Right or wrong, young men and women finding their voice is a beautiful thing

On Valentine’s Day, among the 17 lives taken on the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was that of 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff. Alyssa was an accomplished soccer player and a member of the school’s widely respected debate team.

As soon as I saw the news that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had been attacked, my mind immediately went to the debate team. The first time I had ever heard of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was nearly two decades earlier, when I was a student in Florida. The national champion of my particular flavor of debate — mock student congress — was a young man from the school.