Debate at Hillsdale College: Forty Years and New Frontiers
Written by Victoria Kelly
With the 2023-2024 season, the debate program at Hillsdale College celebrated its 40th anniversary. The time also marked major changes and growth for the program. Beyond celebrating multiple generations of Hillsdale debaters competing, winning, and making memories together, the program welcomed its long-term supporter Dr. Kirstin Kiledal into the coaching position. Not only was Dr. Kiledal well-qualified to lead the program into the new era—after all, she previously served as an interim coach and supporting faculty member—but she also captures the energy and history of the team since she was a member of the original team in the 1983-1984 season.
Under her new leadership, the team has been rebuilding, completing what she called a “transition year.” Opportunities for the veterans of the team were carefully preserved: for example, parliamentary debate, my format of choice, continued, as did our success. I and my long-time debate partner Jonah Apel, ’24, won one of the October tournaments hosted by Bowling Green State University and reached the final round in another later in the semester (despite my having a concussion at the time).
The new team vision incorporated not only extemporaneous speaking abilities but also a return to research debate by joining CARD (Collegiate Advocacy, Research, and Debate), a new program based in the Pacific Northwest. When asked why she and the team leaders chose CARD, Dr. Kiledal highlighted its organizational focus on scholarship, argumentation, problem-solving, and community. She further emphasized how its focus enhances Hillsdale’s goals of teaching argument and logic, being able to argue based on principles, and education “that doesn’t end when the books are closed.”
Dr. Kiledal described CARD as a forum through which debate at Hillsdale can be both accessible and transformative. As she put it, “CARD offers us the opportunity to teach students the essential elements of policy debate without the overload of knowledge required from many formats and to begin competing quickly in an environment that is learning-centered in its performance and evaluation.”
Young talent on the team saw success in the format throughout the year. Last fall, in the first hybrid CARD tournament the team attended, Ryan Rodell, ’27, and Ben Brown, ’26, brought home the win. Later that semester, Rodell and Alex Mooney, ’27, again reached finals, and as spring began, so did Brown and Patrick McDonald, ’26, in the first tournament of the semester, hosted by the University of Minnesota.
Over the course of the semester, the team participated in ten tournaments between parliamentary debate and CARD, totaling two wins, five finals visits, and a couple near-misses. Rodell and Brown both placed in speaker points for CARD for the season, and Rodell, Brown, Mooney, and I all received speaker awards in our final tournament of the semester, the National CARD Tournament and Conference of Scholars hosted by Western Washington University. The team also celebrated a new partnership moving forward with a generous grant from the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation.
As the team rests up for next year, continues growing its roster and culture, and prepares for a fuller tournament schedule in the fall, Dr. Kiledal holds a lot of excitement. She knows that moving forward, the best strategy will remain the same intangible elements that helped the team start rebuilding this year, noting what “Hillsdale College Debate’s long history has taught us—hard work, perseverance, great ethical debate, excellent friendships and more than a bit of fun” as “keys to success as a team and as individuals.”
With that final vision in mind, she shared with me these parting thoughts:
While we are 40 this year, our current team is young and its potential is great. It is my goal to mentor this team as its director and coach, to learn together, and forge a path that allows our debaters to grow at all levels. Competing is a large function of a team—and winning is certainly gratifying—for us and for the College. CARD is a starting place. Other formats, community events, and outreach will also offer opportunities. Our vision is in support of Dr. Arnn’s: to change the world, one debater, one team, one debate at a time. . . . It is my hope that the team continues to seek excellence through theory, practice, and criticism; honing natural skills and abilities; and taking debate from the classroom and competitive arena back into the public arena, one in which debate and argumentation have been supplanted by noise. We will remember to listen and to remind the world that true debate, argumentation, and reason can only ever begin with agreement.
Over the course of our anniversary and transition year, I made countless memories with my teammates. While I’m sad that I won’t be with the team next year, I know that the progress will only continue as the team aspires to even more victory, camaraderie, and growth in our Hillsdalian mission together.
Victoria Kelly, ’24, is a proud country girl from upstate New York. On the rare occasion she is not studying or hanging out with all her favorite Hillsdale people, you can find her debating politics, practicing Tae Kwon Do, or swing dancing, preferably outside under the stars.
Published in May 2024