First State Congress Meet Held in January
By Jamie Oberg, UIL Intern | Monday, February 24, 2014 12:41 PM
Jose Guardiola from Gregory-Portland High School addresses the current issue during finals at State Congress. The finals were held at the Texas State Capitol.
Photo by Jeanne Acton
This January, UIL hosted the inaugural championship for Congress, a pilot program within the speech and debate umbrella. The preliminary rounds took place at the University of Texas at Austin and the final round took place in the Texas Capitol building.
Congress models the legislative process of democracy, specifically, the United States Congress. Within this mock legislative assembly competition, contestants draft legislation (proposed laws and position statements) submitted to the tournament, and they research the docket of bills and resolutions dealing with real-world social and political policies prior to the contest to prepare their speeches. At the tournament, students caucus in committees, deliver formal discourse on the merits and disadvantages of each piece of legislation and vote to pass or defeat the measures they have examined. Parliamentary procedure forms structure for the discourse, and students extemporaneously respond to others’ arguments over the course of a session.
“It was a contest where we could promote the added skills that our other current contests don’t, and thus find those students that were not yet engaged in UIL,” Riggins said. “There were certainly students who came from the debate world, but there were many others who came from agricultural or FFA programs, social studies and government classes, and students that simply have a goal in life to be a public servant.”
One such student, Zach McMeans from Borden County ISD, decided to participate in the event after attending the Student Activities Conference in Lubbock in the fall. The senior, who won 1A Congress champion, has also participated in extemporaneous speaking, current events and CX debate. Additionally, McMeans is a chapter conductor for his local FFA group, a position specializing in parliamentary procedure.
“I was pretty excited once I learned what the event was and ecstatic when I learned that it was going to get a chance,” McMeans said. “Congress is a combination of all the events I do in UIL and FFA. It gave me the opportunity to use skills I’ve developed in different areas and group them into one event.”
Because the event was a pilot, UIL staff was able to make some changes to the traditional speech and debate method used for events adopted by the League.
For the Congress pilot, Riggins decided to switch up the structure of the regional rounds by organizing based on educational service centers instead of traditional UIL districts. Students from classifications 1A-5A within the same educational service center region all competed amongst each other within the same legislative chamber, where traditionally each classification would have its own chamber.
“This structure made it great because the students were competing with each other and not against each other,” Riggins said. “They competed together in the same body, but we advanced them by their traditional conference.”
This combination of the conferences was intended to help all students participating, regardless of the size of their school.
“Our 5A schools getting to compete in the same legislative assembly with the smaller schools became a learning experience for everyone,” Riggins said. “It showed the larger conferences that the smaller schools are filled with great, talented speakers and allowed the smaller schools who may not have experienced the congressional event before to watch seasoned competitors.”
In addition to the change in regional structure, the Congress championships were the first UIL academic event to be held in the winter months.
“We tried a fall/winter event and that seemed to really be nice because the spring tends to get so crowded with other extracurricular activities,” Riggins said. “So this event was not only the inauguration of Congress, but of a winter event at the high school level.”
Riggins said starting the event as a pilot will help her to make necessary adjustments before presenting it to the Legislative Council for final consideration.
“Piloting allows us to tweak the event to improve small details, making changes until we get it to where we desire,” Riggins said. “The goal is to eventually have a full-fledged sanctioned event that will count for district sweepstakes, points and honors.”