This past Saturday, Jan. 28, the Middlebrook Debate Club hosted its first debate tournament with the Connecticut Middle School Debate League (CTMSDL). Twenty Middlebrook students from 6th to 8th grade participated, and despite facing many more well-established and experienced teams, the 8th grade team of Arman Peters, Chris May and Nathan Wang managed to place fourth overall.
The resolution that they debated was that “This House would eliminate life without the possibility of parole sentences for all adults.” In keeping with the CTMSDL style, Middlebrook’s debaters began preparing their arguments in December, when the resolution was first announced. On Saturday, they argued over the course of three rounds both for and against the resolution; each member of the teams of three gave one constructive or rebuttal speech in which they presented their case and responded to questions from the opposing team. At the end of the tournament, teams were ranked by their number of wins and their individual speaker points. Individually, sixth-grader Ria Raniwala was sixth speaker overall.
The Middlebrook Debate Club first started meeting in November of 2015 and has since attracted a broad range of students interested in politics, current events and, of course, debate. It meets at Middlebrook School on Tuesday afternoons, and its next tournament will be in Greenwich in April.