Arnold Arnez

04/19/15

(646) 384 – 0337

43-01 72nd st, Queens, NY, 11377

aarnez8639@bths.edu

Brooklyn Technical High School

My debate experience is like many, the nervous quivering in my stomach before the round starts, the

adrenaline pumping through me, my voice bursting like a fire hydrant the moment I begin spreading my

speech, and the pride of winning an award, my effort and even my worth made to shine like silver to all

who see me walk to receive it. Deep inside, the award’s reflection shows my face, and I see my past, and

I wonder if this reward has been worth it if I had no friends to share pride and community with, or if I

had been lost in loneliness as I had been before debate.

Debate has thus for me been the finding of myself, of being accepted and honored in a

community where for much of my childhood, I knew many people, but was friends with no one, silent in

a loud world. Debate allowed me to find a community where intellectual skill is held with esteem, and

not with the confusion and false delusions that is commonly seen in the mainstream. I’m sure that

feeling is felt by many, hell, you’ve felt it, when you have an idea about your life, or the world, but you

speak upon deaf ears, and know that this idea is yours, but only yours, alone to you. My debate team

has been the cornerstone for my intellectual growth, where as a child I was told I grew quickly, too

quickly, and found people who are both fun to be fool with cause we’re all clowns, and can become a

college seminar with professors in Afropessimism, French Postmodernism, Marxism, and many other

fields of revolutionary thought. I found myself in the people who embrace their identities, and the new

understanding of themselves, that was always becoming.

As a child, I had an opaque view of culture, of a flag and a language, but I thought all people

would know about it, but culture to me was in the shadows, to me I was blind to myself, and I grew up

colorblind to the rest. As a Latin@, there are two sides to the history that comprises that term, the

European culture that was forced upon with invasion, conquest, and assimilation, and the people who

would be the Indigenous, for me, the Inca people who would become the Quechua people as the Empire

was colonized. My people were made to slave for and become white, or face the conquistadors, white

as the grim reaper and their sword as sharp as a scythe. The side my family toke was the one that toke

national pride in Independence, but rejected the idea that they were like the ‘Indios, los campesinos’ a

sign of dishonor and poverty because they were savage, yet their faces no different from that of the

‘Indio’. In debate, the Indigenous would be a lost side of my culture, a side of me that was separate and

other, to a world which prides inclusion, I felt comfort and kinship knowing that I held a culture that

survives today, where my voices like theirs could speak so loudly to so many in Bolivia.

I began my journey on the debate team my freshman year, hearing the opportunity to begin a

process of learning politics and becoming more socially aware. I struggled learning to debate while I saw

the rest of my team move forward, move beyond what I could have hoped to achieve. My years after

would become better, but would never seem to move forward enough, seeing my friends leave me

behind in the dust. I began to experience a pain in never being able to see my goals being realized, often

wondering if debate has become a burden to myself if I see my goals only embedded within the trophies

I win, and not the rest of the world which I’ve seen which shine brighter than a medal. In my three years

of debate, I have learned to become a debate partner, rather than becoming a lone debater, to see the

friendships I’ve made as being comrades, that in the heat of battle, I could depend on them. As such,

I’ve planned on moving forward on improving not purely for the sake of the trophies and awards, but for

the opportunity to be with the very people who have created who am and can become. With them, I

plan on reaching the heights of the high school debate community, to see my efforts become realized

for my partner and myself, to show that I will not be left behind and that I can achieve heights of glory as

a sign of pride and that people’s efforts can lead to great things, and united we all can do so.

I’ve had two purposes in writing this have been simple, to alleviate the burden of paying to

attend NYCDI, and to right my experience of debate, to see how the story of my life has a message for

the personal growth, even from the parts of my life which scar my ego, for the maturity which debate

has given rise to for many who have had similar experiences. I’m going to be real with you right now,

because many people have experienced the same things that I have, but my goal was to break the

chains that many have when they describe their lives, their person, their very beings, shunned by

themselves because of their shame of failure. I’m writing this to turn these experiences to show that

silence in the loneliness that one feels could be used to move beyond them and make better

experiences, debate camp being the place where debaters are made. It’s debate camps that would allow

me to not only experience the personal growth in a time where little can be accomplished, but also hear

and learn the experiences that others in the debate community, making it a national community that its

known for. That’s why I come to ask the Vince Binder organization for a scholarship, with NYCDI tuition

costing $2000 which completely overstretches my family’s finances. My parents are immigrants with my

father being the one who works for only $40 K a year while my mother has to care for my brothers, and

they have to pay for my eldest brother’s college tuition. I would like to show my parents that their

efforts in coming to live in NYC can provide one of the best educations to make me an intellectual and

future caretaker for my parents who have given so much with the little they can accrue now. This debate

scholarship is a gateway to a summer camp that emphasizes the ID politics, and this is the way I can be

an explorer of my inner self, and of a culture that creates my outlook and mentality in a world that lives

in isolation, a millions islands, cut off from each other, and themselves, but debate and debate camp is

the bridge which makes these islands into a community, un hogar, a home.