By Reed Schroeder
The Edgewood College debate team, currently classified as a club, will soon be cancelled.
Daniel Mortensen, the former coach of the debate team, said the debate club still has some left-over funds and he would like to “turn debate into a true class” that would focus on the processes and aspects of debate.
Additionally, if debate were to be turned into a class, Mortensen said he believes that 15-20 students would enroll in it per semester.
Moreover, he said this class may be able to travel just as the debate team had.
The club began to run into issues when student enrollment at Edgewood dropped from previous years. Fewer people came to attend classes at Edgewood, so fewer people were able to join the debate team.
Mortensen said to follow the debate guidelines there would need to be eight debaters and three judges. However, this was problematic in recent times for the team because there would only be about three students at any given practice.
He said he would often fill in the missing roles as best as he could but felt as though these low numbers impacted the performance of the debaters and discouraged people from staying with the club.
Mortensen said low student interaction with the club is one of the reasons it was cancelled.
This club was unique because it offered a hybrid experience which was created to service both casual and competitive debaters.
Edgewood competed both locally and globally in debate tournaments many times a year. Those within the club were offered the option of travelling with the team to go to competitions in and out of state.
Former team member Robert Kaszarek has fond memories.
“I can confidently say that my experience, pertains to also everyone else’s who was on the debate club, was quite frankly, fantastic.”
Mortensen said debate was the definition of a co-curricular sport in the sense that it was both fun and able to sharpen an individual’s skill set.
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