http://www.esu.org/tours/reports/report_macmullen

Have Accent – Will Travel : Ian In America

In the autumn of 1998, some nice people at the English-Speaking Union in London decided to send me on a tour of America. Andy Hume, then a postgraduate law student at Glasgow University, and I, newly graduated from New College, Oxford, assumed the mantel of the “British Debate Team” for this jamboree which has been staged annually since 1922. For those who are interested: of the twenty debates that were adjudicated (usually by an audience vote), we won seventeen, lost two and tied one. But the art of debating was the real winner. Or perhaps there were no real losers?

Some trite cliché in that general spirit, anyway.

If I had to choose just two adjectives to summarise my experience on the tour, I might well go for “frantic” and “wonderful”. Frantic because we visited 33 universities in seventeen different states, from Maine to California, in a mere ten weeks, taking seventeen domestic flights in the process (not counting connections!). Wonderful because our American hosts, usually student debaters or academics in university speech-communication departments, were unfailingly generous and hospitable: we were treated like royalty (or perhaps I should say as royalty used to be treated).

It was a trip crammed full of interesting and amusing experiences, and offered me a rare insight into the cultures of an astonishingly diverse country. What follows is a wholly inadequate attempt to record my adventure at a length some people might actually be willing to read. If I sound damning at times, this is usually a reflection of my nasty, critical nature, and only occasionally a fair comment on our hosts. As a final disclaimer, there were of course many incidents far more exciting than those I describe below, but do you honestly think I would commit them to paper?

1 The East (Sep 15 to 29) 2 Alabama (Sep 30 to Oct 5) 3 Colorado (Oct 6 to 12) 4 Texas (Oct 13 to 19) 5 Georgia to Arkansas, via the Mid-West (Oct 20 to 30) 6 California (Oct 31 to Nov 9) 7 Iowa to New York: the Mid-West part 2 (Nov 10 to 23)

1 THE EAST i) Our first stop – at Bates College, a small private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine – provided an unexpectedly gentle warm-up debate. Eric, the Bates coach, was convinced that the best way to ensure a good spectacle was to rehearse and plan the debate in meticulous detail. Spontaneity carried too much risk, hence the element of surprise was carefully removed from the arguments during open preparation. The resulting debate, on whether we should raise the Titanic, was predictably flat, as Andy and I dutifully stuck to the script except when indulging in the weak humour that was to be our mainstay on the tour. For reasons of balance, the Brits spoke against each other: the audience of forty sided marginally with the opposition against Andy’s team’s proposal to let the ship rest in peace. But frankly, nobody seemed to care. ii) The three days we spent at Clarion, a small state university in northern Pennsylvania, were one of the most enjoyably relaxing times we had on tour, but they contained for me one moment of blind terror. In an uncharacteristic display of bravado, I accepted a student’s invitation to join him for a midnight leap into blackness before falling thirty feet into the river Clarion. My adrenalin levels were only slightly lower at the debate: just weeks after a local high-school shooting incident, a crowd of over 200 gathered to hear us debate whether juveniles should be tried as adults for murder. For the second and last time on tour, Andy and I spoke on opposite sides – the emotionally charged atmosphere and strong preconceptions of the audience guaranteed victory for my rhetoric of individual responsibility and societal vengeance over Andy’s reasoned opposition. iii) Duquesne, a private Catholic university in Pittsburgh, gave me my first, and probably last, opportunity to stay in a penthouse suite. They also gave us our first, but by no means last, opportunity to debate about affirmative action. We offered a deliberately radical policy of rigid quotas for higher education admissions, but the debate stubbornly refused to ignite. The audience of 150 diligently made notes for their inter-cultural communication class and gave no hint of enjoying the occasion. iv) The University of Pittsburgh is based around a magnificent, bizarre neo-Gothic skyscraper called the Cathedral of Learning. Words simply cannot express… The publicity for the debate was somewhat inaccurate: Andy was disgruntled to be described as a member of the “English” debate team, while I was perplexed but flattered to see myself billed as captain of both the Oxford University rugby and cricket teams – surely an unprecedented sporting feat. We opposed Pitt’s idealistic proposal for unilateral US nuclear disarmament with a few harsh facts of life, in a fairly mediocre debate. Far more memorable was our first taste of US-style policy debate – we listened in shock and bewilderment as four otherwise normal students spouted jargon and cited academic sources at unintelligible speed. Attempts to compare this curious discipline to our own happy-go-lucky sport were to be a popular topic of conversation throughout the tour, even though one might more profitably have compared the Spice Girls and Pavarotti.

v) Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York State, was our only Ivy League host on the tour. Hence I was expecting their weekly debate meeting to be a fearsomely intellectual affair – in fact, it was dominated by the unlikely topic of how best to run over a deer in a large van. The rest of Cornell lived up to expectations, however: the campus is beautiful, and Pam – the debate coach – hosted us in her wonderful house, complete with large indoor swimming pool. On the motion that “This House believes in big government”, we surprised the opposition by proposing a scheme of compulsory parenting classes to be administered by the state. In one of our most convincing performances of the trip, we managed to win over an initially sceptical audience and take the vote by about ninety to fifty. vi) Our first impressions of Baltimore were not favourable – the forced smiles of our servers at Burger King were delivered from behind bullet-proof glass in what must be the world’s highest security fast-food restaurant. At Towson, a curiously semi-public university, the welcome was warm but harboured a sting in the tail for Andy. We had been asked to propose that “a political leader’s private life is always public” – everybody’s favourite issue in America at the height of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal.

Hence the following line of intrusive questioning from Dan, to test Andy’s commitment to full disclosure: D: When did you get your first girlfriend?

A: When I was seventeen.

D: Did you lose your virginity to her?

A: Yes. D: Thanks very much. I’m sure we all needed to know that.

Despite (or perhaps in sympathy for) this humiliating incident, we managed to win a small but clear majority amongst the audience of 110. vii) Before heading south into Virginia, we were treated to a couple of days in Washington D.C. with Liz Lamzaki, an alumnus of the 1998 American debate tour of Britain who was currently working for a congresswoman. Highlights of our brief stay were many and varied: the inevitable monuments and memorials, the Capitol, the overwhelming impact of the Holocaust Museum and the contrasting attraction of Cameron Diaz on Saturday Night Live. viii) As temperatures soared into the nineties in late September, we arrived at the frighteningly expensive University of Richmond. A quick look at our accommodation confirmed my sense that we were visiting the higher education equivalent of Beverley Hills: the Jepson Alumni Centre belongs in an aristocratic age, as did our astonishingly theatrical housekeeper Cecilia. The Richmond team decided to propose that “democracy is so good, everybody should be made to have it”, but shied away from the spirit of the motion by insisting that we should do no more than educate people about the merits of democracy. In the vote, the audience of forty overwhelmingly punished the home team for their cowardice. ix) Last stop on the East coast stage was at the College of William and Mary – private, and the second oldest university in America (after Harvard). We were only in town for less than 24 hours, but regrettably this still gave us time to see Colonial Williamsburg, former capital of the Southern States, now entirely populated by people in period costume and souvenir-shop proprietors. The debate coach seemed perfectly happy with an audience of fifteen for a debate in which William and Mary advanced a highly

technical policy to shrink the welfare budget. Andy and I were completely wrongfooted and unprepared for the level of detail, so only the novelty of our accents can explain our undeserved victory in the ballot.

2 ALABAMA x) Owing to a last minute cancellation by Troy State, we spent six days with our hosts from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Without a doubt this was one of the best stops on the tour – the level of hospitality was outstanding even by the high standards of the tour, and by the end I felt properly inducted into the culture of the South. Integral to this was my experience of the food: traditional homemade “grits” and the remarkable “Dreamland” – a no-frills, no-nonsense barbecue place serving huge quantities of pork ribs (and literally nothing else) in a tumbledown shack.

The absolute highlight of the week was the Alabama vs. Florida American football game. At the risk of overstatement, this must have been one of the most enjoyable four-hour periods of my life. 83,000 spectators were packed into the stadium on a seriously hot autumn day. We learnt the chants; we ogled the cheerleaders; we boogied to the band; we roared our appreciation as the poor man dressed as a Florida alligator was flattened by the Alabama elephant. We even watched the game, which Alabama lost by the unexpectedly narrow margin of sixteen to ten. And I just kept trying to remind myself that this fantastic spectacle was only a regular weekly game between two university teams. America really knows how to put on a show!

We spent a fascinating afternoon at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, with its vivid exhibitions of the struggle for racial equality in the States, and particularly in Alabama. But history turned rapidly into the present. Just hours after we had been reading about Governor George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to try and prevent the University of Alabama integrating, we were being told that fraternities at the university are still racially segregated (not de jure, of course, but very much de facto). Indeed, the whole portrait of the Greek societies – fraternities and sororities – was a shock: exclusive, hierarchical and engaged in machine politics up to and including tactics of physical intimidation. So far, not dissimilar to the Oxford Union, but even Oxford cannot compete with the sexist rituals of the “Greeks” in Alabama. A junior frat boy and sorority girl are put in a room together: his job is to try and kiss her; hers is to struggle at first but then to submit. In this particular part of the Bible Belt, at least, attitudes are not quite up to date.

After an absorbing week, the debate was perhaps always going to be an anticlimax.

Two committed Socialists on the debate team were so keen to publicise the scandal of fat-cat capitalists getting subsidies from the government that they proposed the abolition of corporate welfare. Unfortunately, the unconditional nature of their plan left them committed to a pure free market economy, which they reluctantly defended when they saw what they had done. The result of this surprising lack of foresight was a massacre. Opinions differ as to whether there was a single vote out of thirty for the proposal. “Rama-jama, yella-hamma, give ‘em hell, Alabama!”

3 COLORADO

xi) The journey from Alabama to Colorado involved a series of delays: two of the flights we needed were cancelled, and, after a communications failure resulted in a three-hour wait in Denver airport, we eventually arrived in Fort Collins nearly fourteen hours after we had left Tuscaloosa. But our hosts at Colorado State University more than made up for the frustrations of the journey. We spent two days up in the Rocky Mountains admiring the spectacular scenery in gorgeous weather.

And the debate was one of the best on tour, due in part to the atmosphere generated by an audience of over 300 packed into an auditorium with a seating capacity of 210.

The motion compared presidential and parliamentary systems of government; the American team advocating the British system and vice versa. A close debate, but the clapometer registered a clear win for the Brits. xii) At the Metropolitan State College of Denver, we had the (thankfully) rare privilege of meeting three extraordinary people in rapid succession. First to declare her hand was a girl who has made numerous suicide attempts, and who vigorously and cheerfully defended her philosophy that everyone gets exactly what they deserve in life, despite my increasingly desperate attempts to offer a plausible counterexample. Next was the man who seemed suspiciously eager to tell his “story”, which turned out to end with him shooting dead his two best friends. Finally, by the standards that her colleagues had set, the compulsive liar who span us an extravagant yarn about her imminent inheritance of $1.5m seemed positively normal.

Denver provided our only chance to watch competitive American parliamentary debating, and I was surprised at the technical and procedural nature of many of the arguments, which owed much to the US policy debate style. By contrast, on the motion that “sexuality is the new McCarthyism”, proposed by Colorado State as winners of the tournament, we merrily subverted a proposition case about feminism and the objectification of women by telling a lot of immature jokes. Luckily, the audience of 200 debaters shared our sense that this would have been one serious debate too many at the end of a long tournament, and we won easily by applause. xiii) Our ludicrously brief visit (15 hours, half of them asleep) to the exclusive Colorado College in Colorado Springs was memorable for three reasons. First, the debate. Proposing the impeachment of Clinton, the home team were indiscriminate in their selection of arguments, declining to reject those that were factually wrong, based entirely on rumour or conspiracy theories, or plainly irrelevant to impeachment. The 45-strong audience voted heavily for us. Second, our host. Mike Edwards’ loud, incessant falsetto laughter will live with me forever. Third, their generosity.

Disappointed by the short duration of our stay, the debate coach pressed food, drink, money and gifts on us at every turn. Embarrassing at times, but we suffered like true stoics!

4 TEXAS xiv) Our hosts at the University of North Texas, in Denton, knew what was expected of them: this was the closest we would get to Dallas, and I was not going to leave without a tasteless photo of myself on the grassy knoll. In fact, the museum on the sixth floor of the book depository is an interesting memorial to Kennedy's life, as well as offering a minute examination of the circumstances of his death. But the real fun is to be had talking to the (invariably bearded) conspiracy theorists outside.

The Dallas Museum of Art was impressive, although my clearest memory is not an exhibit but the putrid stench of dead crickets decomposing at the bottom of the lift shafts. UNT also treated us to our best lunch of the tour: wonderful Mexican food in Fort Worth washed down with margheritas and sunshine. Again, the debate struggled to compete with what had gone before, especially because the UNT case for affirmative action scarcely went beyond saying that racism exists, and that this is a bad thing. xv) Baylor is a private baptist university in Waco, Texas. The students at Baylor were delighted that we had heard about Waco, until we told them what we had heard about Waco. The debate, again on affirmative action, was remarkable only for the total apathy of the audience of nearly 300, who remained silent throughout. There was no applause for speeches, and two attempts to initiate a floor debate were both embarrassingly abortive. When the clapometer was wheeled on to determine the winner, there was a ripple of disinterested, polite applause for both sides. Hence our only drawn debate. If the audience thought we were poor debaters, however, they should have seen the four of us play golf the next day. This was the first time I had held a golf club in anger, and anger was indeed much in evidence as it took me over three hours and much blatant cheating to complete eleven holes. xvi) The journey from Waco to Tyler in East Texas took us right into the terrible storm that had hit Texas shortly before we arrived. In torrential rain, we passed the roadside wreckage of a house whose owner had died only hours earlier as the building was literally blown apart. Thankfully, the storm soon abated.

The debate at the University of Texas at Tyler was held in a magnificent new concert hall, which was also the venue the previous night for a splendid performance by the St Petersberg Symphony Orchestra. The soloist in Tchaikovsky's violin concerto did particularly well not to be distracted by the standing ovations he received from his stetson-wearing audience at the end of each movement.

This was the first time the British debate team had visited Tyler, and no expense was spared by our enthusiastic hosts: the great and the good of Tyler were invited to a formal reception before the debate, and a panel of seven local judges and attorneys were asked to adjudicate the debate and award an impressive cup to the winners.

Inspired by the occasion, and by our biggest audience of the tour (400), Andy and I turned in our most polished performance and managed to persuade all but one of the panel that "American politics is morally bankrupt". All in all, certainly our best debating experience in America.

5 GEORGIA TO ARKANSAS, VIA THE MID-WEST xvii) At Atlanta airport, I was delighted to recognise Mike Hester, the coach of West Georgia State University, by the large placard he was holding saying "Spice Boys".

Our stay in Carollton was brief but pleasant: they asked us to propose giving the United Nations a standing army, which we did well enough for a small majority of the 80-strong audience. And, hearing that I had run out of toothpaste (which gives some insight into the quality of my small-talk) Mike's wife offered me a choice of four different types. Apparently she's a connoisseur!

xviii) At Mercer, a baptist university in Macon, Georgia, I was given my fullest introduction to an audience on the tour: the Dean saw fit to read out every word of my CV, including my date of birth, home address and telephone number. The Mercer team proposed the resolution that "the melting pot has failed in the USA", but regrettably their case went little further than observing the continued existence of ethnic and religious diversity in America. When we realised that we were being asked to argue that absolute homogeneity reigns across all fifty states, we switched tactics and played it for laughs. This must have made a favourable impression, because after the debate two girls invited me to a sorority party. For reasons that I shall never be able satisfactorily to explain, I refused. xix) Down at Valdosta State University we were asked to debate reform of the US military. Since we were in South Georgia, I was bracing myself for jokes about the Falklands War. In fact, knowledge of Britain was in rather short supply: witness their coach's sincere inquiry as to whether Scotland has democracy. So the Valdosta debaters confined themselves to arguing for an enhancement of women's role in the military. Their claims that women can be fully competent in the front line had a prima facie logic from the moment it became clear that Sandra, their first speaker, owns over 30 guns and is allegedly highly proficient in their use. But despite this unnerving fact, the Americans did not make a good fist of the relatively straightforward task they had set themselves, and we were relieved to be able to call their plan into question without appearing too sexist and reactionary. xx) St Louis is a city full of character but famous only as a place to "Meet Me In" and for its imposing arch, built in 1965 as a monument to Westward expansion and standing fully two-thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower. We spoke against the University of Missouri at St Louis team as a finale to the inaugural Urban Debate League tournament, which tries to involve inner-city high school kids in debate. The topic was once again affirmative action, but the peculiar dynamic made this debate quite different from earlier discussions of the issue. Our two opponents, both AfricanAmericans, made a shrewd decision to concentrate on emotive high rhetoric, which played well with the almost exclusively African-American audience of high school students. By the time I stood up to speak we had already been denounced as "enemies of African nationalism" and the air was crackling with hostility. What followed was character-forming, but suffice it to say I am glad there was no vote. xxi) Having been jeered and booed by the UDL audience, we were truly pampered by our other hosts in St Louis, Webster College. The mood was set when they arrived to collect us from our hotel in a gleaming cadillac. The lunch-time debate was eminently low-key: a very small audience watched as the Webster team twisted the motion that "Hollywood's time is up" into a proposal to restrict tabloid journalism via a privacy law. This elaborate feat of intellectual contortion, which occupied fully half of the opening speech, was the only remarkable element of the debate, unless you count my candid confession that I am an avid reader of the Sunday Sport. xxii) The town of Lawrence, Kansas, has the claim to fame of occupying the highest point in the state. Those who know Kansas, or even paid attention to the backdrop in the Wizard of Oz, will know that this is not a significant achievement. Nor, indeed, was our debate at the University of Kansas. Given the motion that the melting pot has

failed, we decided to launch a debate on two reforms to state education to make better provision for religious and linguistic diversity. Unfortunately, the Kansas team refused to accept that we had the prerogative to narrow the debate in this fashion and so declined to oppose our suggested policy reforms. This unfortunate clash of debating styles was probably bound to happen somewhere, but it was not much fun for the 250strong audience, who evidently blamed us for the misunderstanding and voted heavily for the home team. xxiii) If Lawrence had a rather poor claim to fame, Cincinnati has a rather good claim to infamy - namely that Jerry Springer was mayor of the city until he was forced out in a sex scandal. It was also the only stop on the tour where we were not hosted by a university: instead we were guests of the Mercantile Library, a private club founded in 1835 and now with over 1000 members. For the debate in front of 150 of those members, two students at the University of Cincinnati Law School opposed us on the catchy motion that "If America is the world's policeman, then the world is America's Rodney King". Despite having no debate experience, our two opponents did an excellent job and we felt relieved and somewhat fortunate to win the vote by acclamation. xxiv) Arkansas State University in Jonesboro provided us with our liveliest and most entertaining debate of the trip. They asked us to defend the proposition that "culture stops at the Statue of Liberty", and we responded with a mixture of the obligatory jokes about American trash-culture and a serious case about protecting national cultures from Americanisation. This succeeded in provoking a sustained floor debate, with many contributors far more amusing than we had been. But the fun did not stop with the debate, because I had still to experience my first fraternity party. It was unclear to me why the police just stood by watching the obvious consumption of alcohol by underage students in a dry county on unlicensed premises. What I do know is that I was treated to a fantastic evening of "California Cool" with Meredith - poet and astrologer with clothes to suit. So who said Arkansas is dull?

6 CALIFORNIA xxv) Arriving in Los Angeles was always going to be a bit of a culture shock. But arriving immediately after Arkansas nearly killed me. The University of Southern California is an oasis of wealth in South Central LA, home of the Rodney King riots and not a good place to take your poodle for a late night walk. But like good tourists, Andy and I soon escaped South Central in favour of Beverley Hills, Hollywood and Venice Beach. Our day at the beach would have been ideal for body-piercing enthusiasts and temporary-tatoo connoisseurs, but I limited myself to being humiliated as the weedy white guy with two left feet in a street performer’s act.

Perhaps inspired by the other prominent line of business at Venice Beach, the USC debaters chose to propose the legalisation of marijuana. Their case had a peculiar emphasis on agricultural economics rather than the expected liberal philosophy, and indeed the word freedom was hardly mentioned. Our audience included a sizeable contingent of high-school kids, who were inadvisedly treating our efforts as a model of debating technique. “You told three jokes in the first minute of your speech,” one boy reported earnestly from his notes. “Was that a strategy?”

xxvi) Before our next debate, I was able to sneak off and spend a night south of LA in Newport Beach, the millionaires’ row where my uncle somehow manages to live.

With the greatest reluctance I dragged myself away from paradise the next afternoon, and headed inland to Azusa Pacific University - a small, highly religious institution.

The home team were practising for their imminent trip to Oxford to compete in the annual inter-varsity competition. In front of an audience scarcely larger than the two judges of an Oxford preliminary round, we had a solid debate opposing Azusa’s proposition that economic sanctions are an illegitimate tool of the state. xxvii) We arrived at the California State University at San Bernardino as polls closed in the mid-term congressional elections. By the next morning, it was known that the Republicans’ persistent focus on the Lewinsky affair had misfired – for the first time since 1934, the President’s party made mid-term gains. This was indeed a remarkable and historic occurrence, but our short stay at San Bernardino involved two equally extraordinary events. On a motion calling for increased investment in space research, the San Bernardino team chose to argue that we should send unmanned spaceships to the moon to mine tritium, to be used as fuel for nuclear fusion back on earth. Their coach generously warned us of this bizarre intention, and helpfully suggested a line of argument for the opposition based on the risk of extra-terrestial hijackings.

Thankfully, we never needed this argument, because the most cursory glance at a few internet sites revealed both that tritium is in plentiful supply on earth and that we do not have the technology to harness the energy released in nuclear fusion anyway. The resulting debate was therefore the first extraordinary event. The second was that several girls in the audience wrote their name and phone number on their ballot paper, despite the frantic efforts of their guide dogs to dissuade them. xxviii) California is a big state. Humboldt State University, in Arcata, is 600 miles north of Los Angeles and, figuratively speaking, a million miles from Hollywood and smog. Arcata is surrounded by wonderfully unspoilt scenery, most memorably where the great redwood forests meet the spectacular Pacific coastline as at Trinidad. Other than this natural beauty, the highlight of my stay was meeting a first-year student who introduced himself to me stiffly as David G. Williams. “Hi,” I replied, “I’m Ian.” “Ian what?” he demanded. Later that day, the debate gave us a second chance to defend presidential systems of government. Unfortunately, the HSU team claimed that parliamentary government entails proportional representation, despite our protestations that this is simply untrue, and the debate was badly out of focus as a result. The large audience gave us a comfortable win in the vote. xxix) Chico State University was identified by Playboy Magazine (no less) as one of the top party schools in America, and our hosts certainly showed us a good time. I suspect that the publicity for our debate was drafted in one of the many bars we visited, because the leaflets proudly announced the arrival of Ian MacMullen and “Louki Akrita” – Andy’s street address in Athens. He noted with relief (or was it regret?) that they had not used his Glasgow street name – “Victoria Circus”. The debate at Chico was a major event, judged by a panel of academics as well as watched by an audience of over 300. Proposing the “Rodney King” motion used at Cincinnati, Chico seemed unable to decide whether to condemn all economic sanctions or just those imposed unilaterally by the USA. We were able to exploit this confusion for a clear victory. But my abiding memory of Chico will not be the debate or the partying (which was evidently too good to remember) but two happy afternoons we spent in

the beautiful Bidwell Park with weather, in early November, like a perfect English summer’s day.

7 IOWA TO NEW YORK: THE MID-WEST PART 2 xxx) Due to bad weather in the Chicago area, our journey from Chico to Iowa City contrived to fill an entire day: we left our hotel at 5am and did not reach Iowa until nearly midnight. However, if we had to lose time at one of our stops, the University of Iowa would not have been a bad choice (although see xxxii for Wabash!). The hospitality was excellent, but Iowa is only famous for two things: corn and Cindy Crawford, and she no longer lives there. The Iowa debaters, neither of whom resembled Miss Crawford, surprised us by arguing for class-based affirmative action, rather than a race or gender system; this turn of events forced us to think on our feet, and actually jolted us into one of our best performances. A series of audience votes sent a rather discouraging message about the futility of parliamentary style debate: although they overwhelmingly chose us as the better team, nobody had changed their mind on the strength of the arguments. xxxi) I spent most of my time in Indianapolis surrounded by young girls. Not only is this true, it even has an innocent explanation. Our hotel was full of teenage cheerleaders attending a national competition they hoped to win by sheer weight of make-up; the Italian restaurant had been booked by no less than three girls celebrating their sixteenth birthdays; and we spent an afternoon as the only male members of an audience for the new Brad Pitt film. Butler University interrupted our carousing with yet another debate on affirmative action, for which students had to be turned away at the door after the room reached its capacity of 200. Butler does not have a regular debate team, and this became apparent despite the eloquence of their speakers.

However, they do have a basketball team and were keen for us to see them in action, so I obligingly sat for a couple of hours without any clue what was happening on the sweaty court below. xxxii) There is nothing to do in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Of course, that’s not strictly true: you can take a tour of the sewage works, the high school and the new housing estate. I know because we did. Wabash College is an odd institution: all male, immensely rich with only 800 students and an organised series of formal dinners to instruct these young men as to how to behave in the social circles to which they will soon belong. Appropriately enough in such a conservative setting, the home team proposed shrinking the American welfare system. Although the bulk of their case was moderate and well-reasoned, they shot themselves in the foot with some unnecessarily harsh attacks on “good-for-nothing scroungers”, and we were able to sound a note of compassion sufficient to win by a single vote out of fifty. xxxiii) After six days in Indiana, we were disappointed at the thought of only one day in Chicago. In fact we did not even get that, because Northwestern University is actually in Evanston, a suburb of the windy city, and out frantic itinerary did not allow time to get into the city proper. However, although our visit was brief, there was still an opportunity at the post-debate reception for a man with an unfeasibly large beard to explain in all its conspiratorial glory the scandal that is the American dental

profession. In the preceding debate, to our dismay, the home team again proposed affirmative action, although this was the most complex and subtle version of the case we encountered on tour. Indeed, I felt happy that we held our own against a carefully prepared team that included the current American policy debate champion. xxxiv) For our thirty-third and last debate stop, our hosts at New York University decided to bring us back down to earth, after ten weeks of veneration, by housing us in the YMCA. Looking on the bright side, it was fortunate that we had bunk beds, because two single beds would have covered every square inch of floor space in our two-man room. Our debate was, as at St Louis, conducted in front of high-school debaters at the close of the local Urban Debate League tournament. Sadly, but understandably, the 300-plus kids were tired and saw little interest in listening to us propose abolition of the minimum wage – an economic policy motion which was surely not a good choice by our hosts. So our last debate was not a glorious finale: in fact, we had to shout to try and make ourselves heard in a hall full of children carrying on their own conversations. Good practice for Speakers’ Corner, I suppose.

Our five-day trip to New York was planned to coincide with the national conference for speech-communication academics, so we spent much of our time catching up with hosts from the last ten weeks, which was a welcome experience in almost all cases. A New York-based alumnus of the American tour treated us to a superb dinner at the Oyster Bar in the magnificent Grand Central Station. And then there was the Empire State Building, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, the UN headquarters and the rest of the “Big Apple”. But if you want to know more, you’ll just have to buy me a drink and ask me.