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Clip: Season 7 Episode 1 | 2m 3s | Video has closed captioning.
Meet the Newton South High School debate team, one of the largest in the U.S. with a diverse roster - nearly half are girls and many are first generation. What the girls must achieve at the podium is perceptual dominance as they contend with the judges' opinions simply because they are not the boys.
Aired: 03/06/23
- Are you guys getting tripped up with any speeches?
And if so, what specific part you don't get about that speech?
- Where you want help with?
- Anika?
- It's more like process, you'll just start like, yelling.
- Yeah, yeah.
Actually, that's really important.
Don't yell, like, ever.
(laughter) - Because it's student-run, I think that's what makes the Newton South Debate Team really special.
- But, like, let's say, like, we accidentally do, like it just comes out and you realize it sounds bad and your opponent points it out.
[Voiceover] It's just, like, high school students helping high school students.
The older kids coach the younger kids and it's just a cycle that keeps going.
- If you start sounding meek, that's probably more of a loss in perceptual dominance.
- Hattie never loses perceptual dominance.
- Hattie, do you wanna talk about cross?
- Sure.
- Ellen, re-ask your questions.
- Are you guys novices?
- Oh, that's so good.
- I know generally most girls' voices are higher than guys and thus decreases their perceptual dominance.
So how do you still maintain that?
- So I went to debate camp three years ago and so we had a seminar for girls where they told us how to be dominant, and they said, "Try to talk a little lower."
Don't interrupt boys.
They gave you all these tips and tricks, right?
Which is BS, you know, the problem is not us.
The problem is the judges.
- I think Hattie was the first person I saw that was, like, "Wow, I wanna be like you."
- And they totally-- - She was, like, super progressive.
Like, she was one of the first girls to start wearing jeans and being, like, f * * * the dress code.
- You should never think-- - She's the person who trained Bella and Kayla and Rebecca and all the people that trained me.
- Then, from like the how-do-you win-rounds perspective, there have been tons of really, really successful girls in the national circuit who did not do those things.
- No matter if you're a boy or a girl or whatever it is, sounding confident, speaking slowly, speaking loudly, and just, like, taking most of the crossfire down.
If you, like, just practice that over and over in rounds, you'll eventually get it.
