Nate and Daniel just took 4th place at the incredibly competitive Kentucky Round Robin, signifying their clear presence among the top 5 teams in the country

I’m proud of our program’s accomplishments as we start this fall semester. They reflect the hard work of our students and coaches. 39 students will participate in tournaments this fall and they have actively researched and compiled hundreds of documents already. They are learning about a host of issues: nuclear weapons policy, renewable energy policy, relations with Russia, as well as argumentation theory, political philosophy, and improved speaking capabilities (even if they speak a bit rapidly).

Nate and Daniel at Kentucky: 4^th Place!

Nate Cohn and Daniel Straus just took 4^th place at the incredibly competitive Kentucky Round Robin, narrowly getting edged out by Harvard’s top team, signifying their clear presence among the top 5 teams in the country.

Daniel and Nate

PLU: Whitman wins and wins and wins . . .

The good news about Nate and Daniel follows an amazing showing at Pacific Lutheran University where our program advanced 8 teams into elimination rounds (a near record for our squad). Of particular note was Chris Fleming and Nick Griffin and Nigel Ramoz-Leslie and John-Henry Heckendorn who tied for 5^th place in open division; Miranda Morton and Katie Kight (a beginner!) shocked open division by advancing to octafinals (Carly Johnson and Olivia Ware, both frosh, as well as Tim Wilder and Drake Skaggs advanced to double-octafinals); and Skyler Bissell (top speaker) and Will Stark were in finals in novice division (coupled with Zoe Kunkel-Patterson and Cassandra Baker and Ahmed El Kottby and Wayne Lichty who advanced to quarterfinals in novice division).

Nigel and Katie

At Gonzaga . . . Paperless and our teams take off

Prior to these two recent tournaments, in mid-September, the squad headed to Gonzaga where Paperless debating has taken off—with nearly 40% of the teams at the tournament no longer packing huge tubs of paper. It was very gratifying to see our program’s work on this initiative pay off. Paperless is now nationwide and it is growing and widely appreciated for its environmentally friendly as well ease of use aspects.

In competition, the program advanced three teams into elimination rounds (second only to UC Berkeley); Nate was 2^nd speaker at the tournament and he and Daniel took 3^rdas a team. Spencer Janyk and Ali Edwards made it to octafinals and Brian Cole and Alex Zendeh were in double-octafinals.

Alex and Ali