While some students prefer to stay on campus during the cold winter months, limiting their community service to holding doors open for their frost-bitten peers, senior Amanda Hahnel chooses to brave the weather and make the trek into Boston to volunteer. Since her sophomore year at Tufts, Hahnel has been working with students in the Boston Debate League (BDL) for public high school students as both a coach and debate judge.
Hahnel, who is triple majoring in International Relations, economics and Spanish, became involved with the group because of her own passion for debate. "I was looking on [TuftsLife.com] and there were two graduating seniors who had started working with the league the year before, so they were looking for new people to get involved since they were leaving," she said. "I decided to get involved because I was a debater in high school."
Founded in 2004, the non-profit Boston Debate League is part of the National Urban Debate League, an organization that supports students in 311 high schools and 51 middle schools in 18 major cities across the country. The league, which organizes tournaments and runs training seminars, gives the students the opportunity to debate important national and international policy issues.
The Boston division does not usually compete with suburban debate leagues in Massachusetts or other states, according to Hahnel.
"Some of my teams have competed in those [suburban] tournaments, but they're much better funded so they have a lot more computers, evidence and competition," she said. "The focus of the Boston Debate League is to get everyone involved. It's still a very new league — one of the newest in the country — so they give the students evidence [whereas the suburban leagues don't] and introduce arguments more slowly. Most of my students have never spoken in public before and don't know a lot of the basics that the kids in suburban debate leagues know. The BDL hopes to eventually get the kids geared up to compete with suburban debate leagues."
The goal of the league, according to its Web site, is to encourage discourse, make academic thinking the norm and "champion the belief that smart is cool." Schools involved in the program have a proven track record of improving academic performance as well as rates of attendance and graduation.
At practices and coaching sessions, Hahnel guides the students in analyzing research as well as learning and improving general debating skills.
"We go over the merits of the research and talk about debating techniques like cross-questioning, evidence development, and how to read critically," she said.
Hahnel enjoys working with the students in the league partially for the relief of experiencing life outside of campus.
"It's been nice to get off campus to go down to Chinatown to coach. It's nice to have a break from Tufts every once in awhile," she said.
But there are certainly other benefits to her work as well; Hahnel thoroughly enjoys spending time with the students and admires their commitment, effort and enthusiasm.
"The kids are incredible; they really want to learn, and it's a great experience to be there and work with them," she said. "I love working with them because they really want to take advantage of what I have to teach them and are just getting a lot out of it. They've all improved so much and it's really great to see that."
"The kids on the varsity teams who have put in a lot of effort have ended up getting scholarships to really good universities, and a lot of them have come back to help out with the debate league," she added. "One of the kids who used to be in the league goes to Northeastern but comes back once a week and helps me coach."
The city championships for this year's debate, in which over 60 students competed, were held last weekend at Boston University. This year's topic was "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States."
"Since they had city championships last weekend, they decided they wanted to practice every day of the week," Hahnel said. "Obviously I couldn't be there every day because I had classes, so they practiced by themselves."
As a sophomore, Hahnel had the opportunity to accompany the students to Georgia for the national championships in Atlanta, the first time many of them had left the state.
Unfortunately for the program, Hahnel will be leaving next year, and no other students at Tufts are currently involved with the league.
"I don't know anyone else who did high school debate, but I would love for someone to take on the role I have now and to get someone involved at Tufts," she said. "I think it's a great program for Tufts to be involved in."
