{"id":40802299122,"date":"2026-10-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/?p=40802299122"},"modified":"2026-11-04T16:13:34","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T21:13:34","slug":"debate-hawks-take-home-individual-and-team-awards-in-new-mexico-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/debate-hawks-take-home-individual-and-team-awards-in-new-mexico-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Debate Hawks Take Home Individual and Team Awards in New Mexico Tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Monmouth University Debate Hawks won eight team and individual speaker awards at a tournament hosted by the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Oct. 24 and 25. The event featured debate teams from eight other colleges and universities including the University of Houston, University of New Mexico, Trinity College, and University of Texas \u2013 San Antonio, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, the American Debate Association had students argue the contention that the United States federal government should substantially reduce arms transfers from the U.S. to one or more of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Japan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Republic of China, the Republic of the Philippines, the State of Israel, Ukraine, and the United Mexican States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

16 Monmouth students competed in the tournament as teams of two, with each team recording victories at the six-round competition. The varsity division featured teams of Sophie Schaub and Aiden Fornicola; Paige Campbell and Kym Davis; and Abigail Branstetter and Emma Levinson. The novice division included teams of Gurvind Dehar and Jazmine Martinez; Zulmy Lozano and Camila Leonardo; Jayla Osorio and Karla Gonzalez; Parker Smith and Sam Chipman; and Ilyana Balaj and Hanon Carroll. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Novice teams Dehar\/Martinez\u00a0and Osorio\/Gonzalez\u00a0received an award for advancing to the semi-final playoff round.\u00a0Four Monmouth debaters in the novice division received an individual speaking award: Carroll (4th\u00a0place), Leonardo (5th place); Balaj (6th\u00a0place); and Chipman (10th\u00a0place).\u00a0In the varsity division, Schaub (9th place) and Fornicola (10th\u00a0place) also earned speaking awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate team\u2019s next competition is the Jersey Shore Invitational hosted by Monmouth University on Nov. 21 and 22.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA special thanks to our teams captains Sophie Schaub and Aiden Fornicola who worked hard preparing the team in the weeks leading up to the tournament,\u201d said Joe Patten, Ph.D., professor of political science and advisor of the debate team. \u201cThanks also to Mike Makfinsky \u201925 and Mariami Ramirez\u00a0\u201926 for helping coach our debaters this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students interested in joining the Debate Hawks can contact Patten at jpatten@monmouth.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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Karla Gonzalez and Jayla Osorio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sophie Schaub and Aiden Fornicola<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Gurvind Dehar and Jazmine Martinez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Monmouth students competed in the tournament as teams of two, with each team recording victories at the six-round competition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":40802299131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[417,444],"tags":[7815,1934,432],"person":[7818,5053,7830,7821,6272,7845,7573,7833,7824,990,7836,6924,6927,7839,7842,6256,7827],"audience":[11,8],"school":[],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802299122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards-publications-research","category-monmouth-now","tag-american-debate-association","tag-debate-hawks","tag-newsletter","person-abigail-branstetter","person-aiden-fornicola","person-camila-leonardo","person-emma-levinson","person-gurvind-dehar","person-hanon-carroll","person-ilyana-balaj","person-jayla-osorio","person-jazmine-martinez","person-jpatten","person-karla-gonzalez","person-kym-davis","person-paige-campbell","person-parker-smith","person-sam-chipman","person-sophie-schaub","person-zulmy-lozano","audience-current-student","audience-faculty"],"squareimage":{"id":40802299143,"rendered":"\"Debate","original":{"url":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2026\/10\/Debate-group-square.jpg","width":3999,"height":3999}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802299122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802299122"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802299122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802299182,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802299122\/revisions\/40802299182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802299131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802299122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802299122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802299122"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802299122"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802299122"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802299122"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802299122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}