Nominated by Aaron P. Donaldson, Sydney Verga (Team VP of Debate), Hannah Koh (Team VP of Speech)

Blue has been the President of the HSU Debate team and has been the primary recruiting, mentoring, and coaching force for our team. This has created one of the most inclusive teams HSU has ever had, represented by women and men of color, students with disabilities and other marginalized identities, and open transparent conversation about disagreements and conflicts that arise on our team. Blue has been one of the most competitive debaters on our team, as well as one of the best at competitive speech. She has won awards for Excellence in Debating as well as shared our team MVP award.

She has worked with other marginalized identities to give them the fortitude and tactics necessary to see similar success in an activity that is overwhelmingly blind to their needs. This requires creativity, but also resilience in the face of discursive violence and erasure and ethnographic research in the form of unique lived experience that empowers her to craft lessons and instruction for other students. She has demonstrated with her ceaseless organizing on campus that these lessons and the ways she applies them have been especially well learned and her excellence in that regard is incredibly unique. Blue has shown tremendous maturity during incredibly difficult conflicts which inevitably arise on a team that situates arguing at the heart of its activity, and she has done so in a way that has grown the team, empowered historically marginalized voices, and elevated our competitive potentials all at once.

I have coached debate for nearly 20 years in college; I have not once had a student who has been so effective, invested, and mature in these capacities, nor one that has been such an effective recruiter and cross-campus organizer. Just this year Blue has organized exhibition debates with Greek life groups, the African American Center for Academic Excellence, Associated Students, and the Communication Club.