Chapter 8
In Which There is The Debate

It was not everyday that both Kate Sharma and Anthony Bridgerton were unhappy with a class's lesson plans. They thrived on challenge, as well as their general awareness of one another, which made both of them annoyingly competitive and eager to one-up the other.

Nevertheless-

"I'm sorry, what?" Anthony asked Mr. Callaghan, their AP Government teacher. No sooner had Callaghan had waltzed in and written the lesson plan on the board that morning that Kate and Anthony had both stormed up to demand an explanation for today's agenda.

"I second that," Kate added, disgruntled.

"I don't see where I need to clarify," Callaghan said mildly, rubbing at his grey-blonde beard. "It's a debate on affirmative action in college admissions. I hope you two did the readings…?"

"I did!" Both of them cried in unison, and then glared at one another for good measure.

"Are you trying to give us trauma?" Kate proceeded to demand. "We're literally in the middle of college application season!"

"I know for a fact you've already submitted all your apps," Anthony muttered to her, and then said loudly, "Some of us are still in the middle of this harrowing process."

Kate wanted nothing more than to take a dig at how exhausting it must be to go through this "harrowing" process with a private admissions counselor, and the blood of generations of Columbia grads running through his veins. But she had to sacrifice this dig- for the greater good.

"Exactly!" Kate instead cried in agreement. "So we really don't need another excuse to panic some more!"

Callaghan just smiled benignly, like the innocent grandpa he sure as hell was not, and gestured for them to take their seats once the remaining hallway stragglers had traipsed in.

"Alright children, for the debate, let's split you right down the middle…" Callaghan mimed slicing the class in half, right between Anthony and Kate. "The left side will argue in favor of affirmative action in higher educational institutions, while the right side will argue against it."

The right side groaned, Kate being the loudest of them all.

The left side was predictably elated. It took everything within Kate to not glance at the smug expression that would no doubt be adorning Anthony's irritatingly good-looking face. Instead, her mind began to race with the possibilities of how she could turn this bad hand they'd been given in their favor. Arguing against affirmative action could easily morph into thinly-veiled racism, and she could not trust some of her classmates to know when to draw the line- unless…

After taking exactly five minutes allotted to haphazardly plan a battle strategy, Kate watched as Anthony stood (of course it was him) and delivered the opening for the pro side. At its conclusion, he threw a self-satisfied smile in Kate's direction.

Challenge accepted.

Kate leaned back in her seat when Marina Thompson stood to deliver the opening for their side, prompting Anthony to look questioningly in her direction. She merely rolled her eyes, hoping her expression adequately conveyed that some of them didn't need to be attention-whores 24/7 to get the larger point across.

"We believe affirmative action should be limited," Marina said, her features impressively blank, despite the words coming out of her mouth. "We'll expand on the various ways we think the use of affirmative action in college admissions should be cut down, or outright banned in some cases."

"That's an interesting way to put it," Callaghan spoke up. "Do you mean to say your side will not be arguing for an outright ban?"

Marina grinned. "Well, we think policies should vary. After all, there is more than one kind of affirmative action, and not all of them should be treated the same."

"Besides," Kate spoke up with a sly smile, "you never really clarified the extent we're supposed to argue against the policy, Mr. Callaghan."

Callaghan gave a hearty chuckle at this. "Well done!" he said with a twinkle in his eye. "Can I assume you were the architect of this plan, Kate?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Kate replied, at which there was a very loud noise of outrage from the pro side. This time, it was Kate's turn to throw a smirk at Anthony, who looked like he was about to break his pencil in two any moment.

The opening shots had been fired.

From here, Kate watched proudly as her side held its own, despite being on the vastly unpopular side (good little liberals that they mostly were), and they fought their way through two-handed years of history, lies, damned lies, statistics, and Supreme Court precedents.

Daniel Smythe-Smith, who went after Marina for Kate's side, only had to say the words "legacy admissions" for nearly the entire room to began quivering in their boots. Even Anthony looked mildly pained. Kate imagined it probably had something to do with their conversation in his library a few weeks back.

Then there was a salvo on affirmative action for college athletes from Genevieve, who spoke with a gravitas the other side didn't bother to emulate.

"It's basically another form of affirmative action for rich, white kids, and needs to be tamped down," she said passionately

"What about football?" Nigel Berbrooke demanded. "Or basketball? Aren't there a lot of- uh- people of color playing those sports?"

"Those are only two sports," Gen said with exaggerated slowness, as if attempting to explain this to a two year-old (or alternatively, Nigel). "They're ones everyone watches on TV, sure, but not reflective of the demographics of all college athletes combined. A lot of sports require way more financial investment and time than many less affluent minorities can afford. I mean really," Gen added derisively, "have you seen the players are a lacrosse game? Or whoever takes part in golf or rowing teams or sailing meets?"

Nigel bristled at this. Kate remembered he had just bragged about the new yacht his dad had bought for him to sail when they were up in Sagaponack.

Gen smirked, adding, "I, for one, look forward to seeing who makes it onto USC's rowing team this year," This prompting (slightly triggered) laughter from the class. Olivia Jade was something of a bogeywoman for every senior class since the admissions scandal news first broke a few years ago.

It was at this moment that Anthony seemed to have enough. He stood abruptly and cowed Nigel into shutting up and sitting down, all with the power of a single, dirty look.

"This is good and all," Anthony said loudly, "but you guys are ignoring the elephant in the room- race-based affirmative action."

There we are.

Kate hoisted herself out of her desk in one fluid motion and stood.

The classroom fell abruptly silent. Kate imagined it was because this was the closest they'd ever get to witnessing a shootout, or a duel- in the verbal sense, at least.

"Everyone that affirmative gives a leg-up to minorities, particularly students of color, who are historically underrepresented on college campuses across the country. Plus, it's a benefit to all students when there's diversity on a campus…" He continued on for some minutes in that vein, eloquently harkening to appropriate statistics and case law and an optimal combination of ethos, pathos, logos and whatever debate tactics they'd been taught. Kate had heard just about enough when Anthony began another tangent with a self-important, "My uncle-"

"-The one who puts Botox in people for a living, or the big bank-bailing limousine-liberal?" Kate cut him off swiftly, determined to regain the upper-hand.

The class issued a collective "oooooh" like the kindergartners they still were, deep down.

"Mr. Callaghan!" Anthony whined, turning to their teacher.

"Now now Kate, let's not go too ad hominem in our debate tactics," Mr. Callaghan said, failing to sound very admonishing. Kate smirked. She loved being the teacher's pet; She could probably get away with murder in this classroom.

"Of course Mr. Callaghan," Kate replied sweetly, "provided that we keep personal anecdotes to a minimum as well?"

"Agreed."

Anthony deflated like a popped balloon.

Callaghan must have taken pity on him, because he added, "If you would like to refer to relevant policy or policymakers, please state their names formally before proceeding."

"Fine," Anthony scowled at Kate. "Senator Rokesby, who who specialized in equal protection cases when he was practicing, as you may know-" Kate rolled her eyes, "-has opposed any pairing down of affirmative action, and said he will not support the appointment of any judge or justice who believes otherwise."

Kate demanded, "And what if it's to the detriment some minorities?"

"Like that will ever happen," Anthony scoffed, causing Kate to see red for a moment.

"Bullshit!" she cried, banging her fist on the desk for emphasis, and her side roared its approval.

Anthony looked helplessly towards Callaghan, who merely shrugged as if to say I can't do anything about it.

"Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard," Kate said loudly. "Which might be on the Supreme Court's docket soon enough, after a District Court judge your uncle helped confirm ruled that Harvard did not discriminate against Asian-American applicants in the name of affirmative action, even though they absolutely did-"

"-You really want to go there?" Anthony scoffed. "You know that the case was co-opted by some conservative hack trying to gut Grutter and affirmative action in its entirety, right?"

Kate shrugged. She was fighting a losing battle by virtue of her side, but she'd be damned if she didn't go down without a fight. "Sure, the case has been co-opted by the conservative movement. But dismissing the case because of background political motivations isn't right either," she said pointedly

Anthony huffed, exasperated. "Fine, then let's talk law. The district court ruled that Harvard doesn't actually discriminate against Asian-American applicants, that race-based admissions continue to serve a compelling government interest, and it's legal since there aren't any quotas in place-"

"-As per Bakke, yeah, we know," Kate said. "But let's look at the facts. The rate of Asian-Ameircan students admitted into Harvard has barely increased in recent years, despite the dramatic increase in applicants. When looking at their admissions material, Asian-Americans scored higher than any racial groups on nearly every metric except one. Where they scored consistently low was on personality. Look, we aren't disputing the merits of race-based affirmative action. It's one thing to give a leg up- that's fine- but it's quite another to diminish, like they did at Harvard. When a racial group that is more likely to be seen as "foreign" or "reserved" consistently scores low on something as objective as personality, and Harvard continues to be opaque about how much they consider personality, how is there not implicit bias at play here? I mean, we know the stereotypes, right?" Suddenly, Kate said in an inspired moment of daring, "In fact, let me demonstrate. Tell me, Anthony-" she jerked her chin towards him in a challenge, "do you find my personality lacking?"

The entire room fell abruptly silent.

Kate would have revelled in this moment, had she not suddenly felt so… looked at. Sure, everyone's eyes were darting between her and Anthony, but it wasn't them she was focused on. Anthony's gaze raked over her, and Kate felt herself flush under his perusal. She felt oddly bared before him, somehow, as if he could see through her.

She wondered what he saw.

"No," Anthony finally rasped out and hastily cleared his throat."You have a nice… personality."

There was an outbreak of wolf-whistling and inappropriate mutterings at this.

Anthony blushed even more violently than Kate, if that was possible.

"As touching a sentiment as that was, Mr. Bridgerton," Mr. Callaghan said eventually, "I'm afraid we need to move onto closings."

Kate broke eye contact first, nodding to Mr. Callaghan before collapsing heavily into her chair. She barely paid attention to closing arguments, instead focusing all her willpower on not making eye-contact with Anthony Bridgerton.

Afterwards, as the class moved their desks back into their normal positions, Gen sidled up to Kate with a smirk playing on her lips.

"Is it just me or did I feel an insane amount of sexual tension between the two of you during that?"

Kate gritted her teeth as she shoved her chair in place. "No, what you felt was the depths my rage for his elitism."

"Rage, tension, whatever," Gen said dismissively. Kate felt the need to correct her extreme misconceptions.

"Gen," she began, "I was literally shouting at him-"

"-and he totally gets off on that. Have you seen him?" Genevieve said gleefully.

Kate was taken aback. A small part of her wanted to flee for the hills but that would be immature. Then, she unwittingly thought about Anthony, his face when she bore into him about his opinions, his lips parting ever-so-slightly as he'd looked at her with something startlingly close to awe, reverence-

Okay, no. Nope. She was not going there.

"I don't even know where to begin." Kate instead hedged. A nonresponse, basically.

"Oooh, maybe he's, like, a masochist or something," Gen posited, giggling.

"Hey, we don't kink-shame in here," Kate said primly, eager to get this conversation back into PG territory. But of course, good things never happened to her, because lo and behold, as if they'd summoned him by chanting his name three times like the devil he was-

"Whose kinks are we shaming?" Anthony asked, appearing besides them.

"Nobody's!" Kate tried to squeak out, but Gen supplied helpfully, "Yours."

Anthony's smirk widened. "Why Sharma," he purred, practically caressing the syllables of her last name. His voice dropped an octave in a startlingly attractive manner (not that Kate noticed), "I didn't know you were so interested in my… preferences. I would speculate as to yours, but I've always pegged you for the vanilla sort."

For a brief moment, Kate imagined blushing and skittering away like the coy maiden did in those romance novels when faced with innuendo, really, she probably should-

But no.

"Do you really know what I'm into, Anthony?" Kate instead demanded lowly, leaning in toward him. She watched as uncertainty and something else burned within his eyes as he leaned in as well.

There was barely a breath between them.

"Yeah?" he murmured, his gaze flickering between her eyes and her mouth.

And Kate, as though imparting a particularly dirty secret, whispered, "You shutting up."

She then abruptly pulled away and laughed loudly at the astounded expression on Anthony's face.

To be fair, Kate hadn't been lying- Anthony Bridgerton startled silent was the stuff fantasies were made of.

I just really wanted to capture the particular brand of chaos that is high school debates, because Sexual Tension. Do I agree with all the points made? Obviously not. Did I enjoy writing said chaotic viewpoints? Yup :).

The uncles of Anthony's in question are Dr. Nicholas Rokesby, who's a plastic surgeon in LA, and Senator George Rokesby, the junior senator from New York. Both are from Julia Quinn's Rokesby series.