Portland State Debate Team gets third consecutive win of the season

The Portland State Debate Team landed their third consecutive win this year at the 79th annual Mahaffey Memorial Debate Tournament in McMinnville.

The Debate Team is currently ranked 52nd in the world.

Portland State debate team partners Aaron Baker and Lindsay Bing took first place and Sean Partch and Kelly Welch took third place.

Kelly Welch, Debate Team student coordinator, also went on to win the Individual Top Speaker Award for the third consecutive year.

Two Portland State teams in the novice division were semifinalists: Klara Cachau-Hansgardh and Katie Slayden, and Rett Mutchler and Molly Shove.

“We owe so much of our success to our head coach, Chris Richter,” Welch said. “Furthermore, our group operates like a team, and we are so unified in our goals as a group that we provide mutual support and encouragement in developing all of our members as thinkers, speakers and competitors.”

Teams are given only 15 minutes of preparation to create their case, after receiving the debate topic.

“At any given tournament, we can discuss between five and nine different topics through the entirety of the competition, and all of us have become avid readers of current events as a result,” Welch said.

To prepare for a debate competition, the team reads news magazines such as The Economist and regularly checks news Web sites like CBC or CNN to keep up on international issues.

The Debate Team meets every Monday and Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Smith Memorial Student Union, room 323, and is open to all Portland State students. Interested students should e-mail [email protected] for more information.

“There is no better group of people with whom I’d prefer to spend my time,” Welch said. 

[Editor’s note: Klara Cachau-Hansgardh is a Vanguard employee.]