By Samantha Connelly.
Junior Mo Carroll advanced to state in UIL Regional Congress from a competition on November 11.
“It’s a UIL event where you have a docket of 12 pieces of legislation that is written by students, and it’s run like an actual government congressional round,” junior Kelsie Patterson said. “So you take these pieces of legislation and you debate basically whether they should be passed or not, and so you take turns doing speeches in affirmation and negation, basically saying ‘I think this should be passed’ or ‘I think this shouldn’t be passed’, and then you vote.”
On November 11, the debate team competed in the UIL Regional Congress at Wylie High School.
“To prepare, we looked at the docket that was going to be used in different pieces of legislation that we were going to be going over, and we also looked at the docket order.” junior Jackson Riley said. “We also talked with the other regional congress teams that we were going to be in the room with.”
Caroll placed third in the competition and Patterson placed fourth and will travel to state with Carroll as the second alternate, while Riley placed sixth.
“From here I will get the new legislation in December, and I will be working on that until January for UIL State Congress,” Carroll said. “Other people will be working on other UIL competitions that our class also does.”
One of the pieces of legislation that was debated was whether or not standardized testing should be abolished or not.
“I joined debate because I think it is very important to advocate for yourself and be able to do that in a way that is educated and isn’t just based off of emotions and what-not.” Riley said. “I think debate really helps you figure out how you want to word what you want to say.”
Preliminaries for state are on January 4 in Austin and finals are the next day.
“Debate is a really valuable program and you’ll have a really great time,” Patterson said.
