WDI Europe Results

IDAS 2008 TOURNAMENT
SEMIFINALS

ROOM 1

1 Univ Ljubljana CIMERMAN-DOBRANIC 2ND OPP
4 Univ Ljubljana JAKOVAC-PLOSTAJNER 1ST GOV ADVANCES
5 Cornell SOLLOWAY-STITELER 1ST OPP
8 Serbia-Croatia JANKULOSKI-BLACE 2ND GOV ADVANCES

JUDGES: FISCHER, LOKE, LLANO

ROOM 2

2 Germany HILDEBRANDT-ASYAMOVA 1ST GOV ADVANCES
3 Vermont CARESS-NATALE 2ND GOV ADVANCES
6 Slovenia ZVEPLAN-CVIKL 2ND OPP
7 Slovenia PODLOGAR-JANZEK

JUDGES: GREENLAND, MORGAN, LANGONE

THBT the United Nations should send a multinational peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.

FINALS

ROOM 1

1st GOV JANKULOSKI-BLACE
2ND GOV JAKOVAC-PLOSTAJNER
1ST OPP HILDEBRANDT-ASYAMOVA FIRST PLACE
2ND OPP CARESS-NATALE SECOND PLACE

JUDGES: MORGAN, MARUSIC, LOKE, LLANO, GREENLAND

THBT violent action to protect the environment is justified.

SPEAKERS

Position Name Team Total points Average Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6
1 Natale Caress-Natale 482 80.33 85 77 83 78 83 76
2 Hildebrandt Hildebrandt-Asyamova 476 79.33 82 82 74 77 83 78
2 (3) Plostajner Jakovac-Plostajner 476 79.33 75 79 81 79 78 84
4 (5) Asaymova Hildebrandt-Asyamova 472 78.66 81 80 76 74 84 77
4 Podlogar Podlogar-Janzek 472 78.66 80 81 79 73 80 79
6 Dobranic Cimerman-Dobranic 470 78.33 78 78 80 82 77 75
6 (7) Caress Caress-Natale 470 78.33 82 76 79 75 82 76
8 (9) Cimerman Cimerman-Dobranic 468 78.00 76 79 78 81 78 76
8 Jakovac Jakovac-Plostajner 468 78.00 65 82 82 78 77 84
8 (10) Zveplan Zveplan-Cvikl 468 78.00 75 76 78 84 78 77

IDAS 08 TOURNAMENT MOTIONS

ROUND ONE
THW make voting compulsory.

ROUND TWO
THW not negotiate with the leaders of Iran.

ROUND THREE
This house would not prosecute battered wives for killing their husbands.

ROUND FOUR
TH would allow the advertising of prescription drugs.

ROUND FIVE
THBT governments should not bailout failing corporations.

ROUND SIX
This House would ban international adoption.

SEMIFINALS
THBT the United Nations should send a multinational peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.

FINALS
THBT violent action to protect the environment is justified.

Full results at bottom of USA WUDC results page:
http://debate.uvm.edu/usudc/usudctab0809.html

WDI Europe/International Debate Academy Begins

Sam Greenland speaks in the demo debate

Arrivals can be difficult and this one was no exception. All are now here and safe. Now we are about 80 people from 15 countries here for a week before we move to Maribor for the tournament.

Sunday night most people had arrived and a demo debate was featured. The motion was “This house would punish parents for the crimes of their minor children." It was an all-star cast, with Debbie Newman (world champion WSDC coach for England, England-Wales debate champion, former president of Cambridge Union) debating with Sam Greenland (Sydney WUDC semifinalist in 2007, former Hong Kong WSDC coach) were opening proposition, Sam Natale (top speaker, Northeast Universities 2008, University of Vermont) and Lucas Caress (top speaker, Global Youth Debate Conclave, Bangalore 2008, University of Vermont) were closing proposition; Filip Dobranic (twice top EFL speaker at WSDC, University of Ljubljana) and Maja Cimerman (EFL world WSDC champion, University of Ljubljana) were opening opposition, and last but not least Steve Llano (former national champion coach in USA, St. John's University) and Loke Wing Fatt (Singapore, WUDC breaking judge, father of debate in China) as closing opposition. It was a very spirited debate, chaired by Berlin Debating Union's Jens Fischer, and caused a great deal of discussion among he students. The video is coming soon.

Each day has the same schedule. There is an 8:45 AM organizational meeting at breakfast, followed by a series of lectures divided by experience level. After one hour there is a brief break before we meet again for an hour of drills on the subject of the lectures to help turn theoretical materials into behavior and habit. Then a motion is given and everyone has a debate with a long critique. There is a lunch break followed by a digestion break before the afternoon's activities take place. There are two one-hour period for elective classes. During each of these periods between five and seven different topics are offered, and students can choose which they would like to go to. I will send along a list of enacted electives later. After the second elective of the afternoon another motion is announced and with another debate and a long critique before dinner.

The first practice debate motions were:
1-THW pay a salary to stay-at-home parents
2-TH would create separate units for gays in the military.
3-THBT supporting Georgia's NATO bid is more important than maintaining good relations with Russia.
4-THBT the capitalist experiment has failed.
5-THW criminalize Holocaust denial.

Evenings have had a considerable social component. On Monday night the Country Exhibition took place where students brought items, foods, beverages and other things from their country on display and shared them with everyone. This was a robust affair of international fraternity and lasted well into the night. On Tuesday evening the traditional Slovenian "Kitsch Party" took place. Students swapped clothing and dressed outrageously for the party. It raged for quite a while before the judging took place. Sam(antha) Ricker of the University of Vermont was the winner, looking quite good in ponytails and wearing Helena Felc's pajamas. Second place was Don(na) Bracciodieta of St. John's, who had nice cleavage. Pictures will be coming along soon.

Having been at all six International Debate Academy sessions, I would say that the experience level and excellence of the teams is growing immensely here and all over Europe and the world.

Stay tuned for more from Ormoz.

WDI Student Ten Years Later

From Kate Aishton:

Tuna,

I'm sure you don't remember me, but I attended WDI's high school program in the summers of 1997 and 1999. After bouncing around the country for a while, I'm a 1L at Georgetown in D.C. Honestly, before this week I hadn't thought about high school debate in a while (beyond occasional light conversations of nerd-solidarity with students).

I was fortunate enough to get a spot in Georgetown's great "alternative curriculum," a program that focuses the first year of law school on critical analysis of the law with an historical and theoretical bent. My fellow students are all incredibly bright and motivated, and, but for one or two out of 80, far-left-leaning. Campaigning and poll-monitoring with them over the last months has renewed my faith in my generation, and I'm proud to know them.

However, our central legal theory class makes WDI's impact on my life ring clear. I keep hearing my friends, smart and arriving from a wide array of backgrounds, struggle as we move away from familiar Classical Liberalism and comforting Realism and into Critical Legal Studies. It took a couple weeks of working through this theory and its various feminist and race-focused strains to remember why I felt so comfortable: sitting on the floor outside the auditorium at UVM, struggling to cut cards and hash out the details of a Critical Pedegogy plan with the other students in my lab.

I asked around, and this isn't average, even for debaters. There are many of us at my school, and I'm the only one I've met who worked on issues of this depth rather than combing the economist for crime figures. The exposure has given me comfort with discussing race and gender, rights and needs, that allows me to hold a substantiative discussion with our professor while the rest of the class struggles to outline basic principles for the final. In other words, it's made my education a pleasure rather than a chore.

So thank you (and in turn, all the lab leaders and teachers whose names I've forgotten). I hope the students you had this summer will write you more versions of this letter in another ten years.

Best,
Kate

Two-Time WDI Scholar Places Third at Harvard

Brian Rubaie (left) and Andrew Baker

Brian Rubaie has twice been a policy debate scholar at WDI and is one of the most popular studens ever to fill that role. We document here his perormance at the recent tournament at Harvard University.

http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2008/11/06-002.php

Team Battles to Third Place in Harvard Debates

Nov. 6, 2008
UT Dallas debate team members Brian Rubaie and Andrew Baker took third place at Harvard University’s annual Intercollegiate Debate Tournament Monday night in Cambridge, Mass.

The University of Kansas team finished first and Northwestern University’s team finished in second place. UT Dallas tied with the University of California-Berkeley for third place. Eighty teams from across the country competed at the Harvard tournament.

“This is undoubtedly the best that any UT Dallas debate team has ever done at a major national tournament,” said Chris Burk, director of the University’s debate team. “The success at the Harvard tournament places the UT Dallas debate team among the top teams in the country.”

The Harvard tournament is one of a hand full of “major” tournament-style debates during the regular debate season. The three-day tournament consisted of eight preliminary rounds on Saturday and Sunday, with the top 16 teams advancing to an elimination bracket on Monday.

Rubaie, a junior criminology major, and Baker, a sophomore political science major and Collegium V honors student, defeated the top partnership from reigning national champions Towson University in the quarterfinals. UT Dallas was the only Texas university to have teams reach the top 16.

“This is a huge step forward for Rubaie and Baker, and our entire debate program,” said Burk. “We competed well against the most prestigious and historically successful programs in the country.”

Burk and Scott Herndon, associate director of debate, coached Rubaie and Baker at the Harvard tournament.

The UT Dallas debate program began as a student-driven team about 12 years ago. Debate duo Rubaie and Baker and other members of the UT Dallas squad will compete at the Wake Forest University tournament Nov. 15-17 to conclude the fall tournament schedule. UT Dallas will host its own intercollegiate debate tournament Jan. 10-12.