Grassroots Servant Leadership: The Who, What, How of Stoa
The Debate Committee is currently composed of 7 members from a variety of locations across the country. We have alumni, coaches, parents, and alumni parents on our committee. So what exactly is it that we do …. well …. We argue with each other! (We are the debate committee after all.) In reality, we are responsible for the resolutions, rules, and the debate aspects of NITOC and Stoa Academy. Below we will give some insight into these vital areas of the Stoa community.
Resolutions
Every year the Stoa family has the privilege of exploring and researching a single new topic for Policy debaters and three new topics for LD debaters. While it seems they just appear on our spring ballots, the debate committee spends hours discussing potential resolutions, arguing over the wording, and working to make the resolutions fair and interesting. We eventually narrow the choices down to 5 for TP and 7 for LD. We then submit these to the board, which selects the resolutions that appear on the spring ballot.
Rules:
Every year we monitor and assess what is happening around the country and determine if there are any rule modifications that are necessary. We also look at judge orientation slides and the ballots to determine if there are any changes needed. Any recommended changes are submitted to the board for approval.
NITOC:
At NITOC the debate committee has many important and active roles. We organize judge orientation for all our community and parent judges. We answer the many judge questions that occur after rounds. Parliamentary debate is also under our purview, from proctoring to coin flips and strikes. The most difficult part of our job is handling adjudications.
Stoa Academy
Leading up to Stoa Academy we hold one of our 2 in-person committee meetings, where we reflect upon the previous year and plan for the upcoming year. We also are responsible for creating and teaching the training seminars, attended by coaches, parents, and students, for all three forms of debate.