Anti Oppression Week: Debate team hosts movie screening and open debate

(Photo courtesy of Scott Hamilton Kennedy)

By: Thomas Jones, Staff Reporter

This past week, Regis University hosted its third annual Anti-Oppression week. The Regis University Debate team participated by opening up their bi-weekly practices, occurring on Tuesday and Thursday, to the broader Regis community, and focusing their practices on the issue of gentrification which Regis University and its surrounding community faces, as well as many other communities throughout the United States.

Starting on Tuesday at 5:00 PM in Loyola 33, the debate team hosted a documentary screening of “The Garden,” a film which focuses on a 14 acre South-Central LA community garden, which at the time was the largest urban garden in the United States, and is under threat of being removed and mostly sold off to private industry except for a small section being kept for the community as a dirt soccer field. Some of the films main themes were community activism, race relations, money in politics and the development of impoverished communities leading to gentrification. There was a large turn out for this event, with every chair in Loyola 33 filled as well as several spots on the floor due to the number of people in attendance.

With this film being used as an introduction into some of the issues within gentrification, the debate team held a public debate on Thursday at 5:00 PM in the same room which focused specifically on this issue. This event was also very well attended, even more so than the documentary screening, with many chairs brought in from other rooms to accommodate the crowd. The topic was, “This house, as local and state governments, would provide financial assistance to prevent the process of gentrification.” The eight debaters who participated in the event were given the topic a day in advance to be able to do some research on the issue, however, the debaters did not know which side of the topic they would be arguing until they arrived in the room to debate. After the debaters drew for sides they were then given fifteen minutes to prepare and come up with arguments before the debate started.

During the time the debaters prepped, two senior debate team members, Siena Ruggeri and David Cecil-Few, introduced the British Parliamentary format as well as the topic for the debate. The first team to speak in support of the topic is called opening government and consisted of one sophomore debater, Caterina Cheshire, and one freshman debater, Evanjalina Matoy. The second team to speak is called opening opposition and opposes the topic; this team consisted of two freshman debaters, Nicholas Aranda and Thomas Jones. After these two teams are finished with their four speeches, what is called the ‘top half’ of the debate is concluded, and the debate then progresses onto the final two teams called the ‘bottom half’ of the debate. The team to speak in support of the motion on the bottom half of the debate, called closing government, consisted of one sophomore debater, Selihom Andarge, and one junior year debater, Andy Nguyen. The bottom half team which speaks in opposition to the topic, and the last team to speak in the debate as a whole, is called closing opposition; this team consisted of senior year debater, Allison Foust, and sophomore debater Timothy Smith.

The debate lasted around an hour from start to finish, with the whole event taking an hour and thirty minutes, concluding at 6:30. All eight debaters did a great job presenting the arguments on their respective sides and offered good insight into the issues of gentrification, which is no doubt very real to the Regis community as well as it’s surrounding neighbors.

Regis Debate breaks out into quarterfinals of Debate Championship

(Photo: Getty Images)

By: Thomas Jones, Staff Reporter

               This past weekend the Regis University British Parliamentary Debate Team competed in the Rocky Mountain Debate Championship at the University of Denver. Eighty teams attended from eighteen different schools from all over the country, spanning from the University of Alaska Anchorage to UC Berkeley to Clemson University in South Carolina. The tournament took place on both Saturday and Sunday, October 21st – October 22nd, with preliminary rounds starting at about 9:00 AM on Saturday and running until a little after 8:00 PM that night, and final rounds, referred to as “Break rounds” in the debate community, starting on Sunday a little after 9:00 AM and concluding around 5:00 PM that night.

               In their first tournament of the year, the Regis Debate Team did quite well; Regis had seven teams in attendance, three of which made it to quarterfinals and one making it to semifinals. When a team makes it past the preliminary rounds of a tournament into the final rounds, such as quarterfinals, semifinals and so on, it’s known as “Breaking,” and the rounds past the preliminary rounds are known as “out rounds;” so the three Regis teams that made it into quarterfinals are teams said to have “broke into out rounds” in the tournament. The first of these three Regis teams which broke to out rounds consisted of Siena Ruggeri, a Senior, and Catie Cheshire, a Sophomore; the second team which broke consisted of Allison Foust, a Senior, and Nicholas Aranda, a Freshman; the third and final Regis team to break consisted of David Cecil-Few, a Senior, and Thomas Jones, a Freshman. Topics in this style of debate change from round to round; the topic in the quarterfinals round of this tournament was, “This house would give judicial leniency to marginalized groups committing crimes against privileged groups.” Of the three Regis teams that broke to quarterfinals, the first team of Catie and Sienna made it as far as semifinals, where the Judges, unfortunately, decided they were not one of the top two teams in the round to progress into the final round of the tournament, however they still did extremely well, making it to the position of being one of the top eight teams in a tournament with eighty. The topic in the semifinals round of the tournament was, “This house prefers a world without sexual attraction.”

               Regis also did quite well regarding individual awards for the tournament. Senior at Regis, David Cecil-Few, attained the rank of the sixth overall speaker. This is quite impressive when looking at the largess of this tournament, containing over 150 other debaters (speakers). This tournament also ranked novice speakers. The designation of Novice in debate means that you are new to this type of debate and this is your first year doing this style of debate. Regis claimed two of the five spots for top Novice Speakers at this tournament, with Regis Freshman Nicholas Aranda being fourth best Novice Speaker, and Regis Freshman Thomas Jones being second best Novice speaker.

               Besides all the awards given out by the tournament, all the Regis debaters did exceptionally well. The other four, not previously mentioned Regis teams in attendance at this tournament consisted of Sally Andarge and Andy Nguyen making up one team, Donald Felbaum and Evanjalina Matoy making up another team, Noah Symmes and Rajat Gupta making up Regis’s third team, and lastly, Brian Brown and Morgan Stevens making up Regis’s fourth and final team. The debate team also showed incredible communal support for each other, continuing to stay at the tournament and support fellow team-mates who made it past preliminary rounds by going to watch their teammates debate rounds, making sure there are friendly faces in the crowd.

Beach Court Elementary School Performance Conversation

(Photo: Beach Court Elementary)

By: Thomas Jones, Staff Reporter

               This last Thursday on October the 12th proved to be an exceptionally important day for Regis’s neighbor, Beach Court Elementary School. At 4:30 PM, in the auditorium of Beach Court, Denver Public Schools, or DPS, held an event to disclose their newest School Performance rating of Beach Court, which would then ultimately decide the elementary school’s future. If Beach Court had improved to a rating that DPS saw as adequate then they would remain open as a Denver Public Elementary School, but, if Beach Court hadn’t improved as much as DPS would like, then it would most likely be closed to soon be reopened as a Charter school. The process of a Public-school closing and then reopening as a Charter-school is known as a restart.

               The title of “School Performance Conversation” seems to seek to elicit a light-hearted attitude in an attempt to cover up the true meaning behind this event, however, as soon as I entered the Beach Court auditorium I can say with confidence that this light-hearted titling didn’t cover up the reality that every parent in attendance seemed to be holding their breath.

               Applause spread across the Beach Court auditorium as soon as the slide went up on the projector screen in the front of the room showing that the school had improved its School Performance rating, also known as SPF, to a level seen as adequate by DPS. Through the applause you could hear Leah Schultz-Bartlett, the Principal at Beach Court, say, “The good news is that with our most recent SPF, we are strongly at yellow!” DPS has color-coded SPF’s to determine how good or bad a school is doing. From worst to best, the ratings go: red, orange, yellow, green, blue.

               In 2014 Beach Court had an SPF of 36.6% which falls into the orange category, or, the second to worst category as far as school performance is concerned. In 2015 there was no SPF for Beach Court or any of the schools within the Denver Public Schools districts; this is because the state had new school assessments it was making statewide, so DPS had to pause its recordings of school’s SPF’s for a year so it could readjust its rating system to match up to the new statewide assessments. In 2016 Beach Court’s SPF dropped to 30.7% which placed it into the red, or worst, category. This 2016 SPF is the rating that started the inquiry by DPS into the possibility of closing down Beach Court and doing a restart if Beach Court wasn’t able to improve its SPF.

               However, in just one year’s time, Beach Court was not only able to move out of the red, but they managed to move themselves up two whole categories, going from red to orange and then from orange to yellow.

               Principal Schultz-Bartlett went over some of the reasons Beach Court has been able to improve so much as a school; citing, both actions taken by Beach Court, especially in utilizing the $720,000 DPS has given them over the last two years to hire more staff and create new programs such as their STEM lab at Beach Court, as well as actions which the community has committed in support of Beach Court.

               To give an example of these community actions the Principal specifically thanked Regis, stating, “We have a strong partnership with Regis University, and a program called First Grade First and they provide one on one reading instruction for students.” This program is carried out by volunteers from the local community who give up time out of their day to go to Beach Court and help the students there keep up with their grade required reading level, many of these volunteers at Beach Court come from the Regis University Debate team. The Regis Debate team’s volunteer work in conjunction with the First Grade First program has proven to be quite effective in helping improve Beach Court’s situation.  

               Principal Schultz-Bartlett stated that beach court “Saw big improvements in early literacy this year,” and that Beach Court “met and exceeded expectations of early literacy across the board in the current SPF.” The principal emphasized how influential the community service work has been in helping beach court; “We really heavily rely on our community and our family partnerships to be able to move this work forward.”

               Despite the incredible work Beach Court has done, it still has a long road ahead filled with many challenges. Currently, Beach Court lies in the yellow category of DPS’s SPF ratings. While yellow is exceptionally better than red, where Beach Court once resided, the school's ultimate goal is to move up into the higher tier green and blue category SPF’s. However, Beach Court’s moving up into these higher SPF’s can bring about problems of its own, especially for a lower income school like Beach Court which doesn’t have nearly the same amount of donor money and number of volunteer-able, non-working parents as public schools in higher income areas. These problems Beach Court will soon face in years to come is a slow deterioration of funding from DPS.

               When DPS saw that Beach Court was in the orange and the red, it began an influx of funding to help Beach Court hire more employees and create more academic programs, but, as Beach Court increases its SPF rating, it’s newfound funding from DPS will slowly decrease. A DPS worker at the Beach Court School Performance Conversation stated that the funding will gradually decrease and “Shift” as the school identifies what they can cover in their budget. This, of course, raises many questions as to what will happen as these new Beach Court employees and programs, which were touted as quite essential to Beach Court’s recent success, as the DPS funding which allowed them to come into existence slowly disappears. It very well could mean that the community support, such as Regis’s help with the First Grade First reading program, may soon be essential than ever to Beach Court Elementary School.

Is community involvement debatable?

(Photo: MSU Today)

               “Men and Women in the Service of Others” that is the title and ultimate summation of Regis University’s mission statement. Regis has long emphasized the value of being ever-present in our community through acts of charity and service to those around us. Throughout your career as a Regis student, you will have these values repeated to you often in the hope that you will carry this ideology with you for the remainder of your time on earth. This year, the Regis University Debate team is showing their commitment to serving others at Beach Court Elementary School, right here in our own community.

               Beach Court is less than a mile from Regis University directly down Regis Boulevard, on the other side of Federal. Beach Court has been around since 1925 and children from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade. The students who attend Beach Court are no doubt our neighbors and very well may even be living in houses surrounding Regis’s campus. These children have been struggling to maintain learning at grade level and recently, this has become a more serious concern. The school lacks the resources to help these students on the individual level, which they so desperately require. The debate team, through building relationships with community members tackling this issue, became excited at the prospect of getting involved with Beach Court. The main work the team will be doing is helping these students learn to read at their grade required reading level.

               Over the course of the coming weeks and months, a series of articles will be published in the Highlander to help illustrate more clearly the challenges Beach Court and its students face; as well as how the Regis Debate team is helping those at Beach Court overcome these challenges.

Thomas Jones
Staff Reporter

Below is the coach of the debate team, Jon Denzler’s, contact information. If you would like to volunteer at Beach Court don’t hesitate to contact him and let him know! They need all the volunteers they can get and you will be making an incredible difference in these students lives.

Jon Denzler
Director of Debate at Regis University
Communications Instructor at Regis University - Carroll Hall 105
(440)-724-0392 denzl480@regis.edu