In two consecutive weekends, six Joel Barlow High School debaters earned awards at different events. On the first day of March at the Hopkins regional parliamentary debate, junior co-captain Claudia Meyer and sophomore Ben Fligelman earned the second-place two-person team award in advanced speaking.
In novice, sophomore Graham Litz was the second-place individual speaker, his fourth award at a Debate Association of New England Independent Schools event this year. Parliamentary debate gives speakers just 10 minutes to prepare cases for unannounced policy topics, and this time they ranged from travel bans, environmental trade-offs of mineral extraction, and the morality of having children.
The following Saturday, speakers went to Greenwich High School where Greg Coleman, senior captain, won the forth-place varsity speaker award. Sophomore novices, Leighton Schur and Ben Cerbin won the first-place novice team trophies at the final open tournament in the current season of Connecticut Debate Association competition.
Speakers faced three rounds of debate over whether or not the U.S. should adopt a non-first use nuclear weapon policy in imitation of the position taken by India.
