The “BF” in C.K. McClatchy BF stands for Boettner Fleming, but it could just as easily stand for best friends. It is the name of McClatchy’s premier policy debate team, composed of two seniors, Nate Fleming and Eric Boettner. I had the opportunity to talk to both of them at the same time, and they clued me into not only the dynamic of their partnership, but policy debate as a whole.
CI: Describe policy debate for me in one sentence.
NF: There is a big question and we all argue about what the right answer is, for a year.
CI: What is the question this year?
NF: Should the U.S. federal government curtail its domestic surveillance.
CI: My understanding is that you can either argue yes we should, or no we should not.
EB: The point of debate isn’t to say yes or no to the question, it is to negate what the other team is saying. Me and Nate don’t really talk about the question at all, we just force the other team to answer us.
CI: How?
NF: The affirmative team is responsible for agreeing with the question. The negative is responsible for making the affirmative team look stupid. They have to respond to what the affirmative team is saying specifically. Eric and I typically like to do this by saying that surveillance is based on a fear of death and that makes us hate queer people, so we should become zombies.
CI: OK. That makes sense. How has the season gone for you so far?
EB: Pretty good. We were in a bid round in our first tournament of the year.
CI: So a bid round would be far?
EB: So the way things work is, your final goal is to go to the Tournament of Champions, and to do that you have to “bid” at two tournaments. The bid round at each tournament is during the later stages, where if you lose, you are out.
CI: Why do you love debate so much?
EB: For every class discussion I enjoy in school, there are 10 of those in debate. There aren’t any teachers telling us what we can and can’t say. In the end, it is a competition, and that also plays into why I like it.
NF: Yeah the competition is one of the best parts because you get to have those academic discussions but at the end someone actually wins. There’s a prize attached to it.
EB: They also serve us Chipotle at tournaments.
CI: Do a lot of schools like McClatchy do debate?
EB: No. At a national level, I would say McClatchy’s lack of funding is extremely unique.
NF: Nothing compared to almost all the teams we go up against in the more competitive rounds of our tournaments.
CI: And John Spurlock and Keenan Harris managed to win the Tournament of Champions three years ago?
NF: McClatchy was the first Californian public school to win the ToC in 35 years. Winners of the ToC are almost always private schools. When John and Keenan were in finals they were up against a team that receives 100,000 dollars a year. College Prep, a school, has 13 full times in the last 30 years has six coaches that make 60,000 dollars a year. We have one, part-time coach.
CI: How does the dynamic work with you guys as partners?
EB: I mean, me and Nate are me and Nate. It kinda just works.
CI: Do you guys complete each other, in a sense?
NF: Yes.
CI: How much work do you guys do an average per week, combined?
NF: Around 25 hours, but in the week before tournaments, around 40.
CI: And this is one of those weeks. You guys leave for a tournament tomorrow, October 15th, right?
EB: Yes, in Texas.
CI: What is your goal for the tournament?
EB and NF: Biiiiiiiiid.
NF: If we get in the top 16 teams out of 80, we get a bid.
CI: Are you guys feeling good about the tournament going into it?
NF: Yeah, there are a lot of good teams there, but there are also a lot of scrubs. I hope we face the scrubs. But we’ve already beaten some excellent teams in the two tournaments so far, so we are confident.
CI: What makes the program perform well despite the funding?
NF: We have a real, real, devoted coach, named Steven Goldberg, he helps us out for no money, splitting his time between three schools. Our parents sacrifice a lot, driving kids to tournaments that are sometimes 10 hours away.
EB: As well as just devotion from the debaters themselves. There are three seniors this year that are giving it their all. Shout out to Tony Hackett.
NF: We also have a lot of promise for the next two years. Our sophomores and our junior are on track to be devastatingly good by the time they are seniors.
CI: What would you say to freshman who are interested in policy debate but haven’t tried it yet, and are worried?
NF: Join it, try it out, stick with it. It’s a thing that takes a while to get a feel for. Don’t be terrified by the kids who read at 400 words per minute cause you won’t have to face those people yet anyway.
CI: Thank you, very much.
EB: Woooo, I did it!