By: Elijah Smith
Missouri Western’s Speech and Debate Team has been an integral part of several students’ lives over the past four years. Students from a variety of backgrounds and majors found common ground in the program directed by Jason Edgar.
“My dream job is coaching speech and debate on the university level,” said Edgar, who was hired by Missouri Western as a full-time speech and debate director in 2015. “This first year and a half, I’ve been able to do that.”
Edgar came to Missouri Western from a community college in southwest Missouri, and was the university’s first full-time speech and debate director. He said debate is important to creating well-rounded students, for several reasons.
“It’s a search for the probable truth, meaning that we research and develop our arguments and try to provide clarity and clash to an interested audience,” Edgar said.
The program allowed students to sharpen life skills they can carry into their professional life. Michael Smith, a senior philosophy major, was quite successful during his time in the speech and debate and said his experience in the program will be beneficial to him as he ventures into corporate law after graduation.
“There’s never a presentation in my life I’m going to be nervous giving, or feel like I’m underprepared,” Smith said. “Debate has given me the ability to think on my toes and always be critical of what’s around me, or the information I’ve been given, and then relay that in a way that’s digestible for every individual that exists in a room.”
Sophomore Lily Grantham joined the debate team this past school year not only to hone those skills, but to have the opportunity to learn more about current world events than she could in her other classes.
“Not only do you develop the ability to speak well in front of groups and things like that, but you have the opportunity to expose yourself to different issues globally and locally that you wouldn’t otherwise,” Grantham said. “You learn a lot more than I think is possible outside of debate, without a lot more effort.”
Grantham, who is double majoring in philosophy and history, said that while enrolling in debate is not required for her specific majors, it was worth it for the experience.
This winter, state budget cuts forced the university to suspend the program after the 2016-2017 school year. It was no easy decision for Missouri Western’s president, Dr. Robert Vartabedian, who was instrumental in the program’s rebirth in 2013.
Debate was fundamental throughout Vartabedian’s career. From his beginnings on his high school team, to student-teaching a speech and debate team in college, to assisting the Wichita State University debate and forensics program in graduate school, a university where he later became the speech and debate director, debate has been extremely important to Vartabedian since the late 1960s.
“I’m having to suspend something that was central to my career, both as a student and as a faculty member, so I didn’t take it lightly,” Vartabedian said.
Vartabedian got the ball rolling on the speech and debate program four years ago. After gauging student interest, he made a donation from his own personal funds as part of a three-year commitment to start it up, hoping interest would continue to expand and the program would grow and be able to support itself.
Unfortunately, Missouri Western’s speech and debate program never got those big numbers Vartabedian was hoping for; it claimed just 11 students for the spring 2017 semester.
“In a fairly short period of time, say, five years, evidently, interests have shifted,” Vartabedian said. “We can’t just do it because Vartabedian believes in the program. We have to do it for reasons that make good financial sense. And at this point, it didn’t make good financial sense, unfortunately.”
Vartabedian said he is proud of what the program has accomplished, referencing the duo of Christopher Miles and Michael Smith as “one of the top teams around.” However, he said the evolution of parliamentary debate, what the program was initially intended for, into fast-talking, angry argumentation with verbal shortcuts and foul language was one of the many factors in the university’s decision to suspend the program.
“I think there are many opportunities,” Vartabedian said. “This is one that’s been put on hold.”