Penn State Speech & Debate Society

We are on our way to Pi Kappa Delta for our first in-person tournament in two years! We can’t wait to be back.

This is also our first in-person tournament as a student-run program. When we started rebuilding our program two years ago, we had no budget, no means of travel, no place to practice, and two members. Now after about 1050 hours of collective effort, we couldn’t be prouder to meet our goal of sustaining a program capable of providing opportunities to travel to compete.

This weekend we hosted the second annual Rhetorical Spell online speech and debate tournament! We had over thirty entries from eleven schools. Thanks to all who attended!

Our own members Harshil Jani and Jeff Sun competed at their very first college LD tournament this weekend! Huge congratulations to Jeff, who placed second in the novice division and qualified to nationals!

This weekend we attended the McGaffey Invitational hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln! Novices Alice Yuan and Don Hare competed for the first time this weekend and both did well and learned a lot! Huge congrats to Don, who advanced to novice breakout finals and placed second at his very first tournament. Additionally, Sarah Stevenson-Peck had the opportunity to try out an experimental division with different speech times and was the top speaker in that division.

We give this tournament a thumbs up!

Come see Laura Beltz, the director of policy reform for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and a Penn State graduate speak on questions of civil discourse and political polarization! After her talk will be a Q&A and discussion. No registration required. The talk is on February 28 at 6:30 in the HUB Freedman Auditorium. Hope to see you there!

This weekend we attended the Gorlock Gala! We debated in music practice rooms, dorms, meditation rooms, and more in search of a place to Zoom in to the tournament on Friday. Despite location troubles, senior member Sarah Stevenson-Peck placed in octafinals and novice Amay Anand managed an even record at his first-ever LD debate tournament! Thanks to Webster University for a fun and organized competition!

Wrapping paper, sunglasses, succulents, RBG bobble heads, calculators galore!
Holiday party and white elephant were a success. Happy holidays from the Penn State Speech & Debate Society!

This weekend we sent two novices to their first tournament hosted by St. Anselm College! Niswana Risal competed in Persuasive Speaking, presenting a ten-minute speech on the importance on climate action, and Amay Anand (pictured) competed in Extemporanous Speaking, where he only had thirty minutes to prepare a seven-minute speech on current events. Congratulations to both!

The Penn State Speech & Debate Society offers the deepest condolences to the friends and family of our advisor, Vivian Yenika-Agbaw. Vivian’s empathy for others and passion for rhetoric will be remembered dearly. For those interested and able, the funeral will be held tomorrow at 11 AM at Hetrick-Bitner Funeral Home in Harrisburg.

The obituary can be found at https://www.hetrickbitnerfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Vivian--Sihshu-Yenika-Agbaw?obId=22596934

This past weekend we had a couple exciting events!

We hosted a public debate over Parents Weekend on the topic of whether colleges should pay student athletes. It was a very close debate, and six of our novices had an opportunity to participate. Shout out to Niswana Risal, Jocelyn Rhabb, Patrick Eiswerth, Sandra Blasone, Harshil Jani, and Micah Aleah for an amazing debate!

We also had the opportunity to compete in a wonderful tournament hosted by Lewis and Clark College over the weekend. New members Chase Jones and Wenzhi Sun competed in their first-ever debate tournament in novice parliamentary debate and senior member Sarah Stevenson-Peck placed first in open Lincoln-Douglas.

Congrats to all!

Highlight of the weekend? Paninis!

Oh ya we also had a super dope tournament this weekend too! One of our senior teams, Lillian Schaeffer and Sarah Stevenson-Peck, made it to semis this weekend at the Rice University Parliamentary Season Opener! But also…we really liked the ninis.

Congrats to Sarah!
This past weekend we started our competitive season at the Washburn Warmup. Thanks to Washburn's team for running a great tournament! Senior Sarah Stevenson-Peck placed second at the tournament and qualified to nationals in the spring! We also got to show our novices what NFA-LD is all about -see this picture of our novices doing their first mini-debates. We can't wait for the rest of the season!

We can't wait for the rest of the season!

Sold some raffle tickets for front row seats, good deal?

Debate Volleyball!

Some of our novices came up with some brilliant arguments both for and against the use of drone strikes at practice tonight! We can’t wait to start policy construction next week!

Come to the HUB today and tomorrow from 11:30-4:30 to spruce up your home away from home!!! 🪴 🪴 🪴

Second👏in👏the👏nation👏! We were incredibly lucky to end a fantastic season with a fantastic NFA Nationals! Both open debaters, Lillian Schaeffer and Sarah Stevenson-Peck, qualified to Nationals this year. Sarah took second place in the nation and fourth speaker! Penn State also won sixth place sweepstakes. We also want to recognize our amazing adopted teammate Morgan McGee, who advanced to double-octas in the tournament. She is graduating this year and we wish her much luck in all her future endeavors. We are so excited to end our season this way and can’t wait until next year!

We 👏 love 👏 our 👏 novices 👏 round 2! Got to go to the creamery with some of our team today and we couldn’t think of a better way to spend a wellness day! ☀️ 🍦 😊

We 👏 love 👏 our 👏 novices! This past weekend our team competed at the Grand Prix hosted by Missouri State University! Special shout out to Sarah Stevenson-Peck for making it to finals and our AMAZING novice Marisa Schlemmer who competed in her first ever tournament and absolutely killed it! Some of the most rewarding parts of the speech and debate community are teaching and fostering education into the future! We are so excited for her future in the activity along with our other novices who will hopefully be competing in the near future!

One of the benefits of hosting online tournaments is the ability to customize awards! We’re so excited to ship these awards from Penn State’s Valentines-themed tournament last month and again congrats to all those who competed!

Thank you so much to the Nebraska-Lincoln Cornhuskers for a wonderful tournament this past weekend! It’s always good to compete at another Big Ten school. We were lucky to have the opportunity to have our new members come to watch some debates! Upperclassman Sarah Stevenson-Peck won the tournament and was fourth speaker. Thank you also to one of our alumni, Miao Han, for helping us out with judging! The picture is us having a good time “at” (photoshopped into) one of Nebraska-Lincoln’s landmarks!