Saturday, October 25, 2008

Yale IV

On October 24th, Dartmouth Parliamentary Debate took four teams on a slow, scenic drive down to New Haven to compete in the only British Parliamentary Debate tournament offered in America. The Yale IV tournament attracted teams from all over the broad American Northeast, Canada, and Australia. The Dartmouth team participates on the APDA circuit, but had no barrier in transitioning to a British style of debate. Although no Dartmouth team broke, Sourabh Mishra and Marcus Gadson finished two places out of the break by coming in 18th. To further Dartmouth's success, Prat Srivastava placed as the 7th novice speaker. Campbell Miller paired with Tarang Agarwal, Jen Gaudette with Prat, and Carsten Hansen with Maryam Zafer.

As a brief description, British Parliamentary debate differs from the American style in that it incorporates four teams competing in hour long rounds, preparation time for a resolution unseen by both teams until ten minutes before a round, and a wider variety of accents.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Boston University Novice Tournament


On October 3rd and 4th, the Boston University Novice Tournament was the first to see the incredible potential of nine Dartmouth novice teams (one team was Brown-Dartmouth hybrid).  Will Hix and Ryan Zehner broke to quarter-finals with a 4-0.  Both also won recognition for their speaking abilities, with Will taking home the top speaker trophy and Ryan the 8th speaker award.  Dartmouth had four teams-- Prat Srivastava and Campbell Miller, Natalie Burkhard and Tim Guo, ShanShan He and the Brown debater, Rohan Chaudhary and Maryam Zafer--with 3-1 records.  Other teams included Carsten Hansen and Alex Lucey, Yand Wei and Jingna Zhou, David Silver and David Lumbert, Erich Hartfelder and Jeremey Kauffman. All the novice teams gained Dartmouth immense respect with the quality of their cases, arguments, and speaking skills. With more training from the great varsity members, the Dartmouth '12s will be fierce competition.  
The Novices!