Rashid makes his voice heard at the BAUDL Public Debate in Spring 2010
A full-ride scholarship to debate at a major state university seemed a long way off for Rashid Campbell during his early youth in Oakland. Seeing so many around him fail to achieve their dreams, he faced an uphill climb to his current success. The challenges brought a sense of urgency to his search for a positive future: “Everyone around me struggling made me wish for a way out. I wanted to break the cycle and find the tools to improve my life.”
Debate has been a way out for Rashid, but it has also been a way to comprehend the world, a way to build the skills and dispositions it takes to lead a life that is meaningful and transformative. “Debate was the tool that helped me understand how to grasp the world around me,” he says. “It allowed me to organize my words and speak my mind so others could understand me.”
When he joined the debate team at Skyline High School in his junior year, his talent and ambition were matchless, but his grades were a little on the weak side, and four-year university seemed a far off goal. Debate helped him develop the critical reading, writing and argumentation skills to excel in his classes and prepare for college. His commitment to debate also led him to great competitive success: among his many achievements, he and his partner Tanesha Walker won second place in the new leagues division at the Urban Debate National Championship in New York City. To top off the victories of his senior year, he took both top team and top speaker at this year’s BAUDL League Championship.
His victories in debate helped the BAUDL connect Rashid with administrators at the University of Oklahoma, where, with the help of a healthy dose of advocacy from league staff, he was awarded a full four-year scholarship to lend his talents to their debate team. Now, as an O.U. freshman, Rashid is studying Political Science and African American Studies. He plans to use his degree to empower people to advocate for what they believe and make the changes they want to see in the world.
In his quest to use the skills he built in debate to help others find success, Rashid already has a strong start. He joined us as a junior staff member of the BAUDL Summer Institute this year, and his enthusiasm and skill made a real impact on the young participants. Leading everything from serious topic lectures to rollicking circle chants, he helped convince a new generation of shy recruits to boldly follow his path of achievement.
As with most of our debaters, his words are the best: “My ultimate goal is to change the world, with my words and with the truth. No matter what I end up doing it is going to help those who grew up the way I did, under the worst of circumstances, to find success.”
