By Dr. Ede Warner
Editor’s note: This column is a response to Victor Mwimanzi’s guest column about the U of L debate team, which appeared in the Nov. 14 edition of The Cardinal.
Former debater Victor Mwimanzi quotes author Violet Ketels in comparing the University of Louisville debate team with a “dictoratorial regime.” But Mwimanizi selectively applies the full context of this article, ignoring the point of ethical responsibility.
Ketels concludes, “We must become Cassandras, warriors of the pen, predicting, warning, bearing witness on the side of truth against lies, holding ourselves and others to account for the integrity of words and for fidelity between words and action.”
I would like to address Mwimanzi’s opinion that I embrace a capitalistic and hegemonic world view because I focus on the importance of “grades and competitive success” to accumulate resources for the program.
While attending a conference panel last week on the alienation factor when high school Urban Debate League (UDL) students attempt to make the transition to college debate, I heard several arguments similar to Mwimanzi’s, that black students should not be expected to achieve competitive and academic success as part of the requirements for holding a debate scholarship. UDLs exist in cities like Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Kansas City, just to name a few, where inner city debate programs were created to give students of color the opportunity to compete in debate.
Ironically, I also learned at the conference about blacks who competed prior to 1960 in competitive intercollegiate policy debate. Civil Rights activists James Farmer; Ella Baker; Malcolm X and Thurgood Marshall, and politicians Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm all debated. I wonder, given what I’ve learned about how each of these participants pushed for excellence in their debate careers, because they each saw debate as a transformative method to engage whites about the injustices of segregation and racial discrimination, what these activists, intellectuals and scholars would say about Mwimanzi’s criticism of me.
These leaders recognized the importance of being excellent in their careers and combined their debate training with reading and research and practice, in addition to their racial perspectives. They imposed high standards of excellence on themselves and demanded it from those around them.
Now back to Mwimanzi’s claim. He is partially right. I demand that students meet a minimum and extremely modest G.P.A. requirement (2.5 when Mwimanzi debated, and now 2.75). I demand that students be on time and attentive for squad meetings, come to practice prepared and well read in an effort to strive for excellence, something I’ve achieved multiple times in my coaching history, in a number of different styles and methods of debate, including being named the National Coach of the Year in 2004.
Where Mwimanzi fails to understand Ketels’ conclusion is here: my demand for excellence is because I recognize that academic achievement and competitive success create more resources for the program, which in turn creates more opportunities for more marginalized students. I will retire from debate before I submit to any call to stop making demands on students to be excellent, especially black students. With stereotypes of inferiority labeling black people in almost all walks of life, it is a collective responsibility to strive for success and to challenge those stereotypes that go unchallenged.
To prove the accusation of “capitalistic, hegemonic” acts require proof of a vested self-interest on my part, one that Mwimanzi can’t demonstrate. I have sacrificed many of the individual and personal rewards that my privilege as a tenured professor should award me from my so-called “capitalist obsession.”
My family has sacrificed the expected goal of academic publishing to advance in my career, to create a new method of debate and create opportunities for students like Mwimanzi, whether or not Mwimanzi and other former disgruntled debaters chose to take full advantage of those opportunities. My family has sacrificed the personal rewards of a sabbatical that every tenured faculty member receives, because I know that the students participating on the team would suffer if I took a semester off. My family sacrifices because if I retire from debate tomorrow there likely would not be a Louisville Debate Program with our current mission and substantially less opportunities for black students to compete at all in college.
Finally, my family sacrificed my attendance at my first child’s birth and many, many more personal and family events, to keep up with the extensive travel and demands of debate, all in the pursuit of challenging stereotypes about inferiority, whether related to debate styles, to what constitutes professional activity in education, or to race. The tenure of most Ph. D. debate coaches is five to seven years due to the lifestyle, although this is my 13th season.
If Mwimanzi is right about my money making motives, then I am certainly one of the worst capitalists of all time. It’s too bad Mwimanzi didn’t spend more time reading the rest of the Ketels’ article and listening to my discussions of the importance in taking personal responsibility for one’s actions. Perhaps then he could come closer to embracing Ketel’s ethic of the role of the intellectual. It requires objective and balanced criticisms in an effort to find the truth, not out-of-context accusations which can have no purpose other than his personal gain. Have I made my share of mistakes in the operation of the debate program over the past 13 years? Of course I have.
However, the difference between Mwimanzi and me is that I am more than willing to take full responsibility for those mistakes.
Mwimanzi, however, uses pieces of the truth to ignore and deceive others about the real reasons he and others are no longer on the debate team.
Dr. Ede Warner is an associate professor in the department of communication, and the U of L debate team coach. E-mail him at ewarner@louisville.edu.
