This article originally appeared in the spring 2016 Harker Quarterly.

Upper School

The speech and debate team had a great showing at the state qualifying tournament in late February. Harker students participated in public forum and speech with students qualifying in both events. Eesha Chona and Sorjo Banerjee, both grade 12, will represent Harker in public forum debate, while Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 9, qualified in oratorical interpretation. Sana Aladin and Divya Rajasekharan, both grade 11, qualified as a team in duo interpretation of literature.

The California High School Speech Association will host the state tournament at Mission College in Santa Clara April 15-17.

Middle School

Also in February, more than 60 Harker middle schoolers competed at the Cesar Chavez Memorial Tournament at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Union City. About 400 middle school students from 19 schools, including 62 from Harker, attended and the results were great! In Lincoln-Douglas debate, rishi Jain, grade 6, Montek Kalsi, grade 8, Annie Ma, grade 8, and Aditi Vinod, grade 7, were undefeated.

Avi Gulati, grade 8, took first place in congressional debate. Nikki Solanki, grade 8, took first in declamation and third in dramatic interpretation. Gulati and Bryan Wang, grade 8, tied for third in impromptu debate. Arusha Patil, grade 7, took first in original oratory, while Gulati took second.

Go, debate Eagles!