The iconic view overlooking the Hudson River from West Point displays proud Rutgers debaters after an exciting run at the tournament. Left to right: Grisam Shah, Storey Clayton, Ali Ismail, Josh Pomerantz, George Alukal, Henry Phipps, Alex Jubb, Zach Sinkiewicz, Rachel Moon, Nick Hansen, Deepta Janardhan, and Russell Potter. (Not pictured: Arbi Llaveshi)
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) made the varsity quarterfinals and novice semifinals at West Point, making elimination rounds for the fifth straight week and bringing two debaters even closer to qualification for Nationals. Meanwhile, many more teams were just out of the running after losing their decisive fifth round at the competition, with three teams finishing 10th, 11th, and 12th and another just missing in a varsity “bubble” round.
Here are the official accomplishments logged at the United States Military Academy tournament:
Alex Jubb & Henry Phipps – 8th Team
Arbi Llaveshi & George Alukal – 10th Team
Alex Jubb – 7th Speaker
Henry Phipps – 8th Speaker
Josh Pomerantz & Zach Sinkiewicz – 6th Novice Team (broke to novice semifinals)
Nick Hansen – 2nd Novice Speaker
Josh Pomerantz – 8th Novice Speaker
Jubb and Phipps lost a very narrow 2-1 decision to a Yale/Harvard hybrid team in quarterfinals, the closest that eventual championship team came to losing a round all tournament. Both inched closer to Nationals qualification and have five weeks left to achieve the goal, as do teammates Llaveshi, Hansen (who finished 11th at the tournament), Deepta Janardhan (who finished 12th), and Adam Bomeisl (who took the weekend off). While others from the team could also qualify, those six are halfway toward the goal or closer.
Meanwhile, Pomerantz and Sinkiewicz lost a narrow 2-1 decision to a Yale team in their novice semifinal. The novice elimination rounds were aiming for 3rd place as two novice teams made the varsity out-rounds. It was the second novice break this year for Pomerantz and the fourth for Sinkiewicz.
Hansen regained 12th Novice of the Year (NOTY) position with his second-place finish, putting him just six points back of the top ten. Rutgers overall slipped to 6th College of the Year (COTY) with Brown jumping to 4th off of a good weekend at the University of Connecticut tournament.
This weekend, RUDU will travel to William & Mary for the first of two tournaments over Rutgers’ spring break in the effort to return to the top five in the rankings and qualify more people for APDA’s National Championships to be held near the end of April in Philadelphia.
The logos for the Rutgers German Club and the Bloustein Public Service Association, who co-hosted two public debate exhibitions with RUDU this week.
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) held two public debate events this week, on Monday the 10th and Wednesday the 12th. The former was a prize debate for the German Embassy, co-sponsored by the Rutgers German Club, the third in a series of debates about Germany’s role in Europe where RUDU has competed against other competitive academic organizations at the University. The latter was an event for the Bloustein Public Service Association (BPSA), who invited RUDU to discuss the topic of urban food deserts in an exhibition.
The German debate was part of an event hosted by the German Club to celebrate Karneval, the German equivalent of Mardi Gras. Four organizations were invited to compete in the debates, working toward an eventual final round and champion. RUDU faced the Rutgers University Association of International Relations (RUAIR) in the first debate, discussing the topic of whether the future would involve a more European Germany or a more Germany Europe, with RUDU defending the latter. Rutgers University Mock Trial (RUMTA) and Rutgers University Institute for Domestic and International Affairs (RUIDIA) squared off in a second debate about the same topic.
From that initial matchup, RUDU and RUAIR were chosen to rematch in the final round, this time with RUDU advocating that Germany should stop bailing out Greece and RUAIR opposing that notion. At the conclusion of the final, the panel of three faculty judges deemed RUDU to have won the debate and its top prize. RUDU was represented in this debate by Gordon Morrisette, Alex Jubb, and Vidhaath Sripathi.
Two days later, on Wednesday, four RUDU debaters squared off in a two-on-two exhibition at the BPSA meeting in Scott Hall on the topic of whether supermarkets should be subsidized in urban “food deserts,” or regions where it is hard to buy fresh food. Nick Hansen and Henry Phipps advocated the motion while Sean Leonard and George Alukal opposed it. Phipps also serves on the Executive Board of BPSA and helped coordinate the exhibition event.
RUDU’s next public debate will be hosted by the Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA), Rutgers’ undergraduate student government. This debate will involve six RUDU debaters in a 3-on-3 format discussing the controversial topic of whether the invitation to Condoleezza Rice to serve as 2014 Commencement Speaker at Rutgers should be withdrawn. The issue was first raised by the Faculty Council of Rutgers-New Brunswick, who drafted a resolution exhorting the administration to withdraw the invitation, citing Rice’s role in “efforts to mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the existence of links between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime,” leading to war. RUSA is considering a similar resolution and will be voting on whether to pass it directly after the public debate on this topic.
The debate will take place on Thursday, March 27th, at 7:30 PM in the Student Activities Center (SAC) on the College Avenue Campus. Admission is free, refreshments will be served, and a large crowd is expected to attend. There will be an opportunity to ask questions between the debate itself and RUSA’s vote on the resolution.
More details for the event and the opportunity to RSVP and spread the word are available on the event’s Facebook page.
RUDU will also be holding public debate events as part of Rutgers Day on Saturday, April 26th. More details about those activities will be posted as the event approaches.
The record-breaking RUDU contingent at William & Mary gathers on the steps of Washington Hall for a photo in sunny Virginia. Left to right: Russell Potter, Sean Leonard, Luana Wang [Albany], Storey Clayton, Josh Pomerantz, Henry Phipps, Quinn Maingi, Alex Jubb, Zach Sinkiewicz, Gordon Morrisette, Nick Hansen, Arbi Llaveshi, Victoria Disla, and Vidhaath Sripathi. (Not pictured: Adam Bomeisl)
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) broke a record four teams to quarterfinals at William & Mary this weekend, taking the 5th through 8th spots and also appearing in novice finals. While RUDU had broken four teams at the University of Pennsylvania this season as well, two of them dropped in octofinals and thus this was the first time Rutgers comprised half the quarterfinal bracket.
Here are the official RUDU results from the second William & Mary contest of the season:
Arbi Llaveshi & Gordon Morrisette – 5th Team
Quinn Maingi & Vidhaath Sripathi – 6th Team
Henry Phipps & Luana Wang [Albany] – 7th Team
Alex Jubb & Nick Hansen – 8th Team
Sean Leonard – 1st Speaker
Alex Jubb – 8th Speaker
Quinn Maingi – 9th Speaker
Zach Sinkiewicz & Victoria Disla – 2nd Novice Team
Nick Hansen – 2nd Novice Speaker
Vidhaath Sripathi – 3rd Novice Speaker
The top speaker award for Leonard is the third this year and the fourth of his career, both extending team records he set earlier this season. He is now the 15th ranked speaker in the country, joining teammates Ashley Novak and Maingi in the top twenty. The break to novice finals was the first ever for Disla and the third novice break in a row for Sinkiewicz.
Meanwhile, Ashley Novak won a speaker award and broke to out-rounds at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tournament this weekend in Boston:
Ashley Novak & Jean McCabe [Brown] – 5th Team
Ashley Novak – 10th Speaker
The tournaments this weekend ran Rutgers’ break streak to six weekends and pushed several debaters even closer to qualifying for Nationals with a month to go before the prestigious championships. Llaveshi now leads the pack with 13 points of the necessary 14, with Phipps (12.75) and Hansen (11.5) close behind. Deepta Janardhan (11), Adam Bomeisl (8.75), and Jubb (7.5) are also all over halfway. Sripathi broke for the second time in a month and stands at 2 points and Morrisette earned qualification points for the first time this season.
Five RUDU debaters (Novak, Russell Potter, Leonard, Rachel Moon, and Maingi) are already qualified to attend Nationals. The team as a whole is chasing last year’s team record of seven qualifications for a season.
While Rutgers is on spring break this week, the season schedule rolls on with seven teams slated to compete for Rutgers at Swarthmore this weekend.
The Rutgers contingent of competitors and judges at Swarthmore lines up after quarterfinals. Left to right: Sean Leonard, Russell Potter, Sarthi Tuli, Arbi Llaveshi, Storey Clayton, Henry Phipps, Alex Jubb, Zach Sinkiewicz, Lin Lan, Farhan Ali, George Alukal, Jason Boyle, Quinn Maingi, and Nick Hansen. (Not pictured: Deepta Janardhan)
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) made the elimination rounds for the seventh straight weekend on the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) circuit, finishing 6th and 10th teams and inching closer to additional qualifications to the National Championships.
Here are the official results achieved by RUDU at Swarthmore, which broke to partial octofinals:
Sean Leonard & Nick Hansen – 6th Team
Henry Phipps & Alex Jubb – 10th Team
Sean Leonard – 3rd Speaker
Nick Hansen – 5th Novice Speaker
Additionally, Ashley Novak and her hybrid partner were in semifinals at the weekend’s other tournament at Boston University:
Ashley Novak & Shira Almeleh [Brandeis] – 3rd Team
Ashley Novak – 7th Speaker
Hansen now stands just half a point away from qualifying for Nationals, having come up just short in a 2-1 decision in quarterfinals with Leonard. Leonard’s 3rd speaker finish marked his fourth time in five tournaments where he has finished in the top seven speakers and the third time of those where he has been in the top three. With this surge, he now stands ranked 13th in APDA’s annual Speaker of the Year (SOTY) rankings for the season, and is second among sophomore debaters in the league.
Hansen, meanwhile, won a novice speaker award for the fourth straight tournament, all of them top five placings. He has risen back to twelfth overall in the Novice of the Year (NOTY) rankings with three weekends remaining in the season. Novak remains 9th ranked SOTY and has her sights on being the first Rutgers debater to finish the year in the top ten. The current record is held by Dave Reiss, who finished 14th in 2010-2011.
RUDU will be joining the rest of APDA at the Princeton University tournament this weekend, just down Route 1 from Rutgers. RUDU will be sending several teams in the hopes of adding to the five currently qualified debaters to attend Nationals, as well as improving on the sixth place standing the school has this year. Elections for the league’s Board will also be held.
Just before Princeton, RUDU will be conducting its biggest public debate of the semester, on whether Condoleezza Rice should be the 2014 Commencement Speaker at Rutgers. Well over 100 people are already slated to attend the debate, which will be held before the meeting of the Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA), to be followed by a RUSA vote on the resolution as debated. Arbi Llaveshi, Rachel Moon, and Sean Leonard will be speaking for the resolution and Daimler Vadlamuri, Russell Potter, and Deepta Janardhan will be speaking against. The speakers will not necessarily be representing their own views on the topic, as is typical in debate.
A file photo of Ashley Novak, whose success this weekend at Princeton brought her to 7th in the Speaker of the Year (SOTY) rankings.
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) made it eight straight weeks in the break with a huge run by Ashley Novak at Princeton this weekend. The team’s top speaker and former President made it all the way to finals after winning eight rounds in a row with her partner from Brandeis. She also finished as the 3rd place individual speaker and shot back up to 7th overall in the Speaker of the Year (SOTY) standings, the ranking of individual debaters on the APDA league.
Here are the official awards won by Rutgers at Princeton:
Ashley Novak & Russell Leibowitz [Brandeis] – 2nd Team
Ashley Novak – 3rd Speaker
Several other teams from RUDU compiled winning records, including Sean Leonard and Arbi Llaveshi, who just missed making the elimination rounds after a loss in their 3-1 round against a team from Yale. The performance by Novak this weekend all but secures her spot in the top ten of SOTY, the first time any RUDU debater will have achieved that feat.
Two weeks remain in the regular season this year and Rutgers is 6th in the country. With five debaters qualified for Nationals and several more on the verge, there is much hope for RUDU heading into the National Championships at the University of Pennsylvania at the end of this month.
The RUDU contingent at Binghamton celebrates a double-qualification weekend. The theme of the tournament was the song “Thrift Shop” and prizes were thrift shop sweaters. Left to right: Becky Ratero, Henry Phipps, Nick Hansen, Zach Sinkiewicz, Alex Jubb, Arbi Llaveshi, Sean Lonard, Vidhaath Sripathi, and Quinn Maingi. (Not pictured: Daimler Vadlamuri and Gabi Cozzolino.)
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) broke three teams to quarterfinals at the Binghamton University tournament this weekend, qualifying Nick Hansen and Arbi Llaveshi for Nationals and earning a spot in varsity finals for the second straight week. It was the ninth straight varsity break weekend for the team who is in a close race with Brown and Johns Hopkins for 4th overall in the national rankings with one week left in the regular season.
Here are the official results from Binghamton:
Quinn Maingi & Arbi Llaveshi – 2nd Team
Sean Leonard & Nick Hansen – 7th Team
Henry Phipps & Alex Jubb – 8th Team
Quinn Maingi – 5th Speaker
Sean Leonard – 10th Speaker
Zach Sinkiewicz & Rose Cote [Syracuse] – 3rd Novice Team
Vidhaath Sripathi – 3rd Novice Speaker
Nick Hansen – 8th Novice Speaker
The trip to finals was the second this season for Llaveshi, who also finaled at UMBC with Deepta Janardhan. It was the first for Maingi since he won the Albany tournament with Jubb last year. Both Hansen, a novice, and Llaveshi, qualified for the first time in their careers, though Llaveshi represented Rutgers as the free seed at the 2012 National Championships. Maingi & Llaveshi beat a Yale team in quarterfinals and a Princeton team in semifinals before dropping a 2-1 decision to a Stanford/Princeton hybrid team in the final round.
With the qualifications, RUDU has now tied a team record with seven Nats quals, the record set last year. Phipps fell just short of qualifying after a 2-1 loss to Princeton in the quarterfinals and now stands at 13.25 of the necessary 14 points with one weekend left before the National Championships at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Previously qualified debaters this season include Maingi, Leonard, Ashley Novak, Russell Potter, and Rachel Moon.
Meanwhile, three RUDU teams spent the same weekend on the campus of Swarthmore College for a tournament co-hosted by NYU and Rutgers and officially known as the “NYU” tournament. There, Potter and Janardhan made the quarterfinals in a small but extremely competitive field before dropping to the eventual finalists from American University.
Here are the results from that NYU contest:
Russell Potter & Deepta Janardhan – 8th Team
Nimit Jindal & Grisam Shah – 4th Novice Team
Nimit Jindal – 6th Novice Speaker
Grisam Shah – 9th Novice Speaker
RUDU will be sending several teams to the Georgetown tournament this weekend, the last chance to earn qualifications for those who are close, including Phipps, Janardhan, Jubb, and Adam Bomeisl. Any one of them qualifying would set the team record for qualifications. If two or more qualify, Rutgers will earn the right to send six full teams to Nationals. Currently, if nothing changes, RUDU is slated to send five full teams.
The lineup of RUDU debaters and judges for the “NYU” tournament on the Swarthmore campus. Left to right: Kurt Falk, Deepta Janardhan, Jason Boyle, Russell Potter, Nimit Jindal, Storey Clayton, Grisam Shah, Brianna Florovito, and Victoria Disla.
RUDU gathers in the bright sun of the Amherst campus to celebrate the last regular season tournament of the year. Left to right: Grisam Shah, Nick Hansen, Ali Ismail, Adam Bomeisl, Maxwell Williams, Quinn Maingi, Alex Jubb, Yaqarah Letellier, Zach Sinkiewicz, Lin Lan, Storey Clayton, Henry Phipps, Deepta Janardhan, Sean Leonard, Arbi Llaveshi, and Russell Potter.
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) closed out one of the most successful years in its history with a strong finish at the Amherst tournament. Russell Potter & Alex Jubb made semifinals, Sean Leonard & Henry Phipps made quarterfinals, and Phipps qualified for Nationals in the last weekend of the regular season, breaking last year’s team record for qualifications.
Here are the official results:
Russell Potter & Alex Jubb – 4th Team
Sean Leonard & Henry Phipps – 7th Team
Quinn Maingi – 9th Speaker
Sean Leonard – 10th Speaker
Last year, RUDU set a team record with seven qualifications for Nationals, sending five full teams. This year, Rutgers eclipsed that mark with eight quals, behind only Yale (11) and Harvard (9). Rutgers also finished the year ranked 5th, less than 4 points behind rival Johns Hopkins for 4th. Rutgers has finished one rank ahead of Hopkins in the final national standings in two of the previous three seasons.
The Rutgers debaters qualified for Nationals are Potter, Leonard, Phipps, Maingi, Ashley Novak, Arbi Llaveshi, Rachel Moon, and Nick Hansen. All but Novak will be attending the National Championships as she elected to end her debating career at the Princeton tournament in March. The seven qualified debaters will be joined by three teammates to comprise the five Rutgers teams representing the university at Nationals. The National Championships this year will be held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from April 18-20, 2014. RUDU is now beginning its last week of extensive preparation for the Championships, where Novak and Chris Bergman finished 9th overall last year.
Novak finished 7th Speaker of the Year (SOTY), the first time a Rutgers debater has ever finished in the top ten of those standings at year’s end. Everyone finishing ahead of her is an Ivy League student with the exception of one from Brandeis who finished tied for 5th. She was also the second-ranked female speaker in the league, behind Brown’s Jean McCabe, who finished 3rd in the overall SOTY standings. They were joined by Swarthmore’s Jodie Goodman and Brandeis’ Shira Almeleh in marking the most women in the top ten of SOTY since the 2001-2002 season, when half the top ten were female.
The national top five teams on the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) circuit were unchanged from last year, though the rankings reshuffled a bit. This year, Rutgers was fifth behind Yale, Harvard, Brandeis, and Johns Hopkins. Last season, Yale was also top, Brandeis second, Rutgers third, Johns Hopkins fourth, and Harvard fifth. Despite finishing 5th this season, Rutgers actually set a team record for rankings points in the College of the Year (COTY) standings, with 257.5 edging last year’s mark of 257.
Here are the final Top 25 rankings for the APDA in 2013-2014:
Rank
College/University
Points
1
Yale University
558.75
2
Harvard University
343
3
Brandeis University
332.5
4
Johns Hopkins University
261.25
5
Rutgers University
257.5
6
Brown University
245.5
7
Columbia University
196.5
8
George Washington University
196
9
Bates College
193.25
10
American University
157.5
11
College of William and Mary
153.5
12
Princeton University
147.5
13
Swarthmore College
142
14
Boston University
50
15
University of Maryland
35
16
University of Chicago
27
17
Stanford University
16
18
Georgetown University
10
19
Northeastern University
8
19
Providence College
8
21
Tufts University
7
22
New York University
6
22
Middlebury College
6
22
University of Pittsburgh
6
25
Moody Bible Institute
4
Rutgers is one of just three public institutions in this year’s top 25, ahead of #11 William & Mary and #15 Maryland. Rutgers finished ahead of New Jersey rival Princeton for the fourth straight year.
RUDU debaters, alumni, and coach celebrate the announcement that Sean & Quinn were in the octofinals at the Nationals Banquet on Saturday night. Left to right: Vidhaath Sripathi, Storey Clayton, Adam Bomeisl, Sean Leonard, Kyle Bomeisl, Deepta Janardhan, Russell Potter, Alex Jubb, Jason Boyle, Arbi Llaveshi, Rachel Moon, Quinn Maingi, Kurt Falk, Nick Hansen, Nisha Kumar, and Maxwell Williams. (Not pictured: Ashley Novak, Henry Phipps)
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) earned its greatest accomplishment in team history yesterday with a run to the National Championship Final Round by Quinn Maingi & Sean Leonard. The junior/sophomore duo are just the fourth partnership in the 2000s without a senior on the team to make it to the National Final. They also became the first team since University of Virginia in 2003 to make the National Finals from a public institution.
Here are the official accomplishments earned by Rutgers this weekend:
Quinn Maingi & Sean Leonard – 2nd Team
Sean Leonard – 18th Speaker
Quinn Maingi – 20th Speaker
Vidhaath Sripathi – 8th Novice Speaker
After two grueling days of competition on Friday and Saturday, in which Maingi & Leonard defeated many of the best teams in the nation, it was announced at the Saturday night Banquet that they had become just the third team in RUDU history to reach the elimination rounds at Nationals. Ashley Novak & Chris Bergman made octofinals last year and David Reiss & Kyle Bomeisl did the same in 2011.
Maingi & Leonard faced Bates in octofinals and won a 2-1 decision, marking the first time ever that Rutgers won a National elimination round. They went on to rematch against a Johns Hopkins team they had beaten in preliminary rounds and carried the quarterfinal by a 4-1 margin. In semifinals, they faced a Harvard team that had made elims as the top seed, winning all six preliminary rounds including a win over them in prelims. But Rutgers smashed their eight-round winning run at Nationals with a 4-1 win that put Maingi & Leonard in the National Finals.
Despite losing the Final to Yale on a unanimous decision, Rutgers’ intense debate duo has electrified a debate league normally dominated by Ivy League elites. Harvard had won the previous two National Championships and the Ivy League has collectively won 14 of the last 17 American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) titles. The other three were won by Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University. The lone public institution to ever win a National Championship on APDA was the US Naval Academy in 1984.
RUDU finished the 2013-2014 season ranked fifth on APDA in the College of the Year (COTY) rankings. It was Rutgers’ fourth straight year in the top ten and tied for their second-highest finish. The team record was set last year at third. And while the team set a school record with eight qualifications for Nationals, no one among the five teams preparing to attend the Championship saw the run to Finals coming. Indeed, Rutgers entered the octofinals with the #13 seed of the sixteen teams who made the cut, making the Championship Final appearance all the sweeter.
The partnerships that Maingi & Leonard defeated in elimination rounds were ranked 4th, 6th, and 5th respectively in APDA’s Team of the Year (TOTY) rankings. The semifinal team from Harvard ranked 5th in TOTY included one of the debaters who was on the #1 ranked TOTY team. The final round opponents from Yale and eventual Champions were the #2 ranked TOTY pairing. One of those debaters was also on the #3 ranked team, meaning that RUDU’s team faced a debater on every one of the top six ranked teams at the Championships en route to taking 2nd overall.
RUDU has risen to prominence in the last five years after struggling in obscurity during its first decade on the APDA circuit. After being founded in 2001, the team never cracked the top ten in the national rankings until finishing 5th in 2010-2011. The last four years have featured countless successes and qualifications for Nationals, all culminating in this tremendous and almost unprecedented success for a state university.
Rutgers sent four other teams to the Championships, including Vidhaath Sripathi, whose top ten novice speaker finish reflects Leonard’s fifth novice speaker award from the 2013 Championships. If Leonard’s meteoric rise this year is any indication, Sripathi has the brightest of futures ahead for the team.
RUDU spent the four days leading up to the Championships all but sequestered at the “Debate House” at 11 Bartlett Street writing and rewriting cases, running practice rounds and drills, and preparing for the other teams who would be contending at the Championships. The work of the five teams and Coach Storey Clayton was supplemented by an inspiring surprise visit from David Reiss, who was on the first Rutgers team to make elimination rounds and the TOTY rankings. Reiss now lives in Austin, Texas and was flying home for Passover, but chose not to tell RUDU he would be showing up to help out.
Maingi and Leonard will be among the many returning debaters to next year’s RUDU squad who will hope to rise in the COTY rankings and again contend for a National Championship. Sripathi, Russell Potter, Arbi Llaveshi, Rachel Moon, and Nick Hansen are all returning debaters who attended this year’s Championship.
RUDU celebrates after the National Championship Final Round in front of the iconic LOVE statue at the University of Pennsylvania. Kneeling in front with Second Place trophies: Sean Leonard and Quinn Maingi. Middle row, standing: Kyle Bomeisl, Deepta Janardhan, Alex Jubb, Henry Phipps, Adam Bomeisl (with 5th Place COTY trophy), Maxwell Williams, Rachel Moon, Kurt Falk, Nick Hansen, Vidhaath Sripathi, and Ashley Novak. Top row: Storey Clayton, Arbi Llaveshi, Russell Potter, and Jason Boyle.
Deepta Janardhan (standing, center) defends mandatory minimums in sentencing in a mini-round at Rutgers Day against Sean Leonard (seated, left).
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) was a key feature of the largest-ever Rutgers Day on Saturday, an open house for the university that drew over 84,000 people in total to the five campuses at Rutgers.
Many RUDU members spent all or part of the six-hour event in Center Hall in the Busch Campus Center, talking to prospective members of the team from both current Rutgers undergraduates and high schoolers as well as people from the community. The team also conducted eleven mini-debates on various topics, ranging from fracking to Ukraine to the privatization of space to the meaning of life itself.
Most of the debate topics were suggested by audience members who stopped by to meet the team, and two debates featured people from the community challenging RUDUers to debate them on topics of their choosing. The Daily Targum, Rutgers’ student newspaper, mentioned RUDU’s exhibitions at Rutgers Day in their article about the event.
Public Relations Chair Nick Hansen helped run and coordinate RUDU’s participation in Rutgers Day, its first time at the event since 2011.
RUDU will be holding several in-house events for the team to wrap up the year, including the annual 1-on-1 tournament and the Senior and Alumni Banquet to be held on Wednesday, May 7th.
The iconic photo at Banquet’s end of the 2013-2014 RUDU team. Left to right: Arbi Llaveshi, Gordon Morrisette, Russell Potter, Adam Bomeisl, Jessie Gugig, Nick Hansen, Alex Jubb, Kurt Falk, Ali Ismail, Storey Clayton, George Alukal, Rachel Moon, Nimit Jindal, Gabi Cozzolino, Daimler Vadlamuri, Sean Leonard, Maxwell Williams, Zach Sinkiewicz, Grisam Shah, Quinn Maingi, Jason Boyle, Deepta Janardhan, Jamie DiVito, Becky Ratero, and Henry Phipps.
On Wednesday, May 7th, the Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) closed one of its most successful seasons of all-time with the annual Senior Banquet, held for the second year in a row upstairs in the Livingston Dining Commons. A bit less than half of the 59 students who attended at least one tournament this year went to the event, celebrating the 5th College of the Year standing for Rutgers in the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA), the trip to National Finals, and eight graduating seniors, seven of whom gave their farewell speeches to the club.
The event opened with the finals of the “Would You Push the Button?” Tournament, the new manifestation of the Ironman Tournament tradition that dates back to 2008 on RUDU. Twentieth-seed Zach Sinkiewicz won the flip and chose to Opp against second-seed Sean Leonard. Leonard carried the humorous round on a substantial decision, joining prior (2012) winner Ashley Novak as the only sophomores to win the in-house single-elimination tournament. This tournament featured a double-octofinal bracket of 32 individuals which were pared down to the finalists over the course of two weeks. Sinkiewicz was by far the lowest seed ever to make the finals, upending the fourth and top seeds en route to his second-place finish.
Senior speeches marked the most emotional portion of the night. Maxwell Williams, Daimler Vadlamuri, Adam Bomeisl, Deepta Janardhan, Alex Jubb, Gordon Morrisette, and Henry Phipps gave Senior Speeches in the midst of the four-hour program, making their farewells and recommendations to the club. Each was introduced by a close friend on the team as per tradition, who told stories about the impact of that senior on the team and its history. The respective introducers for the seven seniors were Nick Hansen, Jamie DiVito, Sean Leonard, George Alukal, Rachel Moon, Arbi Llaveshi, and Becky Ratero. Speeches ranged from funny to heartfelt, with advice that was both tough love and warm appreciation. Senior Ashley Novak, the team’s first female President and first top ten SOTY finisher, was unable to attend the Banquet.
Williams closed his speech with a senior gift for Coach Storey Clayton of a homemade “Cards Against RUDU” game, while Morrisette announced the senior gift of a six-foot RUDU banner that the senior class will be giving to the team. Janardhan also announced a plan to donate a certain amount of money to the team for every novice next year who novice breaks or earns a top ten novice speaker award, to refocus the club on recruitment and promotion of novices as well as its current varsity success. Several other seniors have since joined her pledge. Janardhan also had the honor of passing on Farhan Ali’s “Beepy Timer” award, this time choosing to pass it on to first-year Ali Ismail. The ceremonial award is given by a graduating senior on the team to a non-senior to honor their perseverance and dedication to the team. Coach Storey Clayton closed the speeches with remarks about the team and the announcement that he would likely be stepping down as Coach of RUDU at the conclusion of the year after serving for five years as Coach. He thanked many people for their contributions to the team over the years and observed the incredible rise RUDU has witnessed from obscurity in 2009 to National Finalists in 2014.
The night continued with a game of “RUDU Feud!”, a take on Family Feud about various attributes of members of the Rutgers team. The game was run by Henry Phipps and Nick Hansen. The night then concluded with Henry Phipps’ slideshow of the year, set to music, and the annual iconic team photo, seen above.
Below is a list of the members of RUDU who attended tournaments this year, all of whom contributed in some way to the success of the Debate Union who became just the third state school ever and the first in 11 years to make the National Championship Final Round.
Atif Ahmad
George Alukal
Adam Bomeisl
Brendon Brito
Joe Casais
Patrick Chen
Will Cheng
Denise Costanzo
Gabi Cozzolino
Rachel Cusumano
Sweta Devarajan
Victoria Disla
Jamie DiVito
Zaki Doudak
Amanda Fins
Brianna Florovito
Sam Foresti
Marcos Gonzalez
Alan Gou
Jessie Gugig
Nicholas Hansen
Ali Ismail
Deepta Janardhan
Ben Jasper
Nimit Jindal
Alexandra Jubb
Kiranjot Kaur
Pardip Kaur
Jen Kim
John Kral
Lin Lan
Sean Leonard
Yaqarah Letellier
Arbi Llaveshi
R. Quinn Maingi
Rachel Moon
Raynee Morris
Gordon Morrisette
Ashley Novak
Suraj Oza
Henry Phipps
Josh Pomerantz
Russell Potter
Prasad Prayaga
Becky Ratero
Kai Rau
Donalene Roberts
Grisam Shah
Vivek Shah
Ruqaiyah Shehabuddin
Soham Shukla
Zachary Sinkiewicz
Stine-Oksana Soomai
Vidhaath Sripathi
Maegan Sunaz
Dariene Sy
Sarthi Tuli
Daimler Vadlamuri
Maxwell Williams
Members of North Star’s speech and debate team who visited Rutgers gather after the tournament at the School of Communication and Information.
On Saturday, May 10th, the Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) hosted the North Star Academy’s speech and debate team for a day of competition, workshops, and collaboration. The Newark high school recently started their team, which has tried many debate and speech events this season. The contingent that attended this event was comprised almost entirely of first-years and sophomores. This is one of several collaborations with high schools that RUDU has done, after public debate exhibitions at Trenton Central High School and at Point Pleasant Borough High School.
Kurt Falk, a member of RUDU from 2011-2012, is the Assistant Coach of the North Star Academy team and helped coordinate the event. The team’s Head Coach, Jessica Ehmke, was also in attendance. They were supported by numerous current and former RUDU members who helped run the event and served as judges of the speech competition.
The competition itself consisted of short 2-4 minute speeches that the North Star students had prepared and memorized for the event. All were on the topic of a key problem facing society, as chosen by the speaker. There were several preliminary rounds, followed by a break to semifinals (12 speakers) and then finals (6 speakers), resulting in awards for the top three.
Throughout the day, rounds of competition were interspersed with a speaking workshop run by Coach Storey Clayton, a demonstration round of parliamentary debate featuring four current and former RUDU debaters (said to be the favorite event by North Star attendees), and a presentation on Rutgers University by a student representative from the Admissions program. Judges also gave rigorous and extensive feedback to each speaker after each speech they delivered.
While all competitors spoke well and improved greatly throughout the day, the winners were selected by an aggregate vote of the 9-judge panel, one that featured three APDA National Finalists. Rebecca Davis was awarded 1st Place, Akira Caruth 2nd, and Andrea Hammond 3rd.
Ultimately, the event was a great opportunity for North Star students to visit a college campus and see the inner workings of a highly successful collegiate debate team while improving their skills and having fun.
Former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean delivers Rutgers’ 2014 Commencement Address.
On Sunday, May 18th, Rutgers University graduated the class of 2014 at the Commencement at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway. After extensive controversy surrounding the selection of a Commencement speaker, including an initial selection of Condoleezza Rice that was debated in an enormous public debate by the Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU), former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean was selected to give this year’s Commencement Address.
In that speech, Kean praised many aspects of Rutgers University and its current graduating class. But he reserved special citation for just a few groups, including RUDU itself.
“So no matter where your journey takes you, I hope you’ll always remember: take pride in Rutgers, because you should… Your student debate team is the second-best in the country,” Kean said.
Kean’s remarks about the Debate Union come in the fourth minute of the seventeen-minute speech (including introduction).
Kean was referring to RUDU’s second-place finish at the National Championships. Kean gave special praise to Rutgers’ status as a state school. Rutgers is only the third state school ever to appear in the National Finals of the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) Championships. The United States Naval Academy (1984) won the tournament and the University of Virginia (2003) also finished second.
RUDU gathers in the heat at Johns Hopkins University. Top row, from left: Rachel Moon ’15, Nick Hansen ’16, George Alukal ’15, Russell Potter ’15. Bottom row, from left: Victoria Disla ’17, Kurt Falk ’15, Sean Leonard ’16, Minnal Kunnan ’15, Jason Boyle ’13, Quinn Maingi ’15
The Rutgers University Debate Union started off the American Parliamentary Debate Association season with four debate teams competing at the John Hopkins University tournament. The four teams consisted of varsity members Quinn Maingi & Sean Leonard, Nick Hansen & Rachel Moon, Kurt Falk & Russell Potter, and George Alukal teaming with novice Minnal Kunnan. Each team competed in 5 preliminary debate rounds, with 3 of the teams finishing with a winning record.
Quinn Maingi & Sean Leonard (last year’s runners up at the APDA National Championship) finished the tournament as the top seed with a 5–0 record and made it to the quarterfinals of the tournament. Maingi & Leonard finished as the 5th best varsity team at the tournament. In addition to having a team competing in the quarterfinals of the tournament, members of the team won individual speaking awards. Quinn won 8th place varsity speaker and newcomer Minnal won 3rd place novice speaker.
The team of Maingi & Leonard is now tied for 4th Team of The Year (TOTY), and RUDU is tied for 4th College of the Year (COTY).
The RUDU team represented their new academic home, the School of Communication & Information, with well-thought out arguments and positive energy. Each member of the team showed the power of their communication and has started the debate season with a bang! Congratulations to each team that competed at John Hopkins this weekend!
The Rutgers University Debate Union continued its success this season at the annual autumn tournament at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Three teams competed: Kurt Falk and Russell Potter, Sean Leonard and Quinn Maingi, and George Alukal and Jessie Gugig.
The team of Maingi and Leonard, hot off their fifth place finish at Johns Hopkins last week, made it to the semi-final round, narrowly dropping on a 3-2 decision. This is the second straight break for the team of Leonard & Maingi, placing them among the most successful teams this season. Additionally, Maingi won the top speaker award, placing him among the top ten speakers this year. Leonard also won fifth speaker.
The drive to Williamsburg may have been long, but RUDU’s success made it worth it! Next week, RUDU will be competing in New York City, at Columbia University.
The Rutgers University Debate Union had a successful weekend in the Big Apple, with RUDU securing its third straight varsity break this season.
The team of Sean Leonard and Quinn Maingi broke to varsity quarterfinals. In octofinals, they defeated a team from Swarthmore University. Leonard & Maingi now stand at 8th Team of the Year, while Maingi is 5th in the Speaker of the Year rankings.
This weekend, RUDU will compete at the annual novice tournament at Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia.
From left: Victoria Disla ’17, Henry Phipps ’14, Rachel Moon ’15, Jason Boyle ’13, Kurt Falk ’16, Daimler Vadlamuri ’14, Russell Potter ’15, George Alukal ’15, Maegan Sunaz ’15, Nisha Kumar ’13, Deepta Janardhan ’14, Minal Kunnan ’15, Quinn Maingi ’15, Sean Leonard ’16, Nick Hansen ’16
The Rutgers University Debate Union had an excellent tournament at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York this weekend! Five teams competed, three finished with winning records, and five Rutgers alumni came out to judge! Henry Phipps, a 2015 Rutgers graduate, even flew in from his home in Portland, Oregon to surprise his RUDU family.
Two teams–Kurt Falk ’16 and Russell Potter ’15, and Quinn Maingi ’15 and Sean Leonard ’16– reached varsity outrounds at the competitive tournament. Both teams won their quarterfinal rounds, and the two Rutgers teams faced off in semifinals. Both teams were so skillful, many audience members recalled the experience as “paranormal.” In the end, Falk and Potter advanced to finals on a 2-1 decision. Leonard and Maingi now stand at 7th Team of the Year, while Falk and Potter made their first entry on the board at 12th. Leonard also finished the tournament as the 6th speaker.
In addition to the varsity wins, Rutgers continued its tradition of excellence in novice awards! Minal Kunnan ’15 finished the tournament as the best novice speaker. We know he’ll do Rutgers proud in the coming months.
Next weekend, RUDU will be competing at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
From left: Coach Kurt Falk, Lotanna Umenzinwa, Tahiv McGee, Hikmah Okoyah, Angeline Logan, Emma Burns, Coach Rob Burns
The Rutgers University Debate Union hosted its second annual North Star Academy Debate Tournament, with a full day of debate, competition, demonstrations, and workshops. Each round had students discussing whether or not local police offers should demilitarize. Each North Star student partnered with an experienced RUDU member, ensuring all students had a high quality coaching experience. This is one of several collaborations with high schools that RUDU has done, after public debate exhibitions at Trenton Central High School and at Point Pleasant Borough High School.
RUDU member Kurt Falk is the Assistant Coach of the North Star Academy team and helped coordinate the event. The team’s Head Coach, Rob Burns, was also in attendance. They were supported by numerous current and former RUDU members who helped run the event and served as judges of the debate competition.
After three rounds of debate, students watched Nisha Kumar (SAS ’13), Nick Hansen (SAS ’16), Quinn Maingi (SAS ’15), and Deepta Janardhan (SAS ’14) speak in an American Parliamentary demonstration round. This was followed by a college workshop, in which Janardhan, Hansen, Kumar and Becky Ratero (SAS ’16) discussed their college experiences.
While all participants were incredibly talented, the team of Deepta Janardhan and Tahiv McGee ended up on top, with an undefeated 3-0 record.
Ultimately, the event was a great opportunity for North Star students to visit a college campus and see the inner workings of a highly successful collegiate debate team while improving their skills and having fun.
The Rutgers University Debate Union had an successful weekend at American University in Washington, D.C this weekend! The AU tournament is a “Pro-Am” tournament, with a special ruleset: each team must be composed of either a novice and a varsity, or two novices. This provides an excellent opportunity for new RUDU members to learn from varsity members and get a shot at varsity outrounds.
This weekend, the teams of Quinn Maingi ’15 and Minnal Kunnan ’15, and Sean Leonard ’16 and Naeem Hossain ’18 broke to octofinals. This was the first of many varsity breaks for Kunnan and Hossain; we look forward to their continued success!
RUDU also continued its speaker award streak-Maingi and Leonard were 9th and 8th varsity speakers respectively.
Next weekend, RUDU will be competing in the last APDA tournament before Thanksgiving at the University of Maryland.
From left: Kyle Bomeisl ’12, Deepta Janardhan ’14, Rachel Moon ’15, Minnal Kunnan ’15, Sean Leonard ’16, Kurt Falk ’16, Russell Potter ’15, and Quinn Maingi ’15
The Rutgers University Debate Union had an excellent weekend at the University of Maryland! The team of Sean Leonard ’16 and Quinn Maingi ’15 continued their success, reaching semifinals at the tournament and ultimately winning fourth team.
Special congratulations are also due to Elise Zhou ’18 and Naeem Hossein ’18, who finished 9th and 4th novice speakers at last week’s Pro-Ams tournament at American University in Washington, DC.
But RUDU’s great week didn’t end Saturday night. Alex Jubb ’14, now a Teach for America corps member in New Orleans, returned to visit her old friends at Rutgers. Additionally, coach Storey Clayton returned in a surprise visit. Debaters, alumni, and friends shared stories until the wee hours of the morning. Both will be missed!
Since Maryland was the last APDA tournament of the semester, the team will be enjoying a well-earned break. We look forward to starting back up the first week of January, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We wish you and yours a very happy holidays!
Back row, from left: Sean Leonard ’16, Coach Storey Clayton, Kurt Falk ’16, Russell Potter ’15, George Alukal ’15, Quinn Maingi ’15. Front row, from right: Nick Hansen ’16, Victoria Disla ’17, Rachel Moon ’15, Gabi Cozzolino ’15, Jessie Gugig ’17, Alex Jubb ’14, Nisha Kumar ’13, Jame DiVito ’16, Becky Ratero ’16, Jason Boyle ’13, and Deepta Janardhan ’14
The 2015 RUDU executive board elections will occur on December 9th, 2014. The individuals who have self nominated for the executive board elections are:
President: Nick Hansen and Sean Leonard
PR Chair: Elise Zhou
Novice Mentor: Jessie Gugig
Below are the candidate statements by position:
——-President——-
Nick Hansen:
https://vimeo.com/113461778 (A note in this candidate statement; in the official statement of rules for this election, the graduating seniors failed to specify that candidate statements must be written. Therefore, this candidate statement was pre-screened to ensure that it was below the 750 word cap, which it was
Sean Leonard:
Hi, I’m Sean Leonard, and I’m running for President of the Rutgers University Debate Union. I have three independent points as to why you should vote for me.
Firstly, I’m one of the most active debaters on the team. Over the course of my last two years on the team, I’ve attended every tournament that our team has sent people to. In addition to that, I’ve missed a grand total of two meetings; One due to a snowstorm, and the other due to having to leave early to go to a tournament. Having officers who are around to represent the team is an incredibly important thing due to the fact that it serves as a connection for newer members of the team. Rewarding, and ensuring, an active varsity is especially important in the current climate of the team, considering that fact that our participation has been relatively lackluster, at least when you compare it to what we’ve had in the past few years. This also allows me to be there for say, our Novice Mentor to participate in training, which I’ve done to a fairly large extent over the past year.
Secondly, I’ve got a lot of experience on the eboard. Over the course of the last year, I served as the Vice President of the Debate Union, which is one of the most work intensive positions on the eboard. As a position that generally embodies busy work, people can be sure that I won’t shy away from any of the things take up a lot of time. Considering the duties of the President are mostly putting in registration for tournaments, and making sure that we have things like rental cars, and other things necessary for getting to those tournaments, I’ll be more than able to deal with these considering I’ve already dealt with the busy work of being Vice President. In addition to that, just being a part of the eboard has shown me how to deal with these issues, meaning that it will take me very little time to transition between the positions.
Thirdly, I’m a good person to represent our team on the circuit. In addition to the regular responsibilities of say, registering for tournaments, the President is also the person who has to vote at APDA meetings. In this capacity, the President of RUDU is our representative in APDA’s political climate. Not only do I have connections to most of the schools on the circuit, I’ve also served on the Novice Mentor committee for two years in a row, even being appointed the Southern Events Coordinator of the committee. Serving in these positions has given me insight into the way that the APDA board works, and understanding that political climate can have significant benefits to the team in the form of ensuring our preferences are heard, and acted upon within the league as a whole.
Hopefully I’ll be able to answer any specific concerns during my speech during elections, but until then, consider voting for me!
——- PR Chair ——-
Elise Zhou:
I would like to run for Public Relations Chair and would do a good job in the position because of my past experiences with increasing membership in and awareness of a club, as well as knowing what would appeal to potential members.
In high school, I was the president for the French Honor Society and the secretary for the National Honor Society. In being the president of a relatively small French Honor Society, one of my main goals senior year was to increase membership and interest in not only the honor society but also the language itself. My executive board and I achieved this by spreading the word to the middle and elementary schools as well as encouraging struggling French students by offering tutoring programs that would help qualify them for the honor society. This could similarly be applied to debate because I think that there are a lot of benefits to debate that only debaters really know about. I believe that making the Rutgers community, particularly freshmen, aware of these benefits will increase our overall membership and reputation in the university. I have plans to do so by increasing the debate team’s presence in the activity fair during the beginning of the year, since that is when students are the most impressionable and open to exploring new activities. I worked at similar activity fairs every year in high school, so I know generally what to do. Plus, having been bombarded by clubs just this past semester, I understand what sticks out to incoming freshmen and what they are looking for in a club.
I also look forward to creating more opportunities for public debates and coordinating this with the political science, communications, and history departments so professors as well as students are aware of the debate team. I am already in touch with such professors because of the classes I have taken, and most of them would be more than happy to help publicize debate. Public debates are a great way not only to display the talents of our current members, but also to let students see what skills you hone through debate. A lot of students are looking to improve their public speaking and communication skills, and increasing public debates will continue to advertise the team.
I would also do well in terms of organizing things like shirts and coordinating with the university as to when and where to spread the word because of my secretarial experience in National Honor Society. Having had a lackluster executive board my senior year, I contacted companies to order cords and tassels and helped run a blood drive as well. I had to keep minutes at meetings and record when and where students volunteered as well as report to the school administration, so I believe that I can jump right into handling promotional material for the debate team and coordinating proper times to publicize debate through the school administration.
I really love debate, not only because of the people on our team but also because of the nature of the activity, and I think it’s truly a shame that most people I talk about it with do not even know it exists. It has already become my sole extracurricular activity and I enjoy being a part of this niche. I believe that our team deserves to get it’s name out to the university community and I would love to continue building our reputation as one of the university’s most notable academic activities and encourage membership in the coming year.
—— Novice Mentor—–
Jessie Gugig
I’m Jessie Gugig, and I intend to run for the position of Novice Mentor in the upcoming Rutgers Debate Union Executive Board elections. The Rutgers Debate Union has shrunk this year to an intolerable degree, and in the spring, as well as in the fall of next year, measures will need to be taken in order to counteract this. These measures include active recruiting, not the simple posting of fliers and watching as students, usually freshmen, wander in and out of practices. In the past, prospective novices have attended meetings to get a feel for what the team is about, only to be ignored, or not given the attention required to make them feel welcomed and inclined to return.
Assuming that novice prospectives attend meetings with some level of interest in what happens during them, more efforts should be taken by the novice mentor to include these students in the meeting, or to take them aside and teach them about debate to such an extent that they feel included. If the novice mentor (and the team at large) prioritizes current members, overwhelmingly varsity members, over the novices, membership numbers will only continue to shrink. Novice retention after freshman year is what leads to a growth in the team over time, instead of the shrinking we are currently experiencing.
So what is it that can I do about this? Seeing as I don’t personally prize my own tournament performance as long as I continue to improve, I have no problem spending practice nights working with novices and prospective novices so that other varsity team members can focus on their own efforts without feeling bogged down. Further, I have no problem with taking a novice to every tournament if needed, as I’m not seeking any sort of higher recognition in the circuit as a whole. I’m also more than happy to create and enact an actual training plan for novices, helping to pair novice/novice teams together based on their strengths and weaknesses instead of letting the pairings fall together as they will based on novice tournament attendance.
While I may currently be a novice myself, and am not the most knowledgeable person about the ins and outs of debate, I know enough to teach to a framework, and to help future novices succeed. Further, I think it is most important to help expand the team in a way that doesn’t discount novices, more than it matters to have a select few novices who are exceedingly well versed and competition minded. In the past, the team has had a practice of forcing novices to get by almost on their own, a problem that has only been exacerbated this semester. My personal goal is to make future novices not only feel welcomed to, but valued by the team. The learning process should not be an inconvenience, but an ongoing process contained in being a member of the debate team. If elected as future Novice Mentor, I would work to make this true in regards to the team.
![The record-breaking RUDU contingent at William & Mary gathers on the steps of Washington Hall for a photo in sunny Virginia. Left to right: Russell Potter, Sean Leonard, Luana Wang [Albany], Storey Clayton, Josh Pomerantz, Henry Phipps, Quinn Maingi, Alex Jubb, Zach Sinkiewicz, Gordon Morrisette, Nick Hansen, Arbi Llaveshi, Victoria Disla, and Vidhaath Sripathi. (Not pictured: Adam Bomeisl)](http://rudebate.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/wm2-2014.jpg?w=604&h=772)
