[caption id="attachment_36956" align="alignright" width="455"] The Dutch victory celebration featuring European champions Katharina Margareta Jansen (4th from left), Emma Lucas (5th f.l.) Louis Honee (6th f.l.) and David Metz (7th f.l.) - © Louis Honee[/caption] The Astana EUDC 2020 has come to an end and it has been a successful tournament for the Leiden Debating Union. The Dutch debating society was able to win both the ESL and Open final and topped the ESL speaker awards as well. In the grand final, Leiden A (David Metz, Emma Lucas) took the victory out of Closing Opposition against the Opening Government Leiden C (Louis Honee, ...

The Women and Gender Minorities Online Debate Open 2020 was hosted by Livi McAlrea and Emily Xie on the 25th and 26th of July. It featured 68 teams and a break to open quarterfinals and to a novice final. The tournament was founded and initially organized alongside Meehakk Mulani. A panel discussion was organized, and included a series of question and answers as well as broader discussions of womxn and gender minority experiences in debate. The Adjudication Team included Ivy Xu, Noam Shurin, Micaela Lewis, Hadley Parum, and Eva-Marie Quinones. Tab was run by Reed Herter and initially organized alongside ...

The Grand Final of the Restricted Mara Open 2020 has been won by MWS MWS A & W (Wee-ern, Avinash).  Speaking in Closing Government, they faced Piali's Peeps (Aryan, Adidev) in Opening Government, So debating is a gender now? (Josh Kemp, Reed) in Opening Opposition, and stan red velvet (anonymous, anonymous) in Closing Opposition. The adjudication panel was chaired by Clinton Wee Yuan together with Uphie, Hanna Zawawi, Inna Fermin, and TJ. The motion read "THBT it is in Mahathir's interest to cede leadership of the Opposition to Anwar Ibrahim". The Novice Final was won by MWS More and More (Mikhail Taufiq, Arjun ...

The NTU Open Online 2020 was won by Karasuno High (Cavan Tay, Tan Yao Kun) in Opening Opposition speaking against NTU Sheng Siong (Darren, Rohan Kapur) in Opening Government, Bubbles (Vaishnavi Prasad, Nirmal Bhansali) in Closing Government, and NTU C Fairprice (Chaitu, Zhen Zhen) in Closing Opposition on the motion "THBT ASEAN should abandon the China-ASEAN South China Sea Code of Conduct negotiations." The final panel was chaired by Ploopy. Judging with them were Amrit, Connor O'Brien, Hannah Hafidzal, and Vedika Kedia. The Novice Champions were small brain (Joshua, Yi Xuan) debating in Opening Government. They spoke against Pocket Jacks (Dhruv ...

[caption id="attachment_35564" align="alignright" width="400"] The winners Lorna Staines (m.), Suzanne Elliott (r.) with the chair of the final, Nishith Hedge (l.)- © TU Delft Debating Club[/caption] The 2019 edition of the Delft Open was won by the Glasgow University Union in form of the team GUU No country for told men (Lorna Staines, Suzanne Elliott) out of Closing Opposition. They defeated ET DSDC (Elian Lavrijsen, Teck Wei Tan; DSDC/Oxford) in Opening Government, DSDC Floris en Marit (Floris Holstege, Marit van den Helder; Leiden/DSDC) in Opening Opposition and DSDC JJ (Jonathan Kellogg, Jure Hederih; DSDC/Oxford) in Closing Government on the motion "THR ...

Once again the anglophone World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) took place during the turn of the year. This year's location was Mexico City. The tournament started the 27.12.17 and ended the 04.01.18. After nine preliminary rounds the teams breaking to the outrounds were announced on New Year's Eve. At the WUDC, teams participate classified as one of three language categories: EPL (English as a Proficient Language), ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language). EPL-classified teams can only participate in the Open Break, ESL-teams depending on their ranking either in the Open Break oder the ...

[caption id="attachment_33181" align="alignright" width="400"] F.l.t.r.: The winners of Moscow Open Maxim Raschupkin and Mikhail Shuganov together with final judges Anna Akimova, Harish Natarajan, Monica Forman and Raffy Marshall - © Yaroslav Elistratov[/caption] The team Varvara (Maxim Raschupkin, Mikhail Shuganov) from Kazan has won the final of the Moscow Open 2017 from Opening Government on the Motion "THBT democratic states should ban and block all media outlets believed to undermine democratic values". They defeated Pink Ponies (Alexey Nogovitsin, Danil Kustin) in Opening Opposition, SUFE A (Yan Shen, Qiyu Lin) in Closing Government and 2 genders 1 cup (Ekaterina Bogma, Nikola Serafimov) in ...

[caption id="attachment_31316" align="alignright" width="400"] Winners of LSESU Open: Joe Mayes (left), Steven Rajavinothan (right) - © Seah Ying Ying[/caption] The team Young, Scrappy and Hungry (Joe Mayes, Steven Rajavinothan) has won the Open final of the LSESU Open 2017 from Opening Government on the motion "This house believes that history curriculums should portray in an overwhelmingly negative light all celebrated historical figures responsible for racially motivated violence. E.g. Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell, Charles De Gaulle." They defeated the teams ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Joe Roussos, Tim Mooney) in Opening Opposition, Almodovar Film Club (Annie Williamson, Toby Tricks) in Closing Government and Rake unknown ...