April 6, 2010 - Two Newark policy debate teams will compete at the 2010 National Debate Tournament in Kansas City, Missouri from June 14-18. Kylah Broughton and Devane Murphy from Science Park High School and Amna Tariq and Shagun Kukreja from University High School both qualified to compete in the tournament.

Park Hill South High School in Kansas City will host the tournament where debaters will compete in four rounds each day, with an awards ceremony on the last day. The national competition consists of policy, Lincoln Douglas, public forum, and speech. The first tournament was held in 1931.

The Science and University teams are working together to divide up the case list to prepare for all the different plans. Everyone except for Broughton are newcomers to nationals. Broughton, a senior who's been debating since 6th grade, competed two years ago with Pamela Chomba.

"I'm very excited about it," she said. "I went my sophomore year as well. This year it's more about concentrating on what I need to do to get far and have a lot of success in the tournament."

Broughton said her teams case "revolves around the idea of instituting critical pedagogy amongst the educational system. Critical pedagogy is socialist education. We allow for individuals and communities to have their own thoughts instituted into the educational system, so they have their own autonomy to learn what they want to learn instead of the forced curriculum that the state wants to impose on them."

Partner Devane Murphy, a third year debater said that while critical, the case relates to the resolution.

"Education underneath certain government interpretations is a form of a social service," he said. "So we give education as a social service and give funding specifically to all schools but our intent is funding for a new type of education for areas affected with poverty like Newark, for instance."

Murphy said he's "pumped" to go to nationals and see some of the friends he made at debate camp. Debate is the perfect activity for him he said. "I like to talk, argue, read, and be smart and outsmart people."

The University team is equally excited and also have a critical affirmative case.

"I felt proud," Tariq, a junior and sixth year debater, said when they announced her team was going to nationals, "but I kept in my happiness level because everyone else was upset they get eliminated. So I came home and I expressed my joy."

Her teams case is about Hurricane Katrina, a plan that was researched by a previous Newark debater and re- worked to make specific to the resolution.

"We're just going to build affordable housing, like increase monetary allocations for victims of hurricane Katrina," she said. "We're going to rebuild houses to be affordable like section 8 type of housing for low income people living in place like Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi."

Shagun, also a junior, has been debating since 7th grade.

She said the plan relates to the resolution because "it helps people that are in poverty because the people that were displaced, most of them were under the federal poverty guideline. They were people in poverty. We are topical because we give housing. That's the core of the topic, but it also has a critical side to it."