{"id":124284,"date":"2019-05-10T12:14:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T16:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=124284"},"modified":"2023-11-21T10:04:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T15:04:17","slug":"in-u-s-universities-debating-championship-two-senior-debaters-end-careers-on-a-high-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/05\/10\/in-u-s-universities-debating-championship-two-senior-debaters-end-careers-on-a-high-note\/","title":{"rendered":"At national championship, two senior debaters end on a surprising high note"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2019 U.S. Universities Debating Championship at Clemson University saw 204 teams compete for the highest-level debate prize in the country.<\/p>\n

Bates\u2019 Brooks Quimby Debate Council has long been hailed as one of the best college teams out there, but the team of Harry Meadows \u201919 of Princeton Junction, N.J., and Abby Westberry \u201919 of Readfield, Maine, knew the competition would be stiff. Plus, they’d only recently begun to debate as a team.<\/p>\n

Maybe they would successfully “break” from the preliminary rounds into the octofinals. If they were lucky, maybe they’d reach the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

Modest dreams, it turns out: Westberry and Meadows made it all the way to the grand final round, facing teams from Harvard, Yale, and Duke, the eventual winner. Westberry was named the tourney’s fifth-best speaker, while Meadows tied for 11th best.<\/p>\n

Their success left the debaters both surprised and somewhat bemused.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter semis, I really didn\u2019t think we had gone through, but I was content with that result,\u201d said Meadows, reflecting on the tournament in an interview. \u201cThen they announced the results, and the whole team went up cheering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were like, \u2018Oh, here we go again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harry<\/a>

Harry Meadows \u201919 and Abby Westberry \u201919 were finalists in the U.S. Universities Debating Championship. Here, they pose with a wall of debate plaques and trophies in Pettigrew Hall.\u00a0 (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

In terms of their becoming a team, it’s a case of better late than never.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have very different skill sets,\u201d said Meadows. \u201cAbby\u2019s really good at articulating arguments in a way that makes them powerful and difficult to beat. I do a lot more work of coming up with the arguments before the round.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that either of us would have done this well at this tournament without the other one,\u201dadded Westberry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an excellent level of working trust between us both during prep and during the round,\u201d Meadows agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so exhausted I could barely think straight.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In typical British Parliamentary debate style, in which four teams argue for or against a motion, the championship was fast-paced, with 12 rounds \u2014 each lasting up to two hours \u2014 in three days.<\/p>\n

Though widely renowned for its debate team, Bates does not typically make it to grand finals at the championship. \u201cWe had a little bit of an underdog status,\u201d Meadows said. \u201cThe crowd liked that and liked us.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time the pair advanced to the finals, \u201cI was so exhausted I could barely think straight,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

But there was work to do. In the grand finals, the four teams would debate whether the United States should be broken up into multiple countries. Despite their exhaustion, the two agreed that their preparation for grand finals was the highlight of the tournament.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>

In January, Harry Meadows ’19 (second from right) was part of a workshop that Bates debaters held for visiting high school students from Boston. (Grace Link \u201919\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt was very surreal,\u201d said Westberry. \u201cUsually, 15 minutes before you have to debate, they announce the round, and everyone will rush out in a giant swell. This time it was just four teams in a quiet room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fun to get that motion, sit down, and think: What could we say in front of all these people that would make ourselves sound distinct?\u201d said Meadows. \u201cWe wanted to give arguments that were interesting and compelling, not mechanistic and boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a good job of that, even though we didn\u2019t win,\u201d he added, Westberry nodding in agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely got the biggest round of applause,\u201d said Westberry. \u201cWe were by far the crowd favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides the surreality of competing in the grand finals, both seniors mentioned another favorite motion from Day 1, in which they had to argue for or against embracing transhumanist philosophy.<\/p>\n

\u201cTranshumanism is the philosophy that we should edit humanity through cybernetic enhancements and gene editing,\u201d said Meadows, who studies philosophy at Bates. \u201cWe were on opposition, which was nice because we got to defend humanity as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose were our highest speaker scores as well,\u201d said Westberry.<\/p>\n

\"Abby<\/a>

Abby Westberry ’19 (left) and Morehouse College senior William Coggins, teammates for the annual Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2018, confer prior to the debate’s start. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

With the championship now behind them, Meadows, an English and philosophy double major, and Westberry, a sociology major, are preparing to graduate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been my pleasure to work with Harry and Abby over the past four years,\u201d said their coach, Lecturer in Rhetoric and Director of Debate Jan Hovden. \u201cThey are both remarkable people who are incredibly talented debaters, but they are also amazing teammates and leaders on the BQDC. They will be greatly missed.”<\/p>\n

Even though they\u2019ll no longer be debaters, tournaments can still play an active role in their lives.<\/p>\n

As alumni, Meadows and Westberry have the possibility to return to debate events as adjudicators, the judges who evaluate debate rounds in tournaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way to return to debate is when it\u2019s still fresh in your mind and you have friends who have recently competed. That\u2019s a good way to stay engaged,\u201d said Westberry, who has accepted a Fulbright Student award to teach English in India next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that debate skills like public speaking and quick thinking translate to other areas,\u201d said Meadows, who is planning on pursuing either education or law school. \u201cI think debate will follow us for the rest of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Meadows and Westberry credit the entire Brooks Quimby Debate Council with their success. \u201cWe progressed so far because we had a big team behind us that supported us the entire way,\u201d said Westberry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you to everyone who sat through a bunch of practice rounds over the years,\u201d said Meadows. \u201cThat made us better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having rarely debated together, Abby Westberry \u201919 and Harry Meadows \u201919 were grand finalists at the 2019 U.S. Universities Debating Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":124299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-collaboration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124284"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124601,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124284\/revisions\/124601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}