NOTE: This is a reprint of the March 3 2008 story posted on Global Debate. Congratulations to Deven Cooper and Dayvon Love for winning the CEDA National Championship 7-4 over Kansas last night. But remember, Global Debate had it weeks ago.
From http://media.www.thetowerlight.com/media/storage/paper957/news/2008/03/03/News/Towsons.Great.Debaters-3246541.shtml
Senior Deven Cooper and junior Dayvon Love make history on Towson University Speech and Debate Team
Nick DiMarco
News | 3/2/08
For the first time in 11 years, the Towson University Speech and Debate Team is sending two of its members to the National Debate Tournament. And for the first time in the history of the program, the competitors that have qualified for the NDT are black.
Deven Cooper and Dayvon Love will speak on behalf of Towson, one of the 78 schools that qualified for the NDT.
"This is something I've wanted since I was a senior in high school," Cooper said. "I don't even know how to put it into words really, because it hasn't really hit me yet. For me, it's not over because we still have to debate and our goal basically is to win it…this is just a starting point."
The pair qualified for the NDT after finishing with a record of 4-4 in national competition and placing seventh in the District-7 Tournament that took place over Feb. 23-24. In the district competition, some of the schools Towson competed against included University of Mary Washington, Georgetown University, University of Richmond and James Madison University.
Cooper and Love, who are Baltimore Urban Debate League alumni, have grown-up in Baltimore City and fostered similar ideologies through debate.
"The Baltimore Urban Debate League was a way to offer students an alternative way to [spend time] after school and on the weekends to debate and be using our intellectual skills to do something that was positive, instead of being on the street doing something illegal," Cooper, who attended Lake Clifton High School, said.
Love, a 2005 graduate of Forest Park High School who has been competing since he was 15 years old, said he wants to use debate to bring light on the issues facing Baltimore City.
"One of the things I've learned through debate is that you can talk about those conditions in a way that is acceptable to people and it's always a way to improve who you are," Love said.
On Christmas day 2007, the film "The Great Debaters" starring Denzel Washington, was released.
Cooper and Love said they see many parallels between themselves and the content of the film, which is based on a true story about a professor at Wiley College in Texas who inspired black students to compete at the school's first debate.
We can draw ourselves analogous to a lot of the black debaters in the movie because we use passion and personal stories to talk about our arguments," Cooper said.
The film pits the all black team against white upper-class schools and discusses the sensitive topics of race and equality, something Cooper and Love frequently argue about during debates.
"Unfortunately, Dayvon and I can't see it as a game all the time because you're talking about peoples' lives probably close to us, or have the same historical background as us," Cooper said.
Love, a junior philosophy major, said he agrees with Cooper. When the pair is given a topic to debate, Love said they always argue from the perspective of challenging all forms of domination against oppressed people.
"The most important parallel for us to put what we're doing in context is, what the movie showed was that black folks can compete intellectually with white people in the highest level," Love said. "I think what it is that we're doing is that we're taking it a step further, in that not only should we compete on the same level but we have a moral responsibility about the things that we talk about."
0 comments:
Post a Comment