After their philosophy in lecture event yesterday, speech and debate students held their second event of Speech and Debate Week, speed reading, today during both lunches.

This is the first year that speech and debate has organized a week consisting of a debate event each day, with daily public speaking workshops during extra helps. Junior Nitya Mani, who has been in debate since freshman year, believes Speech and Debate Week is about spreading awareness.

“The speech and debate community is very tight-knit, but a lot of people don’t really have a glimpse into the kind of things we do because a lot of our tournaments are away,” Nitya said. “We’re glad to share [what we do] with everyone.”

“Spreading,” or speed reading, was among the glimpses into debate that debaters wanted to show the rest of the school community. They handed out candy as initiative for students to stop by their table outside of Manzanita and try out spreading for themselves. Different articles and papers were laid out on the table for students to speed read to experience the nuance of policy debate.

Ayush Midha (11), a policy debater, described spreading as “useful for fitting in as many arguments as possible. It’s purely strategic.”

While Ayush mentioned that debaters use spreading mainly only as a strategy, other debaters elaborated on the applications of speech and debate in the long run as a useful skill for any career.

“It’s actually something that benefits you regardless of what sort of industry you end up going into. It’s always good to know how to argue your point and how to convince others about why your argument is better,” Shannon Hong (10) said.

Speech and Debate Week will continue tomorrow with videos of national speech and debate champions in the gym during long lunch, Thursday with Model UN Day, and Friday with Congress debates.