Empowering Latinas Through Debate - College of Communications ...

Empowering Latinas Through Debate 13
students, Latinas are their own special class who warrant their own attention,
study and consideration. We must recognize that we are failing Latinas before
we can begin to address the issues surrounding the failure. Those students
which the UDL seeks to assist, those students most in need of the skills that
debate affords its participants are not just underserved students in general, they
are Latinas, specifically. UDLs everywhere need to recognize that of all the
students the public school system is failing, they are failing Latinas the worst.
Recognition is only the first step to combating this problem. Several other
steps need to be taken in order for the mission of the UDLs to be furthered with
regard to Latina debaters. Romo (1998) cites various factors as key to Latinas’
success including: valuing students language and culture, involving parents,
providing staff training, and creating a sense of community. The most important
factor for Latinas’ success is the belief that they can succeed. In the debate
context, teacher and judge training that would include cultural sensitivity
components of all cultures that highlight the needs of Latinas could go a long way
to increasing the likelihood that Latinas would feel as though they could succeed
in debate and, more importantly, in school. Latina role-models should be sought
out and utilized as a means of illustrating to young Latina debaters that they are
not the only Latinas out there debating. Finally, some high school debate
institutes have experimented with having all-female lab groups as a means of
combating sexism in debate. This strategy has been utilized at the Emory
National Debate Institute, as well as several other institutes across the country.
We advocate concentrating Latinas in their own lab as a means of creating