Photo: NFA-LD students Joe and Endo relax and chat with James Thomas of Cornell University

 

Posted by: Alfred Snider

 

One college debate format that is growing in popularity is National Forensic Association Lincoln-Douglas debate. This format is not like the National Forensic League’s Lincoln-Douglas debate, which changes topics and tends gto focus on value issues. NFA-LD is one-on-one policy debate that has one topic all year long. The fact that it is an individual event often means that it is possible to have both debate and individual speech events at the same tournament.

 

This is the fifth year that we have had an NFA-LD workshop at WDI and the students seem anxious to learn, have lots of energy and have high ambitions for achievement. Last year a WDI NFA-LD student was not only a national semifinalist but was the top speaker at NPDA nationals out of over 600 students.

 

The faculty assignments got a bit of s shake-up but all seems to be well. Glenn Prince of Western Kentucky University had been contracted to teach the session, but when his car hydroplaned on Interstate 80 he had a bad accident but avoided serious injury. Nevertheless, his doctor wanted to keep him under observation and his car was a wreck. The previous four NFA-LD workshops have been directed by Sam Nelson of Cornell, and he was able to orient and train James Thomas, now his assistant, to fill in along with help from other faculty. We are glad James can be with us. His work at the recent high school policy workshop received rave reviews, so it was nice to be able to bring him in again.

 

His bio is: