby Debate Council were: Scarborough High School for best overall performance by a team in Student Congress; Deering High School for best overall performance by a team in Lincoln-Douglas debate; Bangor High School for best overall performance by a team in public forum debate; and Skowhegan High School for best overall performance by a team in speech.

For the first time, the Quimby Debate Council hosted debaters from the Harlem Village Academies in New York City as part of its high school debate tournament. The Harlem team’s debate coach, former Bates debater Andrew Jarboe, Bates Class of 2005, brought the team to the tournament, says senior Brendan Jarboe of Acton, Mass., president of Bates debate and Andrew’s younger brother.

“Drew suggested that it would be great to extend our reach to high schools outside of Maine, and to college-bound students who might not otherwise get a chance to come and see Bates,” the younger Jarboe said. A total of 30 Harlem students visited the Bates campus for the weekend, met the debate team and participated in the tournament. Several of them won awards in extemporaneous speaking.

“We hope that as our high school tournament continues to grow, this will be the first of many visits from the Village Academies and other schools outside the state,” Brendan Jarboe said.

The tournament demonstrates Brooks Quimby’s continued commitment to maintaining a strong relationship with debate programs across the state of Maine, says sophomore Ariela Silberstein of New York City, the Brooks Quimby director of publicity. “That connection has been an integral part of the team’s community involvement, and will certainly continue to be so,” Silberstein said.

Bates College sophomores Alix Melamed of New York City and Sartaj Khan Mojlish of Dhaka, Bangladesh, organized the forensics tournament with the help of their teammates and their coaches Andrea Curtis and Julie Rabinowitz, directors of debate at Bates. Lewiston High School speech coach John Blanchette, Bates Class of 1987, helped to organize the speech events for the tournament.

Debater places first at novice parliamentary debate championships

Bates News — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:25:52 +0000

Led by first-year student Brendan Jarboe of Acton, Mass., Bates College debaters swept the 2004 American Parliamentary Debate Association’s Novice Championships, held Sept. 24 and 25 at Boston University. The tournament is organized specifically for debaters competing for the first time at the collegiate level.

Steamrolling through a field of 80 teams composed of 160 debaters from approximately 18 universities, including Brown, MIT and Yale, Jarboe won first place in the individual speaker category. Like many of his novice teammates, Jarboe, an accomplished extemporaneous speaker in high school, had little debate experience before arriving at Bates.

Other novice Bates competitors also posted excellent results in this category, including sophomore Racheal Pool, of Yarmouth, who finished as sixth-place speaker, and first-year student Lauren Pluchino of Horseheads, N.Y., who finished in 15th place. In the team category, Pool and her partner, sophomore Louis Dennig of Woodland Hills, Calif., placed fourth, while Jarboe and his partner, first-year David Kelly of Bangor, placed sixth in the competition.

Under the direction of debate coach Bryan Brito, Bates’ Brooks Quimby Debate Council took 21 members composing eight teams with five judges to the BU tournament. This was the largest number of debaters Bates sent to the novice tournament in 20 years, and a bigger squad than any other school except for Harvard. Discussing the talents of his newest students, Brito said: “We have an incredible new class of novice debaters, all showing a tremendous amount of promise.”

Continuing its regular season at Smith College Oct. 1 and traveling up and down the East Coast throughout the academic year, the Bates debate team will travel to England for contests with Oxford and Cambridge universities in November, and to Malaysia for the Worlds University Debate Championships in December. Brito is planning to add a stop at Trinity University in Dublin for spring 2005.

The Brooks Quimby squad ranked among the top teams in the nation last year, winning the 2003 APDA’s Novice Championships with 2007 classmates Ryan Creighton and Michael Neville-O’Neill and sending the largest Bates contingent ever (eight debaters) to the APDA nationals at Swarthmore University. Racking up speaker and/or team awards at every tournament it attended over the last year, Bates bested Bowdoin last May in the periodic President’s Cup, named because each of the respective college presidents are present.

News » Brendan Jarboe

Brooks Quimby Debate Council hosts annual high school tournament

Debater places first at novice parliamentary debate championships

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