WSDC 2013 – Semifinal [RESULTS] Grandfinal Draw

SF: THBT the government should pay house wives and house husbands for their work

SF1: Ireland (9)(P) v. Australia (5)(O) == 7-0
SF2: Swaziland (2)(P) v. Singapore (3)(O) == 4-3

GF: Australia v. Swaziland

See Grand Final write-up here.

Team Swaziland during their 4-3 victory over Team Singapore (from @DebatingHungary)

Inner Temple IV 2013 [MOTIONS] [RESULTS]

Date: 1-2 February 2013

Results
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post incorrectly swapped Harish and Tom’s Best Speaker-ship.
Champions: Tom Hosking & Harish Natarajan
Best Speaker: Harish Natarajan
Best Speaker in Grand Final: Tom Hosking

Motions
CA:Ben Woolgar
DCA: Catherine Murphy, Hasan Dindjer

R1: THW Abolish Trial by Jury
R2: THBT, When and Where Gay Marriage is Legal, Religious Institutions Should Be Compelled to Conduct Gay Wedding Ceremonies
R3: THBT All Policy on Drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Controlled Substances Should Be Made by Expert Scientific Panels and not Elected Officials
R4: THBT The Arab Spring Has Been Bad for Egypt
R5: THW Punish Illegal Tax Avoidance by the Deprivation of Citizenship (NOTE FROM CA TEAM: “It has been pointed out to us that we confused avoidance and evasion. We are sorry, and a tad embarrassed”)

SF: THBT It Is Impossible to Be A Pro-Life Feminist
GF: TH Regrets that Lance Armstrong Got Caught

From https://www.facebook.com/events/516831748337312/

York IV 2013 [RESULTS]

York IV 2013, held at the University of York on Saturday, 26th January 2013

Champions: Durham TEK (Anna, Elise)
Grand Finalists: Durham TT (Harriet, Simon), USCB L&M (Andrew, Joe), Lancaster (Matt, Jake)

Best Speakers
1. Simon Tunnicliffe (Durham TT) 322
2. David McCreath (Edinburgh Ben Lau) 321
3. Joe Mayes (Durham MR) 318
4. Ben Lau (Edinburgh Ben Lau) 317
4. Elise Trewick (Durham TEK) 317
6. Andrew Beverstock (USCB L&M A) 315
7. Anna England-Kerr (Durham TEK) 313
7. Harriet Tooze (Durham TT) 313
9. Alex Harris (UCL A) 312
9. Jess Redmon (Durham MR) 312

WUDC 2013 [MOTIONS]

R1: THW create public housing for the poor in wealthy neighborhoods
R2: THBT Japan should acquire nuclear weapons
R3: THW only imprison individuals who pose a direct and continuing threat to society
R4: THBT international development institutions (such as the World Bank) should not finance natural resource extraction projects in corrupt states
R5: THBT self-described progressive males of dominant ethnicities are morally obliged to refrain from taking positions of responsibility where there is a qualified alternative candidate from a historically disadvantaged group who would otherwise receive the post
R6: THW legally permit soldiers to refuse to participate in military actions or missions on the basis of conscious
R7: THBT European Union nations should forgive Greece’s sovereign debt
R8: THBT countries with booming populations should allocate every adult a single tradeable permit to have a child
R9: THW ban political parties and require candidates to run for office as independents
Half OF: THBT universities should never prohibit research or teaching on the ground of sexist, racist or otherwise discriminatory implications
OF: THBT the US should cut off all military aid to Egypt
QF: THW ban all advertising of consumer goods and services.
SF: THBT the WTO should never allow nations to place export restrictions on food, rare-earth metals, and other non-oil commodities
GF: THW not allow religious communities to expel members on the basis of views or actions that contradict doctrinal teachings

ESL QF: THBT publicly funded universities should be required to reduce enrolment in degree programs within their university that have statistically poor employment outcomes
ESL SF: THBT policies that may have significant environmental consequences should be subject to a veto by a “Supreme Court” of independent scientific experts
ESL GF: THBT representatives democracies with large numbers of foreigners living in their territory (on temporary or permanent basis) should create specific seats to represent them in parliament

EFL QF: THBT publicly funded universities should be required to reduce enrolment in degree programs within their university that have statistically poor employment outcomes
EFL SF: THBT the feminist movement should actively promote norms of stable monogamous relationships
EFL GF: TH welcomes the decline of the United States of America as the sole global super power

Masters R1: Should parents raise their child/ren without gender?
Masters R2: Should we ever imprison nonviolent offenders?
Masters GF: Should we support free-schooling?

WSDC 2013 – Team Canada

Oliver (center first row), Anisah (right first row), Nasra (right second row), Jessie (center third row), Julia (right third row)

Team Canada for 2013 has joined tumblr, returning to the metaphorical internet airways that were last visited by Team Canada in 2010. They now have a twitter handle (@wsdccanada2013) as well as a tumblr where you can read about Team Canada in their own words. Here’s Team Canada:

• Anisah Mahomed {Returning from WSDC 2013} (C)
• Jessie Dorfmann {Returning from WSDC 2012}
• Julia Milden
• Nasra Moumin
• Oliver Bjornsson

Alternate: Alessandra Harkness

Team Canada are coached by Elisa Frank (Judge at WSDC 2008 and WSDC 2010) and Josh Judah.

Source: http://wsdccanada2013.tumblr.com/bio and http://csdf-fcde.ca/world-debate/team-canada-2013/

Cambridge IV 2012 [RESULTS]

Results for Cambridge IV held on the 16th and 17th of November 2012.

Key Results
Open Champions – BPP A (Harish, Andrew Tuffin)
ESL Champions – Leiden A (Karin, Daan)

Open Best Speaker – Mark Haughton (UCD L&H A)
Novice Best Speaker – Tash Rachman (Oxford RH)
ESL Best Speaker – Syed Saddiq (IIUM A)

The Tabs

Oxford IV 2012 [RESULTS] [UPDATED]

The results of the 2012 Oxford IV. now updated based upon the final tab.

Main Break Champions: Hart House A (Veenu Goswami, Joshua Stark)
Grand Finalists: TCD Phil A (Johny Eagle, Adam Noonan), UCU L&H A (Mark Haughton, Christine Simpson), Edinburgh A (Marlena Valles, David Norris)
ESL Champions: Leiden C
Best ESL Speaker: Radu Cotarcea (BBU A)

Top 10 Speakers (Main Break)

The all Oxford related judging panel

1. Fred Cowell – 423 (ULU A)
2. Christine Simpson – 421 (UCD L&H A)
3. Pam Cohn – 419 (ULU A)
4. Ashish Kumar – 416 (Cambridge A)
5. Mark Haughton – 415 (UCD L&H A)
6. Sam Ward-Packard – 414 (Yale A)
7. Rebecca Meredith – 412 (Cambridge A)
8. David Norris – 409 (Edinburgh A)
9. Matthew Arons – 409 (Princeton A)
10. John Engle – 406 (TCD Phil A)

Imperial Open 2012 Tab [RESULTS] [MOTIONS]

Motions

R1: THBT the West should support a power sharing deal between the Afghan Government and the Taliban
R2: THBT Latin American Countries should use private military contractors to police high crime areas
R3: THBT the feminist movement should renounce the title of ‘Feminism’
R4: THBT in order to be eligible for public funding, art must be subject to a double-blind test, in which it is judged anonymously by an art critic, and by members of the public against the work of a 5-year-old

Team Tab

Speaker tab after the break

The maths behind allocating adjudicators

I was recently looking at a debate tournament and the question arose about how to allocate adjudicators at any given tournament.

The first question is to ask how many adjudicators you have. Some tournaments run a ‘n-1′ rule, usually in BP format, whilst ‘n=1′ is more common in 3on3 tournaments or their variants. In both instances, n represents the number of teams at the tournament. ‘n-1′ makes things far more complicated because you have no real way of knowing for certain how many adjudicators will attend even if you have the number of teams. (You could have 12 teams from 12 institutions and thus no adjudicators, or 12 teams from 3 institutions giving you 9 adjudicators) It also doesn’t help that you have four teams to a debate. This isn’t too big of an issue, but does nonetheless make things more complicated. I will thus concentrate for the time being on 3on3 debates.

If you assume a strict ‘n=1′ rule and that all debates have an odd number of adjudicators (thus avoiding the awkward situation of a perfectly split panel without a deciding ballot). GIven n teams, you would then have n adjudicators and only n/2 debates. You would then nominally have 2 adjudicators per debate. But the preference for odd panels would thus give rise to the question, how many panels of 3 can you afford to have while still providing adjudicators for all the debates?

If there are 12 teams, you can have 6 panels of 3 and 6 panels of 1
If there are 13 teams, you can have 6 panels of 3, 7 panels of 1 and will still have 1 extra adjudicator
If there are 14 teams, you can have 7 panels of 3 and 7 panels of 1
If there are 15 teams, you can have 7 panels of 3, 8 panels of 1 and will still have 1 extra adjudicator

I could continue, but you may already see a pattern emerging. A strict n=1 rule means half, or just under half the debates can get panels of 3 while the rest have panels of 1.

But this is under a strict ‘n=1′ rule. What if more or fewer adjudicators are available? To cut a long explanation short, it turns out you can easily find how many debates get panels of 3 and thus by deduction how many get panels of 1. The formula is simply:

number of 3 person panels = (number of adjudicators minus number of teams) divide by 2

Unfortunately, this only works with panels of 1 and 3. But it is a start, and frankly I think very few tournaments can afford to have panels of more than 3 at tournaments anyways.

[VIDEO] TWSDC 2012 – Octofinal (HKSDC vs. ASIS)

Octofinal debate at the 3rd Thailand World Schools Debating Championships between HKSDC 2 (proposition) and Anglo Singapore International School 1 (opposition) on the motion ‘THBT a strong dictatorship is better than weak democracy’. HKSDC2 beat Anglo1 2-1 and advanced to the quarterfinals. The members of HKSDC2 are Justin Lee, Michelle Sum, Brian Wong and Aspen Wang.

Video credits to Gary.