The debate lounge was empty again this weekend, file boxes and team members whisked away to work. However, they were not at some far-off campus debating, but holed away in a suite with a couple coffeemakers to fuel their research weekend.
“Research weekends are exactly what they sound like,” said Debate Coach and Assistant Professor of Speech Matthew Doggett.
The team conducts the research needed to complete arguments for upcoming tournaments. Because of academic commitments, students do not often have time during the weekdays to accomplish the team’s workload.
Spreading their efforts over the course of one weekend gives them a way to get the bulk of their work done in a reasonable manner, Doggett said.
The average work day is about 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., team manager and junior Lauren Holt said.
Freshman Emily Runge said each team member easily clocked over 20 hours of research between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.
“It is enormously time-consuming,” Holt said. “In fact, we tell people new to the team not to expect to do anything but debate work on such weekends.”
One of the reasons why Hillsdale’s team required such concentrated work is that the team of nine students frequently competes against teams twice as large with graduate students paid to coach and do research for the students, Doggett said.
“It takes a lot,” Doggett said. “And this year, we have only three returning experienced debaters. The rest are somewhat new, but they got a lot done and the weekend went really well.”
Holt described her first research weekend as a freshman as “overwhelming.”
“But it was beneficial,” she said. “It’s a strenuous adjustment to handle the workload of Hillsdale and the workload of debate simultaneously. This year the freshmen were surprised at the level of work involved but they performed admirably.”
Runge said that her first research weekend “was pretty intense.”
“Lots of coffee and lots of frustration went into finishing the evidence I wanted for my case, but it turned out to be very productive and I’m really pleased with the progress I made on my affirmative case,” Runge said.
Runge debated all four years of high school and has always considered debate to be a passion of hers. She even works at debate camps over the summer. As a result, she came into Hillsdale familiar with the amount of work it takes to be successful.
“But it’s still a little intense,” Runge said. “But it takes effort to be good at this.”
The bulk of the research load is concentrated among the students receiving scholarships for debate work or have the experience needed to contribute, Doggett said.
“The first research weekend usually helps us discover where everyone’s talents are,” Holt said. “Some people are better at finding hyper-specific pieces of information whereas others are better at finding vast amounts of general info quickly.”
Holt’s talent lies in finding very specific information, she said. Usually if a teammate cannot locate a particular fact needed for their argument, she ends up with the assignment.
But research weekends usually do more than add to the massive piles of information stored away in file boxes, waiting to be pulled out in-round.
“You really get to know each other,” Holt said. “You bond during research weekends differently than you do during competition. And that usually helps a lot.”
Runge agreed.
“There’s a lot of joking and talking about strategies and debate concepts,” Runge said. “It helps us work through some of our ideas. We all share evidence, but do a lot of the actual debating alone. So working together on all this stuff helps to build that team spirit.”
Doggett said that the team had a productive weekend that will certainly help in upcoming tournaments.
“But this year we’re not exactly looking to do quite as well all-around as last year,” Doggett said. “We’re building towards our two, big national tournaments at the end of the year, so we’re trying out a lot of interesting things in the next few weeks to see how it goes.”
Research weekends are long and often leave students sleep-deprived or behind in their homework, but they see the investment as well-worth the effort.
“This is basically my job,” Runge said. “It takes up almost all of my extra time. But I love debate, it’s so awesome.”
