University Times

It's not two hats he wears as director of debate and as- sistant professor of communication. It's more like two gloves, says Gordon Mitchell, because he doesn't need to take one off to put the other on.

"My academic responsibilities overlap into the debating union, and my debating background informs my teaching," Mitchell says. "Pitt is a great situation for me. I'm really happy being here. Most debating societies are not connected with an academic department the way we are here." Mitchell fills many roles in his dual capacity: professor, coach, academic adviser, recruiter, travel agent, outreach coordinator. He teaches two courses per term in the communication department and directs the William Pitt Debating Union (WPDU), a student group affiliated with the same department. Assisted by five communication graduate students, Mitchell helps a group of 28 undergraduates juggle the challenging and time-consuming extracurricular activity of debate with the rigors of academia. And he does it with considerable success: Pitt's intercollegiate policy debate team currently is ranked No. 4 nationally.

Mitchell says the WPDU becomes like a second home to the debaters, in part because a third of them are out-of-staters and also because the friendly confines of the union's offices on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning provide space for study, debate practice and socializing. Overall, the group is fairly tight-knit and supportive of one another, Mitchell says. "We work together — most are communication majors — and the students tend to hang together, talking about impeachment or other issues of the day." Like an athletics coach, Mitchell must help prepare his charges for competition. There are intense practices in classroom-like settings for learning research techniques, teamwork and principles of advocacy. Often, practice sessions are taped, so debaters can observe and rate their own performances.

"There is also a lot of paperwork I have to do: making travel arrangements, hotel reservations, reserving vans, scheduling events, working within students' schedules," Mitchell says. "Typically, we'll send a team [of two] to about seven or eight tournaments a term, and I go along to about half of them." And, yes, there is the bane of many coaches, the recruitment process: getting in touch with outstanding high school debaters, organizing visits to campus around a recruit's interests and needs, meeting parents, selling Pitt. "I really enjoy all that, too," Mitchell says. But unlike a coach, Mitchell doesn't need pep talks to get his troops hyped up for competition. "In fact, it's the reverse. The kids are always pumped for the debates themselves. It's getting them to be cool and collected, to be able to make judgments of when to not be overly argumentative, to know when it's better to not make an argument but to listen or be a mediator. That's the real challenge [of coaching debate]." In that sense, debating is not only a competitive skill but a life skill, Mitchell says. Debating prowess is not mere oral proficiency, but preparedness, which involves doing research on a topic, drafting briefs, reading what the other side's arguments are and what sources they're using, and being ready to listen to and respond to their points.

This term Mitchell is teaching a course in evidence and a graduate seminar in public argument. "That's where my debating background overlaps with my teaching," he says. Most of the graduate seminar class are members of the WPDU.

Mitchell has noticed a higher quality of student since the WPDU began offering scholarships two years ago.

"We had six scholarship students enroll last fall," Mitchell says. "They have to fulfill the requirements of admission into the Honors College to be eligible." All debaters have to maintain a 3.0 grade point average to keep a scholarship or be permitted to travel, which is sometimes a challenge given the amount of work necessary to compete.

"Tuesday and Thursday classes are pretty popular among the group, because a debating tournament usually is a four-day exercise, with a travel day, three days of weekend competition and travel back at the end of the third day." While high school debaters are ordinarily recruited to compete in two-person national and regional intercollegiate policy debate tournaments, the WPDU also accepts "walk-ins," undergraduates who are interested in various debate forums.

Each fall for the past five years, the WPDU has hosted international debating teams from Great Britain, and in previous years, the union has hosted Russian, Irish and Australian national teams.

Pitt debaters also have competed in international tours subsidized by the Speech Communication Association's committee on international discussion and debate, which annually selects a national team. A branch of the WPDU, the Academic Debate Network, has sponsored public debates the past three years on such hot-button topics as national terrorism policy, affirmative action, University unionization, the future of Pitt, police brutality, same-sex marriage, sports stadium finance and capital punishment. These debates were staged at a variety of local venues and featured debating by Pitt students and community advocates.

The forums allow students to question speakers and to shape dialogue and move toward more thorough public discussion. The Academic Debate Network also compiles and distributes background information to the public and press to create more informed discussion of issues. "The debates are not just a sterile academic exercise, but a potential steering of public policy," Mitchell says.

A WPDU-sponsored debate on national drug control policy is scheduled for March 1, pitting Ethan Nadleman, columnist for The Nation, against Bill Olson, director, U.S. Senate Caucus on Narcotics Control. A debate on the issue of school vouchers is planned for March 23.

In addition, the Academic Debate Network has conducted outreach programs with local secondary and elementary schools to expose traditionally under-served students to the discipline of debate.

"In fact, we're working with the Pittsburgh Public School System now to extend communications curricula within schools, in addition to [fostering] extracurricular debate programs," he says. Mitchell, who holds a doctorate in communication from Northwestern, came to Pitt (and back to his native Pittsburgh) in 1995. But debating has been in his blood ever since the debating coach at Quaker Valley High School came to his house, distressed that Mitchell's older sister Lisa had quit the team.

"He collared me to take her place. He said, 'I'm invoking your family name and responsibility.' And, the next thing you know, I was on the team. That was 9th grade. I loved the excitement of the tournaments and have been involved with debate ever since."

–Peter Hart