HWS / IDEA Round Robin Results

Results from this weekend's Hobart and William Smith Colleges/IDEA Worlds Style tournament.

Final Round
First Place ($1000): Harvard (Lewis Bowlard & Cormac Early)
Second Place ($500): Claremont (Kari Wohlschlegel & Charlie Sprague)
Finalist ($100): Hart House (John Ashbourne & Alexander Levy)
Finalist ($100): Oxford (Alex Worsnip & Lewis Turner)

Top Half Teams after prelims (ranked by team points and speaker points)

1 Hart House 13pts 831spks
2 Harvard 13pts 816spks
3 Oxford 12pts 836spks
4 Claremont 11pts 793spks
5 Swarthmore 10pts 801spks
6 Queen’s 9pts 804spks
7 LaVerne 9pts 782spks
8 RIT 8pts 782spks

Top Half Speakers
1 Lewis Turner (Oxford) 424
2 Alexander Levy (Hart House) 421
3 Alexander Worsnip (Oxford) 412
4 Lewis Bollard (Harvard) 411
5 John Ashbourne (Hart House) 410
6 Cormac Early (Harvard) 405
7 Ben Warren (Swarthmore) 404
8 Robert Embree (Queen’s) 402
9 Sarah Sahagian (Queen’s) 402
10 Kari Wohlschlegel (Claremont) 402
11 Cyrus Stoller (Swarthmore) 397
12 Colin Murphy (RIT) 396
13 Josh Martin (LaVerne) 395
14 Meg Dallett (Vassar) 395
15 Severin Randall (Alaska) 394
16 Charlie Sprague (Claremont) 391

Motions:
Rd 1: This House would bar some nations from sitting on the UN Committee on Human Rights.
Rd 2: This House would force lenders to renegotiate subprime mortgages.
Rd 3: This House would publicly recognize the right of the Tibetan people to national independence.
Rd 4: This House believes that fashion magazines do more harm to women than pornographic magazines.
Final: This House would allow the ICC to have an armed international force for the arrest of war criminals.

The full tab is available at:http://people.hws.edu/barnes/debate/Round-Robin-Tab(2008).pdf

Tips: Tabbing your tournament

If you are running a tournament then the one piece of technology you need and which can completely destroy your event is the tab system. I'm not going to go into the technical mathematical aspects of running a tab. Ten years ago a discussion on tabbing required this because tournaments were tabbed manually (or at best by excel). Now there are systems that handle all that and you just plug in the data.

There are many systems out there and it does vary according to style of debate. Coming from a Worlds Style (BP) format the two I use most often are Tabbie and Cragie tab. Tabbie is a stand alone system which was first developed for Worlds in Singapore and has been used at a number of Worlds and major championships since then. I think it is the best option. However it needs firefox and other programmes installed on your PC. Sometimes that isn't possible. In that case I would always have Cragie tab as a fall back. It is an excel based system so you need excel installed on your pc to run it.

Tabbie Tab System
Cragie Tab

I have had experience running tabs at a number of competitions and if it is your first time using a system then the best advice is to sit down days before the tournament and just play with it using sample data. This is the fastest way to learn.

On the day when running your tournament some tips I have learned (often the hard way)

- If possible have someone sitting at the registration desk to enter the details into the tab system as people arrive.
- All the systems rely on ranking judges. There will be judges you don't know. Make sure they all fill out forms detailing their experience at registration. Also make sure they hand them in. If they take them away from registration you will get about 50% of them back and will be left with several judges you don't know how to rank.
- The system will pair teams based on power pairing (and sometimes brakets) and previous positions. Let it do its thing. Generally it works out over the full length of the tournament and most teams are happy. If someone gets two first props in round one and round two then the best way to drive the system mad and cause a third later on is to move them.
- The system will pair judges based on balanced panels and on avoiding conflicts (i.e. teams meeting their own judges). The two best ways to get conflicts are to start manually moving judges around after the system had done it's thing and hormones. Murphy's law 1 dictates that if a judge and a debater end up together at one of the social events the tab system somehow detects this and puts them into the same room the following day. Make sure to announce every morning if there are any updates to conflicts. It might get a few giggles but it's far less embarrassing than the inevitable walk of shame up to the front of the room after the draw has been posted.
- Running the tab. The key thing is to make sure the tab sheets get back as quickly as possible to the tab room. Also make sure your tab sheets only contain the information you need to enter the results. Extra boxes and form filling only confuses adjudicators and delays returning the ballot.
- At a tournament spanning several days there is a temptation to run and finalise the tab the night before to "speed things up" the following morning and prove how efficient you are. Murphy's Law 2 states that when you do this at least one team and several judges will fall ill and won't be able to make the first debate of the day resulting in manual intervention in the draw.
- Tab systems run quickly but the Murphy's Law 3 states that they always take twice as long to run as you allow on the schedule. Make sure the debaters have something to do to keep them entertained. Show DVDs. Family Guy seems to be a popular favourite.

I'm sure there are other tips and suggestions out there but this article was mainly intended to give an overview (and allow me update the Tabbing link on the right hand side). If anyone wants to post their experience please feel free to comment.

Finally there are other tab system versions out there and I'll list some of these below. However if you are running a Worlds style event then Tabbie is my main recommendation.

Other links
Singapore 04 Tab System
Toronto 02 Tab System
Glasgow 01 Tab System
Sydney 00 Tab System
Manila 99 Tab System
Mark Summers Tab System
Smart Tournament Admin (US)

Sample Tab Sheets (Excel)

EDC Tabbing Forum
Wu Meng Tan's Site
Rich Edwards (US)

Asian Debate Institute 2008 website

A (very) preliminary version of the website for the 2008 Asian Debate Institute is up and working:

http://asiandebateinstitute.com/

Registration will begin on April 14.

The website will updated pretty regularly over the next couple of weeks.We anticipate announcing additional faculty members, adding a day by day schedule, etc

AUDC adjudication reminder

Everyone, reminder that tomorrow (4th April) is the last day to apply for the adj subsidy/waiver for AUDC 2008.

Minimum criteria are as below:

1) He/she must have been a CA/DCA of AUDC, Asians, Worlds,Australs or any major local national tournament

OR

2) Was an adjudicator who has:

(a) judged at the semis of AUDC/Asians OR

(b) broken at Australs/Worlds OR

(c) recognized more than once as one of the top 10adjudicators at AUDC, Australs, Worlds or any major local nationaltournament

OR

3) Debaters who have:
(a) major local/international adjudication experience AND

(b) has made it to the finals of AUDC/Asians OR has made it to the main break of Australs/Worlds

All you need to do to apply is email your adjudication/debating CV to anyone of the following officers:
Estelle (President) - hunichi@yahoo.com
Mark (Vice) - mjcordiner@gmail.com
Mohd Sani (Adj Officer) - mohdsani@gmail.com
It will also be useful if you could also clarify how you meet the minimum criteria

Ankara Open 2008

"Pass the Dutch" (Eric Stam & Rob Honig) team has won the Ankara Open 2008 hosted by the Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

The motions were
1st round: THBT the usage of images of Prophet Mohammed should be banned.
2nd round: TH would trade with African Nations regardless of their social development goals.
3rd round: THBT parents who have had one child taken into care should be prevented from having another.
4th round: THBT all jobs should pay equally.
5th round: THW extend punishment for those convicted of corruption to family members who profit from that corruption.
Semi Final: TH supports an independent Tibet.
Grand Final: THW reduce the size of the state.

We thank all the competing teams and our adjudication panel (Neill Harvey-Smith, Nicholas James Long, G.Rhydian Morgan) for their great effort and contributions.

AIDA Accreditation

Part of what this year's Australian Intervarsity Debating Association (AIDA) Executive undertook to do as part of their responsibilities this year was to examine the AIDA Adjudication Accreditation System and put together some recommendations for its future.

As a part of that process, we are looking for comments from any interested parties, and in particular anyone who falls into the following categories:

- Anyone is currently using AIDA Accreditation
- Anyone who would be interested in future accreditation
- Anyone who would be interested in being involved in a future accreditation process (as an organiser, marker etc)
- Anyone who would like to comment generally on the need for AIDA Accreditation and possible reforms.

Please send any comments, suggestions or expressions of interest to AIDAPresident@gmail.com
Tom GoleAIDA President 2007-2008.

WSDC Motions Selection Committee

The purpose of this e-mail is to officially announce the opening of nominations for the Motions Selection Committee for the 2008 World Schools Debating Championships.

2 members of the Motions Selection Committee will be selected by the host organising committee in the United States. The upcoming election will determine 5 further members, who will work with the 2 selected members to decide the motions for all the rounds of the championship in September.

WHO SHOULD STAND?
Please consider standing if - you're someone who's familiar with WSDC, and who has the time, energy and interest to work with a group of 6 others (communicating by e-mail) to carefully discuss ideas; decide on a varied, balanced and appropriate set of topics; and very carefully consider and fine-tune the wording of motions.
Please DO NOT stand if - you will be in any way involved in helping to coach or prepare a team that will be participating in the championships in Washington, either as the team's official coach in any other official or unofficial supporting capacity.

The WSDC Rules state that the committee should reflect the “geographic, cultural and linguistic diversity of the participants at the championships”. Appropriate candidates from various regions and from ESL / EFL countries are certainly encouraged to stand.

I think it's important to stress here that absolute secrecy is a critical element if the Motions Selection Committee is to be able to function properly. The 7 committee members will need to keep all discussions strictly between themselves. Candidates should NOT discuss ideas for motions with anyone outside the committee, and if elected they must continue to do this right up until the conclusion of the championships. If even the possibility that the wording of yet-to-be-released motions has reached teams comes about, the committee may have to begin its idea-generating and decision-making processes from scratch. I'm sure that no-one would want that to happen. So please only stand for the committee if you are certain that you can be a committee member who will maintain the necessary environment of complete secrecy.

ELECTION PROCEDURES AND TIMETABLE
Wednesday 2nd - Wednesday 9th April
Nominations open. Nominations should be submitted on the nomination form in the attached document, and can be submitted by:

- E-mailing it as an attachment to: mark.gabriel@iname.com

- Or faxing it to: +65 6733-2334

All nominations must be proposed and seconded by two individuals who have previously served as coaches and/or adjudicators at WSDC. The proposer and seconder must come from two different countries (it is permissible for one of them to be from the candidate's own country).

Thursday 10th - Saturday 12th April

The nominees will be announced on Thursday 10th April. During this 4-day period, any nominee who wishes to withdraw may do so. New nominations will only be accepted if the number of nominations is less than 5. Candidates who wish to submit a personal statement (maximum 250 words) to be distributed at the time the ballot opens may do so.

Sunday 13th - Sunday 27th April

Ballot open. Official World Council delegates from countries who have participated in at least 2 of the last 3 WSDCs will be able to vote.

Once elected, the committee is required by the WSDC Rules to finalise the motions for the prepare rounds at least 8 weeks before the championships begin (i.e. by 11th July).

If you have any questions about the role of the Motions Selection Committee, or the nominations and election procedures, please feel free to e-mail mark.gabriel@iname.com

Regards,

Mark Gabriel
Vice-Chairman
World Schools Debating Council Executive Committee

UCD Law win Irish Mace

From uccphilosoph.com

UCD Law (Ross McGuire and Marguerite Carter) have won the Irish Mace. They will now advance to the International Mace final.

Final:

1st Prop: Kings Inns (Alison McIntyre and David Quinn)
1st Opp: UCD Law Soc (Ross McGuire and Marguerite Carter)
2nd Prop: Kings Inns (Brendan Bruen and Luke Ryder)
2nd Opp: UCC Philosoph (Tiernan Fitzgibbon and Derek Doyle)

Motion: “TTHBT Non Consensual Sterilisation of Persons with an Intellectual Disability is Always Wrong”.

Note: The Irish Mace is considered one of the Irish National Championships (the other being the Irish Times Debating Competition). The International Mace is the UK and Ireland (also known in Debating as IONA) championships which involves the winners of national maces in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

World Council (schools) minutes

From schoolsdebate

The minutes from the World Council Meeting in Seoul last summer are now available on the website,

An up-to-date copy of the Rules following the last wave of amendments has also been uploaded.

Wake Forest win NDT

From globaldebate

Wake Forest has won the 2008 NDT (US)

Final:
Wake Forest GL defeated Dartmouth KO, 5-0.

Semifinals
Wake GL d. Mo State OW - 5-0
Darthmouth KO d. Michigan FK - 4-1

Quarterfinals
Wake Forest GL defeated West Georgia LS 3-2
Mo State OW defeated Emory HW 3-2
Dartmouth KO defeated Kansas BJ 3-2
Michigan FK defeated Northwestern 3-2

Octfinals
Emory HW defeated Cal BP
Kansas JS defeated Mo State OW
West Georgia LS defeated USC JJ
Wake Forest GL defeated MSU EL
Dartmouth KO defeated Harvard AM
Kansas BJ defeated Mo State MM
Michigan FK defeated USC LS
Northwestern FW defeated Gonzaga BS

What happened at EUDC registration?

From EUDC group

Dear all,
We would like to shortly inform you of how today's registration process went and prevent justified questions that may arise when looking at the list of registered teams.

Today at 12:00 GMT Phase 2 of registration was opened. The team cap was filled, that is 61 teams were registered, in only 6 minutes! All institutions that registered after this were put in a waiting list. The waiting list is open until the end of the week, to get in the list you simply need to register yourself using the same reg form. There will be several teams deleted due to accidental double registration and there may be cancellations also later, so it is definitely worth to put yourself in the waiting list!

It happened that some teams registered themselves twice of even three times during Phase 2. This is an anomaly that we are going toliquidate by going through the list of registrants and cancelling all such excessive registrations. We will certainly keep to our promise that only 1 team per institution could be additionally registered. Only the first institution team registered in Phase 2 will remain in the list. To make it very clear, this of course does NOT concern teams registered in Phase 1, whose status has already been Confirmed or waiting to be confirmed shortly.

Please don't pay the invoices just yet! We will make another notice about which teams are registered and which registrations are cancelled today or tomorrow. As earlier, questions about payments should be addressed to piretpo@estravel.ee and general questions to info@eudc2008.eu

Yours,
EUDC 2008 team