Lincoln Douglas

What You Should Expect

The Lincoln Douglas debate section of the Mean Green Comet will have two sessions, an in-person session (6/23-7/6), and online portion (7/7-7/12). The in-person portion will be run as a standard lab environment where students can experience in person lectures, electives, and debates along with group instruction from the lab staff that have been hired for this summer. The online portion will be run as a skill intensive featuring several practice debates and close instruction with lab leaders.

There are many ways to run a camp, but the approach of this year’s LD camp will be focused on skill refinement and research. Debate is many things, but research definitively controls how students interact with topics, argumentation, among other things. As such, this camp will place heavy emphasis on content mastery in combination of argumentative mastery. Through lectures, repetitive practice debates, and scheduled office hours, it is the goal of this camp that the debaters come out with a strong grasp on the balance between technical and truthful debating.

To get the most out of the camp, we will be using one of the topics from the 2024-2025 topic slate in hopes of getting students a head start on the research process, especially given the highly competitive tournaments that start out the season.

During our time at camp, it is the goal of the staff to develop the fundamental skills to grow as a debater and take on ownership over their debate career while also preparing them for larger national success. To facilitate this, the students will learn how to:

• Conduct high quality research surrounding debate topics to find strong but unique approaches to argument construction.
• Produce cards, arguments, and cases in a short time and then refine those cases as camp goes on.
• Apply content of lectures and research to formulate in round strategy.
• Handle the rigor of competing at high stakes tournaments through simulating competitions via the camp tournament.

It is our goal, that by the end of camp, students can leave knowing that they have the tools necessary to ensure their success on the local, state, and national level of debate. Through high quality instructors, an incredible student to staff ratio, and the rigor of the schedule, the Mean Green Comet LD lab hopes to provide a camp experience that is unique to campers by setting itself apart from a pedagogical and competitive standpoint.

Finally, we strive to create a community here at Mean Green Comet. We want students to form friendships and bonds that last long after our session is over. Not everyone may have the privilege to have a team during the school year, but you will always have a group of staff and peers who will look out for you!

On-Line Skills Week (The "OSW")

The online portion of the 2024 LD camp will be a 5 day long session (7/7-7/12) focused on direct instruction in a small group setting, this portion of the camp will be conducted over Zoom. Utilizing the smaller number of attendees, the online camp will be focused directly on getting practice rounds in, getting feedback from instructors, and incorporating that feedback into the skill set of students via activities (drills). By the end of the 5 days, students will have debated at least 6 times (numbers permitting), gained useful insight into how to improve, will have developed the tools necessary to ensure future improvement on their own, and created meaningful strategies to help guide research and knowledge about future topics. Some activities that will be included are: practice debates, speaking drills, speech redoes from their practice debates, and various other drills to help students incorporate feedback from their debates.

Because of the intensity of the lab’s schedule, it is expected that assignments of some kind will be given to debaters throughout the camp. Assignments might consist of: readings about the topic, readings about content that has been/will be covered in lectures, recording speech redoes for instructors to listen and give feedback on, among other options. The hope in assigning these is to create self-sufficiency and incentivize independent work and research among students.

While the exact schedule is forthcoming (the hope to have it solidified by the end of the week), the rough sketch of how the day to day would look is this:

• 10AM - login to zoom, morning greetings, preview of activities for the day
• 10:10-10:30AM - morning speaking drills
• 10:30-11:50AM - practice debate #1 and instructor feedback
• 12-1PM - lunch
• 1PM - login, afternoon greetings
• 1:05-1:45PM - speech redoes from the practice debate given to instructors
• 1:45-3PM - skills activities (specific activities assigned by instructor)
• 3-3:15PM - break
• 3:15-4:30PM - practice debate #2 and instructor feedback OR content lecture

2024 Daily Schedule

Divisions, Date and Pricing

Division Director

Holden Bukowsky

A communication studies graduate student and coach at the University of North Texas, where he coaches NFA-LD and NDT/CEDA policy debate, and is an assistant coach at Jordan and Westlake high school. As a competitor, Holden competed in college LD where he was a two time octa-finalist at the NFA championship tournament, and a part of the All-American team. As a coach, Holden’s students have accumulated over 35 bids to the tournament of champions and made it to elimination rounds and speaker awards of just about every national tournament. In his spare time, Holden enjoys reading and engaging research related to Indigenous, Marxist, and psychoanalytic thought. This is his second year teaching at MGC, and he is looking forward to helping make this a great camp!

Division Staff

Dylan Jones

He has spent the last eleven years both coaching and competing in high school and college policy debate. He joined the debate program at Lane Tech High School before transferring after his freshman year and moving to Iowa City, where he competed for City High School until graduating in 2016. He was the back-to-back IHSSA state semi finalist his junior and senior year. In college, he was a two time CEDA Octafinalist and a three time NDT qualifier from Emporia and Northern Iowa. Since he began for coaching at the Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa in the fall of 2021, he has worked with competitors of all divisions who have accumulated a total of thirty-two bids across both seasons as well as last years TOC Quarterfinalists and Finalist.

Elliot Cook

Eli Cook is the head debate coach at Jordan High School in Houston, Texas. They have been involved with debate for 9 years, competing in LD and policy in high school and college policy debate at Wake Forest University. Eli has been coaching LD for the last 5 years and has coached multiple students to TOC bids, late elims, and speaker awards at national tournaments. Eli is primarily interested in kritiks (specifically capitalism, queer theory, and afropessimism), but they are also well-versed in policy arguments.

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