{"id":19250,"date":"2022-12-13T10:44:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T15:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earlham.edu\/?p=19250&preview=true&preview_id=19250"},"modified":"2023-07-26T14:19:03","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T18:19:03","slug":"earlham-students-leave-mark-in-first-year-competing-at-nations-largest-arabic-debate-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlham.edu\/news-events\/earlham-students-leave-mark-in-first-year-competing-at-nations-largest-arabic-debate-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Earlham students leave mark in first year competing at nation’s largest Arabic debate competition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
A team from Earlham College students went toe-to-toe with students from some of the largest and most prestigious universities from around the nation at the U.S. Universities Arabic Debating Championship at Stanford University held earlier this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Earlham team participated in four debates, taking home best speaker individual awards in three of them. It was the first time that Earlham had sent a team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were definitely underdogs\u2014one of the only private liberal arts colleges there,\u201d said junior Ihsan Alaeddin. He suspects that the other teams didn\u2019t expect much of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alaeddin was one of five Earlham students in the competition, which is sponsored by Qatar Debate and is the largest Arabic speaking debate in the nation. He was joined by senior Ahmed Deeb and sophomores Zain Hammad and Yara Matar. Ferris Odeh, a graduate from the Class of 2012 who is pursuing a Master of Education<\/a>, was the team\u2019s manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were really motivated by all of the encouragement and support we received from Earlham,\u201d Deeb said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really know what we were getting ourselves into. We knew the structure of the competition, but that\u2019s it. We practiced a lot and were preparing like we were going to win from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team structured their preparation sessions based on videos from past competitions. They used resources from QatarDebate and Earlham libraries to practice debating, and organized team bonding activities. Forty teams participated in the event with Earlham debating against students from institutions like UCLA, Texas Tech and M.I.T.<\/p>\n\n\n\n