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20 January 2007

WUDC Equity committee

Dear World Debating Community,
It has been my absolute pleasure to serve you as Women’s Officer throughout the year and as acting Secretary throughout the most recent championships. I wish all the very best to Julia Bowes (the reigning champion from the University of Sydney) who takes over as Women’s Officer and will no doubt discharge that honourable position with the same diligence she takes to her debating. Mr Steve Johnson from the university of Alaska, is taking over as secretary and I will be handing all the auto-formatting and vote calculating tricks I created, he will no doubt be an incredibly valuable addition to Worlds Council and I wish him all the best in that role. The minutes have been forwarded to the executive and will be ready for ratification at the next council meeting. However, in order to finalise the minutes, the registrar, Mr Neill Harvey –Smith needs an email from all country and regional representatives to confirm who sat in those roles (especially if those persons changed during t he meetings) and also to facilitate contact during the year. It would also be helpful to confirm spelling His email address is info@debatechamber.com but obviously I will pass anything on.

Equity Policy Subcommittee
One of the resolutions of the Women’s Forum and of Worlds Council was to create a mandatory equity policy for future tournaments. This will take the form of the CUSID model which is to insert a statement of principles into the constitution which must be embodied in an equity policy that is then written by the host of any tournament governed by that constitution. This will give tournament hosts extra powers, reduces their liability and ensures that if harassment occurs at the tournament, for whatever reason, there is official recourse, even if the domestic legislature does not recognize harassment in the same way the World debate community might. I was appointed chair of the subcommittee by the Chair of Council and am now calling for applications to fill that subcommittee (I expect to be overwhelmed as I was immediately after council.) I would like to try and get as much regional representation as possible, and am particularly interested in people who have experience writing, dealing with and applying codes of conduct. If you would like to apply please write to me at Katherine.Price@student.uts.edu.au by 10 February 2007. Stating the following:
• Name and Contact Details
• Institution and Region
• Reasons for wanting to be on the subcommittee
• If you feel the need your debating experience
• Any relevant experience dealing with code of conduct / equity policies
• Any thing else I may need to know.

In the issues of efficient bureaucracy (what an oxymoron!) I will need to limit the size of the subcommittee but will try not to do that excessively (10-15), if overwhelmed with applications I will need to be selective. Sorry. The equity policy will address harassment on the grounds of: gender, race, religion, physical appearance, disability, language, nationality and will hopefully establish minimum standards of behaviour to ensure all participants have an enjoyable tournament.

A personal plea
My camera was stolen 30 minutes after I arrived in Italy, the replacement drowned in the lakes near Salzburg and my third camera in less than a year went missing at the Championship Dinner. It never turned up at the Sheraton which means someone in the debating community must have accidentally picked it up. I understand that all cameras these days all look the same, but I would really love my camera back and am prepared to offer a USD100 reward (Australian dollars would be like offering a reward in Argentinian pesos). If it wasn’t entirely picked up by accident I would love the memory card back (there are some irreplaceable photos of my holiday on there) for which there is a USD$50 reward. It’s a Canon IXUS 50 camera with a 512MB memory card and a ridiculous number of pictures of NYC and a girl in a red dress.

Thanks in advance.
My address:
38 Chisholm St
Greenwich NSW 2065
AUSTRALIA

All the very best debating for the coming year. See you in Thailand (it looks AMAZING!)
Katie

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