One of the best-kept secrets at the University of Colorado at Boulder is the success of its student-run speech and debate team.
The 10-member team currently ranks No. 8 in the nation in the highly competitive category of parliamentary debate. The team has won two of the five tournaments it entered this school year.
Yet of the 297 colleges in the National Parliamentary Debate Association, CU-Boulder is one of only five teams to be entirely student-run and student-coached.
"The team definitely requires a lot of personal dedication," said senior Micah May, the group's vice president. "Students who aren't dedicated generally don't stay around."
A CU-Boulder team has competed in state and national speech tournaments for more than two decades. It holds clinics where older students help younger ones, and all members make maximum use of the feedback judges provide them during competitions.
The team often drives to Fort Collins on weekends to practice with members of the Colorado State University debate team, and it also has received informal help from debate coaches at CSU and Metropolitan State College of Denver.
Colorado colleges and universities consistently sponsor many of the strongest speech and debate teams in the nation. "One reason we've been able to be so strong is because of the strong competition in the area," said junior Amber Lashmett.
The CU team concentrates on parliamentary debate, in which two teams of two students each are assigned opposite sides of an argument, given just 15 minutes to prepare, and then debate for about an hour. May and club president Josh Levine were the 2000 debate champions at the Delta Sigma Roe-Tau Kappa Alpha national tournament hosted by the nation's oldest debate organization.
This year's DSR-TKA national championship will be held at Colorado College on March 15 and the National Parliamentary Debate Association will hold its national championship at Metropolitan State on March 22.
The CU-Boulder team is open to all students. Its members聮 majors include chemistry and biochemistry, mathematics, advertising, philosophy, political science and information systems. Most were active in high school debate.
The team meets once a week and practices or competes about three weekends each month. Members enter 10 to 14 tournaments every year, about half of which are out of state. They must pay for travel and tournament fees and have driven as far as St. Louis and slept as many as 10 to a motel room in order to compete. Last month, the team even hosted a campus-based tournament for 600 high school competitors from 11 states.
Until this year, the team was funded by a student-approved referendum that raised about $16,000 annually. The referendum failed last spring when a majority of students supported the measure, but election rules were changed to require approval by at least 15 percent of all students. The measure failed by 50 votes.
The team plans to try again for referendum funding this spring but is not optimistic that student turnout will be high enough to support passage.
The club has received grants totaling $1,350 from the College of Arts and Sciences' student government and the college's dean, but Levine said the amount is not enough to allow the team to continue for the rest of this school year. As a result, the team recently established a nonprofit organization so it can accept tax-deductible donations.
To contact the Speech and Debate Association call (303) 494-0584, email info@coloradodebate.com or visit the Web site at .