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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.”

The Brooks Quimby Debate Council is getting more and more comfortable outside its comfort zone.

An established force in the American Parliamentary debate format, Quimby deepened its inroads into the contrasting world of British Parliamentary style during the weekend of April 10. The team of Colin Etnire ’12 of San Francisco and Ariela Silberstein ’10 of New York City made the semifinals at the United States Universities Debate Championship, the nation’s ultimate British-style contest.

In its USU Championship debut, in Colorado, the Quimby twosome was among teams from the University of Vermont and the University of Alaska that got as far as the semifinals. A Claremont Colleges team beat out finalists from Stanford, Yale and Portland State to win the tournament.

Co-hosted by Regis University and the University of Denver, the tourney took place at the latter campus and drew 124 teams.

For Silberstein, a high point in the action was winning a quarterfinal round in opposing the resolution “This House would replace citizen juries with professional juries.”

“We were able to defeat a team from the University of Alaska that was one of the top-ranked teams at the tournament,” she said, “in front of a judging panel that included a former World Champion.

“And it was quite significant for us that in the last preliminary round of competition, we were in the top-ranked room of the entire tournament.”

The British style emphasizes rhetorical style and an extended line of argument, while the American is more legalistic, emphasizing line-by-line breakdowns of an argument.

The American Parliamentary Debate Association circuit is Bates’ usual stomping ground. While Brooks Quimby has a long track record with British Parliamentary events — including longstanding participation in tournaments at Cambridge and Oxford, U.K., and at the World Universities Debating Championship, which took place in Turkey over New Year’s — the squad’s British-style competition on this side of the Atlantic has been less common.

But that’s changing. A British Parliamentary circuit independent of the APDA is growing in the United States, and this is the first year Bates has competed on that circuit.

“It’s a sign of the strength of our program that we were able to go so far at a tournament held in a style that hasn’t traditionally been our focus,” Silberstein said of the Colorado event. “However, we’re fast learning how both educational and dynamic British style is, and I think we’ll continue to expand our emphasis on it — and our competitive success.”

The weekend meet extended Etnire’s personal string of successes in the British realm, as he and classmate Ian Mahmud topped 73 other teams at the University of Vermont tournament last fall.

Debate gives you criteria for framing your ideas. It allows you think critically and get straight to the issue. The skills are applicable in all of your classes, in writing papers and framing theses and in everyday life.

Typically only ten percent of our incoming members have previous debate experience. At the beginning of each year, there is an emphasis on preparing novices for their first tournament. Most are ready to compete within a week, and they are working independently with little oversight within a few months. Some of our most successful debaters had no experience prior to joining the team.

Bates has the resources to send more people internationally than just about any of the schools we regularly compete against. Every year we send teams to World Championships, which was in Bangkok last year and Cork, Ireland, this year. As a freshman, I traveled to California for a debate at Stanford. During my sophomore year I debated at Newcastle and Durham, England, and I attended the World Championships in Vancouver as a judge. That degree of travel is atypical even for Bates, but many team members will travel internationally before they graduate.

Read about the history of debate at Bates:

www.bates.edu/debate-history.xml

The Brooks Quimby Debate Council recently sent six debaters to the prestigious Cambridge University Cleary Gottlieb Intervarsity Tournament, hosted by Cambridge Union Society.

The Bates team composed of Geoff Shaughnessy ’09 of Hanover, N.H., and Ariela Silberstein ’10 of New York City, advanced to the tournament’s quarterfinals. Ranked 16th in the tournament overall, the pair scored second among approximately 10 American teams entered. One of the other U.S. teams, MIT, won the tournament, in which 85 international teams competed.

Schools Shaughnessy and Silberstein faced included Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, Newcastle, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the London School of Economics.

Also competing for Bates were the teams of Jared Levy ’09 of Ardmore, Pa., and Matthew Marienthal ’10 of Chicago, Ill., who ranked 25th at the tournament; and David Kelly ’09 of Bangor and Rachel Kurzius ’10 of Ridgewood, N.J., who ranked 27th. Bates debate coach Jan Hovden and adjudicators Alicia Orkisz ’10 of Bridgewater, Conn., and Walter Garcia ’11 of Stonington accompanied the three Bates teams.

Marienthal and Shaughnessy tied to receive the tournament’s 40th individual speaker award, while Silberstein received the 54th.

“It was an honor to represent Bates abroad, and the Cambridge tournament provided us with an amazing opportunity to debate schools from not only the United Kingdom but around Europe and Asia as well,” says Silberstein, communications director for the Quimby society.

Bates debated motions on a variety of topics, including fair trade equity, organ donation, asylum for illegal immigrants trafficked into first-world countries as sex workers, and the “Bush doctrine.”

“The style of British Parliamentary debate has some marked differences from the American style, but Bates’ tremendous successes abroad have proven time and time again the unique versatility of our debating program,” Silberstein says. “The Brooks Quimby Debate Council prepares its members to compete and win not only on home turf but also in environments quite far removed from our campus. Our program fosters a general appreciation for debate and argumentation.”

Bates debaters have enjoyed a sucessful fall 2008 season. At Tufts University in November, Danny Bousquet ’09 of Savannah, Ga., and Colin Etnire ’12 of San Francisco broke to octofinals. At Harvard University in October, the novice pairs of Mircea Lupu ’11 of Northville, Mich., and Andrew Wong ’12 of Ipoh, Malaysia, broke to novice finals. Ally Mandra ’12 of Brewster, N.Y., and Monica Rodriguez ’12 of Stamford, Conn., broke to semifinals.

At the end of December, Bates sends Marienthal and Levy to Cork, Ireland, for the 2009 World Universities Debating Championships. Accompanied by coach Hovden and Kurzius and Silberstein as adjudicators, the Bates team will compete against more than 1,000 participants representing 176 of the world’s finest educational institutions from 41 countries.

Billed as the “ultimate showdown between two of the best debate teams in the country,” the Brooks Quimby Debate Council debates the Yale University team on the issue, “Is terrorism, as a philosophical construct, a just form of warfare?” Open to the public free of charge, the rhetorical match begins at 8:15 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

“We have been looking to have this debate for some time now,” says Vaibhav Bajpai ’08, of Calcutta, India, publicity director for the debate council. “This topic gained particular relevance,” he says, “when Hamas won the elections in Palestine, propelling what is considered a terrorist organization to a seat of legitimate governmental authority.”

Representing Bates in the debate against Yale will be Ryan Creighton ’07 of Lyme, N.H.; Brendan Jarboe ’08 of Acton, Mass.; and Adrienne Maxwell ’06 of Somers, Mont.

The Bates vs. Yale match precedes the third Edmund Muskie Classic Debate Tournament, an event hosted this weekend by Bates, in which approximately 60 debaters from Bates, Brown, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Harvard and Yale will compete.

In their most recent competition, held at New York University, Bates debaters distinguished themselves in a field of 208 debaters from 104 schools. Bajpai and Creighton placed ninth, while Mike Metzger ’06 of Wellesley, Mass., and Jarboe placed 13th. Jarboe placed 15th and Bajpai 17th in the speaker category.

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

Branham’s prize-wining work was published in commemoration of the centennial celebration of the Bates College intercollegiate debate program. “The history is a fine and unique example of scholarship,” said Kathryn M. Olson, chair of the AFA research committee.

Just two years ago, Branham garnered the AFA research award for his 1994 article, “Debate and Dissent in Late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan,” which appeared in the journal Argumentation and Advocacy.

In 1996, Branham was named the Eastern States Representative to the Committee for International Discussion and Debate (CIDD) by the Speech Communication Association, a 5,000-member international organization of communication scholars. He was also named coach of the United States national debating team for its tour of Great Britain from January to March 1997.

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.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the first British intercollegiate debating tour of the United States when three members of the Oxford Union launched their expedition at Bates College, the British national team will return to compete against Bates, kicking off a nationwide tour.

Beginning in the 1960s, according to Robert Branham, associate professor of rhetoric and debate coach at Bates, Americans began to participate in free, extemporaneous debate, and within the last five years, the British style of parliamentary debate has become the most popular form in the United States. “They’re truly public debates rather than technical ones,” Branham said. “They tend to be more lively, with heckling from the audience.”

On Sept. 27, 1922, Bates debaters Arthur Pollister ’24 of Turner, William Young ’24 of Lewiston and Erwin Canham ’25 of Auburn defeated Oxford University in a match staged before a crowd of 2,500 at Lewiston City Hall. The two teams debated the proposition: “Resolved, that the United States should at once join the League of Nations.” Oxford took the affirmative and Bates argued the negative side.

Speaker of the House for this year’s contest will be Charles Radcliff ’50, who was a member of the first U.S. national debating team. Bates senior Liam D. Clarke of Grand Rapids, Minn., president of the student government and the debate council, will debate for Bates with senior Jennifer V. Clark of Mexico City, a vice president of the debate council who spent her junior year abroad at University College in London.

Following the Bates debate, the British team, represented by Dan Neidle, 24, and Andrea Sloan, 22, will continue their two-month tour throughout the United States, including stops in Boston, New York and California. A law student at the College of Law in London, Neidle will begin work as a corporate lawyer in February. He won the national school’s debating championship at age 17 and has competed successfully in national and international university debates.

Sloan, a resident of Scotland, has just finished her fifth year of law at the University of Strathclyde, where she has participated in many debate tournaments in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including three world championships.

“Bates and British debaters have enjoyed a unique and enduring debating relationship,” said Branham. Bates, under the tutelage of Craig Baird, visited Oxford for the first intercontinental collegiate debate in 1921 and debated British teams more than a dozen additional times before World War II.

After the war, Bates was the first U.S. school to resume international debate tours of Britain. Three Bates students have been selected as members of the U.S. national debating teams that have toured Great Britain, including both the first tour in 1950 and the most recent tour in 1997. Bates teams now compete in British tournaments each year.

In the first years of competition, “neither side thought a lot of the other’s way of doing things,” Branham said. “The British regarded the Americans as too lawyerly and technical in their analysis. The Americans, in turn, regarded the British as too frivolous and understated.”