(no subject)
Fallen Angels:
The Dark Side of High School Speech and Debate
April 2003
by Tyson McKee
with Columbian Mateo
The names in this document are changed to protect the not-so innocent. The stories, however, are real.
On the highest floor of an upscale hotel, a bathtub is used as a home for forties of malt liquor, the smell of burning pot lingers in the air, and members of an elite subculture are engaging in illicit sex that makes swinger’s clubs look like abstinence rallies. Has Snoop Dogg rented this hotel for a party? Much to the contrary, these fallen angels are being housed here for a national high school debate tournament.
High school debate members. You know the kind, the kids in class who argued circles around the teacher when they got an answer wrong on a test. Dizzy with confusion, the teacher then grants them credit for the problem, even though it was the only question they missed. During our high school years, most of us never knew the other side of the story, or any side for that matter. When high-school debaters weren’t rapidly firing off five-dollar words, sounding like something out of a Dr. Seuss story, they were engaging in a rock n’ roll lifestyle that would make even Tommy Lee’s girth quiver.
Recently I spoke with a former high-school debate competitor who ranked 4th in the entire nation at a prestigious speaking event his senior year. Not wanting to mar his collegiate debate career, we will refer to him only as, Colombian Mateo. Sitting down at an Arabian-style café, smoking flavored-tobacco out of a hookah, he and I compiled a shocking account of the seedy underbelly of high school speech and debate.
One Time, At Debate Camp . . .
To be a successful national speech and debate member you have to possess the brain of Einstein and the determination of a feigning meth addict. On average, a committed speaker or debater will spend three to five weeks of his or her summer in workshops held at universities around the country. A speech and debate camp is an institute where they eat, sleep, and breathe speaking events. By the end of these institutes, they will have learned a number of invaluable techniques and acquired at least 2,000 pages of researched-based evidence, which is the foundation for success in the coming season. However, institutes also serve as the starting point for the hedonistic subculture of high school speech and debate.
“Camp antics range anywhere from hard drug use to activities seen on late night Skin-e-max programming,” Columbian Mateo said.
The work, or party, load doesn’t stop when school begins. Debate members spend 20-30 hours a week, on top of school, researching for their tournaments. They become completely engulfed in the speed and the competitive mentality. At competitions, students spend 15 hours a day debating, speaking or preparing for the next match. These are their weekends, their off time, so at the conclusion of a long stressful day, there is a lot of “tension” to release. The madness begins.
Egos rise, minds above the law, these select few teens feel elevated atop all the rest. They party and do drugs just because they can. A speech and debate hedonist will start with puffing the magic dragon and then move into acid and shrooms, eventually rounding out with pills of any sort. The freedom of their parents footing the bill, and coaches who intentionally see through cataracts, allows some students to do whatever drugs they please, whenever they want. Especially on the national circuit, some of the most brilliant students might be found smoking a bowl before a round and “powdering their noses” afterwards.
Vomiting By The Cupful
Through the crimson eyes of a hash blazed former high school speech and debate member, Raj Parkash and his fellow teammate, both graduates from Dobson High School in Mesa, AZ, tell this drug tale. One night after being eliminated from the Stanford debate tournament, three years ago, several policy debaters had some time and brain cells to kill, and pooled their money to buy $100 worth of acid. Roaming the campus, looking for a hook-up, they eventually happened across a willing street pharmacist. Unfortunately, he must have heard “aspirin” instead of “acid”, because he prescribed them a bottle of Bayer. Headaches cured, but absent the visions of talking lawn gnomes and bleeding walls, they sought out more pills. They got what they thought was speed. Talking in the upwards of 250 words a minute apparently wasn’t fast enough, so one guy felt as if he needed to take a handful of them. Much to his chagrin, they were duped once more, for these pills were “something else” as they found out by him vomiting by the cupful. During this insanity, another debater stumbled into the hotel room to announce he was so drunk that he had gone blind. He asked for a drink of water but his comrades instead gave him a glass of “water” bottled fresh at the source from the gastrointestinal geyser- a.k.a. the guy puking in the corner.
Strip Debate
Columbian Mateo recalls one incident that occurred in a two-on-two event called policy debate. That is where teams argue over a resolution, and often implore the judge to decide the winners on the basis of the most convincing arguments according to a certain analytical structure, or ‘paradigm.’ Though some judges only view rounds through their personal paradigms, many allow the debaters to argue over which one is the best for the particular round. At one Southwestern tournament a few years ago, a judge quipped before a match that debate would be more fun in the buff. This sparked the imagination of one competitor, “who suggested the paradigm be the team who removed the most articles of clothing by the end of the round should win,” Columbian Mateo said. “When both teams agreed, the clothes flew off during speeches until the guys wore nothing but their boxers, and the one girl had analyzed her way into nothing but a pair of panties.” With debate evidence and clothing items strewn around the room, the coed team was victorious. Perhaps, as football players would, they bumped chests in celebration, though the sordid details were never confirmed.
Tap That Debate Ass
Here is how one powerful debater explained the hotels, “there has been an exponential rise in fucking…people throw down their pieces and speeches and have nothing to do but each other.” Not only are these “hookups” ever-present, but political as well. Just as the star quarterback has the pick of the litter in sexual encounters, so do the top debaters. One big difference is the fact that debate members actually do take into consideration the opposite sex’s intellectual capacity while narrowing their options (hooray for ugly people). On the national circuit, connecting on a high intellectual level is a big turn on. One national champion, a smart little blonde number, slept with over 35 different guys at debate tourneys. Another champ is uncertain at the exact number, though he knows it tallies high above the bedpost. Between preparation, competing, and sleeping, there is not a lot of room left for small talk, just straight between the sheets.
When the sheets got a little boring for one national champ from the east coast, he decided to spice up the bedroom with some bondage. No rope in sight, his MacGyver instincts kicked in. Bungee cords, which were used to attach tubs of research to a dolly, would do the trick. With a small Asian gripped to the bed by bungee cords, the package was delivered. After being released, the girl could not feel her legs. The champ was proud at first, he had knocked the feeling right out of her legs with his powerful thrust. However, to his dismay, the bungee cords had strangled the circulation from her legs, temporarily paralyzing them. Not knowing what to do, he had to turn to his coach for help. A middle-aged woman, groggy from interrupted sleep, oblivious to any mischief, let alone sexual fetishes, accompanied both of them to the hospital. At the ER, the girl’s legs were revived and the mischievous act was covered up. Next time, he might want to do a touch of research before tying someone up. Just file that half a page under fetishes in the bottom of the tub.
Gay Chicken
Move over gigolos, take notes swingers, here is the most mind-blowing information of all, ‘gay chicken.’ A former speech and debate member, who now attends Yale, told us about this game. Now, we’ve all played spin the bottle or maybe even the rambunctious ‘seven minutes in heaven,’ and, well, gay chicken is somewhere along those lines. In it, there are participants as well as an audience. Every person in the room must ante a certain amount of money into the pot. Then the entrants circle up and the people across from each other are dared to do sexual deeds in front of everyone. Contestants are eliminated if they chicken out. Since the high school males have testosterone flowing through their every extremity, two guys are usually what the circle dwindles to (hence the name, gay chicken). The last two compete against each other, and the winner claims the entire pot.
Fuck You, We’re Angels
In high school, a select few minds research controversial topics, tally grades at the tip of the alphabet, and argue with teachers Monday to Thursday, but come Friday through Sunday, those minds are tuned into three things: sex, drugs, and debate. As one powerful debater put it, “We can do whatever the fuck we want, we have diplomatic immunity, the people at our school think we’re angels.”