On Monday, Nov. 4, VSU’s Debate Team met for their weekly club meeting, at meeting room 1022 in the Communication Arts building after a full day of events on VSU’s Communication Major Experience Day.  

From 12 p.m. until 5:30 p.m., any incoming students, students with undecided majors, and people curious about VSU’s Communication Program’s offerings and mission could attend. 

Attendees could go to the communication arts building throughout the day, do a walk-through, and observe VSU’s communication major’s regular classes to see how they operate.  

There was also an opportunity to register to audition for the debate team and virtually join a debate team demonstration featuring Remi Barclay, first time debater, against Reagin Jones, an acclaimed speaker and debater.  

The seminar for the debate demonstration consisted of five high school students, two VSU students, six debate members and their head debate coach Dr. Michael Eaves.  

It was said Eaves, that they are interested in everyone, but students from Jonesboro, Georgia, are their most frequent attendees.  

He said that the debate team for VSU is doing well, and that on Friday Nov. 1 they attended a fall semester tournament, virtually hosted by the University of Central Florida. 

 There were three events with 60 debate teams from 20 schools all over Georgia. From VSU’s debate team, sophomore Gabbi Lorentz, was a quarter finalist in junior varsity and senior Regan Jones, was second place speaker in varsity. 

 Most of these accomplishments start with the classroom. During the experience day there were seminars from Using Ai in Designing, to Interactive Research Ethics Games. There was also a guest speaker, a 2020 VSU Alumnus. 

Sylandi Brown, a CAC Alumnus, presented about student experience sharing, in which she gave her audience tips on how her collegiate studies prepared her for the workforce.  

She said that staying active on campus and joining organizations will prepare you for the future, and went over what she learned at VSU, detailing the core communication elements of the program: communication and values, workplace skills, communication analysis, and social media applications.  

Her present career in Washington, D.C., consists of overseeing all communication efforts for the International Cooperative Research Group. Her job is to communicate research, share and exchange research, data and knowledge products to audiences around the world.  

Topping off the valuable experience day was the demonstration of how a debate is set up, prepared for and performed.  

First, both opponents settled on a good topic with clear definitions to their topic to ensure clarity before they split off into different areas and prepared for the debate.  

In the preparation sessions, they clearly defined the topics, created main categories for overarching points for their argument and created supporting detailed research points. Acting debate coach for the why-not side of the debate was Benjamin Elliot, a senior political science major and Model UN club member.  

Elliot said debating for him is fun, especially when you already love to argue with your friends. He said that debating and his time in Model UN and as a former nursing major helped him with public speaking and knowledge on how to talk to different people and groups.  

Barclay also said that sometimes they do fun things on the debate team like traveling to Washington, DC or like at their recent Halloween debate social where they dressed up as presidential candidates and conducted a debate about each of the candidates’ policies.  

Once each opponent has completed their preparation or the time limit for preparation is up, they conduct the debate. The demonstration debate topic was Halloween is not complete without candy corn. 

Barclay’s points were that during holidays people should have something that they really like or really hate as a form of discussion. This connects to relationships in how those people could like different things, but those discussions bring people together. We could acknowledge the reasons candy corn exists, but that doesn’t matter because it exists now. Candy corn celebrates the harvest and therefore also celebrates the farmers. 

Regan’s points were that candy corn is what brings us together, but nobody really craves candy corn. Candy corn is an idea of what fall is. Candy corn is an idea. Halloween costumes, pumpkins, scary movies, and candy are what makes Halloween. Candy corn’s marketing only during Halloween is what makes candy corn polarizing.  

Candy corn’s polarization is controversial, it is the only thing that makes it for Halloween. The controversy does not bring people together. Studies say that candy corn was voted the second worst Halloween candy. 

How could candy corn make Halloween if people knew so little about candy? She says that Oct. 30 is Candy Corn Day, but no one knows that making the candy further insignificant. Candy corn was only made for farmers starting in the 1950s where they would eat it year-round, and now it is just marketed to Halloween. Other holidays like Thanksgiving and Cornucopia are more strongly associated with a harvest and better celebrates farmers.  

The winner must provide a strong defense to win, so with an underdog defeat, Regan Jones, takes the win with her argument on why Halloween is complete without candy corn.  

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Interested in joining the VSU Debate Team that had recently won the first-ever USG Regents Cup? All students are welcome! No experience needed! 

Meetings: Mondays @5pm, Thursdays @3:30pm, and Fridays @ 3:30pm 

Location: Communication Building CAC1022 

For more information, please contact: 

Director of Forensics, Michael Eaves, meaves@valdosta.edu 

President, Reagin Jones, reajone@valdosta.edu 

Written by Phylisicia Lundy, Berliner/Special Topics Editor