The Quad

May 1st marked the date for Cazenovia’s 13th Anuual Great Debate.  This year the question was: should the Federal Assault Weapons Ban be reinstated?  Under the guidance of Coach Maureen Louis, twenty-one students laid out the issue for the campus to hear after a semester of preparation.  For many of them this was their first time debating.  “It’s very intense and a lot of work,” Louis says, “but it lets the students see their best work.”

Watch some of the debaters here:  13th Annual Great Debate

Watch the opposition prepare here:  13th Annual Great Debate Opposition Preparation

Watch the affirmative prepare here:  Cazenovia College 2013 Great Debate – The Affirmative

Why are we debating this issue?  Read here:  Gun Control and The Great Debate

Get ready, get set, debate!  Read how some students prepared here:  The Great Debate Preparation 2013

The Cazenovia fashion show is a tradition. This year is the 40th anniversary of the show, and for the first time it was held at the Turning Stone casino. Both students and models put a lot of work into the show each year. Seniors also have their own exhibitions featured in the show. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcBb7Q9otL0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUamXK4-X8khttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyPqIOufdwk

“Gun ownership is as old as America,” Robert Spitzer, a leading expert on gun control, explained to a crowded McDonald Lecture Hall this past April.  “But what is less well understood is that gun regulations are equally as old.”  Spitzer’s visit to campus came less than a month before Cazenovia’s Great Debate looked at the reinstatement of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.  Maureen Louis, the coach of the debaters, spent nearly a year deciding on this topic.

“I choose a topic based on what’s being covered in the news,” she says.  “Something that’s pretty competitive on both sides.”  According to Robert Spitzer this issue fits these guidelines well.  “The Federal Assault Weapons Ban,” he says, “currently represents the leading edge of what gun control supporters have been pursuing.”  This ban was originally enacted in 1994, but expired after ten years.  Spitzer says that this was not a time period associated with any drops in crime, but the use of assault weapons in crime did go down.  Therefore its effectiveness can be debated by either side.

Spitzer explains that recently the call for gun control has been fueled by mass violence and assassinations.  “They rouse the public,” Spitzer says, “who then press the government to take action.”  In 1934 the National Firearms Act was passed in response to a rise in gang-style mass violence.  According to Spitzer, this act was “remarkably successful in keeping automatic weapons out of the hands of both citizens and criminals.”  Thirty-two years later the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed, regulating the purchase of firearms following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  These were two notable successes for gun control advocates.

On the gun rights side, the 2008 District of Colombia vs. Heller case proved a victory as the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to own a gun for personal use.  According to Spitzer, this ruling “reframed the debate” on gun control because it turned the discussion to the right of the individual.

Since these rulings, however, there have been several tragedies that have grabbed the public’s attention.  “With the Colorado shooting I knew this would be on everyone’s minds,” Maureen Louis said, referring to the shooting at the Aurora movie theater that killed twelve people this past July.  “And how horrified was I with the Newtown shooting!”  In the case of the Newtown shooting, one of the weapons that Adam Lanza had was a .223 Bushmaster rifle.  This is a semi-automatic firearm, meaning that it is self-loading.  When one round is fired, the shell is ejected and the next round loaded automatically.  This is the type of firearm considered an “assault weapon,” and one that would be regulated under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

Whether or not this ban should be reinstated remains a question to be debated across the nation, but this year’s Great Debate laid out the arguments for the campus to hear.  “It’s very intense and a lot of work,” Maureen Louis says, “but it lets the students see their best work.”

Debate Preparation 2013 By Jamel Brantley

As the Communications program at Cazenovia College prepares for the 13^th Annual Great Debate to be held May 1^st at 7pm in the McDonald Lecture Hall, one would wonder what a debater does to prepare for this event. This year the topic of the debate will be if The Federal ban of assault weapons shall be reinstated. With a topic this big, one would think that a lot of preparation would be needed to make sure that the debate goes smoothly.

Maureen Louis is the Communication Director of the Communication Studies Program at Caz and she is the teacher of the debate class. The debate is held every spring and always has two different teams, each with about ten members the opposition and the affirmative. The Great Debate will include prepared arguments, cross examination, and questions from the audience, roles that will be assigned to different students in the class by Professor Louis. So how does one prepare for this big event? I had the pleasure of interviewing Samantha Young, who participated in The Great Debate on the opposition team.

            To prepare for The Great Debate, Young has been collecting articles about gun policies in different cities and she has also attended a seminar on campus about gun policies. As a result of this, Young has become very knowledgeable on the subject. When you are in a debate, usually the number of members on a team is at least four, but for the debate that Young is preparing for, she is on a team that consists of ten members. When you have a team this big, working on an event this big some frustration is bound to happen. Young says at times she feels like within the team, it’s every man for themselves, but she still finds a way to make it work within the group dynamic.

            When asked what the easiest and hardest part for preparing for The Great Debate, Young said the easiest part was conducting the research, because there is so much information about gun policies, and the hardest part is practicing and knowing what you are going to say depending on what part of the debate you have. I asked Young, if she could change one thing about the debate process and she said “even though Maureen is doing a great job preparing us for the debate, I wish we could have broken up into teams earlier in the class.”

            Every year, not only does the topic of the debate change, but the teams change as well. I wanted to see how past debaters felt their experience in The Great Debate went so I asked Cazenovia Student and last year debater Francisco Hinestroza about his experience. Hinestroza said that participating in The Great Debate was an exciting and difficult experience for him. One thing that Hinestroza said that stood out was when he said “it is difficult debating on a topic that you do not agree with.” This is something all debaters struggle with, because they do not get to choose the team that they are on.

            One common denominator that Young and Hinestroza shared was their feelings on the preparation on the debate overall. They both said that working with a big team is difficult when you have to work with different personalities within the team without causing chaos. I also spoke with Matthew Moses who graduated last year and also participated in the Great Debate last year and he said “sometimes you do feel like you are doing more work versus the other people on your team, and you have to just deal with that because on the night of debate, your team won’t be at the podium with you. It will only be you.”