May newsletter for WSDC 2008

Phyllis Hirth, Convenor of WSDC 2008 in Washington DC, has released information about the activities available on the free day. Read this and more on the WSDC 2008 blog.

Election for Motions Committee

WSDC holds an annual election for the committee of people who discuss and select the topics for debate at each World Championships. Nominations are currently open for the Committee setting motions for WSDC 2008, in Washington D.C.

Please consider standing if - you're someone who's familiar with WSDC, and who has the time, energy and interest to work with a group of 6 others (communicating by e-mail) to carefully discuss ideas; decide on a varied, balanced and appropriate set of topics; and very carefully consider and fine-tune the wording of motions.

Please DO NOT stand if - you will be in any way involved in helping to coach or prepare a team that will be participating in the championships in Washington, either as the team's official coach in any other official or unofficial supporting capacity.

The WSDC Rules state that the committee should reflect the “geographic, cultural and linguistic diversity of the participants at the championships”. Appropriate candidates from various regions and from ESL / EFL countries are certainly encouraged to stand.

If you're interested, please contact mark.gabriel@iname.com for a nominations form. Nominations close on 9th April.

World Council minutes

The minutes from the World Council Meeting in Seoul last summer are now available on the website, as are an up-to-date copy of the Rules following the last wave of amendments.

Cambridge Union rejects debating, adopts punching

A bit of light entertainment for a Monday morning: the senior officers of the Cambridge Union Society, the world's oldest debating society and home to several WSDC alums in recent years, have resigned following a physical fight in the Union chamber. Conflicting reports have made the British papers but this Daily Mail article is the most colourful.

Its rival, the Oxford Union, can't be too smug though giving its recent publicised troubles.

More sources available at Colm Flynn's blog.

Videos from Korea '07 available for purchase

Justin Reznick writes:

Greetings from Korea!

I met many of you when you came to Korea last July and am happy to share some long-awaited news about video footage from the last WSDC.

The sponsor of WSDC 2007, YBM/Sisa, has packaged and released a set of DVDs (along with transcripts of the debates) that are now available for sale. The product description is in Korean, but even if your browser cannot handle Korean text, you can still find pictures of the DVD package and two URLs for streaming video samples.

Note that you will not be able to order from the above site unless you are in Korea. You can view an online video sample.


If you are interested in buying the set--it's 15 DVDs, all the elimination rounds--I have been told that you should contact Mr. D. H.
Hong (dhhong@ybmsisa.com). He said that YBM can deliver the DVDs directly, even overseas, as long as they are able to confirm the orders by email beforehand.

Also, last fall, I uploaded all the WSDC 2007 videos that I had access to, but I did not make any public announcements because I was concerned that I might be violating an agreement with our sponsor. I'm no longer concerned about (my videos are low-res and include only one round that overlaps with the those on the released DVDs), and I hope other teams have videos that they can share as well. I recommend Google Video's Uploader applet for getting your digitized videos online. (And Alive Video Converter if you have big videos you need to compress to put online.)

If you want to see the debates I put online (all the ones with team Korea), try a video.google.com search for "WSDC Korea." I hope that any other people with video footage from the last WSDC will contact Claire Ryan so that any other videos that are out there can be announced and more freely circulated. Also, please contact me if you'd like any messages posted on the WSDC Seoul site's message board. That site will remain up and online for at least another year or two.

I hope to see you all again soon!

Justin Reznick
Korea Forensics League
+82-11-9294-8973

WSDC alumni win top prizes at WUDC

Lewis Iwu, who competed for England in Stuttgart '04 and Calgary '05, was part of the Oxford team which won this year's World Universities Debating Championships in Thailand (with partner Samir Deger-Sen, who was 2nd individually; the pair broke 1st with a record 25 points). Lewis is the first WSDC alum to win WUDC since Caleb Ward (NZ) and Jack Anderson (Scotland) in 2003. I think.

Sam Block (Cambridge), who was on both England teams with Lewis, was the top speaker. Lewis was joint 5th with Kitson Symes (Oxford, England '06). Chris Croke and Dominic Thurbon (Australia) also reached the final for Sydney. Congrats to all of you!

World Schools alums in action at WUDC

Do you know which of the speakers still competing in the WUDC in Thailand were formerly participants at WSDC? Here are a few we recognise - please leave a comment if you know of more, or any corrections:

Grand finalists

Lewis Iwu (Oxford A, broke 1st) - England
Chris Croke (Sydney A) - Australia
Dominic Thurbon (Sydney A) - Australia

Semi-finalist

Evan Goldman (Queensland E) - Australia

Octo-finalists

Lewis Turner (Oxford D) - Wales
Shengwu Li (Oxford E) - Singapore
Kathy Scott-Dowell (Victoria E) - New Zealand
James Moir (Oxford B) - Scotland
Alex Worsnip (Oxford B) - England
Neil Dewar (Oxford E) - Scotland
Chris Bishop (Victoria A) - New Zealand
Kitson Symes (Oxford D) - England
Sam Block (Cambridge A) - England

If we're missing you, it's because the results from WUDC often don't include speaker names - please leave a comment and we'll update this blog. Fingers crossed for everyone left standing!