Baylor Students Qualify for the National Debate Tournament and Win a Recent Competition
Baylor students qualified for the National Debate Tournament in April 2025 include (left to right) Spencer Benton, Anastasia Keeler, Shahina Chatur and Isabella LoCicero.
For the 21st year in a row, members of the Baylor University debate squad have qualified to compete in the nation’s top debate tournament, while a Baylor debate team has also won a recent national competition.
National Debate Tournament
Two Baylor debate teams have performed well enough to take part in the 79th National Debate Tournament (NDT), sponsored by the American Forensic Association. It will be held April 4-7, 2025, at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.
Representing Baylor, Anastasia Keeler, a junior double major in political science and Spanish from Austin, Texas, will debate with Shahina Chatur, a senior double major in political science and economics from Colleyville, Texas. Baylor's other team competing in the NDT consists of Isabella LoCicero, a senior political science major from Paris, Texas, and Spencer Benton, a sophomore political science major from Houston, Texas. It will be the first NDT appearance for all four students.
A team from Baylor University has won the NDT three times -- in 1975, 1987 and 1989. All teams competing in the 2025 NDT will debate the topic, "Resolved: The United States federal government should adopt a clean energy policy for decarbonization, including at least a market-based instrument."
Mid America Championship
Meanwhile, a third debate team -- composed of Lorilei Lassen, a senior aviation sciences major from West Jordan, Utah, and Omar Darwish, a junior data science major from Upland, California -- won first place at the 2025 Mid America Championship tournament, which was held Feb. 14-16 at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma.
Lassen and Darwish defeated a team from the University of Kansas on a 3-0 decision in the final round. The Baylor team was undefeated during the tournament, winning against teams from the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Minnesota and Kansas State University on their way to the finals. In addition, Lassen and Darwish won the top two individual speaker awards at the tournament.
"Our teams this year are some of the strongest in Baylor's long and successful debate history, and the fact that we have had so many parts of the team have so much success is a testament to the depth of our talent and the support structure that these students have created for one another," said Dr. Jeff Nagel, assistant professor of communication and director of Baylor's Glenn R. Capp Debate Forum.
Nagel said preparing for intercollegiate tournaments throughout the academic year requires dedication and many hours of work outside class for debaters at Baylor.
"Recent academic publications argue that these undergraduate students complete roughly an entire master's thesis worth of work each and every year on a given topic on top of excelling in the classroom," he said. "They start in June and debate all the way through April, so it is a lot of time and work. Seeing them have success really makes it all worthwhile."
As the director of the Glenn R. Capp Debate Forum in the Baylor University College of Arts & Sciences, Nagel coaches all Baylor debate teams, while Kristiana Báez, lecturer in communication, serves as assistant director of debate.
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The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments in the sciences, humanities, fine arts and social sciences, as well as 11 academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. The College’s undergraduate Unified Core Curriculum, which routinely receives top grades in national assessments, emphasizes a liberal education characterized by critical thinking, communication, civic engagement and Christian commitment. Arts & Sciences faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit the College of Arts & Sciences website.