Members of the Speech and Debate team won the international debate tournament in Chengdu, China on November 17th. Julia Keeney (11) and Rylan Cole (11) became traveled to China after competing in the qualifying tournament in Kentucky. Atherton’s Speech and Debate Coach, Rachel Castillo, joined the students on their trip.
“So essentially the Chinese government does this program annually where cities in China that have U.S. sister cities can invite one debate team from each of their sister cities to come and compete. And this year, they invited a Louisville team,” Castillo said.
The tournament lasted about two days, and happened in a local conference center. Keeney and Cole competed against teams from the United States and China.
Keeney and Cole competed on the topic of AI, their argument being that “AI had more drawbacks than it did benefits…it is really unethical because it increases divisions in the hiring process. Since AI is trained on historical data, it is way more likely to hire people with white sounding names, and it can lead to a really increased gap in socioeconomic status. The final round was between us and another team from China and the competition was really incredible,” Keeney said.
Along with Cole and Keeney winning the entire tournament in China, Keeney was also named best speaker of the competition. Castillo was extremely proud of her students afterward, and enjoyed seeing them form bonds, and interact with other students.
“They had a big banquet for everybody afterwards and we were all enjoying the banquet and then we had to leave in the middle of the
banquet. So we left, and they really bonded with the other U.S teams, so we got in our bus to leave and all the U.S. students just chased the bus waving. It’s really, really cute,” Castillo said.
Cole was honored to be able to be in the Sichuan province and mentioned all the things they were able to do.
“For the first few days we went exploring, went to some museums, we had tour guides and people from the news following us around and we toured some schools and talked to the students there,” Cole said.
One of Cole’s favorite parts of the trip was being able to see pandas at the zoo, and the delicious meals.
Keeney shares a similar positive experience.
“It was really interesting getting to bond with kids that live in a culture that is so different from our own,” Keeney said.
Atherton is very proud of both of these girls and their coach.
