An affirmative and negative case, hours of research and two practice rounds are going to waste this weekend after the varsity debate tournament at Clayton High School, which was scheduled for Friday, November 21 and Saturday, November 22, was cancelled this Thursday.

Dennis Kane, speech and debate coach, said the Clayton debate coach decided to cancel the tournament after many schools dropped out.

“He decided to do this with much reluctance, but he felt it was best to cancel the tournament,” Kane said.

Debater Kaylee Johnson, junior, explained that out of town schools from Kansas City and Springfield decided to back out of the tournament because of the conflict in Ferguson. Because of this, there wasn’t sufficient revenue to fund the tournament.

“I feel like they’re kind of blowing [Ferguson] out of proportion, but I guess I understand,” Johnson said. “It’s kind of close to Ferguson and if riots were to break out it would be really dangerous, but I think they should have waited just a little bit longer.”

Johnson said she was especially disappointed because the Clayton tournament is usually very fun, especially considering the Subway and coffee shop located inside Clayton High School. Everyone really knew what they were doing, Johnson said.

“I’m really sad because it would have been really good practice,” Johnson said. “The next tournament that we have is an out-of-town tournament, which is kind of upsetting because now I won’t have any practice before a really hard tournament.”

Varsity debate member Akshay Srinivasan, sophomore, said he was happy the tournament was cancelled because he did not complete his preparation work.

Even though he himself felt pleased the tournament was cancelled, Srinivasan said he felt bad for the other debate members because a lot of people signed up to compete, and last year the tournament in Clayton was a lot of fun.

“I think a lot of people are going to be worried about coming to [St. Louis],” Srinivasan said. “It’s also going to affect us because more tournaments will be cancelled, so then people won’t work as hard.”

Unlike Srinivasan, sophomore Arjun Devraj said the tournament being cancelled was upsetting because he had to do a lot of work in preparation for the tournament, and now his work isn’t going to pay off.

Devraj said the debate team misses a lot of tournaments anyway on top of the tournament in Clayton being cancelled, which could hurt their chances of advancing to Districts and State.

“We should try to stay on top of things to ensure that we can feel actually get enjoyment out of these tournaments,” Devraj said.