Sophomore Noah Woo won “First Place Overall Speaker” at the Collegiate Advocacy Research and Debate competition that was held in California State University Long Beach Feb. 21-22. 

Despite participating in the competition online, Woo won first place in both advocacy and community building, and second place in evidence and analysis, earning him the award.

Woo said that these abilities and this win are not by his own doing.

“All the glory to God. None of this comes from me,” Woo said. “I am grateful to be able to represent Hillsdale. To represent the people in this community. It’s all by grace and it’s all for him.”

Woo and sophomore Jonathan Evans, Woo’s debate partner, won three out of the five rounds, with Evans also placing in second place both in evidence and analysis and community building, and third place in advocacy. 

Woo’s ability to create an overarching story is crucial to winning despite the quality of arguments, Evans said. 

“He is very impressive,” Evans said. “He’s always been better at the big picture, so his position in the division of labor really fits him. He pulls together everything in the round, all of these various lines of argumentation, and shows why, ultimately, that means that our side should win.”

Senior Benjamin Brown, also a member of the debate team who competed in the competition in person and won four of the five rounds, said Woo’s attention to detail serves him well.

“He is a very technically-minded debater, which is especially important, and collegiately he is contrasted with the high school leagues that a lot of our debaters come from,” Brown said. “That is to say that he has a cool, detail-oriented, big picture skill set.”

The ability to create an overarching argument is further strengthened by Woo’s passion in debate, Evans said.
“He’s able to get pretty passionate about it, too,” Evans said. “He does a great job at that. Sometimes I struggle to be super excited about something like labor policy, but he’s pretty stellar at that.”

This storytelling skill developed during Woo’s time at Hillsdale College. In high school, Woo said, he took a different approach to debate.

“I would only think about numbers, and the only logical decision is the one that is supported by evidence,” Woo said.

Now, Woo said, he can approach topics with the numbers against him and still win. For example, in this competition, Woo and Evans, when arguing for the affirmative side, did not have the statistics in their favor. 

“On the affirmative side of the resolution, you are arguing for unionization and the different policies the U.S. can pass to achieve greater unionization,” Woo said. “And the problem with that is that there is a very strong analytical piece, a meta-study that quotes 147 different little studies. It basically is like every time there is increased unionization, there is necessarily unemployment.” 

Instead of using statistics, Woo and Evans took a personal approach, making an appeal to the individual workers, Woo said.

“We were able to win a lot of those rounds where people ran that argument because we made the appeal to individual workers to stand up for their own ideals and stand up for their own rights as human beings and self-advocate almost through a body that allows them to have more power,” Woo said.

Kirstin Kiledal, professor of rhetoric and public address and coach of the debate team, said Woo is able to create a good frame around the debate, which is called the inherency. 

“He really sets up that sense of why we need to do this thing on the affirmative,” Kiledal said. “And he does a similar thing with regard to the negative’s response to that. Noah is also really good at organizing his argument and at starting to group those arguments together into a kind of calculus to show the strengths of the side that he is arguing on in comparison to the other side of the argument.”

Kiledal said both Woo and Evans are clear speakers with a good handle on theory as well as content of the argument.

“They are really strong debaters, and they are going to go for the win, but what they are not going to do is go for the kill,” Kiledal

In a world of opinions and arguments, Kiledal said, both Woo and Evans approach the challenge of debate with mirth and modesty.

“Despite the seriousness that we engage in the world of debate, Jonathan and Noah treat this as any other activity with humility and humor,” Kiledal said. “They are a joy to work with. They make me laugh and I am really proud of them.”