Douglas High speech perseveres without regular teacher, classroom

Because of a misunderstanding during enrollment for the fall semester, the award-winning Douglas High School speech and debate team is without a regular teacher and their meeting place doubles as the student detention room during school hours.

This year the speech and debate team is an after-school activity rather than a class for school credit.

"There weren't enough students signed up. We've been promised by (Douglas principal) Marty Swisher we'll have a class next year," said Paul Mileo, University of Nevada, Reno, journalism student and one of the speech and debate's advisors.

"The counselors didn't let us know which speech class to take and it wasn't in the course booklet," said sophomore Clara Ritger.

With none of the incoming sophomores able to sign up for fall classes in speech and debate, it appeared that only six students had signed up - not enough to offer the class at Douglas.

It's now up to the approximately 30 students on the team to meet at least twice a week on their own time in the room provided by the school. There's a distinct disadvantage to not having a two-hour regular class time to do research, collect evidence and to go over policy, but the students and their advisors feel they are keeping a tradition going at Douglas.

"They're dedicated students," said Mileo. "The debate team at Douglas has always been really strong. They're awesome."

Both of the student advisors, Mileo and Brian McNulty, were teammates at Douglas "at the beginning of the century."

"Brian and I were students of Marty Cronin and we believe in Douglas debate and want it to continue," said Mileo. "(Past advisor) Karen Heine asked us to continue and we're elated but it's a lot of work. We really value debate and didn't want to see it die at DHS."

The team runs on a small budget, some of which is provided by the school and some by parents. Mileo said a couple of donations may be coming through in the next few months but the group is interested in gaining sponsors from the business community.

The high school is already preparing for a formal speech and debate class for the 2007 school year. With many freshmen on speech and debate teams this year in the middle schools, Douglas principal Swisher said he continues to search for an instructor.

"Speech and debate is popular at middle school because it's fun," said Swisher. "For two years I've looked for a person to teach the subject with speech or English background and in that time I found only one person with a speech background. Paul and Brian are working hard to keep it going at school."

The team's next monthly league tournament in individual speech events is from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 17 and 18 at Reno High School. The instructors encourage the public to come out and help with the judging.

Mileo said he stresses to the students that it is their job to persuade and convince judges, no matter what event they're doing.

"Most of the topics are questions that face our society everyday," Mileo said. "People shouldn't be worried about the debate being over their heads. Most of our judges are not former speech and debate students. This in my opinion makes the students' jobs that much harder, since they need to be able to adapt to any judge."

Those who would like to judge a tournament could commit as little as an hour or as much time as they choose.

Anyone interested in judging should show up at the school that the tournament is being held and report to the judges lounge which should be well marked. Since there are multiple rounds during the tournament they need about 30 judges every round. People are encouraged to show up whenever they can.

For more information on how to be a judge or sponsor for the Douglas High School speech and debate team, contact Paul Mileo at mileop@gmail.com or (775) 220-9539.