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    Although the University of Texas emphasizes the ability for their incoming freshman to achieve a rebirth, Texas has already granted me a rebirth in my past. In the summer of 2008 I attended the University of Texas National Institute of Forensics as an incoming junior. While there is a diverse array of debate camps to choose from across the country, the UTNIF is renowned for pushing the limits in argumentative style. Rather than solely trying to improve the debaters’ win/loss record, the institute emphasized drawing deeper connections with the arguments presented in debate rounds. Generally opposed to the sophistry prevalent in high school speech and debate, the instructors at the UTNIF encouraged debaters to research major philosophical thinkers and deploy their beliefs within a debate round. The personal emancipation that the instructors enlightened me to has sparked my own desire to continue to teach similar lessons to younger debaters.
    Early on in my own participation in speech and debate, I had many instructors who were excellent and teaching me how to win. A common expectation advanced throughout the debate community is that arguments should be approached strategically. While certain teams might advance arguments condemning patriarchal relations that oppress women, a valid response to such arguments could include morally repugnant justifications of patriarchy. Debate rounds are won frequently on arguments with Malthusian, imperialistic, and even implicitly racist assumptions. Despite the extensive amounts of research and persuasive technique exhibited by such hypothetical victors, I have always felt that there is something missing in such an approach to debate. While it is obviously not necessary to intimately believe in every warrant advanced in a speech delivered in a debate round, an approach to debate that creates unique disincentives to defending personal advocacies in favor of more strategic yet less genuine arguments is untenable. Approaches to debate should be fostered that leave room for connecting advocacies to personal agency. Similar to how methods of experiential learning “make the value of education more obvious because you begin connecting information to the “real world””.1 Due to these personal observations, I quickly became disenchanted with the ideologues who emphasized a separation between personal beliefs and positions defended.
    The aforementioned severance was conducive to giving the progressive instructors at the UTNIF a highly influential role in my own development. A significant amount of my time at UTNIF was spent studying the thoughts of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s 1953 essay “The Question Concerning Technology” reorients philosophy from being primarily concerned with how to one thinks about action and instead with how one thinks about thinking. In the face of the suicidal drive of modern technological thought, Heidegger advocates incorporating meditative modes of thought into one’s ontology. While there are certainly problems in this world that require immediate action, Heidegger suggests that many more problems are caused by a rush to action without proper reflective inquiry. Such an approach can be aggravating, especially “if we still believe that thinking’s only real purpose is to function as a prelude to action,” which will leave us “feeling nothing but frustration, unable to conceive of ourselves as anything but paralyzed.”2 Although this might be a difficult obstacle to overcome, the end result is certainly worthwhile. This approach to philosophy introduced by Heidegger directly applied to the revelations that the UTNIF gave me in my approach to speech and debate. Because my own personal ontological inquiries became a high priority, debate quickly became a brilliant outlet for my own development. It was through the implementation of Heidegger’s philosophy in debate that the UTNIF instructors affected my personal views of debate.
    These lessons taught to me in Austin remained with me throughout my junior and senior year of high school. Senior year was a time of great existential questioning as I filled out college applications and wrote many essays. As college approached, I was forced to consciously consider what my future career was going to be. My previous experience in speech and debate had made me painfully aware of countless struggles constantly occurring across the globe. My declared major in college would inevitably be conducive to personally influencing a social issue of concern. Although I was resolved to make my choice in career a means to a higher end, determining the proper methodology to use to combat social injustice was particularly problematic. The structural conditions that lock individuals into social hierarchies are largely irreversible by a single individual. This depressing realization forced me to consider prioritizing certain struggles that I would align myself with. When determining how best to use my labor to benefit other individuals, I had no other criterion with which to base priorities upon besides my own personal experience. Remembering the emancipation found through intellectual inquiry taught to me at the UTNIF the previous year, I realized my own personal contentment derived from personal growth instead of a mere shift in material conditions. Such a freedom is inherently derived from the immaterial. Because my own path to emancipation was paved with intellectual enlightenment alone, I was left with no other choice but to lay similar stones for others to follow. While it might be difficult to quantify the impact that an inherently immaterial methodology would have on others, I was inevitably more intimately connected with such a struggle than any other political outlet predicated upon a material struggle that I have not personally experienced.
    My passion for debate provides the perfect means for me to cause other individuals to question their presuppositions in a similar manner. Because of the objective and creative nature of debate, competitors are encouraged to research and create their own unique arguments and utilize the laboratory of the debate round to discover how different arguments interact. More importantly, debaters have the opportunity to defend positions that they personally believe in and teach other competitors about distinct material struggles. This increase about awareness of certain issues translates into interest and activism towards solutions to the particular problem. However, using my influence to strictly increase participation in debate is insufficient. The instructors at UTNIF that sparked my own passion for debate taught me that debate only reaches its full potential when it is pushed to the limits of intellectual inquiry. When debaters can advance positions that they fundamentally believe in instead of falling prey to the sophistry that characterizes debate, the competitors can thereby situated their arguments in a broader context of social struggle. This creation of intrinsic meaning for individual advocacies allows the debate round to become a space for the advancement of personal ethical beliefs.

unique opportunities of debate

    This endeavor is not an end in itself. Preserving public spaces for the democratic contestation of ideas is integral to maintaining freedom within American society. Professor of Cultural Studies at McMaster University Henry Giroux notes in his 2006 essay “Reading Hurricane Katrina” that any resistance to social injustice is impossible when a public sphere does not exist to allow citizens to genuinely consider different political ideas. Giroux writes that we should foster the “creation of a vast network of democratic public spheres such as schools and the alternative media in order to develop new models of individual and social agency that can expand and deepen the reality of democratic public life.”3 By ensuring the emancipatory potential of speech and debate programs in high schools across the United States, such a democratic network of the exchange of ideas is thereby created. This conclusion allows me to connect my own passion for my involvement in high school speech and debate to broader material struggles. Without ensuring that the free exchange of ideas is maintained throughout the nation’s youth (that is not manipulated by corporate or governmental influence on ideas), the hearts and minds behind any future social struggle will never be passionate enough themselves. It would seem safe to conclude that maintaining speech and debate as a public sphere free of outside control is a perquisite to the vitality of American democratic culture.
    My passion for speech and debate as an outlet for expressing certain political beliefs directly translates into influencing the way that others approach speech and debate. In some ways, the indebtedness that I feel towards the instructors at UTNIF for opening my mind years ago only feels resolved when I am able to pass a similar gift onto others. Fortunately, I have several ways to influence high school speech and debate as a college student. Many local Austin high schools host speech and debate tournaments on the weekends that require judges. As a judge, I am able offer encouragement and advice to competitors. Moreover, I am currently involved in coaching several debaters at a local high school. By helping the students learn how to research arguments and also injecting my own personal views on debate, I am able to ensure that the activity is approached in a manner that is conducive to a genuine exchange of ideas. It is also encouraging to note that my passion for sparking intellectual inquiry within others is not relegated to the speech and debate world. I have considered pursuing a future career in teaching as a result of my recent reflection on what constitutes my passion. Even maintaining any involvement with the academy would allow me to pursue encouraging others to take the pedagogical stances that can provide a sense of freedom.

1 Bump, Jerome. Course Anthology. Page 45.

2 Ladelle McWhorter. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State University. “Guilt as Management Technology: A Call to Heideggerian Reflection.” Heidegger and the Earth: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. 1992. pp. 3-9

3 Henry Giroux. Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability.” College Literature. 33.3: Summer 2006.