For the first time in five years, Binghamton University’s speech and debate team qualified two teams in the National Debate Tournament.

By competing in District 8, specifically, BU competes against some of the highest-ranked schools in the nation. According to Joseph Leeson-Schatz, director of the speech and debate team, this was no easy feat, as the two teams that qualified were comprised of a pair sophomores and a pair of freshmen, respectively.

“It took a lot of work during the pandemic to make this happen,” Leeson-Schatz wrote in an email. “It took consistently meeting online for reading groups, practice debates and collective research sessions. It meant spending hours upon hours looking at what our opponents, like [Harvard University], [Cornell University] and [Dartmouth College] were arguing and spending time figuring out our responses. It also meant juggling things like social isolation, additional time stuck staring at a computer screen and tapping alumni to help us prepare for our debates.”

In the face of COVID-19, Leeson-Schatz said debating online is not ideal, as technology issues tend to emerge and make it difficult to both participate and judge.

“Coaching is also harder because, in addition to having to be in one digital classroom to judge, we need to have another digital space open to meet with debaters and talk about their rounds and prepare them for their upcoming debates,” Leeson-Schatz said. “What makes it particularly hard for debaters is that when they’re competing they can’t just whisper or write a quick note to their partner. They have to navigate communication through a separate digital space.”

Rosalisy Peguero, a team member and an undeclared freshman, shared similar sentiments.

“Adapting to online debating was definitely not easy since many of the aspects of debate that people love, like interacting with judges and opponents, using performative elements like poetry or songs and even being able to travel to different colleges and meeting new people, aren’t possible or at least greatly diminished because of the fact that we are all debating through a screen,” Peguero wrote in an email. “Even though most of the community wishes we could go back to the good ol’ days of being able to debate in person, the nationwide debate community has been so helpful in making sure everyone is included and given the opportunity to keep doing what they love, even if it’s through a completely different medium.”

However, members of the team have been able to find a silver lining. Thomas Buttgereit, assistant coach and a graduate student studying philosophy, said online debating has made the competitions more financially accessible.

“It has definitely been a big adjustment switching to debate online,” Buttgereit wrote in an email. “In many ways it’s a tradeoff, not having to travel is nice and it makes tournaments less expensive and easier to attend, but at the same time you miss seeing people in the community and tournaments feel more isolated. I think the community has done a great job of adjusting though and the season is going along smoothly.”

With these changes, Leeson-Schatz said he has noticed a decline in new membership.

“Losing the in-person travel has also made it tough to sustain interest for newer members for the team,” Leeson-Schatz wrote. “Whereas in most years, about 80-90 percent of our novices stay for the entire year, this year we lost 75 percent of our novices between the semesters since they didn’t want to spend upwards of 30 hours online over their weekends.”

This time commitment did not scare Peguero away, but there are other obstacles that they do face.

“As a debater of color who often makes arguments regarding critical race theory, black feminism, et cetera, I am often met with many microaggressions that come in the form of argumentation or even in regular interactions with both other debaters and judges,” Peguero said. “That doesn’t even include the mild misogyny, transphobia and ableism that sadly go unchecked most of the time. While it is often discouraging, it only pushes me to keep making debate a place that is accessible to people like me without having to be met with those obstacles.”

While debate may not be as inclusive as others think, Peguero said they hope people can derive inspiration from their story as “someone from a tiny high school in the Bronx who didn’t have the funds or resources to be as good as the private school debaters.”

“In essence, I wouldn’t say my biggest accomplishment in debate is going to the National Debate Tournament as a freshman,” Peguero said. “I’d say it’s seeing girls of color coming up to me and telling me how inspired they were with the things I said in my speeches or how they didn’t even know that they didn’t have to be silenced when being cross-examined or asking me to teach them about people like Denise Oliver-Velez or Assata Shakur or Sylvia Rivera. Those small moments make the endless hours of researching, planning and prepping all worth it, and I’m thankful for that every single day.”

Alexis Barakakos contributed reporting to this article.