On Saturday, March 16, the Virginia High School League Regional Debate Tournament was held at Rock Ridge. It was held on a smaller scale than the previous tournaments, but was still a qualifying competition for the state tournament happening later in the year.

The topics of the debates differed in comparison to their previous ones but were still familiar territory. The students on Public Forum (PF) argued whether college athletes should be considered employees, and by proxy, whether they should be allowed to unionize and be paid, while the student congress chamber debated on proposing bills panning from student loans, minimum wage, green energy, municipal water systems and their privatization to the C.H.I.N.A. act. The policy team argued around the issue of the U.S. government’s fiscal redistribution and expanding social security for guaranteed jobs and basic income improvements, and finally, the Lincoln Douglas (LD) group had their debates on the decision of the United state’s criminal justice system and whether it should be about rehabilitation.

The debaters prepared weeks in advance for this tournament, and compiled hours of research, statistics, and speeches into full-fledged, defensible arguments that would be put to the test. “We googled and tried to find a bunch of background information on the topic before we started formulating our ideas, and we have a couple of ‘assisters,’ they’re like pdf documents that [show] every possible argument you might have [for either side],” junior Nitya Matcha said. 

Some students, however, preferred the older topics, generally surrounding larger issues regarding governments, world affairs/foreign policy, and the country’s responses to a specific challenge regarding climate change. “As someone who doesn’t really care about sports, I would’ve definitely preferred a geopolitical topic like any other PF topic we’ve ever done, but I’ve grown to see both sides of it, just as when you complete any other resolution, so of course I appreciate that,” junior Yoshi Sarkar said. 

The organizer of the debates, Physics and congress debate coach, Rama Srinivasan, helped coordinate the entire event. “I’ve had the help of all of these wonderful people in Loudoun County Public Schools [with running the event], and I just do all the other logistical things,” Srinivasan said. “I love the fact that [they’re] actually learning about contemporary issues that affect [them], the [big] picture, and the long run, whether it is local, political issues or geopolitical issues; I think all students of this age and day should be able to communicate, and they should understand the situation and be aware of things that are [happening] inside the country, and that’s why I’m part of [coaching] debate.”

Srinivasan also had confidence that the student debaters would be scored accurately for their knowledge of the topic and speech efficacy. “For students congress, we judge them based on the fact that they understand what parliamentary procedures are, and also if they actually understand the legislation on which they would like to speak on behalf of or oppose legislation for specific logical reasons. We score based on numbers, which is what the National Speech and Debaters Association has given us guidelines [for], and so we actually score them from one through nine as rankings,” Srinivasan said. 

All of the Rock Ridge students qualified in a total sweep, as the PF group won both debates 2-0, the congress group came in second, the LD debaters took first and second place, and policy won second place in their debate. The next regional debate will be in Salem, VA on April 26-27.