In one of our previous ECHO issues, an article was written about various clubs here at Rolla High School. Fortunately, this article serves as a messenger to let the students know that we have one more golden nugget of club information. The Debate Team-the bonus-fry of RHS activities, if you will-is officially up and running. Debate team is a club where students shape and contest arguments against individuals or other teams-all in the good natured name of proving you’re right.

Sam Kimball, Junior, is at the helm of the grassroots organization that is the RHS Debate team.

“Debate is a club right now, but it is also a MSSHA activity, so hopefully a couple months from now we can start going to competitions and actually start doing competitive debates,” Kimball said.

“You go and you argue things; [It’s] Being able to fight your decisions while having it sound good,” Junior and debate member Renee Reisner said

Kimball’s motivation for starting the team was inspired through a class activity he participated in his Sophomore year.

“Well, I guess it started last year with us doing debates in Honors English II with Mrs. Gillis. I really enjoyed it, and a lot of other people did [as well], and she asked would anyone be interested in joining a competitive debate team. So I was like, ‘Yeah!’” Kimball said.

At an average meeting, business is taken care of by preparing and setting up arguments, gathering evidence, and practicing until satisfaction has been reached-or at least until 4 o’clock.

“We prepare for debates. Right now, we’re just doing debates among the school, but down the line we’ll begin preparing for people from other schools. We work on our outlines for our debates for the parts that we can, and the parts that we have to make up on the spot we find evidence for it. We find specific arguments for common arguments and counter arguments,” Kimball said.

Although there are multiple formats on the Debate circuit, the RHS debate team practices and utilizes the Lincoln-Douglas form.

“Right now we just do Lincoln-Douglas, which is a one-on-one debate debating values, like justice or personal liberty, stuff like that,” Kimball said.

Because of the late start, this club is open and taking new members.

“Yes we are! We would love to have new members any time. We meet alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays, contact me [Sam Kimball] if you want to join; It’ll also be in the announcements every week,” Kimball said.