Anna McGarrigle & William Kershner

It is 7 p.m. The Palo Alto High School campus is completely dark and mostly quiet, but the English Department is not. Several of the rooms are fully lit, host to the many students who participate in Paly debate.

Parents walk in to serve as judges for debates between students, while others stand by and observe. Students talk, discuss and laughingly joke with each other as their coaches walk in and out of the rooms.

Paly is host to the Lincoln-Douglas, Policy and Public Forum debate teams as well as the Speech Team.

The room where the Speech Team gathers to practice is slightly more quiet. The coaches, Jay Musen and Brandon Silberstein, willingly discuss how Speech functions and its distinctions from the other debate teams.

As they explain the workings of the Speech Team, the rest of the members listen and chime in, showing an eagerness that is not dampened by the fact that few people on campus know that the Paly Speech Team even exists.

Paly Debate Coach Jennie Savage expressed her enthusiasm for the Speech Team, describing it as something different from what other debaters are used to.

“The Speech Team got introduced to Paly about a year ago and it was amazing,” Savage said. “It draws in a different segment than debate does. You’re not going head-to-head against an opponent, [and] I think that’s the biggest difference. In Speech you just go in sequence, [and] you’re not in the room while [your opponents] are competing.”

Musen adds that Speech consists of a variety of different events in which individuals can participate.

“Speech is actually a conglomeration of a number of individual events. One subcategory of Speech includes interpretation events,” Musen said.

“We do a number of [interpretation events],” Musen said. “We do dramatic interpretation, which is where you have ten minutes to perform a piece from a play or a book or any published screenplay as long as it’s print. If you want to do humorous stuff you can do H.I. — humorous interpretation. If you want to work with a partner you can do duo interpretation.”

Another more popular event within the Paly team is Impromptu.

“Impromptu is where you’re given a topic,” Musen said. “It’s actually your choice of three, which can be nouns, quotations or current events. You pick one and have two minutes to prepare a five-minute speech. We have a lot of people who do Impromptu here. It’s probably the most popular event.”

Speech Team captain junior Evelyn Wang, who became captain when the team was first created, discussed her own experiences.

“Last year, I did original prose and poetry and dramatic interpretation,” Wang said. “This year I am doing dramatic interpretation and probably humorous interpretation because I act. I do a lot of theater outside of school and dramatic interpretation is essentially acting. I also really love writing, so original prose and poetry really appealed to me, because it’s writing a ten minute piece and performing it.”

Before being on the Speech Team, Wang participated in Policy debate.

“Speech requires a lot less preparation and constant work than debate,” Wang said. “Debate was constantly prepping; it was constantly having to do new things. For speech you just write, or you prepare one piece and you keep on practicing.”

As a part of the Speech Team, Wang sometimes encountered negative comments from other debate teams.

“A few people have been very condescending, because we’ve just started,” Wang “It’s been two years [since the speech team started] and so it’s just not been a very good feeling.”

However, Wang adds that the negativity has not been a huge issue for the team.

“It’s not as though we have a huge competition going on,” Wang says. “A few individuals have been giving us negative some comments, but it is certainly not indicative of the entire debate team’s opinion of us at all.”