Author Archives: Executive Director

Canada breaks a record 7 teams at Dublin Worlds

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On New Year’s Eve in Dublin, the 32 breaking teams in this year’s World University Debating Championships were announced. Canada broke 7 teams — more teams than any other country in the competition and more teams than Canada has ever broken in one year since Worlds officially changed to the British Parliamentary format ten years ago.

The Canadian teams who will debate in the Octofinal rounds on January 2 are Michael Kotrly and Joanna Nairn (Hart House A), Jess Prince and Gordon Shotwell (McGill B), Rory McKeown and Gaurav Toshniwal (Hart House D), R. Jesse McWaters III and Jason Rogers (McGill A), Rahool Agarwal and Ren (Hart House B), Ian Freeman and Melanie Tharamangalam (Hart House C), and Garnett Genuis and Padraic Ryan (Carleton).

Full Break:
1 Yale A
2 Chicago A
3 Sydney A
4 Cork Philosoph A
5 Oxford B
6 Hart House A
7 McGill B
8 Melbourne A
9 Cape Town A
10 Hart House D
11 Yale C
12 Yale E
13 McGill A
14 Sydney C
15 Glasgow A
16 Sydney E
17 Cambridge A
18 Ateneo B
19 Leeds A
20 UNSW A
21 Middle Temple B
22 Hart House B
23 Cambridge B
24 Oxford D
25 Inner Temple A
26 Cork Philosoph B
27 Bristol A
28 Hart House C
29 Carleton
30 Monash C
31 Ateneo A
32 Oregon A

Good luck to our teams and have a happy new year!!

2005 University of Alberta Hugill Cup Fall CUSID West Meeting

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2005 Fall CUSIDWest Meeting Minutes

Hugill Cup, University of Alberta – November 26, 2005

VP West, Athabasca, Calgary (Kettles), BC (Teddy), Alberta (Roman / James), Saskatchewan (Ky), Brandon (BJ), [Alaska (Steve)], SFU (Massie)

* VP West report
– CA school / training etc over summer
– Massie’s videos
– Portland tournament, 9 – 11 Dec. (Steve)
– Brandon invitational, 20 – 22 Jan. (BJ)
– French discussion, FL-HS debate in Apr. (Guillaume)

* Tournament debriefing
– Mandatory for all tournaments, posted before meeting (BJ)
– Can codify until blue in face, but if we want them, we should just do it (Crossman)
We will encourage them, posted beforehand, in Western Issues

* Western Issues mod policy
– Current policy arbitrary, let’s limit somewhat (James)
– Pref. open access on request, but Western Issues is intended for business and mod policy should follow (Massie)
… discussion of optics, utility

General consensus on “anyone CUSID-West gets access on request, with a strong moderation policy of ‘stay on topic’ and keep it to business.”

* McGoun

Ky & Shavaun(sp.): U of S is looking for tournament that encompasses how a tournament would be run in Sask. Considering heckling, questions, etc. — Sask style includes a lot of heckling, speaker-POIs, and dislike of tight / spec / researched cases. Think that a lot of style questions should be up to host school. Are well on-track for planning, considering external CA (had some offers already, want to develop local CA talent too).

Teddy: understand that you want to run tournament in certain way, but query why this policy of host sovereignty is good.

Sh: see two divisions in CUSID-West: AB/BC have focussed on some aspects of CP, SK/MB have focussed on others. Seems logical to U of S that when it comes to sub-region, there should be some reflectiveness.

Massie: 5 years ago, Leger hosted wanted to run it in BP style. Three years ago, CUSID Pres went to Dief and said “this is more different than we thought”. CUSID-West said style included canned cases, POIs encouraged, etc. When did we develop idea that there are _two_ western styles?

Sh: look at schools as they are now, Brandon, Regina, & Sask tend to run similar styles, which have a categorized difference.

Massie: this is more of an _emerging_ difference, rather than a recognition of a past difference. Isn’t it better to do this prospectively and recognize style?

Teddy: why, for a title tournament, should the host school decide? Can we, as a region, come up with a defined style? See for instance Worlds.

Mandy: to say that this is emerging loses the point that this is _our_ style.

Massie: Sask said that UBC Nats style was Western style, and Dief wasn’t.

Crossman: in terms of TD’s discretion (which I think is important), this is a CUSID-sanctioned tournament. While there may well be a or two  CUSID-West styles, there is also a general CUSID style that cuts through all regions. And perhaps things like having heckling or questions through speaker do undermine that. But when we have a title tournament, as we did at Nats last year, you have to be willing to bend on questions and make people comfortable for the legitimacy.

BJ: five years is non-trivial, in-house style.

Massie: involvement in CUSID West is part of what defines style.

Kyle: MoA is product of schools coming together to answer question “So, what is your style?” when CUSID asked at Nats bids. Maybe we’ve evolved since then and should revisit style. If there are concerns about canned cases, maybe we need to move towards straight cases.

Teddy: maybe, formally, hosts do have that discretion. But as a region, we ought to set the style etc for tournaments.

Consensus seems to be that we want to have a consensus on style for title tournaments and that we’ll try to hammer this out.

VP Central re-elected, Guelph holds next Leger

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At the CUSID Central meeting, held during the CUSID Central Canadian Championships (L?g?r Cup) this weekend, Paul-Erik “Dash” Veel was successfully re-elected as VP Central. In addition, the University of Guelph was chosen to host next year’s Leger Cup.

Unfortunately, there were no bids to host the Central Canadian Novice Championships, however, it is aimed to have a host selected by McGill’s Winter Carnival in January.

New VP Atlantic and Call for Nationals DCA Applications

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Over the weekend of November 4-6, 2005, the Atlantic Canadian Championships were held at St. Francis Xavier University.

CUSID congratulates Myles McNutt, from Acadia University, for being elected as the new VP Atlantic for 2005-2006, and thanks the outgoing VP Atlantic, Alexa Smith from Dalhousie University, for her work this past year.

In addition to the Executive election, the Atlantic region granted hosting privileges of the next Atlantic Novice Championships to Acadia University and the next Atlantic Championship to Dalhousie University.

Turning to upcoming tournaments this year, the Chief Adjudicator for this year’s National Championships, Ren, is calling for applications for Eastern and Western Deputy Chief Adjudicators to join him on the adjudication team. For more information, click here or e-mail Ren at james.renihan@utoronto.ca. Applications are due on November 15.

BP Championships and Fall General Meeting results

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The 2005 British Parliamentary Championship was held on October 14-16 at the University of British Columbia with 40 teams from across North America and a very distinguished international judging team. After an exciting final round and an hour of deliberation, Rory McKeown and Gaurav Toshniwal from Hart House (University of Toronto) won the tournament on a 3-2 decision over Monica Ferris and Brent Kettles from the University of Calgary. The other two finalist teams were Ren and Rahool Agarwal from Hart House, and Joanna Nairn and Michael Kotrly also from Hart House. Ren also won the Top Speaker award at the tournament.

The Fall General Meeting was also held on October 15 at the BP Championships. CUSID welcomes its newest full members – the University of Alaska, Brandon University, and the John Molson School of Business – and congratulates them on their successful bids. Julieta Chan, who served as the interim Executive Director over the summer, was elected as the permanent 2005-2006 Executive Director. There were no bids for the French National Championships, so the tournament host will be decided at a future General Meeting.