Pan Pacific Championships Results

Aloha colleagues,


The Hawaii Pacific University Sea Warrior Debate Society hosted the third annual Pan Pacific Championship Debate Tournament, October 16-18 at our Hawaii Loa Campus. Twenty-four debate teams representing 11 universities from Hawaii, the US mainland and Malaysia competed in World style debate for the title of Pan Pacific Champions of debate! Portland State University (Aaron Baker and Lindsay Bing) won the overall Championship title and a team from the University of Hawaii (Ben Siegel and Daniel Hugo) won the title of the overall best team from Hawaii.

This year the tournament featured the following topics:

THW This house would classify crimes motivated by a victim’s homeless status as “hate- crimes”.
THB undocumented immigrants should be eligible for financial aid for higher education.
THB the United Nations should protect the Arctic.
THW increase its support of military efforts in Afghanistan.
THB the International Criminal Court should prosecute war crimes in Gaza.
THW exchange personal privacy for counter terrorism monitoring.

Finals: THB that President Obama should not have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Two teams from the Portland State University (Kelly Welch and Sean Partch; Aaron Baker And Lindsay Bing), one from University of Hawaii, Manoa (Ben Siegel and Daniel Hugo) and a composite team from University of La Vern and Universiti Teknologi Mara (John Martin, Hazwani Zainal) reached the grand final round held at the Kalama Beach House in Kailua, HI.

Before the final round, teams were treated to Hawaiian style BBQ on the beach and a Hula performance. Other institutions represented at the tournament were University of Southern Illinois, Northwest University, California State University San Bernardino, Hawaii Pacific University, Claremont McKenna College, California State University, Fullerton and Rocky Mountain.

The Pan Pacific Championship will be moving to February. See you in Spring 2011 in paradise!

Mahalo,
Rose Helens-Hart
Director of Debate
Hawaii Pacific University