Love arguing in your free time? Read the news for fun? Consider joining the forensics team or Communications Studies 4: Argumentation and Debate. The forensics department believes it could change your life.
“We often have people who messed up in high school, but are really brilliant,” Francesca Bishop, director of forensics, said. “They can’t go to a UC and they often find us when they have no direction.”
Their lives are often markedly different after participating in the program.
“We had this one student who did drugs in high school and his transcripts were not good enough to get into college, but he was brilliant,” Bishop said. “He went to Berkeley after us and then he went to law school. He’s an attorney now.”
Such successful examples are not a rarity for the department. Bishop remembers other students who manage the same kind of 180 degree reversal.
“We had another student who went to high school in Compton. When he first came to El Camino he didn’t have direction,” Bishop said. “Diana Crossman recruited him out of [an Oral Interpretation of Literature course]. She offered him extra credit to go to a tournament and that got him hooked.”
“By his second year he was awarded the top speaker in the nation. He got scholarships and he ended up getting a Ph.D. from Northwestern University,” she added. “He was a lecturer at USC up until this year. Now he is tenured at San Francisco State.”
Bishop believes that the forensics program is responsible for encouraging students who otherwise may have never received that support.
“He came from a background where people had not told him he had academic potential and suddenly we were telling him that he was talented and [could] do anything he wanted to do,” Bishop said. “He believed us and because of that, started to have success. He reframed his abilities in his head.”
The success that students experience have also been the result of a sense of belonging to a purposeful group.
“El Camino’s identity, for a lot of these kids, stems from the fact that they are part of a recognized team identity, and the program is known pretty much all over the country,” Crossman said. “No matter where they go, there’s a sense that they were a part of something that was special.”
The team’s reputation is a direct result of the dedication and hard work that they put into their endeavor.
“Unlike a lot of community colleges, we actively pursue 4 year competitions. We went to the NPDA National Championships and there were only two junior colleges that actually attended, and they did nothing competitive relative to what we did,” Crossman said. “We seek that competition out because we recognize ourselves as attempting to be more of a known connector between the JC world and the four-year world.”
Joining the debate team continually serves to focus students and direct them toward a path that is both productive and has personal meaning for them.
“When I was applying in the fall I thought: ‘debate is cool, I may or may not do that down the road,'” Alejandro Rivera, 20, accounting and communications major, said, “but I ended up getting accepted into UCSB, Long Beach and Oklahoma. I picked Long Beach over the other schools because of the reputation of the program at Long Beach. It’s just been such a huge influence.”
The EC debate team continues to have a good track record for getting people into their schools of choice.
“Of the with people who are graduating, six got into UCLA and Berkeley; one got into Long Beach; and one is probably going to Oregon,” Bishop said. “Some are still waiting to hear from Ivy Leagues, USC, and Georgetown. That’s a pretty amazing record.”
Taking the basic communications course not only teaches effective communication, but it can clarify for students whether this is a viable path for their future.
“Take Communications Studies 4: Argumentation and Debate this summer! Tell the instructor you are interested in the team. Give me a call [for] information and advice at 310-660-3593, ext. 6000,” Bishop said. “Tryouts will be on the first Wednesday of the fall semester at 1:30 p.m. Details will be posted on the door of MU 132 on the first day of school.”
“If you want to change your life, come to MU 132 and talk to one of the coaches,” Rivera said. “Without exaggeration, it has been a life-changing experience.”
