Ashish Kumar and Michael Dunn Goekjian have won the Paris Open 2014. The final jury unanimously decided that the team from Cambridge prevailed as Opening Opposition to the following motion: This House supports the unlimited use of war-time propaganda which aims to dehumanise the enemy. The Top of the tab team Pascal A (Alon van Dam, Harish Natarajan) was in Opening Government, Belgrade A (Helena Ivanov, Stefan Siridžansky) spoke in Closing Government, and Matthew Willmore and Scott Ralston from the team Wigglypuf in Closing Opposition.

Michael Dunn Goekjian offers a POI while his team partner Ashish Kumar and Scott Ralston from Closing Opposition take notes. (c) tivi+

The final in the category English as as Second Language (ESL), taking place during the open semifinals, was won by Lund’s team Dixendorf (Emilia Carlqvist, Peer Klüßendorf). The Swedish team and acting ESL EUDC champions successfully made the case as Opening Government for this motion: This House would offer citizenship to illegal immigrants in exchange for meaningful information on their traffickers and illegal employers. In Opening Opposition was Berlin’s BDU wrecking ball (Christina Dexel, Philipp Schröder); Paris 5 A (Clara Delplancke, Claire Mayer) concluded the debate on Government side, and Leiden’s team Super best panda friends (Gigi Gil, Lennart van Laake) did so on Opposition side.

The tournament consisted of five preliminary rounds, open semifinals, an open final and the ESL final. Rebecca Meredith and Christine Simpson were the Chief Adjudicators. They were supposed to be joined by Daan Welling who had to call the tournament off at short notice. Noémie Bristol-Courgeon convened the event. The organisation team provided the debaters with one bottle of wine per room every round and champagne before the final.

During the tournament, a tabulation error occurred: The team Edwardo and Surgin was accidentally marked as ineligible to compete in round four, which resulted in them being ranked fourth automatically with no speaker points. The organisation team apologized for the incident and said that their true performance now could not be judged appropriately. Still, they amended the tab, positioning Eduardo as 8^th best ESL speaker and Sergin as 12^th (Editor’s note: the tab doesn’t state their full names). The full tab can be found online (the tabulation error amendment is not included in this version).

These are all the motions of the tournament:

R1: THBT it is immoral to donate to animal welfare charities while there are charities which aim to alleviate human suffering still in need.

R2: THW guarantee military veterans jobs for life (through civilian state sector employment or/and state subsidy of private sector employment).

R3: (info slide:
The Diamond Club is a dating website which aims to pair male millionaires with physically attractive females. Male members pay upwards of £100,000 to join the site, while female members are ranked out of 100 for their physical attractiveness and do not pay a fee to join. No other qualities, such as skills or interests, are taken into account when ranking female members. The site is for linking of dates, and not for prostitution.) THBT feminists should not oppose dating sites which seek to romantically link rich men and physically attractive women.

R4: THBT western nations should require companies seeking to sell products within their borders to abide by national worker’s rights legislation, regardless of where the goods were manufactured and at all stages of the production process.

R5: THW determine income tax based on the relative privilege of an individuals’ upbringing. (With info slide defining ‘privilege’ as private education, parental wealth, childhood home)

Open Semi: THW, as NATO, send troops to protect the Ukrainian border (not including the Crimea).

ESL Final: THW offer citizenship to illegal immigrants in exchange for meaningful information on their traffickers and illegal employers.

Open Final: THS the unlimited use of war-time propaganda which aims to dehumanise the enemy.

hug/nbo