Resolve: The United States federal government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth’s oceans.

That’s the statement that the Manhattan High School debate teams had to either affirm or negate at the Garden City and Topeka West tournaments this weekend and will continue to debate over in future tournaments.

The school team was split into two — one going to Garden City and one going to Topeka West. The group at Topeka West took second place as a school, while the group at Garden City did not place due to not enough participants despite success on the duo team level.

“My partner [senior Peter Sang] and I got to quarter finals,” junior Nathan McClendon said. “We finished 5-0 and were in the top seed.”

Sang placed as third speaker at the competition.

Debate, like most tournaments, works in a bracket system. Other aspects of it, however, are a bit unique.

At the beginning of the season a topic of debate, called the resolution, is decided upon for all schools. This year’s resolution, as stated above, deals with government funded ocean exploration and/or development.

Each team is responsible for researching and finding facts that would support either an affirmative or negative argument about the resolution.

Once assigned a position on the topic, one member of the affirmative team gives an eight-minute speech followed by a three minute cross examination by the opposing team and the affirmative teammate gives a final rebuttal saying why he/she won that round. This is done four times, one time for each of the participants.

“It all takes about an hour and a half [for each round],” senior David Hazelwood said.

The arguments are composed of facts researched by the team in advance.

“We’re good at team research,” junior Arnav Das said. “But we can always research more and do better.”