By Gabriel Borges

Debate club is a club that is gradually becoming a big club and regaining its place in the school. 

  However, the club had to overcome adversities in order to grow to what it is today. 

  The Debate Club started six years ago, and it was a club that grew a lot during the pandemic but unfortunately, because many seniors left, it ended up losing a lot of people. 

 “At the time of the pandemic, the number of students present online during chats were around 20 students, but unfortunately in recent years , many students stopped showing up at meetings,”  Club supervisor Rebecca Delmonico said. 

Delmonico said that this was because students participated in other clubs and sports. 

  As a result, the group after the pandemic was left with few people. But Delmonico never stopped holding meetings, always trying to recruit students to this group.

  “This club is important because of the great representation of letting students express themselves and say everything they want to say with confidence that nothing will get out,” said Delmonico.

  Junior Sophie Gustafson was selected as president last year and continues to hold the position. 

  “We have a smaller group right now, which has been really nice because everyone gets more time to speak,” said Gustafson. “However, we’re a super inclusive group and always welcome new members! No matter what the size of the club is, I think it’s more important to have a group of people who love adding their ideas to the mix and speaking out about any topic.”

   After a long time, the ideals of the presidents have not changed. 

  “Everyone wants and wants to create a club in which people can feel safe to create discussions and comments on any type of topic they want and without judgment,” said Gustafson.

The typical routines of the club never changed, the only thing is the quantity of the people.

“During a normal meeting, we have a pretty solid structure that we stick to. The first thing we do at any meeting is a quick lesson about a logical fallacy or rhetorical strategy. A fallacy is something that you shouldn’t include in an argument because it makes it weaker, so we pay attention to those so that we know when to call them out when someone else uses them.” 

The debate club is always looking for new recruits who are people who don’t have the fear of speaking up about whatever comes to mind.

By Gabriel Borges