There is one place students can go to speak their minds and do it well in HHS, and that is the speech and debate club.

On Friday October 7, 2016, Hershey High School had its Second Annual Community Day. Ms. Baaklini hosted the Speech and Debate session which was lead completely by student members of the club. During their time, students got to learn more about either speeches or debates. When it was all said and done, Baaklini hoped to have some more people interested in speeches and/or debates and hopefully some new members to the club.

The first and second sessions focused on debating and the third and fourth sessions focused on speeches. The first session watched the Vice Presidential Debate which was held on Tuesday, October 4, 2016. Matt Jenkins and Joe Horner, juniors at HHS, explained how both candidates gave their attacks and whether their ways were correct or incorrect. They also explained how they would have done in an actual debate competition setting. Horner pointed out the logical fallacies each side made and how they may have worked for this specific debate, but the attacks they made would not be accepted in a real competition.

Also, the way the politicians debate is completely different than how the speech and debate club debates in competitions. According to Horner, the first two minutes are crucial for getting your point across in competitions. However, in the presidential debates, each candidate uses their first two minutes to establish themselves as credible people and do not mention their debating points at all.

Between the first and second sessions, there were eight students total. Jacob Fahnestock, senior at HHS, enjoyed the sessions because he got a lot of good information.

“I liked the breaking down of each side of the debate,” Fahnestock said.

The members of the club like speeches and debating a lot. “I can’t beat them with fists, but I can beat them with words,” said HHS junior Avery Wang when describing why she likes speech and debate club so much.

Jenkins had a different response. He notices that people debate a lot in society and they do it incorrectly. He likes how speech and debate club gives a structure for how to debate properly.

Speech and debate club meets once a week, after school, to work on their speeches or debating points for their competitions. The first competition they will go to this year is on November 11th in Gettysburg, PA. That is the first competition out of five for the club. Once competitions begin and get closer and closer, the club meetings are extended until 5pm to give the students more time to get their materials and points ready for the competition. All meetings are simply just workshop time, besides from a few housekeeping items every once in awhile.

Students that are interested in speech and debate club should contact Ms. Baaklini. The club meets every Monday after school in E112.