HWS/IDEA advisory committee

The HWS/IDEA Round Robin is assembling an advisory committee to help direct its tournament in future years. We are seeking nominations (or self-nominations) to fill the two remaining places on this committee, which are reserved for people with substantial knowledge of debating in either Africa or Australia. Current members of the committee include:

Name (Background)
Rory Gillis (Canada & APDA)
Neill Harvey-Smith (Western Europe)
Jason Jarvis (Asia)
Ian Lising (NPDA & Southeast Asia)
Helina Loor (Eastern Europe)
???????? (Africa)
???????? (Australia)

The tournament is now preparing for its 3rd year in April 2009. Advisory committee members do not have an extensive workload. They provide advice regarding:
1) criteria for granting invitations to teams;
2) who to invite as adjudicators;
3) some questions regarding tournament policies; and,
4) which team to accept from a pool of at-large applications (in some difficult cases).
Committee members serve 2-year terms on the committee, but may step down at any time if necessary.

HWS/IDEA Round Robin Vision Statement
The International Debate Education Association and Hobart and William Smith Colleges aim to bring together an elite and internationally diverse group of debaters and adjudicators each year for a weekend of debate at the highest level. The tournament will be held each year at HWS in New York State. The debates will be in the WUDC format, set up in a unique pre-paired round robin, ensuring that every team debates against every other team exactly once in the preliminary rounds.
Our goal is to facilitate great debating with international diversity and to recognize the skills and accomplishments of great debaters and adjudicators by treating them to a weekend of satisfying debate and superb hospitality. We will endeavor to ensure that all qualifying teams are able to attend.

Historical results
2007: Winning Team – Yale (Adam Chilton & David Denton)
Top Speaker – Adam Chilton (Yale)
2008: Winning Team – Harvard (Cormac Early & Lewis Bollard)
Top Speaker – Lewis Turner (Oxford)

CONTACT INFORMATION: Eric Barnes (barnes@hws.edu)