The University of Richmond's debate team has put its mission to save the program on hold in order to prepare for competitions this semester, team member Travis Henschen said.
Next year, the department-affiliated policy debate program will become a student club and lose much of its funding, according to the Richmond website. This will keep the team from being able to hire a much-needed full-time coach, Henschen said.
Since team members received an e-mail in October notifying them of the decision, they have spent much of their valuable practice time fighting it, said Christine Parker, a junior on the debate team.
After winter break, the team members accepted that they might not be able to change the provost's mind and put their efforts toward ending the year as well as possible, Parker said.
The team just returned from the Henry Clay Debates at the University of Kentucky.
The tournament -- consisting of eight rounds -- was one of the toughest tournaments all year because teams were at the top of their game from preparing for the national qualifying tournaments, Parker said.
The team's district qualifying tournament is next weekend at the College of William & Mary against teams such as Georgetown University, the United States Naval Academy, George Mason University and Liberty University.
"Liberty is a powerhouse," Parker said.
Richmond is sending two teams. Parker and her partner, Ashley Fortner, make up one team and Henschen and Alex Borwick make up the other.
They hope that at least one team will qualify for nationals.
This year's topic is immigration. To prepare, the teams have five intense practice sessions, the first of which will start at 10 p.m. and last into the early morning hours. The two teams will use each other for practice debates.
"It may seem like a narrow topic," Parker said, "but you have to really get into the specifics and talk about things like the EB-5 visa and human trafficking."
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Teams are told 30 minutes before each round whether they will be arguing for more immigration into the United States or against it, so teams must thoroughly understand every aspect of the topic.
The research team members do for debate takes up more time than most of their classes, Henschen said.
Parker said each team had a different way it approached the affirmative side.
Richmond's team has to know and understand the other teams' arguments and prepare a counter-argument specific to each one.
"After everything settles down we will try focusing on getting ourselves a coach again," Parker said.
Although team members are grateful to still be receiving some funding next year, they have been disappointed in the lack of transparency and inclusion of the members themselves in the decision, Henschen said.
"There has been a trend of detracting from the program," Henschen said.
Most debate teams have more than two coaches but Richmond's team has already been operating with one for the past few years since it lost the funding for an assistant, he said.
The team also used to host a summer debate institution at the university and had an outreach program with local high schools, but both programs were cut during the past few years, he said.
The team plans to reach out to the whole campus to get students involved so the program does not fizzle out without all of its current funding, Henschen said.
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