Looking Forward from State Student Congress

The hallways been roaring with news of the Student Congress State team’s win on November 1^st and 2^nd, and for good reason too. Coming in 28 points over Dickinson, the second-place school. The event drew a large amount of attention to the often-forgotten Student Congress, Speech, and Debate teams not just for the size of the victory, but also for its timing: the Spartans haven’t won State at Student Congress since the 1970’s.

The Student Congress team is part of a larger, year-round series of competitions known as Fargo North High Forensics. The Forensics team also contains the Debate team in the winter and the Speech team in the spring.

Christian Novak, one of the judges describes the program as such: “Forensics at FNH aims to challenge all students using a creative outlet to express their ideas through writing and public speaking.”  Students work hard and must possess a very real grasp of both sides of hot-button issues and policies in the same way that the National or State Legislature Committees do.

It’s hard work, with practices stretching on for hours and extra research time stacked on top of that, but it is fulfilling to the utmost. “It’s a lot of interesting topics and the students get to write and dispute them. The students come up with more, and sometimes better ideas than our regular lawmakers do,” advisor Clover Ellingson says with a smile, “And the students really got close to eachother. It’s fun to watch them work together to kind of dominate the floor and stop the other teams from talking.”

Looking forward to the next few years, Fargo North can depend on a powerful underclass team and a fantastic group of upperclassmen and mentors to lead them to further victories.