D.C. Charter School Student Credits Debate With Getting Her Into Harvard

May 08, 2023 At 12:34 PM EDT

At the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL) Annual Dinner in Dallas in late March, Liv Birnstad spoke before a packed room of distinguished guests.

Just a few years earlier, her nerves may have consumed her. But as the 2023 NAUDL Debater of the Year, Birnstad, a high school senior, delivered a powerful speech about how she sacrificed her comfort to debate and, in the process, learned courage and found her voice.

NAUDL says the Debater of the Year award recognizes "a debater who demonstrates commitment to debate, improvement in their academic performance and leadership in their school, Urban Debate league and community." The student, who receives at least $2,000 in scholarship money in connection with the award, must be a graduating senior with a 2.0 GPA or higher who has been active in debate for two years.

In an interview with Newsweek after the Annual Dinner, Birnstad said she was initially pushed into debate by her eighth grade English teacher who saw her immense potential.

"I absolutely did not want to do it," she told Newsweek. "I was so nervous. I was riddled with anxiety."

She thought she would only do one tournament and be done. Instead, she "fell in love with the activity."

Four years later, Birnstad, a graduating senior from Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., said the NAUDL honor is "bittersweet."

"I'm overjoyed...but it means that my debate career is actually over," she said. "I'm coming to the end of this chapter, but it means a lot."

Debate has had a great impact on Birnstad, including on her approach to her schoolwork.

"My freshman year, I realized it was really easy to game the system and do bare-minimum work but still get perfect scores because the rubric laid out exactly what you needed to do," she said.

But this got boring for Birnstad. Debate inspired her to engage with the curriculum in a deeper, more nuanced way.

Birnstad began aiming not only to get good grades, but to produce work that she was proud of and that would help her make better arguments at debate tournaments. In recent years, Birnstad has debated subject matter ranging from NATO policy and water management to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

David Trigaux, the director of programing and development at the Washington Urban Debate League (WUDL), of which Birnstad is a member, said the young debater is "incredibly mature and thoughtful."

"She works smarter than most adults," he said. "I'll be clear: She's not the hardest-working person, but she is the smartest-working person. She knows what she needs to do and gets it done, and she doesn't waste a bunch of time staring at a screen or beating her head against a wall."

These skills carried Birnstad and her partner to the semifinals at the 2023 Urban Debate National Championships in March, the furthest a WUDL team has ever gone in the tournament since the league was founded in 2014.

The Capital City team was ranked fourth going into the elimination round alongside 15 other teams and fell in the semis to the team from Port of Los Angeles High School, which went on to win the annual competition.

After it was announced that Birnstad's team lost, one judge surprised her with a brief acknowledgment of her commitment to debate.

"The final judge knew that I was a senior, and he goes, 'It's my understanding that we have a senior in this room debating,' and [when] he said that, I almost started crying," she said. "That was my last debate round ever....It was a tough pill to swallow."

The skills Birnstad acquired through debate not only apply to her academic career but have also helped her become a community advocate on the D.C. State Board of Education, which oversees the area's public schools.

Birnstad has served two consecutive terms on the Student Advisory Committee (SAC), representing student voices on the board.

She said her debate experience helped her land the position her junior year and prepared her for the work she does, which has included advocating for a measure to codify student voices on the board, which was recently condensed into a set of bylaw changes expected to pass later this year. Those changes will establish the SAC's presence on the board through the end of December.

"Debate has helped me understand how to distill that information [related to the board's work], how to ask meaningful questions about that information [and] how to present my own information in a way that is both compelling but also accurate," she said.

As a student member of the board, Birnstad does everything a regular board member does, including writing and voting on resolutions, such as one to establish a citywide Pride prom. She now co-chairs the SAC and also sits on an education standards committee.

Trigaux said Birnstad is fearless among the older board members.

"She's calling out people 50 years older than her in public meetings and getting her way," he said. "She's using her advocacy skills."

Through her work in debate and on the board, Birnstad has become confident expressing herself publicly and working with others.

"Maybe it's because I'm a young girl, but I was more prone to just believing what people told me, and I didn't feel the need to think independently," she said. "And I think being on the board and doing debate helped me learn to think independently of that and not be afraid to speak up when I noticed that there was a discrepancy in what I thought and what others thought, to at least clarify things."

She added that she is no longer afraid of looking stupid by asking questions or facing patronizing comments.

"I realized that some people—maybe it's a sexism thing, maybe it's not—are just going to be condescending," she said. "I had to learn how to emotionally navigate that when I started on the board and that's been very helpful."

All of this work will lead Birnstad to Harvard University this fall, which she announced at the NAUDL annual dinner. She credits this achievement to the sport that gave her so much.

"I would not be going to Harvard if it was not for debate," she said, adding that it gave her the academic skills to obtain a high GPA and write college essays, as well as the confidence to apply to the Ivy League school.

She is also a 2023 Coca-Cola Scholar, receiving a $20,000 achievement-based college scholarship that recognizes students for their capacity to lead and serve in their schools and communities.

Birnstad is not debating in college, but she will continue to work with WUDL this summer and will likely work with the Boston Urban Debate League's national circuit tournament team.

She hopes to become a teacher and wants to continue learning so that she can become a better debate coach and judge.

"Debate is a resource that's abundant. If I give it to someone else, I don't lose it. And it has given me so much. I really feel like debate has liberatory potential for the people that do it," she said. "Because it has given me so much, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to people if I'm not passing along my understanding of debate or my skills."