My Mizzou Story
Nicholas Dudley
Nicholas Dudley's mom says he was a shy, quiet child who spoke only when he had something to say. At MU, he found his voice and won a national debate championship.
Dudley, a senior majoring in political science, talked his way to the national debate title in Akron, Ohio, last spring when he won the National Forensics Association Lincoln-Douglas Debate Championship. Dudley is part of MU's team that became the first group ever to advance all five of its debaters to the elimination rounds at the national tournament.
Other members of that team were Chance Harp, sophomore in economics; Tyler Landes and Kyle Dennis, sophomores in business; and Chris Shaw, senior in business. Dudley and Shaw also finished tied for 11th in a two-person parliamentary team competition in St. Paul, Minn., and were ranked second for most of the year.
Dudley credits the team's two coaches, Mizzou law students Jeremy Hollingshead and Chris Banks, for leading the five debaters through hundreds of hours of preparation and then traveling with them to tournaments, all without pay.
Preparing for debates is time-consuming work. The team members pore over electronic information and search law reviews and other periodicals. They spends hours clipping stories and collecting quotes in search of opinions from great legal minds. As the tournaments approach, their lives becomes cluttered with file folders filled with information.
"The week of nationals, we spent 20 hours cutting evidence," he says. "We put it on pieces of paper with tag lines, citations and highlights to read it efficiently."
Dudley estimates that team members spent 200 hours preparing the case that went to nationals — a resolution about reforming the criminal justice system. His winning argument was that police interrogations should be abolished.
While collecting facts, Dudley gains confidence as he gets to know the case like the back of his hand. "You always get excited, even it it's something you've argued 10,000 times," he says.