The St. Bonaventure Mock Trial team is heading to Washington, D.C. today for an invitational at American University. This will be the team’s fourth competition of the season.
The team began its season with a competition at Drexel University in Philadelphia. It then debated at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. Most recently, the team hosted the “Friar Faceoff.”
One case is given to each Mock Trial team, and they develop that case throughout the year. This year, the case is centered on an accidental death suit; an eleven-year-old girl allegedly shot and killed her best friend, as either part of a game or an addiction to violence. The team is able to decide many aspects of the case–is the girl guilty or not–and then develop their argument.
“We’re doing intentional shooting” Jessica Ungaro, a junior sociology major, said. “We’re trying to say that this little girl purposely shot and killed her best friend. We have two psychologists and a psychiatrist who say that this girl is suffering from psychopathy.”
The team breaks up into a few smaller teams in order to try different strategies.
“We’ve been testing out different theories, and we’ve been competing well for this early in the year,” Ungaro said.
This is an important competition for the team, because it allows them to get out of the area. Junior finance major Sebastian Bellm said because of the team’s determination, it has seen much success.
“Our team has been placing well every tournament, and won several individual awards,” Bellm, who has a law and society minor said. “The teams have also been improving every tournament. We are further along this year than we were last year at this point, which is exactly what we were hoping to see.”
Ungaro said the team is looking forward to a new playing field.
“It’s one of the furthest competitions we’ve ever gone to,” Ungaro said. “We found out last year it was hard to compete against teams we’ve never seen, because we were used to competing against teams in our area, so we decided to go to some tournaments further away this year to get some experience competing against teams we’ve never seen before.”
The team leaves for D.C. Friday and competes in two trials Saturday and two trials Sunday. Each competing team does two trials on the plaintiff side and two trials on the defense side. The trials have two judges who score the teams on a two-point scale. A team’s record is out of eight points in the end.
Ungaro has the position of an attorney on both sides.
“On the plaintiff side, I direct the grieving mother who lost her child, and I do the closing for the plaintiff, which is nine minutes of thinking on your feet and recalling facts from the trial. On the defense, I cross the grieving mother, and I direct the gun safety expert.”
The Mock Trial team is hoping to come out of this tournament with a good score that will allow them to move forward in the competition. Senior Nick Taylor, a sociology major, said the fate of the team lies the in hands of many young competitors.
“This year’s team has a lot of new faces that have had to step into some pretty big roles, as well as old faces taking on even bigger challenges,” Taylor said. “Everyone is exceeding expectations though and we are well on our way to placing highly the rest of the season.”
Bellm added that continuing on an uphill path is the goal for the team this season.
“Our hopes this season to take the success we had last season, build upon it, and improve on it,” Bellm said.
