Hart House IV

After a few days of R and R with some friends in Manhattan, I (Steve)
headed to Toronto to judge at the Hart House IV. The trip started with
a ride on the Cornell Campus 2 Campus bus in order to hitch a ride
from Cornell to Toronto. The C2C is the prince of buses, featuring
wifi, great seats and free snacks. After a quick bite to eat in
Cornell, we piled into a truck and drove to Buffalo where we stayed
overnight with Amelia's (one of the Cornell debaters) parents, who are
possibly the nicest people on earth. The other highlight of the visit
to Buffalo was dinner at the restaurant that invented Buffalo wings.
Delicious.

We left Buffalo the next morning for Toronto, but stopped off at
Niagara falls after we crossed the boarder. We were treated to a
lovely sunny day and on a day like that the falls are nothing short of
spectacular. I'm glad we decided to stop off - before seeing them I
was pretty ambivalent, but now I'm really glad I got to see it.

The Hart House IV is run much more like a tournament in Australia,
with students running the tournament and plenty of social events. The
Gala Dinner on Saturday night was a highlight, held in Hart House's
gothic main hall. The HHIV managed to attract 80 teams and a
staggering number of judges meaning there was large panels of good
judges on every round.

I judged the final, won in a 6-1 split by McGill over Alaska.
Congratulations to McGill. Unfortunately for me, I was the splitter!

I should make a shout out to all of the Hart House people who looked
after me, especially Monica Ferris and Richard Lizius who let me stay
at their house for the duration of the tournament, even though I broke
Richard's light shade within ten minutes of arriving. It was also
great to see again lots of the people I've met over the course of the
tour, especially Steve Llano, Stephen Boyle and the Vermont and HWS
debaters (our experiments in trickle down economics on Saturday night
were a highlight).

King's College

On Thursday the 7th of October we visited King's College, located in
(the basement of) the Empire State Building in Manhattan. Before our
seminar at King's, Steve Llano of St. John's fame took us up to the
86th floor observation deck just as the sun set. The view was
absolutely incredible. We managed to take a few photos, but as has
been the case, it's been nigh on impossible to upload them.

King's College was founded in the 1920s by a radio evangelist. In
contrast to almost all of the colleges in the North East, King's is
quite openly conservative: it has a house system featuring Reagan,
Thatcher and C.S. Lewis houses.

At King's we did a long-form Q and A and seminar for 50 debaters from
King's and St. John's. We really enjoyed ourselves and hope those
present at the seminar did too. In particular, it was useful to be
able to talk about extensions and some of the other things that make
BP debating unique to an audience with lots of enthusiasm for the
format but a bit less experience with it.

After the seminar some of the King's and St. John's debaters took us
out for a beer in the East Village, before we went to catch up with a
USU debating alumnus who now lives in New York.

St. John's University

From Wednesday to Friday we were hosted by St. John's University in
Queens, New York City. St. John's is a large university with a
sprawling campus and probably most resembles an Australian university
and look and feel. Founded by a Roman Catholic order dedicated to
educating the disadvantaged, St. John's has the most socio-
economically and ethnically diverse student body that we've seen.

SJ is another university with an academic debate and rhetoric program,
and we were able to attend and 'guest lecture' a class on global
debate, which provided us with a great opportunity to pass on sneaky
tips and regale people with war stories. We also watched SJ's debaters
in a public debate on campus, although the suspectedly tryptophan-
laced burritos we had for lunch made us a little less attentive than
usual.

While we were at SJ we were looked after by the Stephen Llano, the
university's Professor of Rhetoric. Steve is a good friend of Sydney's
own Sam Greenland and is just as lovely (although Greeny must be
jealous that Steve has made a full time academic pursuit out of
debating!). Under Steve's tutelage we saw a bit of Queens - highlights
of which included the local English pub, the Sly Fox, and the just-off-
campus halal food cart.

One final note: Although there have been photographs aplenty, for some
reason they won't upload, so please again excuse the lack of multimedia.

Colgate University

We've just arrived in Brooklyn, where we're staying while we visit St.
John's University in Queens, New York. We arrived in New York City
today from our brief visit to Colgate University in Hamilton, New
York. Hamilton is the smallest town we'll visit on the tour, with a
population of about 5000. None the less, like seemingly all of upstate
NY, it was a scenic town steeped in history. Colgate sits on a hill,
overlooking the town, and boats a spectacular campus that is almost
200 years old.

In the one full day we had a Colgate we sat down with some keen
debaters for a three hour seminar and question and answer session on
the vagaries of BP debating. We were then treated to dinner at the
restaurant attached to the university's golf course (the crab cakes a
particularly recommended!) before heading back up the hill for a
public debate against a team from Colgate. Continuing the pattern from
the debate against HWS, we took the impossible side of the motion,
affirming 'this house believes that the west has a moral obligation to
spread democracy by any means necessary'. At least this time we were
only defending George W. Bush, instead of defending bigotry. But
that's debating!

We enjoyed our time at Colgate, brief as it was, and special mention
should go to Mike and Austin from Colgate, and the Colgate Speaking
Union's coodinator, John Adams, who was a fantastic host.

Our time at St. John's has already been quite productive, but I'll
update on all of it in a couple of days when we finish.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

We've just arrived in Hamilton, New York from Hobart and William Smith
Colleges, where we'd been staying since Friday. We spent the weekend
judging the inaugural HWS Fall Classic, a new BP tournament which was
attended by 48 teams. Although we were told that 48 teams was quite
small for this circuit, we were impressed by the size and consistency.
BP is very new to a lot of the competing schools, and the improvement
of some teams over even the weekend of the tournament was remarkable.
Congratulations to the winners from Cornell and runners-up from Vermont.
Geneva, where HWS is located, is a beautiful and historic town that
sits on the shores of Lake Seneca, a massive fresh water lake some 65
km long. We were housed in HWS' newly opened Harris House, a grand
renovated 19th century house on Main St, overlooking the lake.

On Saturday night we were taken by some of the HWS debaters to a party at
the Phi Sigma Kappa frat house. Drinking watery beer from red cups
satisfied the cultural exchange part of this leg of the trip. The
experience was pretty much exactly what you'd expect from frat movies,
except that we were treated to some truly great hospitality by the
frat brothers on the basis of, rather than in spite of, being visiting
debaters!

Today we spent a couple of hours with the HWS debaters talking about
BP strategy. HWS have only been debating in BP for five years but
already have some promising speakers who are very much on the up and
up. We enjoyed the discussion, as we did their hospitality over the
weekend.

This afternoon we took part in a public debate at HWS, jointly hosted
by the debater club and a muslim students' organisation. In the
interests of debate, we affirmed the topic that the Cordoba group
should not build the 'ground zero mosque'. Thankfully, we lost the
debate to the HWS team. It was an excellent event and a great
illustration of how debate can be used to test out the best possible
formulation of arguments for unpalatable positions, in order to better
understand both sides of an issue.

We'll be working with the debaters at Colgate University tomorrow,
before flying to New York City on Wednesday to work with St. John's
College, so we'll update in again in a couple of days.

Farewell Vermont, hello Hobart and William Smith Colleges

'Fresh' from a nine hour trip in a van from Burlington, Vermont to
Geneva, New York, we have arrived at Hobart and William Smith
Colleges. It's midnight here, and the highlight since we arrived an
hour ago are our digs. We're staying in HWS' 'Guest House' which is
exactly what it sounds like - an entire house for guests. It's a grand
old 19th century mansion and we've a room with en suite each. Score.
I'll update with some photos from HWS tomorrow.
We spent the last two days in Vermont helping the UVM teams prepare
for the tournament that we've just arrived at, the HWS IV. UVM's
preparations are going well and they're quietly confident of putting
in a strong showing at the tournament. We'll be judging at tournament,
which starts tomorrow.
Finally, it's worth giving a shout out to Burlington, which is a
really great college town. Keep up the good work, Burlington!

Greetings from Vermont

Autumn leaves in Vermont.

Yesterday we arrived at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is a small college town that these days revolves almost exclusively around UVM. More about the town later.



Last night we got down to business as soon as we arrived on the Greyhound, judging some UVM practice debates. UVM are a large and busy society, with some Worlds format debaters leaving for California this morning, others coming with us to Herbert William Smith College on the weekend and a policy debate team heading someone else interstate tomorrow.

UVM have an incredible amount of debating infrastructure. The university has an endowed professorship in forensics (debate). The current Edwin H. Lawrence Professor of Forensics is  the incredibly dedicated Alfred 'Tuna' Schnider, one of the first organisers of Worlds style debating in the US.

UVM also have a full-time coach, former Irish Times Champion and Worlds Quarterfinalist Stephen Boyle. Stephen is charged with selecting and training the UVM speakers for all tournaments. Like the coach of a sporting side, Stephen makes selections based on form and past performance. The speakers, like players in a sporting side, accept his word as final. Of course that must be easy for them to do, because Stephen is a lovely guy and a great coach.

Some of the UVM debaters before a debate in their dedicated debate chamber.

On top of two full-time coaching and teaching staff, UVM have an entire floor in a lovely old building to themselves. It houses their coach's office, a debate chamber/trophy room and some social space.

After the debates we had some tasty late night burgers and talked novice development and the spread of Worlds format in the US with Tuna and Stephen. Then we decamped to 'Mojito Night' at a local bar, where a member of the UVM team introduced us to a card game called Apples to Apples

Part of UVM's impressive trophy collection, including a portrait of Edwin H. Lawrence himself.

We're in Burlington until Friday, and we'll update again before we leave.

Steve