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If the absence of Republican candidate Paul LePage from last night’s gubernatorial showdown at Bates disappointed some spectators, you wouldn’t have known it from the debate watch party that took place just downstairs from the debate held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Though attentive and informed, the 50 or so students — for the most part Quimby Debate Council members and students in a campaign rhetoric course — still brought a certain wisenheimer energy to the gathering as they and their professors watched the Maine Public Broadcasting Network debate on the big screen.

Of course there were cheers whenever Bates was mentioned, and a particular candidate’s folksy appeals to the viewers at home reliably drew a response. But the laughter and exuberant mock applause practically broke through the ceiling when candidate Kevin Scott, alone among the four, expressed support for a conditional legalization of marijuana.

“I laughed too,” said Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano. “It was so unexpected and unorthodox for a candidate.”

• Complete video of the Oct. 28 Maine Public Broadcasting Network gubernatorial debate at Bates.

• Video of Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman’s Muskie-flavored welcome to the audience.

Featuring four of the five candidates for the Blaine House — Democrat Elizabeth Mitchell and independents Eliot Cutler, Shawn Moody and Scott — the debate held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall capped a day at Bates largely centered around the event. A crew from MPBN was on hand bright and early to start setting up in the concert hall, and Bates folks from Physical Plant and Dining Services had plenty to do setting up green rooms for the debaters and prepping the Museum of Art for a welcoming reception.

Public events began with a late-afternoon presentation, by seven students, designed to give spectators context for the main event that evening. Four members of the Brooks Quimby Debate Council summarized the candidates’ positions on the economy, social issues and the environment. And three students from Kelley-Romano’s “Presidential Campaign Rhetoric” course offered tips on debate strategy and likely outcomes.

The seven had done their homework. Quimbyites Nate Sweet ’11, Sam Schleipman ’12, Spencer Collett ’13 and Daniel Lambright ’12 effectively differentiated the candidates (including LePage, who bailed out of the debate the day before), providing basic themes for each contender that were helpful in relating them to larger currents of political thought.

From Kelley-Romano’s course, Kevin McCandlish ’13, Daniel Waters ’12 and Jordan Conwell ’12 laid out debate strategy and tactics. If candidate debates offer great insights into policy, Waters noted, the real takeaway is so-called relational strategies — the language, posture and gestures candidates use when they address each other.

A debate has less to do with scoring policy points, he said, and “everything to do with how candidates are judged [as people] by the voting public.”

Partners from way back

The evening’s events picked up momentum around 6 p.m. as guests, ultimately 100 or so, converged at the Museum of Art for a reception co-hosted by Bates and MPBN. Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and MPBN President Jim Dowe welcomed the visitors, both taking care to remind us that, in fact, the relationship between the two organizations goes back a ways: Bates and sister colleges Bowdoin and Colby founded WCBB, one component of what’s now MPBN, back in 1961.

“MPBN wouldn’t exist without Bates,” Dowe said, recalling that then-Bates President Charles Phillips was among a Bates group that went to Washington on the first day that licenses for public television were issued, in the early 1960s. “They waited on the steps for the doors to open” at the FCC, Dowe said.

“It’s very fitting for us to host debates at Bates,” Hansen said, referring not only to the college’s long and proud debate history, but also to the fact that the city of Lewiston welcomed Bates debates in City Hall before the college had a suitable venue of its own. Now, she said, “we’re thrilled to be able to reciprocate.”

As the hennaed Moroccan women of Lalla Essaydi’s photographs looked on, guests at the reception sipped champagne and munched chilled shrimp, chocolate-dipped strawberries and mustard-rubbed lamb.

In attendance were members of local government such as Auburn Mayor Dick Gleason P’93; well-known Bates faces such as dance program founder Marcy Plavin and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and state Rep. Richard Wagner; and two of the candidates, Shawn Moody — with son James ’12 — and Kevin Scott. A second Bates student had a candidate connection too — David Cutler ’12, nephew of Eliot.

No empty podium

As showtime drew near, MPBN crew members, all in black shirts, put the final touches on the stage and camera setup. Would there be a symbolic empty podium for the absent Lepage, we asked? No, one staffer joked, “but we did get them from Marden’s.” (LePage is general manager of the discount store chain.)

By showtime, about 280 of the Olin concert hall’s 300 seats were filled. About half the audience was invited, with the rest of the seats going to members of the Bates community, including some 70 students.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman greeted the gathering. Picking up the thread from Hansen of Bates’ debate history, he raised the spirit of a great Maine and U.S. politician who, before all that, was a debater at Bates: Edmund S. Muskie ’36.

Baughman pointed out that when Muskie ran for governor in the mid-1950s, the candidates never debated one another. So even in a political season as rancorous as this one, it’s clear that there has been at least some kind of progress.

Indeed, as silly as the students got during the watch party in the basement, there was no question that each had a critical eye — in the best sense — on the discourse emanating from the auditorium upstairs.

In an age when so many potential voters shun the polls, director of debate Jan Hovden said before the event, “anything that engages people in the political process is a good thing in and of itself.”

Members of the Brooks Quimby Debate Council pose during a fall 2007 debating trip to the United Kingdom.

Members of Bates College’s award-winning Brooks Quimby Debate Council present a lively public discussion about censorship and First Amendment rights at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the college’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Part of The Big Read L-A program sponsored by the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries, the event is open to the public free of charge.

Six Bates debaters will argue the resolution “This house believes communities have the right to ban books from school libraries.” Books as current as the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling or as enduring as Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″ will come under fire, says Andrea Curtis, interim Bates debate coach.

Three proposition and three opposition debaters will face off. In addition to the organized speeches, the audience will be invited to present floor speeches supporting either side during the round. No experience is necessary, and the community’s participation is welcomed in this conversation, says Curtis.

“The Brooks Quimby Debate Council has a long history of encouraging public and controversial dialogue within our public debate presentations,” Curtis says.

Bates debaters look forward to this presentation. “It’s going to be a fun event that should help teach local students about the world of debate,” says sophomore Ariela Silberstein of New York City. “Working in collaboration with the Lewiston Public Library affords us a unique opportunity to reach out and speak in front of people other than college students.”

The other five Bates participants are first-year student Peter Gault of Darien, Conn.; sophomore Rachel Kurzius of Ridgewood, N.J.; junior Jared Levy of Ardmore, Pa.; sophomore Matthew Marienthal of Chicago, Ill.; and first-year Nathaniel Sweet of Sharon, Mass.

The Bates College debate team ranks fourth in the United States, according to the compiled results of all U.S. collegiate debate teams who competed in the 2008 World Universities Debating Championships, held in Bangkok, Thailand.

The Big Read is a nationwide initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of U.S. culture by encouraging citizens to read, discuss and celebrate a single book within their communities through a series of special events. “Fahrenheit 415″ by Ray Bradbury is the focus of Lewiston-Auburn’s 2008 Big Read L-A program.

Free copies of “Fahrenheit 415″ are available at the circulation desks of both libraries while quantities last. More information on other Big Read L-A programs are available through either library’s Web site: www.lplonline.org or www.auburnpubliclibrary.org.

Awarded annually, the prize recognizes outstanding scholarship in argumentation theory, criticism, history or practice. The AFA is an organization of 600 argumentation scholars from six countries.

Branham was also recently named the Eastern States Representative to the Committee for International Discussion and Debate (CIDD) by the Speech Communication Asociation, a 5,000-member international organization of communication scholars.

CIDD, a five member committee that selects the U.S. national debating team each year and organizes and sponsors national debating tours in Russia, Great Britain, Japan and Israel. The organization also arranges for annual tours of the United States by the national teams of these countries.

Branham heads an intercollegiate debate program at Bates that is recognized as one of the best in the United States. He also teaches a course on documentary filmmaking that has produced such notable efforts as Roughing the Uppers: The Great Shoe Strike of 1937 and The Phantom Punch, about the heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston in 1965.

The author of a number of scholarly articles and editor of several handbooks and tutoring aids for debaters, he graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of North Carolina and the University of Massachusetts respectively. He joined the Bates faculty in 1974.