Yale Debate Association
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THE YALE DEBATE ASSOCIATION 2015-2016 Newsletter The YDA by the Yale Continues Reign as Top School on APDA Numbers: After a season that saw a hard fought race for APDA’s Club of the Year title, Yale runs to finals at the 1 United States Universities YDA’s US Rank- Debating Championships, ing begets a fantastic perfor- mance at the World Champi- onships, and finishes another successful year at the top of the list of the best debate teams in the country. In addition to its in- 7 Individual members of the YDA Years in a Row ternationally recognized success, the YDA were also greatly successful throughout continued its run of unprecedented do- as top US Team the year. Yale LZ, consisting of Diana Li mestic dominance. Breaking its own rec- and Henry Zhang, were APDA’s Team of ord for total points, Yale won APDA’s the Year (“TOTY”), winning back the coveted COTY award of the 2014-2015 award with 88 points. Additionally, most season, for the seventh year running, ac- of the best speakers at the 2015 National cumulating 66 more points than the sec- championships were from Yale. The 2016 ond ranked school, Brandeis. North American Championships also saw 11 As part of a record breaking year, Edwin Zhang and Tony Nguyen become Tournaments not only did Yale win its seventh consecu- finalists. Won tive COTY award from the American Par- Unsurprisingly, the YDA contin- liamentary Debate Association (“APDA”), ues to prove itself as the best team in the it is continuing the 2016 season as first United States this year, and the ranking place with 433 points, more than 160 also reflects an excellent class of new nov- points higher than the current second ices and the dedication and involvement place, with Brown University holding 286 of the YDA's members to every aspect of points. 6 the team. Top Speaker Awards Another Impressive Performance at APDA National Championships Yale saw unrivaled success at the 2015 APDA National Championships that took place at The College of New Jersey. Yale set a record for total qualifications to 10 compete this year, with 10 debaters fully Debaters qualifying over the course of the season, Qualified for and 13 partially qualified debaters, total- Nationals ing a number of 23. This number consti- tutes a new APDA record, bettering Yale’s own mark of 22, set last season. At the tournament, Evan Lynyak and Megan Wilson were 5th place varsity team, Diana Li and Henry Zhang were 6th, Allison Douglis and Reed Berry were 10th, Tony Nguyen and Edwin Zhang were 15th. Evan Lynyak also had the dis- tinction of winning the coveted award for the Top Speaker at the tournament, while Diana Li was ranked as the 2nd speaker. 4 Allison Douglas was 5th varsity speaker, APDA Nationals Lynyak and Megan Wilson also broke as and Megan Wilson was 10th varsity the top seed of the tournament, and Evan Semi-Finalists speaker. Lynyak became the first-ever sophomore The YDA also had a total of four to win Top Speaker at the tournament. teams breaking at the APDA National Among those Yale debaters who Championships, constituting a quarter of qualified for Nationals were two novices, the break for the championships, which Justin Katz and Kyle Hietala. was more than any other school. Evan 4 Top 10 Speakers at Nationals Yale Once Again Dominates Throughout APDA’s Season Throughout the year the YDA lowed Diana and Henry to successfully competes at more than 40 tournaments, outperform any other team for the sea- across the country and the world. Domes- son. tically, the vast majority of these tourna- For the 2015-2016 season, Evan ments are in the format of American Par- Lynyak and Megan Wilson are also 1 liamentary debate, sanctioned by the Team of the American Parliamentary Debate Associa- Year Ranking tion. Throughout the year the YDA and its members compete at tournaments every weekend in an effort to qualify for Na- tionals and earn points towards APDA’s prestigious year end awards: Club of the Year, Team of the Year, Speaker of the Year (“SOTY”) and Novice of the Year (“NOTY”). As mentioned in the introduction, due to the depth and talent of the YDA, the COTY ‘race’ was won for the 7th con- secutive time. Through the outstanding performances of every one of our mem- 13 bers the YDA accumulated more COTY Final Round Ap- points than any other school, and is con- pearances tinuing to do so in the 2015-2016 season. fighting hard for the coveted TOTY Individual teams also performed award, and are currently 2nd ranked admirably. In an incredibly close TOTY team of the year, surpassed only by a few race, Diana Li and Henry Zhang accumu- points by a team from George Washing- lated more points than any other team in ton. previous Yale history. They managed to surpass the second ranked team, by cap- APDA also recognizes the perfor- ping off the Princeton tournament, the mance of individual speakers. The YDA last tournament (and one of the largest) varsity members won a total of 48 speak- of the year, with a fantastic win. This al- er awards during a single season, further exemplifying the dedication of the mem- bers in the team. Our novices also per- 2x formed admirably, winning top novice More Points speaker awards at multiple tournaments than 2nd Place throughout the year and also winning 7 novice finals. On top of all of this, our novices also saw significant success in varsity competition, with two novice- varsity partnerships reaching finals. Success at the North American Debating Championships The North American Championships (“NorthAms”) - held this year at Queen's University - is a unique debate tourna- 4 ment that brings together schools from Teams Canada and the USA in a hybrid of Cana- Advancing to dian and APDA styles. Yale has tradition- Elimination ally been very dominant at NorthAms, Rounds most recently winning the title in the years 2009 and 2011. Despite not win- ning outright, even this year the YDA out- performed all other schools at the tourna- ment, breaking a total of 4 teams in the main break, nearly half the number of total American teams in the break. Edwin Zhang and Tony Nguyen ad- vanced the furthest of Yale’s teams, mak- ing it to the finals. Evan Lynyak and Hen- 1 ry Zhang made it to the semifinals, while Novice team in Justin Katz and Christopher Taylor made the main break octofinals. ing it to the octofinals of the main break, The tournament also saw great success with Michael receiving the 2nd best nov- for Yale's novice teams, with Michael ice award, and Xavier Sottile and Ethan Mao and Sophia Park breaking and mak Sciamma making it to the novice finals, with Xavier receiving 8th best novice. 2 Teams in main and novice finals YDA Performs Admirably at the World Championships The World Universities Debating Cham- time since 1993 (when worlds results pionships (colloquially called “Worlds”) is started being recorded) that Yale has bro- the most competitive and prestigious uni- ken two teams in the top ten. This also versity debating tournament in the world. makes Yale the first and second breaking Historically, the YDA has always done North American team at this year's 2 well - Yale was the first American School Worlds. Teams in In the octofinals round Worlds Octo- about nationalizing all Finals systemically important financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, Edwin and Evan unfortunately did not advance further. How- ever, Tony and Henry ad- vanced to the quarterfinal round before narrowly losing on a topic about the establishment of a Black 4708 secessionary state within Miles to Thessa- the territory of the United States. In addi- to win Worlds in 1990, and in 2006 was tion, Evan Lynyak received the 7th place loniki the first American school to have a team speaker award, which makes her the top in the finals of the competition in its ranked female debater at Worlds. modern format. In addition to this, Yale debaters and alumni regularly feature in the elimina- tion rounds of the champion- ship. This year, 9 members of the YDA travelled to Thessaloniki, Greece to compete in the latest edition of the competition — one of the largest delegations at the tournament. After nine gru- 6 Years Breaking eling preliminary rounds, Yale Multiple Teams successfully put two of its three teams through to the elimina- at Worlds tion rounds. Edwin Zhang and Evan Lynyak broke 5th, and Tony Nguyen and Henry Zhang broke 10th. This is the first What We’ve Been Debating On the YDA we debate primarily in two formats: American Parliamentary British Parliamentary In American Parliamentary debate, the government (or affirmative) team proposes a topic of their choosing — usually a case they have written in advance. The 1 opposition (or negating) team has only the 7 minutes of the first government speaker’s Ranking at BP speech to think of their counterargument. Nationals For example, in the quarter-finals of the 2015 Harvard tournament, the gov- ernment team Yale LW (Evan Lynyak and Megan Wilson) posed the question of whether or not we should prefer a feminist movement within which advocacy groups that promote cis women’s issues are separate from advocacy groups that promote trans women’s issues. The government team, Yale LW, won the debate. A video of that debate can be found at the following address: http://videos.apdaweb.org/?p=1383 1 Top Speaker at APDA Nationals In British Parliamentary debate, there are 4 teams (2 on each side), all of whom are given the topic 15 minutes before the start of the debate.