The last weekend of January 2010 marked the annual North American Debating Championships — a competition between the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate (CUSID) and the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA). The competition was hosted this year by the joint efforts of the Osgoode Debating Society and the York Debating Society on North Toronto’s beautiful York University campus. With 80 teams (that’s 160 speakers!) competing for the title, there was some strong competition for the North American champion title. The final round, by happy coincidence, worked out to be a showdown between CUSID and APDA. Despite a valiant attempt made by McGill University team of Saro Setrakian & Sean Stefanik, the final round and the championship went to the MIT team of Adam Goldstein & Bill Magnuson.
Despite MIT claiming the victory for APDA, CUSID had a strong showing this year. In addition to the McGill finalists, CUSID’s team from UBC (Evan Choate & Joshua Sealy-Harrington) finished as semifinalists, teams from Queen’s University (Adam Hetherington & Christine Wadsworth) and another team from McGill University (Vinay Mysore & Sophie MacIntyre) finished as quarterfinalists, and two Hart House teams (Richard Lizius & George Trotter and John Ashbourne & Erin Fitzgerald) as well as another Queen’s team (Adrienne Lipsey & Mark Rubenstein) finished as octofinalists.
CUSID also secured the spots of top novice speaker (Tim Abdulla from McGill University), top novice team (Deirdre Casey & Sam Greene from Hart House), and 8 of the 10 top speaker positions:
#1 Richard Lizius (Hart House LT)
#2 Christine Wadsworth (Queen’s HW)
#3 Adam Hetherington (Queen’s HW)
#4 Adam Goldstein (MIT GM)
#5 Sean Stefanik (McGill SS)
#6 Saro Setrakian (McGill SS)
#7 John Ashbourne (Hart House AF)
#8 Sophie MacIntyre (McGill MM)
#9 Alex Campbell (Stanford CM)
#10 George Trotter (Hart House LT)
Overall, this was a good year for CUSID. Next, we’ll find out who Canada’s top debaters are at the National championships this March in Edmonton.