New students to debate have been starting to learn the basics of the Lincoln Douglas debates by practicing against each other. 

“Lincoln Douglas debate is a one-on-one values debate in which debaters are competing against each other with a topic that is highly revolved around a morality type topic,” teacher Michelle Porter said. “They are using values and criteria as their means to justify the resolution. In class, debaters select a topic and then they research it thoroughly. They have to have three contentions, or arguments, to support or negate the resolution.”

Although there are some new students to Lincoln Douglas debate, freshman Meghan Vallampati has done it before and is excited to go against another classmate in class.

“So I have been doing Lincoln Douglas debate for a couple years probably since like sixth grade,” Vallampati said. “I’m excited for it just because we have a really dynamic class and I’m excited to debate against different people because you can kind of see who they really are on the style of debate and like how they ask questions.”