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Faculty Invited to Participate in
Speech and Debate Open '98

Pei-Hsin (Michelle) Tsai and Rafael Dinner

The Speech & Debate Open article. Author: Pei-Hsin (Michelle) Tsai, Wellesley '00 (ptsai@wellesley.edu). Editor: Rafael Dinner, MIT '00 (rdinner@mit.edu).

This fall, the MIT community will witness the school's first intramural forensics event, the Speech and Debate Open '98 (SDO). Encouraging participation from faculty and staff as well as students, the competition is an occasion for all to defend their opinions about the Institute. "SDO is a unique forum for the discussion of campus issues between members of the entire community, and not just between a few chosen officials," says Gary Li, director of the SDO Group, president of the MIT debate team and a junior in Economics.

During Columbus Day weekend, contestants will enter four rounds of speech or debate competition, followed by semi-finals and finals rounds. Keynote speeches, luncheons and awards ceremonies will frame the event.

In the speech portion, students will give memorized presentations in dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, impromptu (an unprepared speech on a randomly-selected topic), or duo interpretation (a memorized performance of a literary work by two people). For debate events, SDO '98 emphasizes accessibility for laymen. Training seminars will brief participants on rules and tactics, and the format is simplified from normal parliamentary debate. Teams of two students each will present arguments, cross-examinations, and rebuttals on a topic chosen before the debate. Topics will be drawn from community feedback in order to suit participants' interests.

In an effort to involve all segments of the MIT community, the SDO Group invites faculty and staff members to serve as judges in the competition. The highlight of the weekend's events will be the MIT Forum Debate, in which two teams of staff and faculty members discuss an issue crucial to the Institute. "Staff and faculty play vital roles in this whole affair, as judges, as potential participants in the MIT Forum, but equally importantly, as a source of feedback on what campus issues they are most concerned about," explains Li. He continues, "I think staff and professors define MIT about as much as students do, and their concerns are often not known to students." Treasurer of the Association of Student Activities (ASA) Matthew McGann '00 agrees that faculty participation is crucial, and believes that the Open will help "to promote faculty-student interaction, to build community, and to facilitate intellectual discussion at the Institute."

Debate and speech events have always been a training ground for MIT students to improve their communication skills and knowledge of worldly affairs while competing with other schools. Last spring, however, the new Executive Board of the Debate Team sought a way to contribute to MIT at large. The idea for an intramural competition emerged during the first meeting from the impetus of Vice President of Finance Amit Roy. The Debate Team collaborated with the Speech Team and Counterpoint, the MIT-Wellesley Journal of Rational Discourse and Campus Life, to form the SDO Group. The group received funding from the Campus Activities Complex Program Board. Recently, Chicago Pizza, the MIT Copy Technology Centers, and The Tech have become supporters of SDO '98.

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