Chicago

If one pictures tells a thousand words, what do four say?

Debate 29: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

We spent the rest of Saturday in Chicago – checking out the preparations for the holiday lights illumination parade on Michigan Av. That evening after having enjoyed a very agreeable dinner -we met with two members of the Northwestern team who took us for drinks at a phenomenal bar that contained a bowling alley, basketball hoop and beach volleyball court!

As there was to be no debate on this stop due to Scott being unwell, we played pool against Northwestern instead and a two frame British victory ensued! We left the bar and took a cab to the famous Green Mill jazz club. Set in an old speakeasy with a truly authentic atmosphere. The band started at 12.30am, not only did they have a great name ‘Sabertooth’ they were in Alex’s immortal (Fast Show inspired) words ‘fab’...

The next day, Alex went for a jog along the north shore using his new Nike+ shoes, which talk to his Ipod to show how far he has been running and play motivational music at appropriate times. Alistair used the time to work on his CV and apply for jobs. That evening we had dinner at an Italian restaurant downtown with three more NW debaters. On Monday after a walk through the Chicago loop we took the subway up to Northwestern’s campus in Evanston. It is set right on Lake Michigan and has stunning views back towards Chicago. A party had organised for us with all of the debate team. We were cooked a delicious Mexican dinner for us all while we enjoyed Monday Night Football, Beer Pong, debate chat and a keg.

We would now be out of Northwestern’s care and as Thanksgiving was soon approaching we had some time off for the first time on the tour. We checked into another hotel and spent Tuesday sleeping in before Ali went to the Art Institute of Chicago for the afternoon (Alex who had visited previously ran around on a treadmill). That evening we went to a fantastic South American restaurant with an old friend from home Daragh Grant (more on him later).

Wednesday was spent at the Field Museum – sort of like the Natural History museum in London but with a greater variety of exhibits. We spent a great deal of time in the Evolution and dinosaurs exhibit. Alex wanted proof that evolution wasn’t just a crazy theory. We both thought the exhibits were very well set out with a good balance between interactivity (which appealed to our 12 year old nature) and detailed scientific explanation (for the Doxbridge academic in us). We were also able to see lots of stuffed animals and an exhibit about Native Americans before we were booted out at 5pm.

National Communication Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

NCA is a huge convention that brings together communications Professors from across America. It mostly takes the form of panel discussions where experts in a variety of communications fields present papers, but it also involves forums for debate coaches on all the major US circuits and acts as an important recruitment window where schools recruit graduate students. NCA started early for us as we met Sam at the Hilton hotel and walked to the main convention centre where we briefly with met the member of the committee who had helped organise our tour. We left them to work on the selections for the reciprocal tour to the UK that will be happening in the spring. While we waited for Geoff form DePauw (so Alex could be reunited with the jacket he had left in Indiana) we read through the titles of the hundreds of presentations and symposiums that were held over the four days of NCA and in the process learned some exciting new words such as ‘hetero-normative’. The professional nature of debate coaching and the difference from the UK was once again acute; one seminar was all about ‘The Role of the Ballot in Debating’. In fact some papers were so well named we were inspired to submit our own titles for next year. Look out at NCA 2008 for: “Re-Imagining the Anglo-Normative Dichotomy: A Post-Colonial Journey through the spectrum of a fractured Americana”

Unfortunately the legendary Northwestern coach ‘Duck’ (Scott Deatherage) was in hospital so there was some confusion as to what to do with us. After a Bond-esque rendezvous with a Northwestern graduate student we solved the problem by going to a very nice restaurant with Sam for lunch – and a few nice traditional gin and tonics. During lunch duck phoned and we were soon checking ourselves into the very nice ‘W’ Lakeshore – while Sam was off to Slovenia to teach at the IDEA academy.

That evening thanks to Gordon Mitchell we were taken for dinner with lots of University of Pittsburgh Alumni and faculty to honour Robert Newman and celebrate his 85th birthday. Newman studied at Corpus Christi College in Oxford after a chance encounter in a dinner line during World War II and is one of the most respected communications academics in the US. He wrote seminal books on Evidence and how it was used to justify the attacks on Hiroshima. The dinner conversation was truly fascinating and the after dinner speeches were incredibly moving. Robert ended the evening by reminding us of the manner in which evidence was abused during the infamous McCarthy witch-hunts and the ongoing need for vigilance in holding our governments accountable.

Debate 28: Loyola University, Chicago, IL.

Loyola was to be one of our most fleeting stops. We arrived into a very cold Chicago and checked into our hotel the Millennium Knickerbocker, something of a downtown institution where JFK and Al Capone had both stayed. We had a brief walk up Michigan Avenue (the main shopping drag in Chicago also known as ‘The Magnificent Mile’), and made a stop at GAP to purchase some scarves to keep us warm. David the coach from Loyola then picked us up and we drove the 25 minutes up the University which is in northern Chicago right on the lake. The debate was at 4pm and we opposed the motion ‘This House believes the USA should join the ICC’, in 30 minutes we managed to cook up a fairly reasonable case and enjoyed the debate which was attend by about 40 people. David and the Debate Team took us downtown to have Chicago’s famous deep-dish pizza (think pizza in pie form). The coach from U. Miami who is also a also friend of David’s joined us and we bantered about how the last time we had seen him it have been about 40 degrees warmer. After dinner and a few drinks we went to the Palmer House Hotel and met our manger Sam who had just arrived for New York to attend the National Communications Association Annual Conference.

Debate 27: Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN.

We were handed over at the local McDonalds to Seda a graduate student, who delivered one of the best opening lines of the tour – ‘Are you comfortable with a woman driving?’, which considering we were about to spent the next two hours in a car with her and neither of us can drive, was an intriguing question.

Seda is from Turkey and is studying psychology at Purdue Calumet, so having informed her that she was the best Turkish driver we had ever driven with – we both discovered this summer that Istanbul taxi cabs are lethal – we soon got down to a healthy discussion of Turkish politics, the PPK, Iraq and the EU. Before long the two hours were up, we had arrived in Hammond, Indiana and changed time zones - without leaving the state! After a brief stop at the university where we met our debating partners (Perdue doesn’t have a team so we were each paired with a undergraduate majoring in communications) we were dropped off at the hotel to be greeted in our room by a welcome basket full of goodies! That evening Michael (one of the debaters) took us for dinner at a Thai restaurant and we turned in for an early night as the debate was at 10am the next morning…

The debate was a feast of pomp and ceremony on a scale we had yet to see! Small American and British flags had been placed in the grass lining the route to the building the debate was taking place in were 250 people showed up at 10am. Flags adorned the stage, we were trumpeted in to the hall, national anthems were played and the moderator wore doctoral robes. But best of all Hammond’s Deputy Mayor read a declaration from the Major declaring this day in the history of Hammond ‘British Debate Day”. The debate itself was on unwarranted surveillance –, it was a good debate and although Alistair’s “You are free to do what you want including makes bomb, but when you do could you please let the government spy on you” line was ok, Alex eventually carried the slightly more sensible side of the motion. Many photographs and an autograph signing session followed the debate – then it was off to lunch at Cracker Barrel, another American institution.

For dinner that night we were taken to ‘House of Kobe’ a Japanese restaurant where they cook al the food in front of you with much ceremony. The next morning Seda drove us to the train station to take the train the 45 minutes into Chicago.

Debate 26: DePauw University, Greencastle, IN.

We arrived blearily eyed into Indianapolis after our flight via Chicago. Geoff who is the debate coach drove us to our hotel in Greencastle. DePauw is a small liberal arts college a lot like Kenyon, except on a slightly bigger scale. On the first evening we went for Steak with the team, Geoff and his two daughters. We returned to the hotel to find it had a free DVD library and selected ‘The Fan’ – a fairly awful sports movie with Robert De Nero and Denzel Washington, before we watched the end of the Indianapolis Colts lose to the San Diego Chargers (a comment relevant to those who follow this ‘American’ Football game).

The next morning Geoff took us for an authentic breakfast at an old rail-stop and for a walk around an old quarry that the university purchased for $1 and turned into a nature reserve. We then visited Geoff’s argumentation class where we debated two of his students on the motion, ‘This house would rather be witty than pretty’ – it was a fun debate, much of it at the Spice Girls expense. For the record Alex and Alistair do not have tickets for the LA reunion concert.

The main debate event took place at 4pm and was well attend with about 80 people; we took on the DePauw team in opposition to the motion ‘This House would scrap the Olympics’. We had done the debate several times before so had our arguments well rehearsed and we were able to carry the vast majority of the audience and save the Olympics. After some press interviews we were taken to Marvin’s – which is a local institution for DePauw students. The walls are covered with pictures of DePauw students around the world carrying large signs that say ‘Marvin Delivers’, one of the most famous pictures shows students with a large painted banner bearing the slogan in Red Square during the 1980s. Just after the photo was taken they were promptly arrested as the authorities thought Marvin was a missile delivery system! We enjoyed the house special of garlic cheeseburgers (GCB) before retiring to watch another and altogether better film, ‘Gridiron Gang’ with the Rock coaching a prison football team. We were thoroughly inspired.

The next morning we drove to West Lafayette for brunch at the famous XXX dinner, we had a little time before our drop off so Geoff took us to the sight of the Tippecanoe battle, were we picked up some very nifty Native American whistles…

Debate 25: Kenyon College, Gambier, OH.

Arriving in Columbus we noted that it was slightly colder than it had been in Miami – in fact it was much much colder! Jesse a student at Kenyon College picked us up at the airport– the college is a very selective liberal arts college with only 1,700 students, many of which are from the East Coast or Chicago. The debate program is student run, but the tour has been coming to Kenyon every year for the last 10 years. In the car to Kenyon we discovered that on this very small campus we were competing with a speech by Margaret Atwood at the same time as our debate - not to mention Saturday night drinking…

We arrived late on Friday night and were taken for dinner and then for a proper student Friday night out – with warm up drinks and then a bar crawl to all of the bars in town (two – Gambier is a seriously small place). We were able to sample local beer from Ohio before the evening became very strange. We discovered Jesse had spent a term in Edinburgh at the university, interning for the SNP at the Scottish Parliament, as well as drinking in all Alex’s locals. Moreover he had stayed at the same apartment building as Alex whist living in Washington D.C. Then Alistair met a girl who had just graduated form his high school, Latymer in North London and was now at Kenyon on a scholarship – while Alistair was coming to terms with this random excitement, Alex was introduced to several people who had spent last year in Oxford and discovered several close mutual friends. We had several more drinks before returning to our delightful cottage on campus where we were living.

On Saturday we walked around campus and were taken for a lunch of ribs at a small restaurant outside of town. During the drive we passed several Amish wagons and homes. That afternoon we took advantage of Kenyon’s new $80millon sports centre – which was built thanks to a very generous alumni donation. We taught Jesse the basics of cricket before we played some basketball.

The debate that evening was on the subject ‘This House would lower the age of drinking to 18’. We were arguing to keep it at 21. Jesse debated with a fantastic Classics professor who is very popular on campus for his eccentric lecturing style. Despite competing with Attwood and her Booker we got a good turn out and the debate was very funny. After we were finished we went to a very smart frat party and sampled their beer and then we walked down the hill on which Kenyon sits to a 21st birthday party. We took to the beer pong table and were able to win four games in a row much to the frustration of some more experienced and notably more sober team. Although it should be a note for the future that playing beer pong out side, wearing black tie in temperatures just above freezing is not a great idea. The only downer on an otherwise awesome weekend was leaving while slightly groggy at 7.30am to take out flight to Indianapolis via Chicago…