11/21/2011
By MICHAEL STRAND Salina Journal

College is a time to get exposed to great minds and big ideas -- Isaac Newton's theology, Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Thomas Malthus' theories on the causes of poverty, chaos theory, quantum mechanics, nihilism, the concept of free will.

But you don't usually expect to run across all of these in one class -- and especially not in one two-hour class session.

Welcome to Kansas Wesleyan University's debate team, where coach and instructor Gary Harmon hit all those topics and more during a single class this past week.

Outside the class is a long list of KWU's national champions going back several years; Harmon is in his 10th year at Wesleyan after spending more than 20 years coaching debate at Salina Central High School and other high schools around the state.

So far this year, the KWU team is continuing its winning tradition -- despite being made up primarily of freshmen and sophomores, and competing against much larger schools.

At John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark., in late October, the team took third in individual events and first overall in combined debate and individual events. And at Louisiana State University in early November, the team placed fifth out of 28 schools; it was also the smallest school in the tournament.

Not that those things matter, Harmon said, citing Kansas' "strong debate tradition" starting at the high school level.

In many other states, high school debate seasons last the full school year, not just the fall semester, which might seem to give students in other states additional time to hone their skills.

"It's not the disadvantage people say," Harmon said, explaining that Kansas debaters go to more tournaments, and those tournaments have more rounds.

"Kansas kids who do fairly well in high school can do really well in college debate," Harmon said.

High school vs. college

Of course, high school debaters do have some adapting to do when they hit college.

In high school debate, one topic is debated for the entire season, and debaters amass boxes of evidence to back whichever side of the argument they're on in a given round.

By contrast, college debaters are given a topic at the beginning of each round and have 15 minutes to prepare.

"It could be something about Iran, or the environment, or Belize, or the advantages of polka-dots versus stripes," Harmon said. "The students have to have a broad knowledge base going in. They're always reading books and magazines."

"You have to learn to be knowledgeable about lots of different topics -- 15 or 20 minutes to prepare isn't a lot," said Kieffer Storrer, a junior from Osage City who is the team's senior member. The most "out-of-left-field one was in Louisiana, where we had to debate about Kim Kardashian; I knew her marriage was over, and that was the extent of my knowledge."

A good reputation

Like much of the team, Storrer came to Wesleyan because of Harmon and the team's reputation.

"My coach in high school told me they have a pretty good debate program here," said Storrer, who got involved in debate because "I'd always been told I had a good speaking voice. I dabbled in sports as a kid, but was pulled toward things like Scholar's Bowl and debate."

Jake Provo, a freshman from El Dorado, said he came to Wesleyan for the debate program, as did Tonya Powers, a sophomore from Hutchinson.

Provo said his high school debate coach had debated under Harmon when at Wesleyan, and "she told me if I wanted to go on in debate, it should be under Harmon."

Powers said she first got introduced to Wesleyan's program through a summer debate camp at the school before her senior year.

She took second place in two events at the camp, "but I lost to national qualifiers, so I was pretty happy," and Harmon offered her a debate scholarship to come to Wesleyan.

"This is pretty much the perfect school for me," Powers said. "I like the small classes. The big schools, with the big teams, they tell them what arguments to use and there's no individual decision -- I like to come up with my own arguments. We do really well because we have the time to be individually coached."

Powers said she thinks one of the secrets to the team's performance has been "Harmon doesn't go after the people that 30 other schools are recruiting -- sometimes those people are arrogant and it's hard to convince them to change what they're doing wrong," she said. "He finds people who are interested in debate, and turns them into good debaters."

Teaching tactics

Harmon's years of experience are obvious during class, where he's leading discussion of the theory of attacking the underlying assumptions of a given argument, rather than the more-traditional strategies, such as questioning whether a proposed solution would really work, whether it would work well enough to be worth it, and so on.

His presentation is scattered with statements such as "the textbooks won't tell you about this any more," or "You won't hear much about this any more," referring to various tactics students might use.

As an example of attacking underlying assumptions, Harmon asked students to consider a hypothetical anti-poverty measure, which would keep poor people from starving -- an apparent moral imperative.

However, Harmon said, 18th century British economist Thomas Malthus "might say the moral imperative is in the other direction," and that feeding the poor just makes more poor people, ultimately resulting in more misery and death.

In a more extreme example in a practice session, students walk through a prepared argument that relies on quantum mechanics to suggest the universe is unpredictable, and that cause and effect and free will don't really exist.

Debaters who can persuade a judge that cause and effect are an illusion don't have to worry about such minutiae as whether a job-training program would actually reduce poverty.

Besides meeting such an argument on its own terms, and arguing that cause and effect do exist, Harmon said, debaters may instead want to challenge the idea of challenging basic assumptions. That's what Storrer does later in the class when going up against a case claiming anti-poverty programs won't work because cause and effect aren't real.

"Guys, if we don't have free will, then what I'm saying up here is pre-determined," Storrer said. "This is a real-world problem, not a theoretical argument, and if cause and effect don't exist, there's no sense in debating any policy, and no reason to have a debate season."

The strategy of challenging basic assumptions -- it's called "Kritik," -- "can be done to win a round," Harmon said, "but not to find the truth. I want you to go for the truth -- and the winning will take care of itself."

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by email at mstrand@salina.com.

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