[caption id="attachment_34633" align="alignright" width="338"] © Saharalipour[/caption] The Hart House Inter-Varsity 2018 was won by Laurier/Unaffiliated SX (Ivy Xu and Brendt Schmidt) from Opening Opposition. They debated the final on the motion "This House opposes the propagation of Canadian exceptionalism" against Harvard CH (John Hunt, Sophia Caldera) in Opening Government, Yale AC (William Arnesen, Ko Lyn Cheang) in Closing Government, and Cornell KW (Jin Mo Koo, Emma Rose Wirshing) in Closing Opposition. The final was chaired by Mo Niaz with Alexandra Sundarsingh, James Hardy, Julia Milden, and Meghan Auckland. The Novice Final of the tournament was won by  Western DX (Vidit Desal, Emily Xie) in Closing Government, on the motion "With the goal of improving representation in media, this House would ...

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 ...

The use of language in university debating hasn't been studied a lot so far. Miriam Kohn from the University of Rochester did some research - in this interview, she tells us about her results and thoughts on the use of "hedging". Edited for length & clarity with entire thesis and speech transcriptions available here. ...