Herds of suit-clad debaters from 36 different schools across the country flooded campus this weekend for the National Debate Tournament. After a year and a half of planning, and $40,000 of funding, the hosts, members of the Wesleyan Woodrow Wilson Debate Team, said the tournament was met with overwhelming success.
“I have never felt so proud of the debate team as I did on Sunday,” said team president Sara Williams ’06. “We threw the best national championships in recent history. We spent three years struggling to become an established team on the debate circuit, and a year and a half planning for this, jumping over every obstacle put before us.”
As hosts, the Wesleyan team could not compete, according to American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) regulations. They instead focused their energy on organizing the weekend events, culminating with the final tournament round held on Sunday in the chapel, where the Harvard team of seniors Alex Blankinsopp and Alex Popotov ran away with the title. Though the Popotov and Blankinsopp team was seeded in the top eight, the bracket play leading up to the final round was full of unexpected outcomes, contributing to the climactic end on Sunday.
“The seven most likely teams to win our tournament were all knocked out of the elimination rounds,” Williams said. “This made for an interesting and emotional third day of competition.”
“There were a lot of upsets,” said Gwen Caitley, a tournament judge and graduate student at Brown. “It was very dramatic.”
“It’s obvious that the Wesleyan team worked really hard to prepare this tournament,” Caitley continued. “Right when we pulled up, there was someone there to greet us with all the files we needed.”
Because the tournament received such wide acclaim, Wesleyan’s debate team says they have gained credibility in the national circuit.
“This weekend showed the APDA that we are ultimately capable of hosting really great tournaments,” said team captain Amanda Fuller ’07. “We were also able to attract media coverage from surrounding papers like The Hartford Courant, so it gives a good name to Wesleyan as an institution as well.”
The 36 schools represented at the tournament each sent between one and ten teams to compete. Each team consisted of two debaters who qualified through an APDA tournament earlier that year or received the single team slot nomination that each school is granted in order to compete. A three-day bracket tournament was held Friday through Sunday, judged by graduate students with previous experience in college debate.
“The presumption is that people who have debated a lot in the past have a good idea how to debates should be judged, so they try to get people with experience,” Caitley said.
Both the judges and competitors stayed at the Middletown Inn, where 100 rooms were reserved in advance. Funds for the tournament were collected over a year and half from team-sponsored fundraisers, alumni donations and University subsidies.
“This is a huge deal,” Fuller said. “Nationals is a very difficult tournament to host. It’s difficult to have everything run on time, but ours was on time every step of the way. Very few schools are even able to host such a tournament, and those who do usually don’t end up succeeding.”
Along with a newfound esteem in the national circuit, the debate team is hoping to gain campus-wide appreciation as well.
“We’re hoping to continue to grow as a team and give us more notoriety on campus,” Fuller said. “Intellectual discourse and debate are such an important part of a liberal arts institution. We hope that more students will want to get involved after this tournament.”