Author Archives: Executive Director

CUSIDWest Meeting held, Winter GM minutes posted

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The CUSIDWest regional meeting was held at the McGoun Cup hosted by the University of Saskatchewan this past weekend on February 24-26. The Memorandum of Agreement for the Western Region was unanimously abolished. As for next year’s Western title tournaments, McGoun will be held at the University of Alberta and the Pro-Am Championships will be held at the University of Calgary. Finally, Erin Reddekopp was elected as the new Vice-President, Western Region. Erin, who hails from the University of Alberta, will replace the outgoing VP Western, Monica Ferris, in a month’s time. CUSID would like to thank Monica for all the leadership she has shown in the region this year.

The minutes from the Winter General Meeting at the North American Championships are posted. You can read it here: http://www.cusid.ca/documents.php?cat=minutes

North American Championships news

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The North American University Debating Championships were held on January 27-29, 2006 at Hart House, University of Toronto. Congratulations go out to the new North American Champions, Ben Eidelson and Matt Wansley from Yale University, as well as the finalists, Laura Kusisto and Adam Lazier from Queen’s University, who represented Canada in the final round. Rory Gillis from Yale University was the Top Speaker and Jason Rogers from McGill University was the Top Public Speaker.

The Winter General Meeting was also held on the Sunday of that weekend to discuss certain constitutional amendments and the allocation of the British Parliamentary Championships and the French National Championships. First and foremost, CUSID welcomes l’Universit? de Qu?bec ? Montr?al and la Polytechnique de Montr?al as its newest members. As a result of its successful membership bid, l’UQAM will play host to this year’s French National Championships and Hart House will host next year’s British Parliamentary Championships. Both amendments to restrict members’ participation in other debate organizations failed to pass, but amendments requiring the CUSID Executive to write formal year-end reports were all approved.

2006 Hart House IV CUSID Winter General Meeting

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Minutes of the CUSID 2006 Winter General Meeting

January 29, 2006

Hart House, University of Toronto

1.  Call to Order

Meeting called to order at 1:00 pm by Jessica Prince, CUSID President

2.  Roll Call and Voting Rights

Executive Present:

Jess Prince, President (Chair)

Julieta Chan, Executive Director

Joanna Langille, Treasurer

Monica Ferris, Vice-President, Western Region

Paul-Erik “Dash” Veel, Vice-President, Central Region

Michael Kotrly, National Ombudsperson

Schools:

University of Alberta (proxy carried by Padraic Ryan)

University of British Columbia (proxy carried by Padraic Ryan)

Carleton University

English Debating Society, University of Ottawa

University of Guelph

Hart House, University of Toronto

McGill University

McMaster University

Queen’s University

Trinity College, University of Toronto

University of Waterloo

University of Western Ontario

Wilfrid Laurier University

York University

Full-directed Proxies:

University of Calgary

University of New Brunswick

Bishop’s University

3.  Additions to and Approval of the Agenda

Motion to postpone the discussion of restricting non-Canadian members from full membership in other organizations until after the discussion of the alternative motion of restricting all members.

– Motioned by McGill, seconded by McMaster.  Motion is carried.

Agenda unanimously approved by voice vote.

4. Approval of Previous Minutes

Minutes unanimously approved by voice vote.

5. Oral Executive Reports

President:

  • Two new schools in Quebec looking for CUSID membership, which shows a growth of debate in the province.  Brittany Piovesan, the Director of French Debate, is very excited.
  • The Universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg have been granted provisional membership and will submit for full membership at Nationals.
  • Will attempt to clean up by-laws that have gone missing.
  • At Worlds Council, we ratified UBC’s bid for next year’s Worlds and voted for Assumption University in Thailand to host Worlds 2008.
  • Made connections with people from the West Indies and Jamaica at Worlds who were interested in participating in Canadian tournaments.
  • At Worlds, met the APDA President, Robbie Pratt, and we had previously talked about having a “heads of state” meeting at the North American Championships to discuss the Memorandum of Understanding and other issues that effect our two circuits. At World’s, we reaffirmed our desire to have such a meeting between our Executives. However, on the day before NorthAms, he decided not to attend the tournament, so I met with other Executive members who said they were unaware of the President’s issues and who were generally very nice.
  • Will recommend that a better transfer of information happens between Executive members leaving office and those who have newly been elected, and therefore proposes that a formal report be written by all CUSID Executive members.

Executive Director:

  • Updated CUSIDnet software during the holidays and the website has continually been updated
  • CUSIDnet recently had a case of spam posts.  Created a small dilemma about thread deletion when people started replying to the threads and having conversations.  Decided that they will be deleted if replies were only requests for deletion or when no productive conversation is being had.
  • Renewed webhosting account by taking advantage of the Christmas special – buy one year and get one year free as well as double bandwidth.  Bandwidth should not be a problem anymore.

Treasurer:

  • List of schools who have paid their dues is updated and on CUSIDnet
  • Paid to renew CUSID webhosting package
  • Agree with Jess that formal report needs to be written, since there were problems with transferring this year.  Suggest that CUSID account transfers be done during Nationals to prevent the outgoing Treasurer from leaving the country and not transfer the account to the incoming Treasurer.
  • Money is in the bank account!

Director of French Language Debate (delivered by Bill Hughes of Ottawa):

  • Attended The Commerce Games (Jeux du Commerce) at Université Laval, which is a popular French debating event in Canada.  Represented CUSID and judged 18 rounds of debate.  Great venue for French debater connections and inroads to French debate in Canada.
  • Happy that there are two new French schools applying for CUSID membership.
  • Increased number of French tournaments. Université du Québec à Montréal (pending membership) is bidding for French Nationals this year.  Sherbrooke will be hosting Opération Sherbrooke, a magic wand tournament, in February.  L’École Polytechnique de Montréal will be hosting a tournament called King of the Mountain and the invitation will be up in the next week.
  • Would like to see French school private forums on CUSIDnet to increase communication in those schools.
  • Interested in getting non-CUSID schools to go to tournaments.

Joanna Langille, as 2006 NorthAms Tournament Director:

  • NorthAms advice for next year’s Executive:  Make sure that the Canadian NorthAms Deputy Chief Adjudicator is selected as early as possible, e.g. 6 months, so that the DCA has sufficient time to communicate with the Chief Adjudicator and the organizing committee.
  • Next year’s American CA will be from southern APDA, so their goals will be less compatible with CUSID’s goals.
  • This year, Robbie Pratt had asked that the Memorandum of Understanding be repealed, and Maryland and Johns Hopkins pulled out because of dissatisfaction with the MoU.  If they try to pull out next year, try to give them the style guide from this year, which most teams agreed was a fair interpretation of the MoU.
  • In general, an important criterion for the DCA should be that he or she is a forceful person who can adequately represent CUSID’s voice at NorthAms.

Vice-President, Western Region:

  • CUSIDWest actively undermines equity issues and disregards the Code of Conduct, since they think that equity is a Central problem.  For example, there were no equity officers at Hugill until it was pointed out and only then was the Tournament Director designated as one.  Still, she was not visible throughout the tournament and never left the tabs room.  Another example is UBC who had no equity policy for a CUSID-wide title tournament.
  • There are ideological differences, split between “West CUSIDWest” consisting of B.C. and Alberta and “East CUSIDWest” consisting of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  The West believes in canned cases; the East doesn’t.  The East believes in mandatory heckling; the West doesn’t.  This degenerated into a 12-page flamewar on CUSIDnet.
  • Over the summer, hopes to discard the Memorandum of Agreement.  Will adopt a NorthAms style times or just pure Central times, but not sure how it affects East CUSIDWest, since they’re pretty mad about it right now.
  • Want to encourage American participation from NPDA.  There was an American team who attended Hugill this year.

Vice-President, Central Region:

  • There is still no assigned host for next year’s Central Novice Championship.  A Trinity Novice is a possibility, but still looking at other schools that could host.
  • At the upcoming tournament at Guelph, may have another forum to discuss issues in Central, so it’s not just people from small schools.  If there’s a broad consensus on issues, solutions can be formalized and implemented more than has been in the past.  However, will need to check on other schools’ attendance.
  • There have always been claims about the benefits and harms of certain dynamics and certain styles.  With Shaughnessy Hawkins, will look at CUSID in a social science perspective and compile statistics with controls for gender, small school, program of study.  Will ask different research questions such as what determines what wins rounds?

National Ombudsperson:

  • Echoes Monica about region disparity on equity issues and that it is viewed as a Central problem.  CUSIDEast was also really bad about following the CoC, but Jen Bond, the Eastern Ombudsperson, enforced it.
  • Some schools are actually against equity policies and do or say things just to provoke the equity officers or Ombuds Committee to act.
  • The whole Ombuds Committee is in good communication with each other.
  • Question for President: Regional Ombudspeople are supposed to do a report after each tournament, but to whom are these reports supposed to be submitted?
  • President: Probably supposed to go to the National Ombudsperson.
    • CUSID is likely the most equity friendly debating organization in the world!

6. Constitutional Amendments

A.  Amendment to the “Regions” section:

Addition of:

5.CUSID shall be regionally organized into:
c) the Western Region, comprised of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Territories, and Alaska.

Proposed by: the President 2005/2006.

– Motioned by McGill, seconded by Guelph.  Motion carries unanimously.

B.  Amendments to the “Executive” section:

42. The President shall be responsible for

Addition of:

h. compiling a formal report at his/her term’s end.

43. The Executive Director shall be responsible for

Addition of:

g. compiling a formal report at his/her term’s end.

44. The Treasurer shall be responsible for

Addition of:

i. compiling a formal report at his/her term’s end.

45. The Vice-Presidents shall

Addition of:

f. compile formal reports at their term’s end.

46. The Director of French Language Debate shall

Addition of:

g. compile a formal report at his/her term’s end.

Proposed by: the President 2005/2006.

– Motioned by UBC, seconded by Alberta.  Motion carries unanimously.

C.  Amendment to Schedule A for new full memberships: l’Université de Québec à Montréal and la Polytechnique de Montréal.

DISCUSSION:

  • Polytechnique has not sent people to tournaments, but will host a small tournament in Feburary.  They can work together with UQAM.
  • UQAM would also like to involve themselves in CUSID as well and can definitely put on a good French Nats.

– Motioned by Ottawa, seconded by Carleton.  Motion carries unanimously.

D.  Amendment to the “Membership” section:

Addition of:

10. All members shall be restricted from holding full membership in any other debate organization (for example, they shall not be regular institutional members of NPDA or members of APDA).

Proposed by: the President 2005/2006.

DISCUSSION:

  • President: There are two motions for consideration. I am proposing them because at the last GM in October, after we granted Alaska full CUSID membership, some members expressed interest in restricting their membership and other future non-Canadian members solely to CUSID and thus, no other regional debate organizations. After that meeting, some members also expressed interest in a motion restricting all CUSID members from holding full membership in any other regional debate organizations (such as APDA or NPDA). I have no personal stake or interest in either motion, I just think that they both deserve to be considered. As this is controversial, any motion should obtain 2/3 majority to pass.
  • Now that Alaska has been accepted with no strings attached, there is more interest from other American schools to join CUSID just to have access to the regional and National Championships.  There needs to be some display of commitment to CUSID.
  • We don’t want to restrict people from debate.  It’s a debating organization.  We vote on these memberships on a case-by-case basis anyway.  We don’t really need this hard rule in place to bind everybody.  If it means more people at tournaments, that’s good.
  • All schools in CUSID have limited resources and we don’t want to drain clubs.  If we open CUSID up to anybody, a club’s resources will be spread thin.  Our primary mandate should be to encourage Canadian clubs to go to Canadian tournaments.
  • If it’s just solely on a case-by-case basis, some schools will have more political advantage than others.
  • We really want to engage with NPDA in CUSIDWest.  NPDA considers UBC and Alberta as full members.  Alberta and UBC have constitutional power in NPDA.
  • We’re not stopping people from debating.  We allow non-Canadians to go to CUSID invitationals anyway.  We’re talking about things like being on the CUSID Executive and participating at Nationals.  If we’re going to define CUSID as a league, we should have some kind of limitations.  We should be consistent about whom to allow as full members and not just schools we like and schools we don’t like.
  • This amendment is restrictive and can’t cater to different organizations.  E.g., if we vote on contractual issues with APDA, then some schools can have 2 votes.  Perhaps this amendment can only apply to organizations with which CUSID has some contract.
  • McGill: Friendly motion to amend “for example” to “i.e.”.  Motion is friendly, so amended.

– Motioned by McGill, seconded by Hart House.  Motion fails with only 8 votes for.

E.  Amendment to the “Membership” section:
Addition of:

10. The non-Canadian members shall be restricted from holding full membership in any other debate organization (for example, they shall not be regular institutional members of NPDA or members of APDA).

Proposed by: the President 2005/2006.

DISCUSSION:

  • If not the last one, then not this one.
  • We have to treat non-Canadians differently.  We can’t just admit anybody into CUSID.  If they really want the opportunity to vote in CUSID, then they need to show us why by not being in other organizations.
  • The difference is that they already have other leagues in which they can be on the league executive and vote.  Remember, they can still participate in our tournaments.

– Motioned by Hart House, seconded by McMaster.  Motion fails with only 7 votes for.

7. New Business

a) Designation of French Nationals, March 2006
Bidding school: l’UQAM

– Motioned by McGill, seconded by Ottawa.  Motion carries unanimously by voice vote.
b) Designation of British Parliamentary Championships, fall 2006
Bidding school: Hart House

– Motioned by McGill, seconded by Carleton. Motion carries unanimously by voice vote.
8. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 2:15 pm.

CUSID General Meeting to be held at the North American Championships

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The next CUSID General Meeting will be held at the North American Championships at Hart House, University of Toronto on January 28, 2006 (and January 29, if necessary). The meeting will consist of certain constitutional amendments and the bidding of the British Parliamentary Championships and the French National Championships. The agenda can be found here.

CUSID member schools who will not be participating in the North American Championships but would like to vote at the meeting should send their directed proxies to the Executive Director, Julieta Chan, at ed@cusid.ca or appoint a proxy nominee to vote on their behalf. Proper proxy instructions can be found in the CUSID By-Laws.

Back-to-back for Canada: Hart House wins Worlds, Results

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Last year, Canada won Worlds after a 13-year drought. This year, Canada did it again, this time by Michael Kotrly and Joanna Nairn from Hart House, University of Toronto who defeated teams from Yale University, University of Chicago, and The Inner Temple in the Grand Final round to capture the title. CUSID congratulates them with pride for their outstanding performance.

Six other teams also represented Canada admirably. Rory McKeown and Gaurav Toshniwal (Hart House), R. Jesse McWaters III and Jason Rogers (McGill University), Rahool Agarwal and Ren (Hart House) made it to the Quarter-Finals; Jess Prince and Gordon Shotwell (McGill), Ian Freeman and Melanie Tharamangalam (Hart House), and Garnett Genuis and Padraic Ryan (Carleton University) were Octo-Finalists.

In speaker rankings, the top speaker in the competition was a tie between Rory Gillis and Beth O’Connor, both from Yale University. The top Canadian speaker and 9th in the world was Jess Prince, while Joanna Nairn and Ren tied for 10th place.

Canada was also well represented in the Public Speaking competition with Michael Kotrly, Jason Rogers, and Ren reaching the final round. Gordon Shotwell and Brent Kettles (University of Calgary) were semi-finalists. Public Speaking was won by O’Neill Simpson from the University of West Indies, Cave Hill.

At the Worlds Council meeting, the 2008 World Championships hosting right was given to Assumption University in Thailand, whose bid included Joanna Nairn as one of the North American Deputy Chief Adjudicators. Also, University of British Columbia’s bid defence was ratified for Worlds 2007.

CUSID wishes the debaters a safe trip home and once again, congratulates all the Canadian debaters at Dublin for what is undoubtedly Canada’s most impressive showing ever. Next year will be even more exciting as the World Championships returns to Canadian soil in Vancouver.