Ordinarily, most couples would tend to avoid arguing with each other — but not University of Oregon debate partners, Liz Fetherston and Kehl Van Winkle. Debate is what brought them together.

The pair placed 6th out of 55 teams at the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence competition at Northern Arizona University last month. Additionally, Fetherston was awarded the title of Top Speaker and Van Winkle was awarded 4th Speaker.

Both Fetherston and Van Winkle have been involved in debate since high school. The couple admitted that if it weren’t for their partnership, they may not have done so well.

“I ended up hating debate at first. I just wanted to quit and it was terrible,” Fetherston said. “I thought he [Van Winkle] was really mean in the first practice debate we ever had in high school.”

When Fetherston was in high school she attended the UO Debate Institute, a program that UO Speech and Debate members put on to help high school debate students learn more about the field. From that point forward, she was hooked.

Since then, Fetherston and Van Winkle have been a part of the UO Forensics program and have competed annually at various competitions. “That’s why I applied to go to college here, it was actually the debate team,” Fetherston said. She feels that every student could benefit from competitive debate in one way or another.

“It helps you succeed academically as well. Learning how to articulate what your opinions are helps to write papers very quickly.” For this reason, she and Van Winkle currently volunteer at Thurston High School in Springfield to coach the speech and debate team.

“I think it helps to some degree the fact that we are a couple. We spend so much time together,” Van Winkle said. “Even though it’s not always the most romantic conversations, we are able to come up with a lot of off-the-wall ideas and develop them more because of how comfortable we are with each other.”

Both debaters are looking forward to beginning their graduate studies next fall. Fetherston plans to earn her English for Speakers of Other Languages endorsement, and hopes to become a high school teacher. She would also like to continue coaching high school speech and debate. Van Winkle anticipates going into law and hopes to attend Lewis and Clark Law School.

As the first UO Speech and Debate member to be awarded Top Speaker, Fetherston feels like she is part of a larger movement taking place for gender roles.

“It’s just statistically true that there are not very many women reaching high levels of competitive success,” Fetherson said. “This year every NPTE national champion was a woman. I thought that was a really cool way to end my career — knowing that women are achieving success.”

Director of Forensics, Trond Jacobsen, is very proud of the entire UO Forensics program’s accomplishments this year. He describes Fetherston as a great student and an exceptional debater.

“Her legacy as a leader is that she made everyone better and more successful,” Jacobsen said.