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World Universities Debating ChampionshipThe World Universities Debating Championship is the largest tournament in the world of university debating, and one of the largest student events in the world every year. It is a parliamentary debating event, held in the Worlds Format (aka British Parliamentary format).
Past Hosts & Winners
Future Championships
Detailed Annual History of the World Universities Debating ChampionshipsGlasgow University Union 1981The first Worlds was hosted in Scotland in January, 1981 by the Glasgow Union and organized by Clark McGinn. 43 teams competed from 7 nations. Registration was £10 but teams from outside the British Isles paid no registration as they were at a financial disadvantage for travelling so far. In exchange for this fee there was a promise of "a bed for every competitor". There were four days of debating with a day off in the middle to visit Edinburgh, and then the finals. Steve Coughlan and Andrew Taylor took home the first place honors for the University of Toronto, defeating John Rankin and Marcel Mongeon of McGill. Andrew Taylor also took home the best speaker award. It was a strong year for Canada; three of the top four teams were Canadian. Not many English schools attended; they thought Glasgow was too far from home. It was Scotland. It was winter. It was raining. The Canadians couldn’t believe how warm it was. The Americans couldn’t believe how cold it was. University of Toronto Hart House 1982The University of British Columbia won the bid for the 1982 tournament. A letter sent out by Joe Pollender in the fall of 1981, however, cites a 42-day Canadian postal strike as the cause for a change in the program. The second Worlds was moved to the University of Toronto and organized by the undefending champions, Steve Coughlan and Andrew Taylor, when the UBC effort fell apart. About 40 teams competed, with first place going to Stuart Bugg and David Kidd of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Stuart Bugg was the best speaker. The dinner hosted by the Royal Commonwealth Society at Casa Loma was a high point of the tournament.That year, an idea arose that one year’s winners should become the following year’s hosts, as this system had worked so well for the second Worlds. Auckland was duly selected as the site for the 1983 Worlds. Princeton University 1983Princeton took up the torch when the University of Auckland failed to organize a tournament. There had been a great deal of talk of subsidized airfare to New Zealand, but this all suddenly went quiet. Frank McKiergan and John Nicholson of Glasgow Dialectic met and defeated a University of Toronto team of Jeff Nankivell and Francis Daniels. John Geisnell is recorded as the best speaker but his University is not known. The World Debates council was formed at this tournament. The general idea was to get a bit more organized, and possibly prevent world tournaments from evaporating completely. Prior to that, issues such as the next tournament location and haggling over who should get to go had been decided by a general meeting of all teams present. University of Edinburgh 1984The 1984 Worlds was hosted by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Sixty-four teams competed, and the University of Sydney beat Oxford to bring the first place honors to Australia. A number of people went to Glasgow afterwards to film “Mr. Speaker, Sir!” for the BBC. Willie Hamilton was on one side; Nicholas Tolstoi on the other, on a resolution abolishing the monarchy. McGill University (Montreal) 1985In 1985, the Worlds returned to Canada. Hosted by McGill University in Montreal, it was run by Scott Keating, Melanie Garret and Elizabeth Jarvis. A total of 120 teams took part, in the grand McGill tradition of tournament on a grand scale. The final round was held in Redpath Hall. Judges included Francis Fox, former Solicitor General. Marcel Mongeon and Trish Dodge hosted a reception for the overseas debaters, at which guests met former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau was in a bit of a rush, however, and had to leave early to take his kids to karate class. That year, Sean Murphy and Damian Crawford took home a richly deserved first place for King’s Inn, Dublin. Fordham University (New York) 1986In 1986, Fordham University in New York hosted the Worlds. Over 100 teams attended, including competitors from Sweden, and Jesuit University in the Philippines. University College Cork (Brian Hassett & Siobhain Lankford), won the competition for Ireland making it 2 in a row for the Irish. The format of the competition saw 14 preliminary round debates between teams of 2 and two teams per debate. The final motion was on censorship of the press. University College Dublin 1987In 1987, University College, Dublin hosted the worlds in Ireland. It must have felt like the world showed up, too. The local newspaper reported that 220 teams were there. Even if that turned out to be 220 people, it was a sizeable invasion. Glasgow (Kevin Sneader & Austin Lally) were the World champion that year. New Year’s Eve was a study in contrasts as the debaters who gathered in evening attire for a cold buffet in the Lord Mayor’s Hall found themselves ringing in the new year next door to a heavy metal rock concert, complete with “a bunch of guys in leather jackets and girls in red lipstick cracking gum.” The importance of understanding local cuxtoms was amply demonstrated to all who had not found out ahead of time that Dublin offers no public transportation on new Year’s Eve. The evening ended with what is variously described as a rainy two, three or four mile walk in formal wear. University of Sydney 1988At the Worlds in Sydney in 1988, had 90 teams. Oxford brought the first place trophy home to England, while Francis Greenslade (Adelaide) was best speaker. Competition and judging conventions differed from one Worlds to the next, and part of the idea is to do things according to the customs of the host school. Some competitors, used to making frivolous definitions, were disconcerted with a certain Australian rule aimed at banning such frivolity. If a resolution lent itself to economics, for example, you had to debate economics. This led to at least on unfortunately literal debate about whether it really was better to live on your knees than die on your feet. Princeton University 1989Princeton hosted the 1989 Worlds. Aaron Blumenfeld and company ran the event, which was won by the previous year’s hosts, Sydney, Andrew Bell and Warren Lee. Second place was won by Justin MacGregor and Dave Conklin of the University of Toronto. About 110 teams attended. That year saw a marked increase in international participation. Singapore and Greece attended; the Soviet Union sent observers and competed the next year at Glasgow. There were a lot of prizes, including, for the first time, recognition for debaters for whom English was a second language. The format was 10 preliminary rounds with teams of two and two teams per debate. “This tournament will run on time,” debaters were told at every meeting, long after they were tired of hearing it, but it worked. While not all Worlds have featured a prepared topic, at Princeton it was “Socialism has failed.” One may recall that 1989 was quite a year for socialism…but this was only January. How could they have known? There were divisions for both comic and serious public speeches, but the idea of having to stand up and know that you were expected to be funny was more than many cared to deal with. The competition offered a number of unusual ideas, including object speaking; a debater was handed an object, and then had to build a speech around the object. Glasgow University Union 1990Glasgow played host to the Worlds for the second time in 1990. Yale University (Matt Wolf & John Wertheim) took home the first American victory in the history of the tournament, over a field of about 165 teams. Hong Kong was represented, and the American Academy in Athens, Greece returned. A Polish team was there, too. The previous summer, a group of 10 people had toured Eastern Europe to teach debating. One of the Soviet teams the group had met on the tour came to the Worlds that year. Princess Anne was the honored guest at a reception for the Debating Union Presidents before the final round. She presented the award to the winning team from Yale, who were the victors in the finals against three Australian teams. University of Toronto Hart House 1991The 1991 championships were hosted by Toronto for the second time. These championships were held under the North American style of debating which involved just 2 teams in each debate and Double Octo-finals. The eventual winners were McGill (Chris Wayland & Mona Gupta) defeating Dalhousie (Stephen Pitel & John Haffner) in the final. Stephen Pitel would go on to debate for and coach Cambridge and poineer the case book approach which would come to dominate teams tactics at Worlds. Trinity College Dublin 1992Words in 1992 were hosted by Trinity College Dublin. Here around 150 teams competed. The final was competed by 3 Australian teams ANU (who broke 1st), Sydney A (Who broke 2nd) and Sydney B (who broke 11th). The Fourth team was Glasgow (Robin Marshall & Gordon Peterson) won the final and the championships. The competition was not a total disappointment for Australia as the top speaker award was shared by James Hooke (NSW) & Richard Douglas (ANU). The winning Glasgow team was not actually included in the initial break as the tab system failed early on and manual calculations were used which later turned out to be flawed. Following complaints by other colleges (not Glasgow who by their own admission were in bed with a serious hangover) Edinburgh were dropped from 32nd position and Glasgow were added in and had to be woken from their beds to debate in the octo finals. Oxford Union Society 1993Worlds in 1993 was hosted by Oxford. The convenor was Matthew Christmas (an apt name considering the time of year). He headed a committee which spanned 2 pages of it's booklet, a sign of things to come with the ever increasing complexity of running Worlds. The prizes were designed to remind the winners of Oxford and so Rowing Oars (from the famous "Boat Race") were chosen. How exactly these were brought home by the eventual winners, Harvard (David Friedman & David Kennedy), is not remembered. Daniel Mulino (ANU) was best speaker. Former British Prime Minister Edward Heath addressed the championship dinner during which the Irish and Scots discovered that the bread rolls while unpalletable made fantastic weapons in a food fight. Worlds council had to select a new host for the 1994 championships after Sydney, who had been awarded the championships in Trinity had to pull out. They came with another college prepared to host (Melbourne). University of Melbourne 1994Melbourne hosted the 1994 championships after the University of Sydney found themselves unable to host having won the bid in Trinity. After 5 years of cold wet championships this must have been a nice change for the teams in particular Glasgow (Manus Blessing & Duncan Hamilton) who won the competition. Ben Richards (Monash) was the top speaker. The growth of the international aspect of the championships were seen here with teams from France, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and Zimbabwe. Princeton University 1995Princeton hosted once again in 1995. While the overall winners were University of New South Wales B (James Hooke & Jeremy Phillips) who defeated Oxford A (Rufus Black & Rod Clayton) in the final the competition is perhaps most noteworthy for a significant break through by the English as a Second Language contingent. Chitra Jenardhanan from Nanyang in Singapore became the first ESL speaker to win the Best speaker award in the competition. At Princeton council meeting two colleges bid to host in 1997. Stellenbosch and Deree. After presentations and questions Stellenbosch was selected as the host by a vote of 13-6-1. Australia also proposed standadarisation of format to British Parlaimentary after a heated discussion between Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore and Germany in favour of standardisation and United States and Canada against a motion was passed to delay consideration of the issue until the following year. Princeton also had serious problems with judge numbers. Most colleges failed to send a judge and the 2 team per debate required twice as many judges as normal. In the preliminary rounds many rooms had only one room. As a result the N-1 rule was mooted for future championships thus ensuring that sufficient judges would be available but it would not be until Stellenbosch 97 that council would vote to enforce this guideline. University College Cork 1996Cork hosted the championships in 1996. Macquarie (Fenja Berglund and Ben Way) won the competition with Adam Spencer (Sydney) as best speaker. The final was held in Cork City hall and highlights were televised by the Irish National broadcaster RTE. There were a number of problems at this championships which combined to give a bad perception of the championships as a whole. The Tab system was missing several results or had results entered incorrectly resulting in a Princeton team losing out on a break position. Official results were never released although a team tab was circulated in the US and, in the absence of any is now taken as the Cork Tab. The Tab also could not guarantee a 3,2,2,2 for positions with all teams. Council requested that position allocation be made crucial in future championships. This caused serious problems with future tab systems generating large brackets of 3 or 4 points in rounds 4 and 8 combined with a popular move back to pure power pairing instead of brackets to protect the top teams, for future championships.The Championships were also note worthy for two decisions by Worlds Council. Firstly the creation of the Deputy Chief Adjudicator position to make sure that the interests of debaters outside the host nation were represented on the organising committee. Secondly this council voted on the Australian motion from the previous year to standardise to the British Parliamentary style rather than allow the host to decide the style. As in Princeton this was an extremely contentious decision and at one stage featured a walk out by delegates who were either opposed to standardisation or favoured another style. The motion was passed and for better or worse this paved the way to the creation of Worlds Rules as we know them. Stellenbosch University 1997In 1997 the Championships were hosted in Africa for the first time by the University of Stellenbosch. In fact this was the first time a host nation came from outside the original 7 nations (called the “Charter” nations). After the problems with the previous two charter nation worlds (Princeton & Cork) this gamble by Worlds Council paid handsome as Stellenbosch 97 is widely regarded as the benchmark worlds setting new standards against which all future Worlds would be measured. This was in spite of a campaign by some American debaters to boycott the championships as they were being held in the birthplace of aparthide and an outbreak of Ebola in Africa which had the World's media in overdrive. The competition ran smoothly and the social events in warm African summer were very successful following two cold climate worlds. This was also the first championships to have Deputy Chief Adjudicators to provide external expertise to the organiaing committee Ray D'Cruz and John Long being the first to fill the role. Stellenbosch also struggled with the number of judges. As a result the council finally voted to enforce the N-1 rule for all future championships. Council at Stellenbosch voted to introduce verbal adjudications after the first 6 preliminary rounds. The ESL Final was contested by 2 teams from Singapore, one from the Philippines and one from Greece and NU Singapore emerver with the win. The main competition was won by Glasgow A (Andy Hume and Derek Sloan) who were faced with the task of taking a large trophy in the shape of an Elephant home. It had to be carried into the final by 4 men. Andy George was best speaker. Deree College (Athens) 19981998 saw a mainland Europe country host for the first time. Deree College Athens hosted the championships billing itself as “Debating coming home”. Grays Inns A (Neil Sheldon and Andy George) won the competition with Neill Sheldon also taking the top speaker award. The championships were also saw the change in voting rights on council which loosened the grip of the “Charter” nations and rewarded countries who sent the most teams. The council also voted to set up a World Debating Committee to work on issues between championships. There were problems with delays and judges continually judging at the same level (i.e. the top 3 judges would be in the top room and the bottom 3 ranked judges always judged the bottom room). This lead to frustration among the judges seeing a steady stream of weak teams (and frustrated teams seeing a constant stream of weak judges), culminating in a large no show from bottom ranked judges at a delayed round 9. As a result of this the concepts of top ranked “chair” judges in every room and rotating judges around the tab became common. Athens had ESL semi finals for the first time to allow the top 8 ESL teams break. Athens were the first championships to publish results during the competition. While this did not meet the requirements of Council in Stellenbosch (for which Athens were criticised) it was the first time teams had a clear picture of how they were performing at the end of each day. Ateneo de Manila University 19991999 saw the trend of first time host continents with the first Asian host, Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines. There was advance discussion on some American/IONA lists as to the safety of the Philippines and then the Asian Economy collapsed creating a financial headache for organisers and participants alike. During the championships some small problems initially occured with registration and the Tab system which were fixed by the adjudication team. After that the championships are seen as a tremendous success, possibly the most successful. This first Asian Championships saw a large number of non-Charter Nations break. Philippines broke 3 teams (one to the Qtr-Finals), South Africa 2 (Witswatersrand reached the Semi-Finals) Singapore and Pakistan (Qtr-finals) broke 1 team each. Monash A (Meg O’Sullivan and Andrew Phillips) won the competition while Andy Kidd (Oxford) was best speaker. The Grand final was televised live in the Philippines and opened by President Joseph Estrada. Manila also saw as new competition "The World Masters". This was a competition open to adjudicators and observers and run on a national basis rather than by college. Ireland were the first winners. University of Sydney 2000University of Sydney hosted the championships in 2000. The championships were delayed by around a week so that participants could celebrate the Millennium at home with their families. This meant that a few hardy souls risked the Millennium Bug and were able to get cheap flights on near empty flights departing on New Year’s day. This was seen as a championship that again raised the bar in terms of standards expected of the host. An opening night harbour cruise around the most beautiful natural harbour left people wondeting how the host committee could keep this up for the week. They did. This was also a championship of records as Monash University became the first college to successfully defend the title, this time through Kim Little and Cathy Roussow. Andy Kidd (Oxford) also became the first speaker on record to top the speaker tab two years in a row. Glasgow University Union 2001The 2001 championships returned to Glasgow for it’s 21st birthday. After 4 years of warm (or at least very mild) climates hosting the championship the participants were greeted with the heaviest snow fall in living memory at Glasgow. Round 9 had to be cancelled after large numbers of teams were struck down with some form of illness by the pleasant name "Winter Vomiting Bug". However as the round one motion was announced at the wrong time in the adjudication briefing and another had to be used we still got 9 motions if not 9 debates. On top of this the tab system which was based on a "fixed" version of the Sydney tab turned out to be even worse than the Sydney version. At least one team were excluded from the break (Cambridge) and it took several months before the results were finally published. Despite all this Sydney (Greg O'Mahony and Paul Hunyor) came through to win and Paul Hunyor also took home the best speaker award. A prize of a large "Braveheart" style sword for the winning team must have made for an interesting conversation at customs. University of Toronto Hart House 2002Toronto hosted the championships in 2002 and once again the participants prepared for vast quantities of snow. Record levels of snow fell 40Km south of Toronto and 40km North of Toronto but not a flake was spotted in Toronto during the championships. Ewan Smith topped the speaker tab for Oxford. Perhaps fittingly considering the Tragic events of just 3 months before, New York University Law (Rob Weekes and Alan Merson) won the championships for the United states, the first time since 1993 that an American team won, although it might be noted that both speakers were graduate students from the UK, having previously studied at Cambridge and Glasgow respectively. Ewan Smith (Oxford) was the top ranked speaker. The motions at these championships were considered insensitive by many debaters as they covered topics such as Sept 11, Rape, and Aneroxia. Worlds Council saw a record three nations bidding to host 2004 Croatia, Malaysia, Singapore. This selection process was marred by controversy over the voting allegances but eventually Singapore won the right to host Worlds. Stellenbosch University 2003The 2003 championships were hosted once again by Stellenbosch in South Africa. This championships did not run as smoothly as the first Stellenbosch Worlds. Quickly during the competition it became obvious that problems existed with the tab system which had been tested but with pre-prepared data which clearly didn't mimic live conditions. A series of small errors in the design or manual use of the tab system caused serious delays on Day 1 (finished at 11pm) and Day 2 (round 6 moved to the next day). Another all night session by the tab and adjudication teams saw a marked improvement in the running of the competition on day 3. Four rounds were held in quick succession up to round 9 when after loading in the key adjudication panels, carefully prepared by the adjudication team, the panels were accidently randomised due to a manual error while exporting to the display system. This resulted in some quick reworking of the panels in particular to avoid conflicts of interest which had not been eliminated by the system due to the late randomisation. However after all that the break was announced on time on New years night. The rest of the competition ran smoothly and throughout the championship the social events were generally considered outstanding helping to keep many people happy and win back some of those who had been annoyed with the earlier parts of the competition. Also helping to make up for all the earlier problems Cambridge B (Jack Anderson & Caleb Ward) won probably the best and tightest final in worlds history. They won on a split 5-2 decision just ahead of Melbourne A (Perry Herzfeld & Sarah Kennedy). Monash B and Cambridge A were also in the final. Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) 2004In 2004 saw the championships hosted by Nanyang University in Singapore who defeated Malaysia and Croatia for the right to host. Before the competition Singapore faced several difficulties. Their Chief Adjudicator Amanda Keamass resigned to take up a new job offer. The replacement Ravi Visnawathan was a relative unknown and this caused some concern when he initially announced that he would speak in Stellenbosch and not adjudicate. This would have meant he had no adjudication experience at Worlds prior to being Chief Adjudicator. However he did adjudicate break rounds in Stellenbosch and their bid was ratified at council in Toronto. After that in early 2003 concerns were raised about the SARS virus sweeping through Asia but in reality it was not a serious threat to the championships. After all this the Championships themselves were a great success. The Middle Temple team of Alex deane & Jermery Brier defeated Sydney, Singapore Institute of Management and Inner Temple in the final. Worlds Council however did not run as smoothly. Council refused to ratify Zagreb as hosts for 2005. Concerns were raised about the adjudication and financial aspects of the bid. 24 hours later Zagreb returned with a modified proposal but again this was rejected by Council. At this stage the bidding was reopened for 2005 and MMU Malaysia bid unopposed. After all that UC Dublin won the right to host in 2006 again unopposed. Mutimedia University (Kuala Lumpur) 2005In 2005 the championships were hosted by Multimedia University in Malaysia. Even though they had just a year to organise the competition the championships were generally seen as a success. This was a good championships for Canada as Ottawa A (Erik Eastaugh & Jamie Furniss) won defeating Cambridge A (Daragh Grant & Joe Devanney), Oxford. D (Alex Just & Jonathan Bailey) and Hart House B (Michael Kotrly & Joanna Nairn) in the final. Worlds council awarded the University of British Columbia the right to host Worlds in 2007. Sydney University were unsuccessful bidders and the Dublin Bid was ratified smoothly.
World Debating CouncilThe World Debating Council consists of every country that competes at the championship, with each country selecting a council delegate (either it's national debating association president or selected from the participants at Worlds). The council is responsible for setting the rules and awarding the right to host the championships. Up to 2000 the host of the Championships appointed the Chair of Council. There is also a Worlds Committee elected to discuss issues during the year as council only meets at the championships. This council consists of a mix of elected officers and regional reps. Since 2000 the Chair of the committee has also chaired the Council [2000 Omar Salluhudin (Malaysia), 2001 & 2002 Colm Flynn (Ireland), 2002 Ian Lising (US)]
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