Kennewick High Students Best Hover in County League Debate
Local debaters faced off against an all-female team from Hover on the future of the Monroe Doctrine.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the first of the series of county league debates held through the county Friday evening, January 28, the county league team of the local high school, upholding the affirmative side of the question, won from the Hover high school, debating the negative. The subject discussed was the Monroe Doctrine, the local debaters maintaining that it should be abandoned while the Hover team advocated its retention. A feature of the contest was the fact that three boys for Kennewick—Elwin Brace, Stanley Randolph, and James Reed—were pitted against three girls for Hover: Miss Toothaker, Miss Ruth Toothaker, and Miss Evans. Both teams showed the result of careful training. Hover had the best team they have developed for several years, Miss Ruth Toothaker proving their strongest speaker. Honors were fairly equally divided between the members of the Kennewick team, the rebuttal work of James Reed and Stanley Randolph being especially strong. Miss Hayes, debate coach for the Pasco high school, acted as judge. A very much appreciated feature of the trip was an excellent oyster supper spread given to the visitors and judge in the domestic science room at the school house immediately after the contest.
“A feature of the contest was the fact that three boys for Kennewick were pitted against three girls for Hover.”
Debate culture in 1916 was a cornerstone of civic intellectual life in small-town Washington. The mention of a co-ed debate between Kennewick and Hover (a community that largely vanished due to the irrigation and dam projects of the mid-20th century) offers a window into the long-lost academic landscape of the Tri-Cities region.
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