TEDx Middlesex: MX Debate Club’s Revolutionary Presentation Beyond Its Circle

The Middlesex Speech & Debate Club presents the culture of speaking to the campus.

Photo from Middlesex instagram

On October 2, 2025, the Middlesex Speech & Debate Club launched the school’s first TEDx program in the BAP theater. With eight talented speakers, the club presented a new, promising program that aspires to promote the speaking culture in Middlesex. Behind the scenes of this unprecedented event lies the question of why the club chose TEDx specifically, and what motivated them to begin the project. 

Though the club had several reasons for choosing TEDx, the club heads unanimously agreed on one major motivation: “accessibility.” One of the club heads, Terry Qi ‘26 reflects that “typically, only the seniors are allowed to take the chapel talk, and since Middlesex has always had a speaking culture, TEDx provides the opportunity to expand the tradition as a highly intellectual and public speaking-oriented one to more students.” 

Students’ interest further reinforced the motivation to begin the TEDx program, as the club wishes to consider every student’s idea and encourage students to develop skills of public speaking. Speech & Debate Club Co-Head Bryan Dong ‘27 shares that “a lot of people were more interested in giving speeches instead of pure debating like in a public forum, and TEDx was easier to get in and for new members to join in the future.” 

Beyond providing more opportunities for Middlesex students to speak, the Speech & Debate Club also aims to expand beyond its current community and share this passion for speaking and debating to a wider audience. Co-Head David Yang 26’ answers that it is because “Tedx has a platform, it has recognition, and we are looking at precedents by other schools with well developed debate speech programs like Milton and Andover, which both have an annual Tedx event and they generate a lot of interest within and outside of their schools.” 

This event marks a crucial milestone of Middlesex’s speech and debate program, as it takes the first step toward making public speaking more accessible to students of all grades and experience levels, giving them the opportunity to share their unique thoughts with their peers within and outside of the Middlesex community. 

Organizing the event was not an easy task. The three clubheads have been planning for about a year and a half, and experienced multiple administrative issues. Securing the license was an important part during the preparation process, as the club needed to amend multiple times in order to get the licensing approved. The stage setup proved equally time consuming, but the club heads worked closely with the photography and stage management team to ensure the event ran smoothly.

Apart from the club heads’ efforts and hard work, the student speakers also faced multiple challenges when preparing for TEDx. To record the speech, every speaker is expected to memorize their scripts of roughly 900 words, and each watched many previous TEDx videos to search for the skills that could be incorporated into the speeches. 

Looking back to this year’s TEDx event, Bryan Dong '27 and David Yang '26 commented that although the overall achievement and impact is more “internal, they were able to introduce the logistics to the speakers and set up the framework for future events in the upcoming years.” The hard work put in by both the speakers and the club heads was what made this year’s TEDx event successful and promising. With experience from this year, the club aims to improve and refine next year’s event with more speakers and interactions between inside and outside of the school.

Ethan Gu ‘28