Las Vegas Policy Debaters "Live and breathe" Debate

UNLV's debate team coach, Jake Thompson, standing at right, guides students through a practice session as team member Michael Eisenstadt, center, prepares to give a speech.

From http://www.lvrj.com/news/29857209.html

Sep. 28, 2008
Las Vegas Review-Journal

UNLV wages war of words

Starting from scratch, debate team is fast making its mark

By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The guy in the red T-shirt stands at a temporary podium and jibber jabbers.

He's with a half-dozen others in a trailer on the outskirts of UNLV's campus. Wood paneling covers the walls. The room smells like a dirty vacuum cleaner.

T-shirt guy needs a shave, maybe a haircut.

He zombie-stares through his glasses and into his laptop, which sits atop two Rubbermaid tubs that themselves sit atop a long, narrow table in the center of the trailer.

He speaks, waves his arms, sucks in breaths so quick and deep he sounds like a dolphin.

What comes out of his mouth seems ridiculous.

Listen to the only parts speed note taking could get down:

" ... educationargumentnoone evergetstheirmessageacross (dolphin breath)negative criticismargumentscritical irrellevantinclusiveofallthe arguments(dolphin breath) infinitenumber ofargumentsmadenosense ..."

Indeed. Madenosense.

That's really what it sounds like, one long string of unseparated words, like a comedic performance without the comedy.

This goes on for four minutes, 31 seconds. To the untrained ear, it is completely incomprehensible.

Which doesn't really matter because it makes perfect sense to the guy saying it, Michael Eisenstadt, debater.

"This," Eisenstadt says, "is my love."

Eisenstadt is a former Nevada state high school champion debater. He's 19 years old, wants to be a lawyer, and lives at home in Henderson with his little brother and his ailing parents.

He is one of the stars of UNLV's debate team, long a forgotten relic of past budget cuts but now, says the coach, a team on the verge of greatness.

"I think we can create a team here at UNLV that's one of the top 10 in America in the next few years," says coach Jake Thompson, brash, young and full of energy.

This is nothing like a presidential debate or something you've seen in the movies. It's all about making as many good points as you can in a limited time. Thus, the comedic fast-talking. In practice, and in the real debates. Speaking so fast, say the debaters, makes you focus and teaches you to think fast, too.

UNLV's debate team was eliminated in 1998 because it's expensive to travel the country going from tournament to tournament for the eight-month debate season.

The team returned last year when a local philanthropist, Sanford I. Berman, donated enough money to fund travel and scholarships in perpetuity.

Which meant a coach needed to be hired.

Thompson lunged for it.

He had been a high school debater years ago, a college debater, then a Ph.D-holding assistant coach of one of the better debate programs in the country, at the University of Kansas.

When the University of Nevada, Las Vegas job came along, he was director of forensics (that's debate, not CSI) at the University of Northern Iowa.

UNLV presented a challenge, but also, in his words, "boundless opportunities."

It's not often you get to start a program from scratch.

And so he got to work recruiting, a lot like a football coach might. He was on the phone with potential students all day, every day, for weeks.

In some ways, being on the debate team is like being on the football team, except these guys are skinnier.

Its participants eat, drink and breathe debate. They get scholarships. They focus on little else during the season. And they start practicing before classes resume, in August, 12 hours a day, six days a week, for three weeks.

"This is like a full-time job for them," their coach says.

The season runs from September through April, and students spend anywhere from 20 to 60 hours a week practicing and researching.

The team meets twice each week to talk things over, in a classroom. And they meet every Wednesday evening for practice in that dank trailer.

That's what Eisenstadt was doing with all that jibber jabber. He was repeating a counter argument he had given in a competition against a team from Harvard University recently so he could focus on what he did wrong.

UNLV's team has been ranked as high as 34th in the nation (there are more than 100 universities with debate teams).

This year, the goal is to qualify for the national tournament held at the end of the season. Thompson says the team is on the way.

They've beaten teams they weren't supposed to, including one from Harvard and another from Townsend University, which produced last year's national champion team.

UNLV's teams -- there are four two-member teams -- haven't made the semifinals yet, but the coach says he sees consistent improvement. There have been only two tournaments so far.

Team member Cory Anderlohr says debating like this is totally different from what he did at Advanced Technologies Academy, a Clark County magnet high school where he focused on courses in the law.

Like a lot of the debaters, Anderlohr, 19, a communications major, wants to be a lawyer.

He says with college debate, precision in your arguments is vital, as is efficiency because of the time limit. You have to think fast to be a good debater, and you have to be able to take either side of an argument and do it justice.

Sounds like a lawyer, no?

"I like to challenge myself, you know?" he says. "You're very vulnerable in this. It puts you in a different place than you're used to. You have to think fast and speak fast."

Team member Elliot Carr-Lee loves this stuff so much he wants to make a career out of it. The 19-year-old wants to coach debate after college.

Like others on the team, Carr-Lee helps high school debate teams, and says learning how to do it right broadens the mind in ways other activities can't.

"Debate gives so much back to the community," he says.

Tiffany Alvarez, 17, is one of the newest members of the team, and one of only two female members.

She's a freshman who just graduated from Canyon Springs Preparatory Academy, another magnet school.

Alvarez did two years of debate in high school, but says she wasn't all that into it. Now, she's totally into it.

Which brings us back to Eisenstadt, the future lawyer.

He discovered debate early, even before high school, through a relative.

"After I started doing it, I was like, 'This is a channel for me to acquire all the skills I need for my career,'" he says.

And so he went on to four years of debate in high school, to the state championship in 2007 as a Green Valley High senior, to twice qualifying for the national championships, to twice being named regional high school champion.

He probably could have gone anywhere he wanted for college. He chose UNLV, he says, for a couple of reasons: It has a good political science program. It has a law school. And it, finally, has a debate team.

But most importantly, it's close to home, he says. His parents are in ill health and would do better with him around. He feels like they need him around. He feels responsible for their well being.

That's the thing about debate, these students say. It teaches you perspective. It teaches you to see all sides of an issue. It teaches you how to become a better person by looking beyond yourself.

It teaches you, in other words, howtogrowupandbearesponsibleadult (dolphin breath).