Dartmouth Winter Tournament

After a long hiatus, the Dartmouth Parliamentary Debate Blog resumes and recounts all the tournaments from winter term.



On the weekend of January 16th and 17th, the hosted our own tournament at Dartmouth. Schools came from all over the Northeast making the pool close to 50 teams overall. The experience was great for Dartmouth Novices who judged at a tournament for the first time. The tournament's highlights were the social hosted by the SAE fraternity, Moose trophies, the Mai Tai banquet, and the finals round won by Yale's Grant May and Pam Brown.









Judges

Wesleyan & Brown

On Halloween weekend, Dartmouth Parli sent teams to both the Wesleyan tournament in Connecticut and the Brown tournament in Rhode Island.
Sourabh Mishra and Marcus Gadson placed as the 4th Varsity team and Pratyaksh Srivastava and Maryam Zafer came in as the 2nd Novice team. The other teams Tim Goh and Jen Gaudette and David Lumbert and Jingna Zhou left the tournament with great records. Prat Srivastava also placed as the 2nd Novice speaker and Tim Goh took 3rd place.

The Brown teams ,Tarang Agarwal and E McNeil and Andrew Wansley and Joe Huston, both went 3-2 at Brown. They had great records despite facing a large and competitive pool.

Cornell

The Dartmouth Parliamentary Debate team drove 300 miles to attend the Cornell tournament on Novermber 14th and 15h. All the teams met with a lot of success as Shan Shan He and Rohan Chaudhary placed as the 3rd Novice team. Marcus Gadson and Jen Gaudette went into the semi-final round as the top seeds with a 5-0 record. They emerged as the 3rd Varsity team. E McNeill was awarded the 6th Varsity speaker award, Tarang Agarwal the 8th and Marcus Gadson the 9th.

Jen Gaudette and Shan Shan He have fun after a day of tough debating

Tufts (ProAm)

On the weekend of November 7th and 8th, Dartmouth teams headed to Boston to take part in the Tufts tournament. This tournament had a unique setup because it mandated that novice debaters pair up with varsity team members. Andrew Wansley, paired with Will Hix, said, "Novice and Varsity members had a great time debating at Tufts. Wonderful rounds and great experiences all around."
Other teams included Varsity Ben Lo and Novice Tim Goh, and (?)

Andrew Wansley, Erich Hartfelder, Will Hix enjoy time in between rounds

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.

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!

  

Results from BU and Stanford

Although most of the team was busy with finals the past few weeks, a few debaters were able to find the time to compete each of the past two weekends. On February 29^th-March 1^st, Joe Huston ’10 and Andrew Wansley ’10 went down to Boston to compete in the Boston University tournament. Joe and Andrew compiled a 4-1 record, but finished just outside the break.

On March 7^th and 8^th, Sourabh Mishra ’10 and Marcus Gadson ’10, along with Tarang Agarwal ’11 (who debated with James Shapiro of Brown) made a cross-country trip to the Stanford Debate Tournament. For the first time in his last three competitions, Tarang did not make it to novice finals. That’s because he made the varsity break, going 4-1 on his way to a 3^rd place varsity finish. Additionally, Tarang and James were the top novice team at the tournament. Sourabh and Marcus also went 4-1, finishing as the 4^th place pair

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Tarang and James: 1st place novice + 3rd place varsity =
A lot of trophies!