There are many clubs at Shadow Ridge High School, to develop a variety of skills, or some, just to have fun or to socialize, but one of the most exciting and interesting clubs is the Speech and Debate Club, advised and managed by Dr. Baaske. The main purpose of the club is for students to learn how to articulate their thoughts and arguments, and how to effectively speak with others. 

Dr. Baaske states, “The Speech and Debate Club is about helping students learn how to communicate with one another.”

There are many different types of speech and debate activities, Congress style debate is where students debate like congressmen do, going back and forth on the positives and negatives of a piece of legislation, there is policy debate where students must name their sources and claims as fast as possible in the least amount of time, it is the most fast paced debate style. In Lincoln Douglas style debate, students pick a position on an issue and bring their evidence in index cards and argue over it. Lastly, are the speech events, where students create a speech about something they are passionate about, read out their evidence, and present their opinions and facts with some theatrical freedoms. 

The club not only participates in argumentative activities with the students who are a part of the club here at Shadow Ridge, but they also compete with students from other schools.

“Our main activity is to compete against other high schools and individual speech events and debate events,” stated Baaske.

Speech and debate are activities that can appeal to a variety of people, for a variety of reasons.

 “I would say that they always have different reasons, so you have those who are interested because they want to express themselves, and those students usually go into the individual event for interpretation, which are more like acting events,” states Baaske.

 “There are those who want to go into the debate events because they love going back and forth with the argument, and then there are those who want to learn how to be leaders, or they feel like it’s something that they need in preparation for their future careers, so, students who want to go into law, or politics, or business, they would be interested in learning more about communication.” 

Anyone who plans to be someone who requires the skills of argumentation, communication, and persuasion, is someone who should be interested in the Speech and Debate Club. The club serves to cultivate useful skills for the future. 

Joining is not a complex process for students, as Dr. Baaske explains, “All they have to do is show up and tell me they’re interested, and we get started. I mean there’s paperwork after that and so on, but I just throw them right in, give them the events, and say ‘here’s what we got, here’s some videos to watch, and let me know what you’re interested in.’”