Students filed in the classroom one by one, setting their backpacks and binders down on the floor to get comfortable for the next hour of Lincoln-Douglas debate club. They sat down casually on the desk-tops, some with their feet on the chair, others swinging their legs off the side of the desks.
Once a decent sized crowd had entered, Mr. Ritz began to cover the current debate topic: Whether or not human rights protection should supersede state sovereignty. He stood up behind his desk to speak to the class about one of the possible sides to this argument and waved his arms around as he did so, using his hands to speak in exaggerated motions.
After a few minutes of talking, the conversation started to shift. “I’m multitasking,” Mr. Ritz offered the students as an excuse for his drifting off topic. “You know how random I think.”
Now back on topic, the class verbally listed the names of students who would be attending the next debate tournament so that they could be moved from the large whiteboard in the back of the classroom to his paper.
“Is Deja Morehead on the board?” he asked. Her competition entry was confirmed by sophomore Keith Brothers.
The topic once again deviated, this time back to the original debate topic. He spoke for awhile, his lecture broken occasionally by a question or comment from a student.
“Any ideas, thoughts provoked, or anything?” he asked the class. “Because this is really a brainstorming session to help you write your cases.”
Sophomore Danny Olvera walked into Mr. Ritz’s room, stopped under the leaf-framed arch just inside the door, and said, “I am so confused right now.”
“CX is in the other room,” Mr. Ritz told him, pausing his allocution just long enough to direct him in the right direction towards another room, just down the hall.
Here, another debate class was being held, this one supervised by the captain of CX, senior Estrella Ramos. Olvera walked in and immediately recognized the people inside.
Compared to Mr. Ritz’s room, this one was loud and unorganized and filled with laughter instead of the serious talking seen in the former. Instead of a single crowd, people were scattered into small groups to work on their cases. Ramos and junior Breton Hawkins discussed economy problems and formulas written on the board which involved their case, while a group of three girls gathered around sophomore Devyn Hinds’ bright pink laptop to do research. A third group formed with Olvera, and one single student worked alone on a school laptop to finish his work.
“Mom!” the group of girls simultaneously yelled at Ramos to get her attention, referring to her maternal-like attitude.
The topics swirled from debate, to twitter, to nuclear war, and back again to debate, mirroring the fickle nature of conversation seen in Ritz’s room.
After finishing her conversation with Hawkins, Ramos walked to the group calling for her and answered their questions.
“Yes, see?” she said as she finished explaining. “It’s offence and defence, and the judge knows that. And then you just go about your case.”
