Not to be outdone by Mia, it was also Luke Stuttgen's birthday, Thursday. Happy birthday, Luke! What better way to spend your birthday than teaching debate!
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As the 2012/2013 Season fast approaches, remember to order your 2012/2013 Topic Analysis Books for LD, PF, and Victory Briefs' Policy Files. Ordering a subscription not only gives you a substantial discount when compared to purchasing the books individually, but also means that the books will be delivered directly to your email as soon as they are released. Follow the links below for more information.
2012/2013 Lincoln-Douglas Topic Analysis Subscription
Congratulations to St. Louis Park's Leah Shapiro for championing the 2013 West Des Moines Valley Mid-America Cup over Collegiate's Andrew O'Donohue. The decision was a 2-1 for Leah (Legried, Hymson, *Melin). Leah is coached by Christian Tarsney and Charles McClung, and Andrew is coached by Aracelis Biel and Mark Gorthey.
The Federal Aviation Administration says you'll be allowed gate-to-gate usage of most of your personal electronics.
Congratulations to Apple Valley sophomores Prince Hyamang and Sophie Ober for closing out Minnesota's JV State Tournament. Prince and Sophie are coached by Chris Theis, Ed Hendrickson, Josh You and David Quinn.
In the Novice division Kiley Eichelberger a junior from Chanhassen defeated Edina Freshman Annie Amen in the final round to win the Novice State title. Congratulations to both debaters. Kiley is coached by Zach Prax
Congratulations to Cypress Woods' Xixiang "Shawn" Xiong for winning the 35th Isidore Newman Invitational! In finals, Shawn defeated Greenhill's Mitali Mathur on a 2-1 decision. Shawn is coached by Heath Martin and Jared Woods. Mitali is coached by Aaron Timmons and Rebecca Kuang. Isidore Newman is a semis bid to the Tournament of Champions.
Congratulations to Collegiate's Andrew O'Donohue for defeating Scarsdale's Noah Thaler to win the 2014 Columbia Invitational!
More and more, there appears to be disconnects between judges and debaters on the virtues of using theory as a strategy practice. Theory debate has steadily garnered the reputation as a frivolous, unpleasant practice, labeled as a tool employed to garner “cheap wins,” a “crutch” for those who lack substantive debate skills, and even a mechanism to exclude underprivileged debaters from the activity.
However, I find that a lot of these issues are not inherent either to theory debate or strategic theory debate, but the way debaters run these arguments. While it may occur much less frequently nowadays, excellent theory debate does exist. The goal of this article is to establish guidelines to help debaters improve on theory debate, should they choose to engage in it.
Congratulations to Collegiate's Andrew O'Donohue for defeating Scarsdale's Noah Thaler to win the 2014 Columbia Invitational!
More and more, there appears to be disconnects between judges and debaters on the virtues of using theory as a strategy practice. Theory debate has steadily garnered the reputation as a frivolous, unpleasant practice, labeled as a tool employed to garner “cheap wins,” a “crutch” for those who lack substantive debate skills, and even a mechanism to exclude underprivileged debaters from the activity.
However, I find that a lot of these issues are not inherent either to theory debate or strategic theory debate, but the way debaters run these arguments. While it may occur much less frequently nowadays, excellent theory debate does exist. The goal of this article is to establish guidelines to help debaters improve on theory debate, should they choose to engage in it.
Congratulations to Lexington’s Evan Li and Edgemont’s Riya Ganpati for co-championing the 2019 Harrison Round Robin.Full results and pairings can be found here.
Congratulations to Harvard-Westlake’s Vishan Chaudhary and Jaya Nayar for closing out the 2019 NDCA Tournament. Congratulations to Vishan for also being top speaker.Full results and pairings can be found here.
Congratulations to Walt Whitman's Benjamin Waldman and Hunter's Michael Ning for closing out the 2019 11th University of Pennsylvania Lincoln Douglas Round Robin.Full results and pairings can be found here.
In an interview with the Associated Press on March 17th 2017, Sebastian Kurz, the Chancellor of Austria, argued that the European Union needs to change course. According to Kurz “the most important is the focus on the big questions and a European Union that steps back on the small questions.”When we here at Victory Briefs first read this interview, we were shaken to our core. Like most of you, we had ignored many of the little questions because we trusted that the European Union would ask and answer them. This freed up the debate community to focus on the big questions instead. We did not need to ask if hopscotch counted as a sport, because we knew the EU could be relied on to tackle that question in their own time. But, it seems as though the EU will soon abandon its sacred charge, and that leaves the high school debate community to step in and fill the lacuna.It is because of this gap in EU leadership that Victory Briefs is proud to cosponsor the inaugural Victory Briefs Little Questions Debate Invitational.We will be asking and answering questions such as: "why did it take so long for Leonardo DiCaprio to win an Oscar", "which professional basketball player is truly the greatest of all time", and "where is Waldo?" With a mixture of prepared and extemporaneous topics, these one-on-one debates will answer some of the real questions that we all want to see answered. In the little questions debate event, one third of the questions will be written by the tournament and released ahead of time; one third will be written by the tournament but not announced until the start of the round; and one third will be solicited during the tournament by volunteers who will be walking around local neighborhoods asking random people ‘what question have you been thinking about recently?’Some may wonder if it is really worth debating these little questions. After all, does it really matter “how many baby carrots can fit into the Pope’s miter”, “what the best knitting pattern is” or “which U.S. President would have made the best WWE wrestler?”Well, at Victory Briefs we believe it does matter. Humans are creatures of reason and thought. And as such, we have a sacred duty to answer those nagging little questions once they have been asked. It is beneath our dignity to never figure out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. Aristotle declared that “all men, by nature, desire to know” and it is out of respect for that ancient insight that we are committed to knowing why we only lose socks half a pair at a time.Victory Briefs is not alone in this concern with the little questions. For years, BBC Earth has been asking their own list of little questions. Questions like ‘Why can’t you herd cats?’, ‘which baby animal is the cutest?’, and ‘why don’t you ever see baby pigeons?’ Similarly, the author Bill Bryson has long insisted on the sagacity of asking little questions. Questions like “what did insects do at night before there were electric lights”, “how do aquarium fish get so much energy out of a few little flakes of food,” “is it actually possible that there are people who can eat I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and not believe it's not butter,” “why are planes, trains, and buses on time when you are late and late when you are on time,” and most especially “why would anyone in a free society choose to become a dentist?”Victory Briefs applauds the commitments of both Bill Bryson and the BBC and we are pleased to announce that Bryson and the BBC are both cosponsors of our inaugural Little Questions debate. Stay tuned for future updates about our tournament and for more information about how you can become a part of the Little Questions Movement.
The University of Kentucky has released the initial list of at large acceptances to the 2019 TOC. Congratulations to the accepted debaters and their teams!
LD 2019 At Larges
Dougherty Valley---Amanda Yang
Harker---Akshay Manglik
Interlake---Megan Wu
KAPS---Ben Thomas
Loyola---John Choi
Northwood---Karthik Krishnan
Pennsbury---Carolyn Zou
Pinnacle---Kristen Arnold
Scarsdale---Sanjana Bhatnagar
Strake Jesuit---Vincent Liu
Gold PF 2019 At Larges
Bromfield SK---Kommineni & Selig
Chagrin Falls HM---Haines & Mills
Delbarton AG---Amin & Gajewski
DuPont Manual CR---Cao & Raj
Fairmont Prep HK---Hong & Kim
Hawken GE---Griffin & El-Kaissi
Horace Mann SM---Soodak & Mark
Milpitas SW---Schletzbaum & Wu
Nueva SC---Shahar & Cheng
Plano West Sr RO---Ogata & Rajagopalan
Saratoga SP---Sankaran & Pai
Shrewsbury IW---Iyer & Warty
Whitefish Bay FE---Fasseas & Ellinas
Winston Churchill DD---Durbhakula & Durbhakula
Winston Churchill HM---Huang & Mao
UPDATEThe Gold Division at larges created room for the following entries to be admitted to the Silver Division:
St Mary's Hall ST---Schendel & Trujillo
West Windsor Plainsboro South HN---Hsia & Nair
Coral Academy Of Science Las Vegas DO---Denning & Opperman
Coral Academy Of Science Las Vegas GW---Greene & Weisman
St John's LT---Lu & Tong
Montgomery Blair ZW---Wen & Zhang
The 2019 April Public Forum Debate Topic is Resolved: The United Nations should grant India permanent membership on the Security Council.https://www.speechanddebate.org/topics/
Congratulations to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School's Andrew Garber for winning the 45th Harvard National Forensics Tournament. In finals, Andrew defeated St. Andrew's Ishan Bhatt on a 2-1 decision (Kukreja*, Ryan, Singh). Congratulations to Valley's Animesh Joshi for being top speaker.Full results and pairings can be found here.
Congratulations to Harvard-Westlake's Vishan Chaudhary for winning the 2019 Cal Invitational UC Berkeley. In finals, Vishan defeated Immaculate Heart's Lena Mizrahi on a 3-0 decision (Malyugina, Gray, Fleming). Congratulations to Mountain View's Varun Paranjpe for being top speaker.Full results and pairings can be found here.