Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Vai Dennis and I am the president of the Debate Union. I became interested in debate through my high school. I wanted to join mock trial in high school but I missed the deadline by two days and I though college would be a good time to try it and when I felt that we had a good debate team I decided to join.
What is the Debate Team?
The debate team and the debate union are two separate things. The debate team is the one that goes to places or across the country and debate for tournaments with our topic.
What do you love about Debate? What is your favorite memory?
What I like about debate is people being in the same interest as you. These are mostly people that find debating enjoyable and not more of a laborious tasks. My favorite memory is going to have to be the road trips, the practice debates that we had in the van and the dinners.
What Challenges have you faced as part of the debate team?
The challenges I’ve faced and the learning curves would have to be thinking super fast like rapidly fast. When someone asks you a question you get little to no prep time to answer it to the best of your ability. That is just something you need to improve on.
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What continues to motivate you in the Debate team?
What continues to motivate me is how I can get better every single tournament that i go to, even rounds. The span of an hour can improve my ability and I am just really excited to see who I become at the end of it.
What skills do you find yourself using when engaged in debate?
Going with Capital University’s motto, it’s going to be thinking critically, you have to go beyond the surface level of the question and not just take everything at surface value.
What do you do to prepare for a debate?
The debate team is in the middle of preparing for a debate. We are researching very heavily as a group. We do some mock/mini debates, bouncing ideas off of each other and getting feedback from coaches and then sometimes we do all-nighters preparing for the debate the next day as well.
In what ways has being part of the Debate Team prepared you for your professional life?
Mostly everybody, but not everybody, wants to go into the law profession. Going to debate tournaments is just a less formal way of going into that profession and the court rooming setting and everything.
