Middle and high school students will compete in the annual Jack Howe Memorial tournament at Cal State Long Beach; the event will help garner at least $50,000 worth of funds for CSULB’s speech and debate team this weekend.
This year, the 20th Jack Howe Memorial speech and debate tournament, hosted by CSULB’s team, Beach Forensics, will take place on Sept. 27 and Sept. 28. This event has been known to have from 1,100 to 1,400 participants annually, current director and coach Nicholas Russell of Beach Forensics said.
CSULB has a debate history that dates back to 1951. The event is dedicated to Jack Howe, who is responsible for founding the school’s debate team, Matt Taylor, a director of forensics at CSULB for 13 years, said.
Jack Howe, the first director of Beach Forensics, founded Beach Forensics and created the first team on campus while working to define the standards of competitive debate in the likeness of his vision, Taylor said.
“He was always seen running tournaments, judging tournaments, almost all of them,” Taylor said.
He said that Howe revolutionized the debate community by creating the Cross Examination Debate Association in 1971, and it had a style of debate that concentrated on anonymity, oratory, and the good man speaking well.
People remember Howe always saying “It was for anyone and did not require a lot of experience,” Taylor said. He said Howe believed that everyone should be able to participate in debate.
“When [CEDA] came out, it was the bastard child of debate,” Taylor said.
CEDA was created to implement an alternative style of debate for the current style of debate during that period. While the National Debate Tournament’s style was the predominant style of debate; historically, it’s known by the debate community that NDT was intended for grad students, which relied on expertise, technicality, and research.
To adequately prepare for an NDT style debate, participants need about three to five years of debate experience and, Taylor said, Howe decided that he was going to change the way debate was done because it just wasn’t being done right in his opinion.
At first, CEDA was controversial because it was clashing with the NDT and its family values, but overtime, CEDA expanded from Southern California to Northern California. Once California was won over, it expanded to the Western Region, when people began to find Howe’s way better. CEDA did not take long to prepare for, anyone could do it, and it was easier to teach. Since then, the NDT and CEDA styles have merged together. The organizations still stand as separate deities, but styles stand separate only in name.
Howe was a pioneer. “He was known for being pretty serious…He felt there was a particular way things were done… and if you didn’t follow those ways, he was going to let you know,” Taylor said.
The different sections for entry are Parliamentary, Policy, Public Forum, congressional, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate, in addition to the 11 California High School Speech Association Individual Events.
There will be some changes this year, like awards being given to all Individual Events semifinalists. The event staff will post IE breaks on campus and online by 9 p.m. Saturday night. The forensics team is also offering parent-judge training each morning at 7:30 a.m.
Beach Forensics awards Jack Howe participants over $10,000 in scholarships to students who win first place in a senior division event, Russell said. Each highly ranked winner receives a $500 scholarship to attend CSULB and compete on its nationally ranked forensics team, Russell said.