The US Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) is the largest British Parliamentary debating tournament in the United States, and one of the largest debate tournaments in the World. The event is held for college and university students attending school in the United States, and is hosted by a different university each year. The host is selected by the member schools of the US Universities Debate Association. The event determines the National Champions for the year.
Contents
Most recently the tournament was hosted by Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia in April 2016. The current National Champions are Jeremy Chen and Drew Latimer from Tufts University. The Novice (first year) division was won by Rahul Gosain and Aaron Schaffer-Neitz from Columbia University. Harry Elliot of Stanford University was the top individual speaker at the tournament. The next USUDC will be hosted at the University of Denver in April 2017.
Format
USUDC is held in a format based on the World Universities Debating Championship. The tournament is held in April, before most American colleges have their final exams. In recent years about 180 teams have competed at the tournament. Only students registered at an American college or university may be made National Champion, but students from foreign schools can still compete.
Each team is made up of two students from the same college or university. In a given debate they will compete against three other teams. A motion, or proposition, is given to the teams fifteen minutes before the debate. Two teams are assigned to defend the motion, and two teams to oppose the motion. The teams are judged by a panel of judges who rank them from first place to fourth place and assign scores to each person based on the quality of their speech. In a debate, teams typically go against teams with similar records to themselves, based on a point system where first place is three points, second is two, third is one, and fourth is none. If a team had six points after three rounds, then they would typically compete against other teams with 6 points
After six or eight preliminary rounds there is a "break," announced at the banquet on the second day, and only the top thirty-two teams progress to the third day. On day three rounds are elimination rounds, the bottom two teams in a round do not progress. They begin with octofinals, then quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals, and they name the National Champion. Seeding for octofinals is based on the cumulative points the team had at the end of preliminary rounds.
Novices, people in their first year of collegiate debate, have a separate break directly to finals for the four best novice teams. A Novice Champion is then named after the Novice Final.
US Universities Debate Association
The US Universities Debate Association (USUDA) is the body which governs USUDC. It was founded in 2005 in order to organize the British Parliamentary debate circuit in the United States. They select the host for the next USUDC each year. Membership in the USUDA is open to all colleges and universities in the United States.
Championships
Harvard has been the National Champion three times, Yale two times, and no other school more than once. No school has ever defended the title from one year to another.
Controversy
At the 2016 USUDC in Atlanta, the motion for round 6 was: "This House Believes That Violence By Palestinians Against Israeli Civilian Targets Is Justified." Controversy emerged from supporters of Israel and members of the Jewish community who were upset by the motion. Morehouse College distanced themselves from the motion and the tournament due the controversy. The CA team, the group who set the motion, were interviewed by a debate podcast and defended their decision to set the motion, saying that the matter was important to discuss and citing other similar motions at tournaments held in Israel as a precedent for debating the issue.