On Thursday, June 20, during the final round of Humorous Interpretation at the National Speech and Debate Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, an individual who was not a competitor freely walked onto the final stage at the Iowa Events Center. He wore a backpack and shouted into the crowd of hundreds of people, “This is kind of boring! Who wants to hear a joke? Knock knock!” He then got on his knees and reached toward his bag, making people believe he was reaching for a gun, causing a stampede as the crowd fled the room. 

 Iris Eckrich, an incoming sophomore, was just arriving back at the venue for lunch when it happened. 

“We turned around, and we kind of started walking. We were like, why are these people rushing out? What’s going on?” Eckrich said. “Then someone comes in and is like, ‘gun, run guys.’ We bolted the other way.”

She and her teammate, rising senior David Lin, ran to safety and eventually sheltered at Mercy College of Health and Sciences. 

“We stayed there until we connected with our coaches and our other teammates from Eastern Missouri and got all together and drove [to the hotel],” Eckrich said.

Back at a separate venue, coach Kim Zustiak had just finished judging a round at Johnston High School. 

“I saw just a string of messages from the previous five or so minutes indicating that there had been an incident at the event center,” Zutsiak said. “I kind of went into action, slash panic, slash terror mode. I contacted each of the three students who were at that site to ensure that they were physically safe.”

With her location in lockdown, Zustiak worked remotely, keeping in contact with the students, their parents, Clayton administrators, and other coaches.

 “Those kids, to their credit, kept a pretty level head and handled the situation quite beautifully,” Zustiak said. “So I was very proud of that.”

Henry Dong, a rising junior, was competing in Extemporaneous Debate off-site when the incident occurred. “Right out after my round 10 debate, I check our group chat, and it’s literally Iris going, ‘everyone needs to evacuate the convention center,’” Dong said. “It really wasn’t until five people had sent the same message that it kicked in for us, that it was probably an intruder threat.”

Dong and other East Missouri competitors started tracking their teammates. “We set up like a little remote control station, and we’re just making a Google Doc of every competitor in East Mo. and trying to see what schools are accounted for,” he said.

While no physical violence occurred, many questioned the lack of security and the National Speech and Debate Association’s (NSDA) initial decision to resume competition less than two hours after the incident. 

“They had no bag checks or anything,” Eckrich said. “So I think they expect to have people still competing the same day. It was insane.”

While NSDA stressed that the incident was not a threat to competitors’ and spectators’ safety, many students and coaches within the Eastern Missouri district felt differently. 

“Everyone felt threatened, meaning that there was a threat,” Eckrich said. 

Other competitors echoed that concern.

“I think it was dumb of NSDA to try to tell people to start debating at 4 p.m., when the incident happened at 2:30 p.m.,” Dong said. “Ultimately, in the end, after getting a lot of backlash, they made the right move to postpone everything until today.”

Zustiak added that “maybe a mistake was made in trying to continue,” but emphasized the deeper lesson the moment revealed the power of student voices.

“The very thing we try to teach our kids in this activity is to use their words, to use their voice. That happened,” she said. “Students were protesting having to continue performing after this incident, and that’s what made NSDA say, ‘You know what? This isn’t a good idea to make kids go and perform after this traumatic experience.’ The thing that we tried to instill in you, that worked.”

After the experience, the community of Eastern Missouri Speech and Debate came together to offer emotional support to one another.

“People who have never spoken to me came up and were like, ‘Are you okay?’ And we had this bonding moment of we both went through the same experience,” Eckrich said. “That’s something really special, because Speech and Debate does bring together a lot of people, and through this event, it continued to do that, regardless of the trauma.”

Before the chaos of Thursday, Clayton’s students were celebrating strong competition and friendship.

Dong had advanced to Round 10 in Extemporaneous Debate, placing him among the top 24 in the nation.

“I think it was an eye-widening experience,” Dong said. “You get to look outside at what other people outside of East Mo. are doing. I think a lot of what I learned was how to polish my craft.”

Dong’s favorite part of Nationals was not the competition, but the community. 

“The car rides, dinner and just hanging out with my roommates. Also, when you’re unwinding coming out of the tournament, and you’re like, holy cow, I just did that,” Dong said. 

As students processed both the intensity of competition and aftermath of the incident, more details about the intruder began to emerge. 

The individual was later identified to be 22-year-old  Jayden Roccaforte of Wyoming. Roccaforte was a part of the speech and debate community during his high school years. It was confirmed Roccaforte was not actively carrying a weapon. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of possession of a controlled substance. 

The team returned to Clayton a day early. 

“I think the event needs polishing and rebuilding from the ground up. Security and police guards aren’t going to do much, but motivating and really caring for your members and caring for debate students’ mental health is going to be the best thing,” Dong said.