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by Iowaka Barber
[OPEN SOCIETY NEWS, Summer, 1998, pp. 14-15]
His Saturday began earlier than usual. At 6:30 AM he received a wake-up call from his teacher, and by 7:00 A.M., he had received two other calls from classmates to make sure lie had not dozed off again.
Not all New York City high school students receive Saturday wake-up calls from their teachers and classmates, but Zomega (short for Zoned-Out-Mentally-But-Eventually-Gettin'-Around) needed to rise early to make the subway trip from Brooklyn's Bedford -Stuyvesant neighborhood to Manhattan to meet his debate partner Dexter Pollard. By 10 A.M., Zomega and Dexter were combing through piles of index cards containing evidence for use against the opponents in a New York Urban Debate League (NYUDL) tournament on the topic of whether the federal government should establish a policy to increase the use of renewable energy.
Moments later, when Dexter was unable to find his evidence in the muddle of papers in front of him, he blamed Zomega, saying"Yo, you're messing me up."Zomega took a deep breath and calmly replied,"You are messing your own stuff up. Take responsibility."That was all that was said and the two refocused on the round at hand.
The epitome of urban cool, dressed entirely in black, chin-length braids covering his eyes, Zomega turned to his opponent and calmly asked,"Can you give me the author of your first citation?"He followed up with"Who says that air pollution is actually declining? And what is the cost of your plan and the time frame for Implementation?"When they lost their round, they walked over and shook their opponentsı hands.
While it did not look like much, the gesture said a lot. Debate has taught them to disagree, and even lose with grace and dignity. A year earlier, 20-year-old Zomega had been branded by school officials as a disruptive influence. He re-enrolled at Bedford-Stuyvesant Outreach, an alternative high school which offers youth who have had difficulties in other schools an opportunity to earn their high school diploma. Alyson Forde, a teacher at the school who purposely recruits rebellious, argumentative, and/or inattentive teens for the debate program, uses debate to encourage students like Zomega to resolve conflicts without exhibiting anger, and to show them that they can do positive things with their lives.
"Unfortunately, Zomega doesn't Understand why people see so much potential in him,"says Forde. Zomega says about himself,"Maybe they, see me differently, than I see myself . I Everybody thinks African-Americans excel only in music and sports. Since I am good in neither, I got stuck with debate. But that's OK because it makes me different, and different is cool."
During the 1997-1998 school year, the NYUDL, an effort of OSI's U.S. Programs, offered 200 students like Zomega and Dexter a chance to be different. The NYUDL is based on OSI's successful network of international debate program in Central and Eastern Europe. The NYUDL also builds on the success of a model program in the U.S. city of Atlanta implemented by the Barkley Forum at Emory University. Consultants at Emory have helped OSI-New York create a debate program in 16 New York City high schools.
The 200 NYUDL students attend public high schools located mainly in lower-income school districts, where at least 70 percent of the student population comes from families relying on government assistance. Since the majority Of students attending these schools had never been exposed to debate, the NYUDL sent 140 students and 22 teachers to Emory University last summer to participate in a two-week camp, where they sat in classes, labs and tutoring sessions. This not only introduced them to the fundamentals of the discipline, but also prepared them for the rigors of a very specific kind of debate: policy debate. Unlike the Lincoln-Douglas style of debating which focuses more on universal values, policy debate focuses on public policy issues, both domestic and international. Policy debate is more complex and research oriented .
Research skills, or even any type of academic enhancement, are not necessarily all that students look for in the debate program. As early, as age four,"CR"looked after her siblings while her mother peddled drugs, initially to support her growing family but later as a means of feeding her own addiction. The drug usage rendered her incapable of holding a job to support her six children, so she married a working man who despised"CR"and her siblings. Fed up with the hardship of her home life, especially with the stepfather's malicious threats,"CR"decided to take matters into her own hands and managed to navigate the legal system in New York to secure financial custody of her siblings."CR"is only 16, but has already had the responsibilities of adulthood thrust upon her. She says participation in the debate program has virtually saved her life."It keeps me focused, keeps my mind momentarily off of home life, and gives me something constructive to do after school so I don't have to go straight home,"she says."Our coach always tells us that we are one big happy family, and I really feel that way. We all care for and support one another."
At the season's Final awards banquet, NYUDL Program Officer Beth Breger summed up the program's goals by telling parents, teachers, coaches, and kids that NYUDL gives kids the tools to be active participants in society."No matter what anyone says, your words, your intellect, and your spirit have demonstrated you can take on the world,"said Breger. The keynote speaker at the banquet, Geoffry Canada, an OSI grantee and author of Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A History of Violence in America, said,"I've known people who have gone through college because they could hit a high C or shoot hoops. But Iıve also seen kids get through college tuition-free because they could out-debate other kids."
Some NYUDL participants have received scholarship offers. Michael Vargas and Lisa Gonzalez, seniors at Grace Dodge High School who have been invited back to the Emory debate camp to teach this summer, have received scholarship offers from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. Yashika Walker, an energetic 15-year-old from Fredrick Douglass Academy in Harlem, so impressed the faculty at the Emory debate camp that universities have already expressed interest in her even though she has three more years of high school.
"It is hard to believe now, but before I went to the debate camp in Atlanta I did not even know what global warming was,"Vargas says."Now I can tell you everything you ever wanted to know and more about it. Debate has made me more aware of what's going on in the world."