President and senior Anushka Pandey (center) starts off the recent speech and debate meeting on Oct. 11 by telling members to sign up for the upcoming meets. Pandey gave details about the meet on Oct. 15 at Kokomo and explained the guidelines for the women’s empowerment meet.

Speech and Debate will participate in a women’s empowerment meet on Oct. 29 at Westfield High School. The specific time members will meet at CHS is yet to be decided. Due to the theme of the meet, only individuals who are women, non-binary, gender questioning or are partnered with one of those categories are allowed to compete. 

Anushka Pandey, president of Speech and Debate and senior, explained the purpose of the women’s empowerment meet.

“It can be really easy to be talked over if you are women, non-binary, or gender questioning so the idea of the meet is to really just support women in a setting where they might have been made to feel as less than their male competitors in the past,” she said.

Debate sponsor Joseph McMillian said the first meet, which took place Oct. 8, went well.

“It was great because we had a lot of wins. We got a lot of first place finishes and I think we placed in every category we competed in and we swept a lot of categories too,” he said. “This was a novice tournament specifically which means all new debaters were competing and everybody did well, got good feedback, and learned a ton from it. For me, that’s the most important thing so it was a success no matter how you slice it.”