Debate 4: University of Vermont, VT - Part 2

Sorry for the lack of updates we have been rather busy for the last couple of days. We continued to compete in the Vermont parliamentary tournament debating the motions, ‘THW nationalise energy resources’, ‘THW scrap the Olympics’, TH prefers soft power to hard power’ and ‘THW negotiate with terrorists’. We were pleased with the way we spoke especially when we got to nationalise all of the US energy industry. Overall we won three and came second twice (although ali was not convinced with one call – but hey this is debating) – Ultimately though we were not allowed to break and went on to judge the semi finals before watching the final on withdrawing US troops for Iraq.

Overall the standard of the BP tournament was good considering that very few teams had any really BP experience although the APDA debaters were able to make the transition quite easily. We also go our chance to see some policy debate a first for both of us – it did live up to the hype with 350 words a minute speeches which prove totally unintelligible to the untrained ear! But it is a skill in and of its self and the depth and rigor that the debates have is certainly superior to BP but the accessibility to and audience or to new speakers is very low. Moreover due to the masses of research involved in policy there is very little time for socialising at tournaments with everyone going to prep as soon as they have finished their last debate. Consequently we didn’t get much of a chance to speak to many policy debaters, although we did get to talk to several of the West Point guys who were debating in uniform. (The West Point team is very competitive to get on to as it is one of the few teams that allows you to get off base each weekend to compete as a result it produces several good teams each year).

The other thing to note about US tournaments is the amount of trophies there are to be won. Dog tags for the top ten speakers in each division and trophies for the top ten teams and best 2 speakers in each division. A contrast to the UK where you might get a bottle of beer for winning the final and a trophy you have to give back next year if your lucky. We were very pleased when the two Rochester speakers who had been looking after us ranked 1st and 3rd in the Parliamentary speakers tab.

So after the excitement of Vermont and sleeping in Mandy’s attic it was off to Boston College courtesy of their coach John Katsulas during the drive we got to check off two more states, New Hampshire (or Bartlett Country as we called it) and Massachusetts.