2007 DCAs

Derek Lande, Tim Sonnreich, and Alex Deane have been announced as the DCAs for UBC Worlds 2007.


e-mail from UBC

Dear All,
On behalf of the UBC Worlds 2007 Organizing Committee I am pleased to announce that we have confirmed selection of our 3 DCA's for our tournament. I would like to take a moment to publicly thank all of the applicants for their efforts, and for enduring a rather public consultation process. The only really hard part of the job of CA thus far has been not being able to take on such qualified and genuinely amazing people.

We would like to also thank all those who contributed to the feedback process. The feedback we got was overwhelmingly helpful and constructive, and there was next to no personal remarks and that I am aware of, no public airing of grievances. We think that this process has helped us select a group of DCAs that will have the support not only of the region from which they hail, but from the entire world debating community.

In selecting DCA's (and I'm very surprised if you're still reading this and haven't scrolled to the bottom by now), we looked for excellence in debating, a proven track record as an adjudicator, a proven track record as an event organizer, the ability to handle concerns in large volume from a culturally diverse group, and lastly but perhaps most importantly, we looked at the feedback from the world, and from the candidates region to see what the impact of naming that candidate would be.

With all of these factors considered, we are delighted to name Derek Lande, Tim Sonnreich, and Alex Deane as the DCAs for UBC Worlds 2007.

Derek is a winner of multiple IVs, a DCA at this year's European Championships in Berlin, and has broken as an adjudicator at worlds in Malaysia. He has excellent organizational and tabbing skills and will be an incredibly valuable presence at the event.

Alex is a world champion, a final round adjudicator on countless panels and countless IVs and one of the most talented speakers in the world. Alex is an excellent planner and a great diplomat. While he is the first to tell a person his own views, he is also the first to fight loudly for views of others he feels are not being fairly represented.

Tim is a worlds finalist, and a final round adjudicator on nearly as many panels as Alex (possibly more, I didn't really count). He has taught debate seminars across Asia and has an excellent ability to respond and predict the concerns of ESL speakers, having spent so much time working with ESL teams in the past. It is very important to us to have a DCA who understands the concerns of ESL teams at the competition. The wording of motions, and other such concerns are often overlooked, and we are pleased to have a DCA with such an excellent and proven ability to respond to those concerns. I will note that the feedback process in particular from ESL speakers highlighted Tim's ability in this regard.

We recognize that we do not have female representation on the adjudication team, and we are aware of the concerns about ensuring women's issues being fairly and adequately represented to the Org Com. We feel that women's issues will be apprpriately dealt with through an expansion of the powers and involvement of the tournament women's officer. Our Women's Officer (to be named shortly) will be involved at all stages of the event planning, from social venues, to motion vetting, to the construction of complaints and dispute resolution procedures. We will be introducing shortly, a consultation process so that concerns regarding women's issues can be compiled out of previous tournaments and previous Women's forums, to ensure that all of the issues that can possibly be addressed will be, and that mechanisms will exist at the event itself to deal with issues as they may arise.

I hope you will join me in congratulating our DCAs on their selection to the adjudication team.

We look forward to working with them over the next year to make worlds at UBC a truly memorable experience.

Sincerely,

Kevin Massie
Chief Adjudicator - UBC Worlds 2007
on behalf of the Org Com