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DEBATERS REPRESENT NO. 1 TEAM ON WORLD STAGE |
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December 22, 2009
GROVE CITY, Pa. – Two members of the No. 1 nationally ranked Grove City College Speech and Debate Team will ring in 2010 by pitting their skills against the world’s best at the Vehbi Koç World Universities Debating Championships in Antalya, Turkey. The competition is the largest debate tournament in the world.
Senior Luke Juday of Chesapeake, Va., and junior Daniel Hanson of Danville, N.H., will compete Dec. 27 through Jan. 4 against 400 teams from a variety of international universities and colleges. Both helped Grove City’s team reach the National Parliamentary Debate Association’s No. 1 ranking for the first time this fall.
Since it began parliamentary debate four years ago, Grove City has had success in the American-style format of two teams debating, each supporting different sides of a “resolution,” or a debatable statement. The team that best presents its case wins the debate.
The world competition will be different, however, because a debate features four teams of two individuals. Two teams are assigned to each side of a resolution – the affirmative, or “government,” defends the statement and the negative, or “opposition,” opposes the statement. “Government” and “opposition” applies, because the style is modeled off of British parliamentary rules. Debaters are given 15 minutes to prepare for speeches, then have to modify as they go as various issues are unearthed within the debate.
“This creates a bit of strain on us as debaters, but we’re used to it,” Hanson said. “This prep time is typical in the debate we normally do.”
The world debate format proceeds through a series of eight seven-minute speeches as each team presents its side while simultaneously refuting the other speakers in the room. Throughout the debate, any of the other debaters in the round can stand and ask questions of the person presenting his or her case; it is customary for each speaker to take two to three questions. At the end of a debate, each of the four teams is ranked in terms of how well each has supported its position.
The tournament will progress through nine preliminary rounds that are “power-paired.” This means that as the rounds go on, winning teams are paired with winning teams, and teams that lose debate teams that have lost. After the preliminary rounds, there are 32 teams put into the championship bracket, and in each round that follows, two teams lose and two teams advance. All of the teams debate in English.
The tournament has been held annually since 1981 at a variety of locations, and it is the largest debate tournament in the world. Rankings are based on world debate performance. Currently the University of Sydney holds the highest ranking; University of Oxford University, University of Cambridge, Yale University and Monash University round out the top five spots.
While Juday and Hanson will represent the College at the tournament, Dr. Steven Jones, associate professor of sociology and the team’s adviser and coach, believes that the high quality does not stop with them; it extends to the entire team.
Juday and his debating partner, junior Dayne Batten of Cary, N.C.; Hanson and his partner, junior Kelsey Winther of Modesto, Calif.; and the team of juniors Harrison Ealey of Brecksville, Ohio, and Alex Pepper of Centreville, Va., have all won at least one tournament this fall. In the novice division, all teams have reached at least the semifinals at every tournament.
“When you get right down to it, we don’t have a weak link on the team,” Jones said.
And the rankings this year reflect that. After four tournaments, the team sits on top of the national rankings with the highest number of points. The team ended the 2008-2009 year ranked No. 9 by the National Parliamentary Debate Association, the largest parliamentary debate organization in the country.
Jones believes the key to the team’s success after it moved to parliamentary debate four years ago is the commitment of its members.
“We recruit pretty successfully, but one thing I think often gets overlooked is the fact that most of debaters stick with it,” he said. “That’s the real secret, I think, to the kind of success we’re having.”
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