Pitt speech and debate team heads to nationals

Pitt’s speech team was formed last year, and it currently has only three members, all of whom are competing in the National Forensic Association’s national tournament.

The William Pitt Debating Union, Pitt’s speech and debate team, sends students to both in-person and online competitions, participating in the NFA circuit throughout the year. Seven members of the team — four debaters in addition to the speech team — are headed to nationals at Wayne State University in Detroit this week. 

While the debate wing of the team is well-established, the speech wing was started last year by Al Primack, director of the William Pitt Debating Union. The members of the team compete across different events, including extemporaneous, impromptu, informative and the After-Dinner speech.

At the beginning of March, Breanne Francis, a sophomore political science major, had not qualified for nationals with her informative speech about gender bias in autism research. When asked if she wanted to go to a tournament on her own in Sacramento — the last participant available on the schedule for qualifying — Francis said, “Hell yeah, dude.”

During a whirlwind 24 hours, Francis flew into Sacramento, competed and finally “broke,” meaning she made it to the elimination rounds of the tournament and qualified for nationals. 

“So I’m just waiting and waiting and waiting to get an email … and finally postings came out, and I got an email, and I just screamed,” Francis said. “I was so excited.”

Elements of an informative speech include an “attention-getting device,” three main points and a conclusion.

Francis said her favorite part of her speech is her hook, which uses quotes from interviews with autistic women in “Stories from the Spectrum.” Francis’ final quote is, “It feels like something was broken inside me.”

“A lot of autistic people I talked to have had that same experience, so getting to advocate on a national level, especially for something that I care about, but also that is just extremely important, means a lot to me,” Francis said.

Francis said the hook is one of the parts she’s focused on the most performance-wise, using a pause to emphasize the final quote. As she prepares for nationals, Francis said she and the other speech competitors are rehearsing three times per practice and focusing on nonverbal elements like hand gestures and body language.

Mia Stack, a junior psychology major, also joined the speech team during the fall of this year and qualified for her informative and ADS. 

Stack described her ADS, which is meant to be more humorous, as “kind of out there.” The speech is about teaching teens how to critically consume pornography and breaking apart misconceptions about the importance of sex education.

Heading into nationals, Stack said she hopes to “break” for her ADS and believes she has a good chance.

“I’m really passionate about sexual violence prevention,” Stack said. “Being able to get up there and talk about something that I’m really passionate about is really nice — also, knowing that it’s a good speech and actually has a chance for qualifying or breaking.”

The other four team members heading to nationals are competing in the Lincoln-Douglas debate event, a one-on-one policy debate. Each round, debaters argue either an affirmative or negative position on the year’s chosen resolution.

This year, the debate centers around a resolution stating, “The U.S. federal government should substantially increase prohibitions on the development and/or use of artificial intelligence” in law enforcement, automation and privacy.

Rosalind Dong, a junior gender, sexuality and women’s studies major, said their affirmative arguments focus on how facial recognition technology affects the policing of minorities and how it can contribute to fascism. 

However, for nationals, Dong said they are testing out arguing a case study about social work for the first time.

“We prepared this to keep things changing quickly and flowing fast, so that people wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, they’re certainly using this [argument], and we already know it. We’re well prepared for this,’” Dong said. “We are making sure that the arguments we are bringing to nationals are very new, and nobody has seen it.”

Heading into nationals, Primack said he has no expectations for students, since he tries not to “overemphasize competitive success.” Instead, Primack said he is more interested in students developing themselves as people and “embracing this as a long-term learning experience.”

Primack emphasized the importance of how the team’s hard work and motivation have contributed to their success, especially as a less experienced team.

“The students, as new as they are to this, are holding up against programs that are funded three, four, five times what we have that have huge coaching staffs, multiple directors, much, much larger student bodies with more experience and debate in their programs,” Primack said. “It’s really been through their dedication and their drive that they’ve been this competitively successful.”