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Jasmine Evenstad ’26 (left) has been part of speech and debate for almost six years, and with the Baker Duncan Debate scholarship, she has gotten funding from �԰����� to pursue that passion. 

Even though she’s majoring in anthropology, Evenstad makes time to participate in debate in a collegiate setting. Being on the debate team has been drastically different from what she experienced in high school. “I've been to several tournaments with the [�԰�����] team and also worked on research projects. They have all been eye-opening learning experiences and have given me a very special lens for viewing the world because it forces you to consider contemporary issues from all angles [in order to] defend or attack any position,” she says. 

The Baker Duncan Debate Scholarship is competitive, merit-based, and renewable. The $10,000 scholarship is given to first-year students with a talent for debating and a desire to commit to �԰�����’s Debate program, which is led by William Jensen and KC Vernon. At �԰�����, teams compete in national tournaments, create research projects, and have access to dedicated, supportive faculty members as coaches. The debate team is composed of students from across the country with diverse backgrounds and mixed levels of debate experience.

This scholarship allowed Evenstad and other debate students like her to commit to �԰�����. “I was very grateful that I ended up getting financial aid through scholarships like the Baker Duncan that made it possible for me to come here,” she says. “I knew I wanted to go to a smaller school where every student's path to success academically is personal, and the �԰����� education is really valuable and reputable.”

Besides debate, Evenstad is also deeply involved on campus. She’s in the Phi Delta Kappa sorority, serves as sorority diversity, equity, and inclusion chair for the Greek Council, and works in the political science office. 

�԰����� debaters like Evenstad are paving the way for a better future. “Debate helps create the leaders of our generation who can imagine new ways of being and interacting with the world and its issues that we've inherited,” she says.