When Niles West High School seniors Kristin Langwell and Rachel Gressel decided on their debate topic last year, they didn’t know their progressive argument would spark a progressive accomplishment.
At the nation’s largest debate tournament last week, the Lincolnwood duo discussed why the United States should stop denying entry to HIV-positive immigrants and became the first all-female team to win the competition. The team competed with over 200 high schools over five days to earn the first-place trophy at the National Forensic League’s National Debate Championship in Ft. Lauderdale.
Although her debate style was strong enough to overwhelm hundreds of other high school students and impress judges, Langwell’s voice quivers slightly as she talks about the experience now. She said, though, that she’s still recovering from the excitement of winning.
“There haven’t been a lot of women who’ve been successful in debate, so this just proves that just because you’re female, it doesn’t mean you can’t succeed at this,” said Langwell, 18, who’s spending the summer in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she’s a summer debate camp resident adviser. “It’s really an honor to be able to represent my gender in this way.”
The team argued that the ban of HIV-positive immigrants is discriminatory and hinders efforts to educate the public that AIDS is not a casually transmitted disease. Although opposing teams were just as resolute in their arguments against the proposal, the two felt strongly about their position on and off the debate floor.
Gressel, 18, says lifting the ban was a form of progressive social reform that had been reflected in other cases in history.
“That’s the same kind of action we had to take when we had to combat slavery, or when we decided that women had the right to vote,” she said. “The public was outraged at first, but when you look back on it later, you see that it was the right thing to do.”
John Heintz, the debate coach and an English teacher at the school, said he’s proud of how his team was “knocking down the patriarchy.”
“Debaters are often represented as the leaders of the next generation,” he said. “I think this bodes well for the future of American society.”
The team’s success has not been without a price. Barbara Gressel, Rachel’s mother, said her daughter spent an average of 20 hours a week on debate preparations almost since she started as a freshman.
“She’s missed a lot of normal teenage activities because of her real focus on her debate work,” she said. “This is a terrific way to end four years of real hard, dedicated work in high school debate.”
Barbara Gressel, a law student, said she’s proud that her daughter has blazed some trails for women but was surprised to hear that tournament officials had advised the duo to wear makeup for the final round, which was videotaped. It will be televised sometime in the next few weeks.
“To reach that level of competition and have someone tell you to put on lip gloss is a little demeaning,” she said. “I wonder if they say that to the boys, too.”
The grueling tournament, in which the duo debated in 16 90-minute rounds, was the team’s swan song. After being debate partners for 2 1/2 years, graduation is forcing the two to part company.
Gressel will be taking a break from debate when she starts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall.
Langwell, who won a presidential debate scholarship to go to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., will continue to debate competitively, but she said she’ll miss teaming up with Gressel.
“It’ll be different and difficult debating with somebody else,” Langwell said. “She puts up with some of my annoying traits. I have really messy handwriting, which makes it difficult for a partner to read my notes.”
