The UIL should adopt PFD as a sponsored event

1. Greater involvement- Anyone who's ever been involved in competitive academics should be familiar with debate/forensics. It is the most popular, and farthest reaching academic event in the entire world. The National Forensics League is also an incredibly well established organization, toting the support of many colleges and businesses[1]. Oprah Winfrey has even recognized the benefits of the NFL and spoken her own achievements in speech and debate[2]. Now moving along to Texas: the UIL has been nationally recognized for it's achievements in extracurricular academic achievement[3]. However with as much as the UIL has achieved, many kids are still very weary to join their school's speech and debate teams. Many teenagers do not have the time to invest into their school's debate program because of how much work does in fact go into being a debater. This has cause the UIL to consistently struggle in getting students involved in either speech or debate. Furthermore, the UIL only hosts six different forensics events: Policy debate, LD debate, Persuasive extemporaneous speaking, Informative speaking, Poetry interpretation, and Prose interpretation. Their logic behind offering so few events is a flimsy one at best: Balance. They fear that by adding public forum as a state qualifying event, they will have trouble balancing it alongside the other debate events the UIL offers. The national forensics league, however has not had this problem, with just as many entries in lincoln-douglas and policy debate attending their national tournament every year. Impact: By adding Public Forum Debate as state qualifying event in the UIL, more students will be willing to compete. 2. Who benefits? Although studies have shown that smaller schools tend to have a lower rate of drop-outs[4] they also have lower funds. This means that unlike larger 4A and 5A schools many 1A and 2A schools lack the resources to be able to build a strong foundation in speech and debate or their students. You see it time and time again that larger schools tend to dominate the forensics arena in terms of Lincoln-Douglas debate ad Policy as well. Success at LD requires substantial understanding of philosophy, and their practical application. Smaller schools just don't have the funds to consistently buy the necessary books for their students to be well versed enough in philosophy to compete as vigorously with larger schools. And while there are a few exceptions in LD, CX debate is the real killer to small schools. For those unfamiliar with the style, CX is an evidence debate in which students are taught how to solve, fund, and explore issues of policy. Policy debaters spend hours on end researching their topic and compiling extensive brief on their subject. It is not at all uncommon to see Policy teams carrying around up to eight large tubs to evidence[5]. .. But seriously[6] Keep in mind these kids are expected to carry these tubs all over their place of competition. Often as big as whole universities. But even more than that evidence is expensive. [7] Impact: PFD is much cheaper, and gives smaller (and poorer) schools the chance to break into the event. Conclusion- If we want forensics to spread, we want to allow more people the opportunity to compete, and if we want to avoid male teenagers dressing up as Lady Gaga, vote in affirmation to add PFD as a UIL sponsored event. = sources = [1] . http://nflonline.org... [2] . http://nfltv.org... [3] . http://www.uiltexas.org... [4] . http://ccsr.uchicago.edu... [5] . http://www.wsspaper.com... [6] . http://upload.wikimedia.org... [7] . http://planetdebate.com...