Sidwell Debate has seen recent success under their new leadership team headed by senior Sajan Shah and coach Colin Downes.
Shah lobbied to Sidwell administrators for a unified debate club his sophomore and junior year, with his mission being “to make debate more accessible to everybody at Sidwell, and to hopefully recruit and inspire aspiring debaters to try debate.”
“I’m very proud to be the first Sidwell debate captain and I hope to keep making debate accessible in the future,” Shah said.
He shared that the main focus of this program is to invoke joy and a desire to learn from others and grow through constructive discussions over applicable world topics.
[Debate] cultivates transferable skills. I use the skills I developed as a debater — oral presentation, quick thinking, critical analysis—every day in my job as a practicing trial attorney. — Colin Downes
At the inception of the club, Sidwell hired trial attorney Colin Downes as the club’s primary debate coach.
Downes believes debate changes lives. “It’s an activity that treats young people and their ideas seriously in a way very few other forums do,” he said, “It cultivates transferable skills. I use the skills I developed as a debater — oral presentation, quick thinking, critical analysis—every day in my job as a practicing trial attorney.”
Shah explains that the Sidwell debate program has three divisions: policy, public forum and Congressional.
Policy debate focuses on one topic all year. “This year’s policy topic is about economic inequality –– specifically, a federal jobs guarantee, universal basic income and social security,” explained Shah.
Conversely, public forum topics alternate monthly. The October topic is whether the United States should increase its military presence in the Arctic.
According to Shah, Congressional topics change every tournament. “[Examples] of Congressional [topics] include Supreme Court ethics and ocean plastic pollution,” he shared.
Both Shah and Downes agree that the competitive atmosphere is what entices new members. Sophomore Lauren Jain says she loves public forum because “the topics are so diverse but also relevant to the world we live in — climate change, the economy, geopolitical relationships — I spend a lot of time learning about how the world and government works.”
Downes finds that debate is “a safe environment to place with ideas, performance, presentation, and rhetoric. It rewards intellectual curiosity.”
According to Shah, the ultimate goal is to qualify for the Tournament of Champions (TOC) in April.
The TOC is an annual, prestigious national tournament for the most successful high school students to demonstrate their debating skills.
Qualifying, as Shah explained, is very difficult and something only a few Sidwell teams accomplish each year.
But the Sidwell debate team has their sights set high. Sidwell debaters Coco Campbell and Fred Bao have already received a Gold TOC bid, granting them qualification to the silver TOC tournament. Arman Syed, Ethan Huang and Lauren Jain have also received one Silver TOC bid.
Leading up to the TOC, Sidwell will compete locally in the Washington-Arlington Catholic Forensic League, which consists of a select group of both public and private high schools in the Washington, Maryland and Virginia area.
