Josh Thorn
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Thorn is the National Catholic Forensic League 2010 National Champion in Policy Debate.
Thorn started debating his freshman year of high school and soon, he says, “It became my main activity and pushed out all the others. Debate is so research intensive, it took over my life!”
In policy debate, teams of two debaters research and perfect an affirmative and negative argument for a single resolution throughout an entire year. Resolutions center around an argument over whether the Federal government should enact a particular policy. “If you were arguing social services for poverty, the affirmative team might argue for food stamps, and the negative team would argue why they’re not a good idea,” explains Thorn.
At the National Catholic Forensic League championships, the preliminary rounds have teams evenly argue affirmative and negative points, and then teams flip between arguments in the elimination rounds at the end. “We were affirmative [in the final round], which was good. I’m more comfortable there, because it feels like a truer argument,” says Thorn. Comfort with an argument can be important, Thorn says, because even though judges are supposed to be objective, “it often ends up being subjective, they look for who they think made the better argument.”
Though his team went on to win the entire tournament, his first preliminary round was stressful. “Our coach was in the judging room, and told us we dropped [lost] all three judge’s ballots,” Thorn says. After that, though, the team won the next consecutive 31 ballots and won the tournament.
Even when not at the championships, Thorn says he enjoys debate. “I’m very argumentative,” he says. “Even when it’s not a super important issue, I like having that back and forth.”