So this year I became president of my school's debate team. And I know, it may sound like I'm taking high school debate a bit too seriously. Still, debate is my passion, and I'd like to see my team go far. However, only four people got to state, and only one person, yours truly, was able to make it to nationals last year, which really irritated me. Our debate team had a couple issues:

1. As an asian myself, I can safely say debate is one of the extracurricular activities 90% of asian parents push their kids into, whether they like debate or not. So half of our team is kids who like debate and want to compete. Some kids were forced by their parents, but still take debate seriously and want to compete. The rest of the kids are either a) just terrible debaters or b) kids who blow off debate and don't show up to meetings 

2. Our debate team didn't get as much funding as compared to stuff like sports or theatre, which is frustrating. We didn't even have a debate coach. Thos is because our school isn't that good at debate. Out of a team of over a 100 people (if you're wondering, the school has about 2500) 4 people made it to state and 1 made it to nationals. That's not enough to get good funding.

3. Caps. Our team had a system in place where after 4 tournaments, you have to sit out the rest if tournaments for the year. So all the kids who are good at debate have to sit it out, and the kids who don't give a fuck about debate or those who are terrible at debate are forced to sign up for the tournament (because the school needs to fill a certain amount of slots). Then the school gets thrashed. 

So I was elected captain at the beginning of the year. My goal is pretty simple: we need to go further, win more, become good enough at debate so that the school increases our funding. The hard part is getting there. 

In the meantime, to become the best we can, I decided I needed to start asking for membership fees. Normally debate is free, but we needed to pool money for a coach. I went to the school and asked them permission to collect fees and do fundraisers and stuff. Since the principal likes me, I got the go-ahead. I started collecting a fee of $75 per person, and told people to see me if they couldn't financially afford it. Next, we did a few fundraisers: everybody brought in stuff they didn't need anymore and we did a yard sale/raffle. We threw a pool party with a $5 entry fee. Finally, we started a GoFundMe page and got our school to put it on their Facebook/Twitter. 

We finally had enough money to hire a good coach, and we did.

Next thing I did (I had the authority to do this, being captain) was remove the caps. My belief is that if you want to go to tournaments, you have to be the best. I arranged what I call tournament qualifiers: the kids in each categories would face off in rounds against each other, and the highest 5 in each category would go. 

Lastly, and most controversially, I kicked a lot of kids off the team. Debate so far has been a club where anybody could join, but I made it into a 'by try-out only' kind of club. There isn't actually a tryout, but it is similar: if you miss 5 meetings (there are 3 meetings a week), you're out. If you're falling behind (ranking badly in 2 qualifying tournaments in a row), I'll give you extra one-on-one time with the coach to improve. By the next qualifying tournament, if you don't do well, you're out.

My reasoning behind this is simple: it's a really large team, and we only can afford to hire one good coach. The coach has to spend time with 113 different people, and many of these people just aren't improving or just don't care The more people on the team, the less time he has to focus on each individual, their strengths, their flaws, and how they can improve. If we kick out the kids that aren't improving, the coach will stop wasting his time and help those who can and want to be helped. 

Some people are calling me an asshole, but I think my policy is tough but fair. If you're falling behind, I'll give you one-on-one time with the coach. If you improve, great! If not, you'll just be wasting the team's time. 