We’ve entered a few teams and are looking forward to representing AU. We hope to bring the perspective unique to AU’s strong international relations programs in the School of International Service to this great meeting of minds. We’ll be competing with both old and new friends from all of the country from both parliamentary and policy leagues (and probably some crazy other debate forms I’ve never heard of). It’s great to get to try something a bit different and I’m most excited to learn from the brilliant opponents we’ll face and the fantastic judging pool we’ll have access to this weekend.

Three AU teams broke to quarterfinals, Tula Biederman and Randi Saunders (who went 5-0 and were top seed going into out rounds), Alex McHugh and Kurt Girard, and David Stuaffer in a hybrid with Adele Zhang from Columbia. David and Adele advanced on to Semis, which qualified David for Nationals! (At last!) Our novices did great as well with Jackson Galloway and Evan Blum winning novice finals once again and Jackson, Evan and Shelby Ostergaard all scoring novice speaker awards. As everyone knows, UVA is a particularly great place to win them! We had some well deserved varsity speaker awards as well, those going to Tula Biederman and Kurt Girard. It was all in all a beautiful weekend in the sunny south and a great way to head into the home stretch of another inspiring AUDS season.

Next week we’re splitting our time between a tournament at home and Williams and then on to Nats! Luckily for us it’s right here in the District at U Maryland College Park. We’re looking forward to great tournament put on by our good friends on the UMCP team and everyone else who’s helping make Nats possible.

If you’re interested in joining the Debate Society, there’s a lot that you can do to get ready for the year. First, learn more about the team by looking through the website, especially the About Us page. Second, learn more about our style of debate, American Parliamentary, on our league’s website. And third, keep in touch with us by joining us on our Facebook page, where you’ll get our most recent updates on information, events, and upcoming meetings.

But as you may be able to tell from the countdown, time is running out before the first tournament of the year, hosted by Johns Hopkins University! If you want to get a jump on the rest of the league, and are interested in going to Hopkins, then send us an email at debate@audebate.org ASAP!

The Executive Board consists of the President and four Directors, as well as a Tournament Operations Officer that sits in on tournament-related Board meetings. This year, the members are:

President: Alex Mchugh, Class of 2014. Alex returns to the E-board after serving as Director of Administration last year. Also actively involved in Students for Liberty, Alex looks to lead the team as the first new President in two years.

Director of Administration: David Stauffer, Class of 2014. David also returns to the E-board after serving as Director of Finance for the previous E-board. David is also a playwright who has had works performed for paying audiences and is, for some reason, a statistics major.

Director of Finance: Tula Biederman, Class of 2015. Tula will serve on the E-board for the first time, after one year debating for AUDS. Tula hails from California, and expects to therefore run roughly three hours behind the rest of the E-board.

Director of Outreach and Development: Alan Ramey, Class of 2015. Alan will also serve on the E-board for the first time, after joining the Debate Society last year. Alan hails from a small town called Downhome, and is confused by McDonalds menus.

Tournament Operations Officer: Payne Griffin, Class of 2015. Payne will serve in an E-board position for the first time, having joined the Debate team last year. Payne has been extremely successful on the AU Cycling Team, and dates someone with the same name as his bicycle.

The rest of the team was also successful at the tournament, as freshmen Alan Ramey and Tula Biederman reached novice finals, where they were narrowly defeated by a team from Brandeis University. To get to that point, they defeated another team from Brandeis in novice quarterfinals, and yet another in novice semifinals.

The path of AU A was similarly difficult. In octofinals, they defeated the top team from Boston University, last year’s national champions on a 3-0 decision. The team from BU ran the case “all federal legislation in the United States should expire after roughly 20 years barring renewal”. In quarterfinals, Steve and James defeated the top team from Columbia University, including first-ranked speaker, senior Reid Bagwell on a 4-1 decision. The Columbia team ran the case that the Catholic Church should not excommunicate Robert Mugabe’s actions. In semifinals, the team defeated the Yale team of sophomore Max Dovola and junior Andrew Connery on a 6-1 decision, after the Yale team proposed that biologists should attempt to make contact with previously unknown Amazon tribes in Brazil.

In the final round, AU once again debated the Yale team of senior Robert Colonel and junior David Trinh. AU A chose to run propose that the US Senate should not have to confirm Cabinet appointees. The round was close, and was decided by a single vote in favor of the Yale team, 6-5.

James finished 5th individually during the tournament, earning him 10 points in the individual national rankings. The tournament win is by far the largest victory for the Debate Society, passing the previous record set at the University of Pennsylvania. The Penn tournament consisted of a relatively small 116 debaters.

To win the tournament, AU A won all five preliminary rounds (including a warmup round against the Yale team they would later defeat in finals), then won three elimination rounds, a total of eight consecutive wins. In quarterfinals, they defeated Yale BB (junior Michael Barton and sophomore Zach Bakal), and went on to defeat another Yale team (Yale CF, seniors Nick Cugini and Kate Falkenstein) in semifinals. In the round, the Yale team argued that the Union should not have executed a Southern prison guard accused of war crimes after the Civil War; AU A won on a 5-0 decision. In the final round, AU A debated the second-ranked team in the nation, Yale CT (senior Robert Colonel and junior David Trinh). James and Steve won on a razor-thin 7-6 decision.

UMBC was a successful tournament for several of AU’s debaters, who were generally split into varsity-novice “ProAm” teams in order to help qualify novice debaters to attend the National Championship tournament at the end of the year. Tula’s victory brings her close to that result, earning her 13 of the 14 points necessary to qualify. She will only need to reach the quarterfinals of a similarly-sized tournament one more time to earn the final needed point.

The team of freshman Abbe Ramanan and senior Stephen Hayes finished 10th, finishing less than five speaker points away from qualifying for quarterfinals. Steve was also the 6th place speaker, finishing just ahead of James, who was 7th.

To get to the final round, Tula and James defeated the Rutgers team of Kyle and Adam Bomeisl, in the quarterfinal round, and a team from Johns Hopkins, Sam Chirtel and Jacob Grunberger, in semifinals. Lastly, in finals, they defeated a Rutgers team of senior Chris Bergman and sophomore Ashley Novak, who argued that the world as is is better than a hypothetical world in which people felt neither love nor hate, but instead felt mild fondness for all other human beings.