Note by the editors: This article will be updated to reflect the top novice speaker & Spanish division motions when such information is released.

left: Pan-American Champions Miriam Kohn & Chris Perkins. right: ESL top speaker Syed Reefat Aziz – © Brady Fletcher.

In the English division of the 2017 Pan-American Universities Debating Championships, the team Rochester PK (Miriam Kohn, Chris Perkins) emerged victorious from Closing Government on the grand final motion “This house prefers a world where American and Canadian Multi-National Corporations in South America adhere to the environmental and labour standards of their home countries.” They debated against ULV LM (Kandin Maraquin, Tanner Long) in Opening Government, Cornell JL (Inbum Lee, Safwan Jalal) in Opening Opposition, and UCLA KP (Arun Prakash, Filipp Krasovsky) in Closing Opposition after the top three seeds of the tournament dropped in semifinals.

The final was chaired by Emanuel Waddell judging with the panel of Lindsey Dixon, Kenneth Newby, Cody Walitzer, and Allison Morrell.

Kaitlyn Hall and Matt Aust of Pacific Lutheran University win the Spanish division final.

The top speaker of the English division was Marina Tan of Yale ST with speaker point average of 81.83 & the top speaker of the Spanish division was Julián Triana Vargas of Sergio JV, who averaged 77.16 speaker points.

Syed Reefat Aziz of Rochester AH was the best ESL speaker in the English language division for the second year running with an average of 76.5 speaker points.

The teams breaking to quarterfinals in the English division were:

1. Yale ST (Marina Tan, Miles Saffron), on 17 points
2. Hawaii DH (Sterling Higa, Giraldine Duff), on 16 points
3. UBC AE (Matthew Araneta, Katy Exton), on 14 points
4. Duke BR (Allison Braithwaite, Eric Ramoutar), on 13 points
5. Cornell JL (Inbum Lee, Safwan Jalal)
6. Rochester PK (Miriam Kohn, Chris Perkins), on 12 points
7. Seattle FN (Alissa Neuman, Aine Foran)
8. Clemson KS (Marina Shrew, Matt Karkowski)
9. Morehouse BB (Shaheed Brooks, Davon Boyd)
10. Clemson SS (Kelsea Shulenberg, Rachel Savage)
11. Duke HJ tied with ULV LM (Jenny Jiao, Jacob Hoberg)
12. ULV LM tied with Duke HJ (Kandin Maraquin, Tanner Long)
13. Wilamette MW (Jessica Weiss, Quinlyn Manfull)
14. USAFA MO (Sarah McClellan, Doug Ottino)
15. UCLA KP (Arun Prakash, Filipp Krasovsky), on 11 points
16. Regis CF (Donald Felbaum, David Cecil-Few)

The judges that broke in the English division were:

Lindsey Dixon, Darren Hicks, Maheer Iqbal, Emanuel Waddell, Josh Martin, Ian Greer, Enting Lee, Una Kimokeo-Goes, Euni Kim, Adnan Muttalib, Robert Margesson, Allison Morrell, Fanele Mashwama, Josiah Peterson, Kenneth Newby, Steven Johnson, Sam French, Pratik Malsh, Marie Arcidiacono and Elizabeth Avunjian.

Elimination panels & pairings for the English division can be viewed here.

Motions run in the English language division were as follows:

Round 1: This house would make the directors of major governmental science and technology organizations elected positions (e.g. Director of Environmental Protection Agency, head of National Science Foundation, Minister of Science and Technology)

Round 2: This house believes that governments should depopulate areas with few viable economic activities

Round 3: This house believes that the feminist movement should oppose presumptive custody in favor of women in cases of divorce

Round 4: This house believes that it is legitimate for states to deny residency to immigrants who openly contradict their predominant values.

Round 5: Info slide: Robot tax: a tax on corporations levied in proportion to the company’s use of artificial intelligence in the production, distribution and sale of its goods and services.

Artificial intelligence: the development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and so on.

This house would institute a “robot tax.”

Round 6: This house believes that minority groups should not reclaim slurs that have been directed against them

Quarterfinals: You are a citizen living in today’s world. You have the ability to create a perfect world by picking a random child by global lottery and condemning them to a condition of abject misery. The lottery is unbiased. The child will endure all the world’s extreme suffering in perpetuity (i.e. lack of human contact, torture, starvation, disease). The child’s suffering creates a world without war, famine, disease, or poverty: there is perfect prosperity and happiness.

This house would do it.

Semifinals: This house believes that the USA should fund military action by private intermediaries (e.g. paramilitary groups, private military contractors, vigilante groups) against drug cartels in other countries in the Americas

Final: This house prefers a world where American and Canadian Multi-National Corporations in South America adhere to the environmental and labour standards of their home countries.

The teams breaking to semifinals in the Spanish language division were:

1. Breitbart PG (Cornell; Estefania Palacios, Jack Groves) on 14 points
2. Jobs Jobs Jobs JV (Sergio; Sebastián Jimenes, Julián Triana Vargas) on 13 points
3. Nasty Women FS (Denver; Selene Figueroa, Quinn Seremet)
4. Obama Wire Tap CC (Venezuela; Francesco Castiglione, Miroslava Colan) on 11 points
5. Bigly BG (Linfield; Melissa Garibay, Mia Burnett)
6. Jobs Jobs Jobs JL (Sergio; Nicolas Riaño, María Camila Farfán Leyva) on 10 points
7. Liberal Propaganda AH (PLU; Kaitlyn Hall, Matt Aust) on 9 points
8. Breitbart AR (Cornell; Roberto Romero, Alex Allaga)

Breaking as judges in the Spanish division were:

Carlos M. Contreras Sánchez, Chelsea Santiago, Daniel Stoyell, Ingrid Rodríguez, Isaac Ramírez, Jackson Miller, Juan Mamberti and Sophia Lopez.

The University of La Verne won this year’s bid to host the Pan-American Debating Championships: Rob Ruiz, Director of Forensics at UNLV, was the Tournament Director; Fanele Mashwama, Emmanuel Waddell, and Enting Lee comprised the Adjudcation Team of the English division; Ingrid Rodriguez, Juan Mamberti, and Luisa Salazar Escalante were the Spanish division’s Chief Adjudicators; English division tab & Spanish division tab were both run by Will Reilley.

byb./jm.