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Story by Erin Peterson / Illustrations by Cornelia Li

In the four years since Beau Larsen became director of forensics at Macalester, the program’s five teams—mock trial, ethics/bioethics, policy debate, moot court, and Model United Nations—have earned plenty of national attention. 

Macalester individuals and teams have landed top finishes at the Cross Examination Debate Association Nationals and celebrated an ethics bowl national championship win with coaching support from Casey Moerer ’23. They’ve qualified for the American Mock Trial Association’s National Championship in 2023 and 2024 with guidance from Niloy Ray ’99.

Larsen has also relaunched the policy debate program, a century-old program that dissolved during the 2010s—and it has roared back to national relevance. During their tenure, Larsen has coached a team to the quarterfinals of the National Debate Tournament (NDT), the most prestigious competition in the field.

It’s the kind of wide-ranging success that places Larsen firmly in the company of previous beloved forensics leaders including Dick Lesicko ’75, Scott Nobles, and Roger Mosvick ‘52. And a new generation of celebrated student competitors is earning recognition alongside Mac’s most notable forensics alumni, including Vice President Walter Mondale ’50 and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan ’61.

Today, Larsen and the eighty students who participate in forensics each year remain deeply committed to the approaches that have long fueled Macalester’s success. “In forensics, students have space to test ideas, build intellectual rigor, and refine the skill they need no matter what their major is—communication,” says Larsen. “My students learn across the course of a season what it means to dedicate yourself to something fully and submerge yourself in hard work as part of the process.”

Larsen is also positioning students for future success and leadership opportunities. In an era of polarization, Larsen sees forensics as a way for students to practice the skills of respectful and thoughtful disagreement both on campus and beyond it. “We want to push one another to not settle for the easy answers, and instead to think deeply together and dialogue across difference as an antidote,” they say.

Forensics students at Mac are experts at dissecting arguments, asking key questions, exposing contradictions, and finding the heart of a disagreement. But as fiercely competitive as they are, they share a  powerful sense of common purpose. That’s why we asked alumni, students, and coaches to share some of the values instilled by forensics that we can all agree on.

A crash course in forensics at Macalester

While many college forensics programs focus on just one or two events, Macalester’s “big tent” approach includes five distinct competitive formats—a significant advantage for students, says forensics director Beau Larsen. “It means that there are many different types of public speaking and argumentation ‘laboratories’ for students to choose from—and it gives them a chance to shine in the events they choose.”

Here’s a guide to all of them.

• Mock trial: Teams of up to ten students compete in tournaments by performing as attorneys and witnesses in simulated criminal and civil cases.
• Ethics/bioethics bowl: Teams of up to six students analyze real-world cases centered on contemporary ethical dilemmas, building arguments grounded in philosophical frameworks.
• Policy debate: Students develop arguments around a yearlong legal, domestic, or international policy resolution.
• Moot court: Students simulate Supreme Court-style proceedings by presenting appellate oral arguments on a yearlong case problem.
• Model United Nations: A team of twelve students represents a country’s interests in diplomacy, negotiation, and policymaking at a national Model UN conference each spring.

Your authentic voice is your power

Li Guan ’15 is a climate and environment manager for the fashion company SHEIN.

Shanghai native Li Guan joined the mock trial team as a first-year student and was proud of the rapid improvements she had made in her public speaking skills since she’d arrived at Macalester.

For some, that hard work wasn’t enough. 

Guan remembers one early tournament when an older judge stopped her and said, “Your English is good—for a foreigner.”

The offhand comment stunned her. But it became a catalyst. “I made up my mind: I wanted to perform as well as any native speaker. I would invest the time to get better,” she says.

She did. With intense focus, she huddled with teammates to hash out case theories, write out direct and cross-examinations, and practice relentlessly. She spent long bus rides to tournaments as far away as Cincinnati finding ways to improve, and analyzing every success and failure on the return home.

It wasn’t long before she shifted her focus from polishing her English skills to developing a voice that would set her apart. “At first, I would observe and copy the styles and tones of the juniors and seniors who were experienced in presenting themselves in a sophisticated way,” she says. “Later on, I found a style and tone—a little bit sassy—that fit who I was.”

Her efforts paid off. She was an integral member of Macalester’s mock trial team that advanced to nationals three times over the course of her four years as a student. And she landed All-American honors as a witness in 2015.

Today, Guan, who lives in Guangzhou, contributes to projects for the fashion retailer SHEIN that support the company’s efforts to manage its environmental impact responsibly and transparently. “A lot of my job is to persuade the leadership and cross-functional teams that the company must run sustainably to succeed,” she says. “So the skills I learned in forensics, like effective communication, public speaking, and even putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, continue to be beneficial to me.”

Preparation drives top performance under pressure

Andrew Gordon ’05 is a district court judge in Ramsey County, Minnesota’s Second Judicial District.

As a student, Andrew Gordon says he sometimes got a knot in the pit of his stomach before mock trial competitions. “It was a little bit of self-doubt,” he says. “I was thinking: Can I do this? Am I the right person to do it? Am I going to win this case? That feeling was what made me put in the work to answer all those questions in the affirmative—even if I didn’t end up winning.”

The pressure felt particularly acute because Gordon had grown up in Jamaica. While he had participated in parliamentary debate as a high school student, he hadn’t absorbed details and nuances of American law in the same way as many of his teammates.

But as Gordon looks back on those sometimes nerve-wracking experiences two decades later, he knows they have benefited him in his current role as a district court judge. “I learned to express an opinion not just in front of an audience, but in front of an audience where you expect to be challenged,” he says. “Being a judge is not like a political rally where everyone who’s there will agree with you. You know that someone in that room disagrees with you, maybe vehemently. You’re trying to figure out what’s going on, and you develop the presence of mind to be in that moment.”

Gordon adds that this capacity for composure and clarity has been essential in his work. “Often, the stakes are high. Someone’s liberty is at stake. Money is on the line. There may be constitutional issues. The skills you learn in debate are skills that have value in the real world.”

Collaboration helps people achieve at the highest levels

Toby Heytens ’97 is a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Toby Heytens is the first to admit that his 18-year-old self was “extremely competitive.” 

That’s what attracted him to Macalester’s forensics team in the first place. With high-stakes tournaments and clear winners and losers, mock trial seemed all but engineered for him.

But it was also an intensive education in collaboration and communication. “A mock trial team has to have at least six people on it, and no single person can earn more than 30 of the 140 possible points,” he says. “It’s literally impossible to win alone, even if you’re the greatest mock trial competitor in the history of the world.”

That structure led him and his teammates—fierce competitors in their own right—to pursue a more cooperative approach. 

If a case needed an overhaul, for example, it meant they couldn’t rely on ego or individual brilliance to carry them through—they had to trust one another’s judgment, stay aligned on goals, and commit to rebuilding it together.

The cooperative strategy was successful: Heytens was part of a team during his junior year that went undefeated at nationals. 

Nearly thirty years after graduating, Heytens considers the lessons he learned about building effective teams to be some of the most important of his life. “To achieve competitive success, you have to care about and work well with each other,” he says.

Finding “your people” is life-changing

Molly McGinnis Stine ’87 was a two-time Cross Examination Debate Association national champion; today, she is a lawyer at Troutman Pepper Locke in Chicago.

“What did I get from Macalester forensics? The ability to think critically, the ability to research, the ability to see things from more than one point of view, and the ability to listen. It helped me develop my voice and my willingness to speak out. I learned to build consensus and I learned how to push back in a productive way.

But also, as is true of any group endeavor, these people became my people. We were in those tin cans of vans for all those hours on dark highways. We were staying in budget motels, and we were trying to figure out how to stretch our daily food allowance. I became friends with them, and I’ve stayed friends with them.”

Strong minds can change

Dick Lesicko ’75 led Macalester’s forensics program from 1984 to 2021.

After competing successfully in Macalester’s forensics program as a student—including a top-sixteen performance at the National Debate Tournament as a senior—Dick Lesicko ’75 couldn’t wait to return to Macalester as a coach.

It wasn’t just that he felt he could have an impact with the raw talent that Macalester attracted. It was also that he’d be helping students develop skills and habits that they’d lean on for the rest of their lives—including the often-undervalued skill of changing their minds. “When you’ve had to argue both sides of a proposition, I think it makes you a little less dogmatic and a little more willing to compromise,” he says. “Sometimes, you realize that you’re wrong—and when you’re testing your ideas, it’s okay to admit that you’ve changed your mind.” 

Lesicko says that this is a useful skill within the context of forensics, and even more powerful beyond it. “In life, you can’t have a real interaction with someone unless [you’re open to] the possibility that they can change your mind, and you’ll be the better for it,” he says. “That’s hard work, but it’s also a sign of real emotional maturity.”

There’s a great big world beyond Macalester to discover

Beau Larsen has been director of forensics since 2021.

Students often joke about the “Macalester bubble”—the sense that campus can feel like its own world and culture. 

But Beau Larsen says that for forensics students, the whole point is to go beyond that bubble, both literally and figuratively. National tournaments bring together dozens of the top teams from across the country.

“Students can test ideas with students from other colleges and universities, which is something they can’t get through traditional classes,” Larsen says. “This is my favorite part of the job: traveling with students so they can immerse themselves into the transformative power of forensics competition.”

Macalester Lands National Championship in Ethics Bowl

In February, Macalester won the 2025 Ethics Bowl National Championship, besting thirty-five teams from around the country. The victory, a nailbiter against Stanford decided by a single ballot point, tackled everything from policies on space weaponry to term lengths for federal judges. 

It marked the second time in four years that the team had won the national championship. Sihaam Barre ’28, Madeleine Heafey ’28, Colette Lawler ’27, Vin Leang ’27, Rūta Rupeikyte ’27, and Eva Sturm ’26 were led by Coach Casey Moerer ’23.

Erin Peterson is a Minneapolis-based writer.