At a Santa Clara University debate tournament held Nov. 16-18, three grade 9 students earned speaker awards. Esther Wong earned the 10th place speaker award, Divya Periyakoil earned fifth place and Sanil Rajput was second speaker. Additionally, Periyakoil and Rajput reached quarterfinals and the team of Ameek Singh, grade 9, and Alex Tuharsky, grade 10, advanced to semifinals.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, six Harker students competed in the Public Forum division of the Glenbrooks National Invitational. With 136 teams in attendance, Harker had two of its three teams make it into the round of 32. Juniors Sreyas Misra and Neil Khemani were eliminated in this round, while the team of Aneesh Chona and Anuj Sharma, both grade 12, made it to the round of 16.

Out of 272 total Public Forum speakers at the tournament, senior Neel Jani took home the seventh overall speaker award. Rounding out the top 25 speakers at the tournament, Sharma was named 20th overall speaker, Kiran Arimilli, grade 12, earned the 24th overall award, and Misra was named 25th speaker at the tournament.