Rutgers University Debate Union kicked off the new year with a great tournament at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Four teams came out after the holidays to compete during the first week of January.

Two teams, Quinn Maingi ’15 with Kurt Falk ’16 and Sean Leonard ’16 with Nick Hansen ’16, broke to quarterfinals and finished the tournament as 5th and 7th team, respectively. Individually, three of our debaters ranked among the best at the tournament: Maingi was 10th speaker, Hansen was 7th speaker, and Leonard was 6th speaker.

The teams performed wonderfully and RUDU looks forward to continuing the semester with a tournament at Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this weekend.

The Rutgers University Debate Union had a rewarding tournament at Carnegie Mellon University this past weekend!

Sean Leonard ’16 and Quinn Maingi ’15 formed one team and George Alukal ’15 and Russell Potter ’15 formed another. Both teams broke into quarterfinals, where Leonard and Maingi defeated a team from Franklin and Marshall College and advanced into semifinals. Leonard and Maingi finished as 4th team overall and Alukal and Potter won 6th team.

Next weekend, the debaters will be traveling into the city at New York University to attend the North American Debate Championships where they will face not only their fellow American debaters but also competitors from the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate.

RUDU had a successful and fun time at The College of New Jersey this past weekend, where team members from previous years returned for this nearby tournament. Seven teams competed and two Rutgers alumni came out to judge as well as a previous coach, Storey Clayton.

From top left: Quinn Maingi ’15, Kurt Falk ’16, Adam Bomeisl ’15, George Alukal ’15, Coach Storey Clayton, Russell Potter ’15, Lawrence Feltz ’16 Middle Row: Sean Leonard ’16, Nick Hansen ’16, Rachel Moon ’15, Shweta Dipali ’18, Jessie Gugig ’17, Yaqarah Letellier ’17, Elise Zhou ’18 Front Row: Gabi Cozzolino ’15, Alex Jubb ’14, Deepta Janardhan ’14

The team of Sean Leonard ’16 and Quinn Maingi ’15 made it to semifinals and went home as 4th varsity team overall. Leonard also brought back the 3rd speaker award while Maingi won 5th. The pair now stand at 5th Team of the Year. With this tournament, RUDU also welcomed new novices eager to jump right in, including Shweta Dipali ’18, Yaqarah Letellier ’17, Jonathan Johannemann ’15, Issac Khaneles ’18, Lawrence Feltz ’16.

Next week RUDU will be busy hosting our own tournament, where we expect a large turnout and many great debates!

This past weekend, RUDU hosted the 863rd Henry Rutgers Championship Invitational. 212 teams from over 25 colleges and universities came to compete at the second largest tournament of the season. This weekend’s tournament was unopposed, meaning that it was the only tournament on the circuit at the time, so everyone on the RU team was involved from the newest novices to the graduated alumni. The tournament director was RUDU senior Russell Potter, and the debate union collectively coordinated everything from housing and food to round pairings and ballot collection. Starting Friday afternoon and stretching through Saturday evening, both team members and alumni “dinos” helped judge the 106 teams and it was truly an amazing sight to see. Rutgers’ resident newspaper, The Daily Targum, interviewed RUDU debaters and covered the tournament in an article that can be found here.

This coming weekend, RUDU goes to George Washington University for a particularly interesting tournament where all cases must be Opp-choice. This type of case allows the Opposition to choose for which side of the case they debate, leading to especially unique and entertaining rounds.

Rutgers Debate Union had a successful weekend at Swarthmore College, where this past tournament was a Pro-am tournament. This means that all pairs were varsity and novice teams. In addition, the tournament included motions, meaning everyone at the tournament debated the same topics chosen by the host school.

The union sent six teams to the tournament, where debaters both placed as individual speakers and broke as teams. The teams included Sean Leonard ’16 and Naeem Hossain ’18, Quinn Maingi ’15 and Minnal Kunnan ’16, George Alukal ’15 and Jessie Gugig ’17, Nick Hansen ’16 and An Mahdzyar ’16, Russell Potter ’15 and Elise Zhou ’18, and Shweta Dipali ’18 and Lawrence Feltz ’16.

Leonard and Hossain as well as Maingi and Kunnan both broke to outrounds, with Maingi and Kunnan winning the tournament.  The union also brought home individual speaker awards: Naeem Hossain was 10th novice speaker, Minnal Kunnan was 4th novice speaker, Sean Leonard was 7th varsity speaker, and Quinn Maingi was 2nd varsity speaker. Congratulations to the individual debaters and participating teams!

Next week, RUDU looks forward to competing at American University.

(Pictured Left to Right: Russell Potter ’15, Nick Hansen ’15, Minnal Kunnan ’15’, Naeem Hossain ’18, George Alukal ’15, Sean Leonard ’16, Quinn Maingi ’15, RUDU alumnus Kyle Bomeisl ’12, RUDU alumnus Adam Bomeisl ’14, Pasha Temkin ’18)

The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) swept the West Point Invitational this weekend, with RUDU wining both Varsity and Novice divisions and making it the third tournament win for RUDU in the 2014-2015  season. A Varsity semi-finals appearance by another RUDU team earned senior Russell Potter qualification for the National Championships. Potter joins Maingi, Leonard, and Kunnan as the 4th member of RUDU to qualify for nationals this year.

Here is the full breakdown of RUDU’s West Point achievements:

Sean Leonard & Quinn Maingi – 1st Team, Tournament Champions
Nick Hansen & Russell Potter – 3rd Team, Semifinalists
Quinn Maingi – 3rd Speaker
Sean Leonard – 5th Speaker
Naeem Hossain & Pasha Temkin – 2nd Novice Team*, Novice Champions
Minnal Kunnan – 2nd Novice Speaker
Naeem Hossain – 7th Novice Speaker

Rutgers had an impressive performance throughout the preliminary rounds of the tournament. The teams of Leonard and Maingi and Hansen and Potter made it through preliminary rounds each with a 5-0 undefeated record, making respectively the 1st and 2nd highest seeds for the Varsity out-round bracket. Hossain and Temkin debuted as a novice pair and proceeded through out rounds to win novice finals even though it was Temkin’s first tournament with RUDU.

RUDU’s accomplishments at West Point continues the team’s yearlong national success. Leonard and Maingi are now ranked 4th in the nation for Team of the Year (TOTY) with each of them also ranked 10th and and 7th in the individual Speaker of the Year (SOTY) rankings. Hansen and Potter also rise in the TOTY rankings as the 43rd ranked team. Kunnan’s novice speaker award lifts him up to 14th place in the running Novice of the Year (NOTY) ranking.

As a team, Rutgers is currently ranked 8th in the College of the Year (COTY) standing, above Princeton and Columbia who round out the bottom of the top ten.

This weekend the debate team kicks off spring break and hopes to continue their success at Franklin and Marshall College’s tournament.

*The 1st Novice Team was automatically awarded to a Novice team that qualified for Varsity out-rounds and thus did not participate in Novice semi-finals or finals

The Nationals duo Sean Leonard ’16 (left) and Raman “Quinn” Maingi ’15 (right) with their trophies

The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) took 3rd place at the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) National Championship held at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), defeating teams from Yale in the octofinal and quarterfinal rounds of the tournament. The team of Raman “Quinn” Maingi (‘15) and Sean Leonard (‘16) made it to the semifinal round of the tournament, losing on a close 4-3 decision to the eventual tournament champion Harvard University. Rutgers was the farthest advancing team from a public university at the tournament and the only public university in history to have back-to-back semifinal appearances at the National Championship. Last year, the same team of Maingi and Leonard made it to the final round of the championship, the first time a public university had done so since 2003.

The 3rd place finish at the Championship capped off a season of victories for RUDU on the APDA circuit, which sanctions weekly debate tournaments across the country. APDA ranked Rutgers 8th College of the Year (COTY), based on the cumulative results of all Rutgers debaters at the end of the regular season. Rutgers ranked above schools such as Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, Georgetown, NYU, Cornell, and Dartmouth. This is the 5th year in a row that RUDU finished in the top ten COTY rankings, making it the most successful travelling team in that period across all Rutgers campuses.

On the APDA circuit, debaters compete in teams of two and pick from an assortment of possible topics, which can range from philosophy to policy to pop culture. Because of the scope of a possible debate at any given tournament, competitors must practice as much as possible before the year-end championship. Sean Leonard, one half of the championship duo, says the help of retired RUDU coaches Storey Clayton and Christopher Baia were critical to understanding the nuances of high-level debate. He also credits his success to the Rutgers administration, particularly the School of Communication & Information and Student Life, which has provided the opportunity for debaters to travel to APDA tournaments every weekend. Traveling every weekend on the national circuit has allowed RUDU to develop the rhetorical chops needed to compete and win against Ivy league schools at the highest levels of competition.

Debaters and Alumni at the Nationals Banquet: Nick Hansen ’16, Adam Bomeisl ’15, Deepta Janardhan ’14, Quinn Maingi ’15, Jessie Gugig ’17, George Alukal ’15, Sean Leonard ’16, Coach Storey Clayton, Russell Potter ’15, Alex Jubb ’14, Ashley Novak ’14, Chris Bergman ’13

Jamie DiVito at the 2014 Senior Banquet

Jamie DiVito has been elected to serve as the 2016 Rutgers Invitational Tournament Director! DiVito is a junior double-majoring in Linguistics and Cognitive Science in addition to pursing a certificate in Digital Film Editing. She joined RUDU in 2012 and since then has been a vital volunteer at our yearly Rutgers Invitational. This is her first time taking a leadership role in the tournament’s administration but in her candidate statement she outlines how she’s ready to “get things done”.

When not involved with RUDU, DiVito enjoys translating English songs into Spanish and reading whenever she can. After graduation, DiVito hopes to teach English abroad and eventually enter the film industry. In addition, she identifies as a feminist.

The 2016 Rutgers Invitational will be held February 5th – 6th. It will be Rutgers’ first all opp-choice tournament and the only all opp-choice, unopposed tournament during the 2015 – 2016 APDA season. An “unopposed” tournament means the tournament is the only sanctioned APDA competition that week and are awarded to teams that are competitively successful on the circuit for a long period of time. Last year’s tournament was over 100 teams, a record for the university. The 2016 tournament will likely attract another record number of teams. For context, the first Rutgers Invitational, held fourteen years ago, consisted of just 35 teams.

Top row, left to right: George Alukal, Shireen Hamza, Quinn Maingi
Bottom row, left to right: Rachel Moon, Minnal Kunnan, Russell Potter

The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) would like to congratulate and recognize it’s 2015 outgoing senior class: George Alukal, Shireen Hamza, Minnal Kunnan, Quinn Maingi, Rachel Moon, and Russell Potter. Each senior recognized here debated for RUDU for at least one tournament in the 2014-2015 season, with most of them debating in previous years as underclassmen.

George Alukal
Hailing from Hillsborough, George joined RUDU in 2013 as a sophomore. While on the team, he served as Novice Mentor in 2014. His debate successes include breaking to varsity out-rounds at Carnegie Mellon (2015) and ranking as one of the top 5 novice teams at the NYU Invitational (2014). After graduation, George will be joining Chase bank in their risk management division. One of his biggest causes while on RUDU was the removal of all laws, but only during evening hours.

Shireen Hamza
Shireen joined RUDU in 2011 as a freshman. She found success soon into her novice career, ranking as the 4th highest speaking novice at UPenn (2011) and going 4-1 at Swarthmore Novice (2011), the best record of all RUDU teams at that tournament. Shireen was heavily involved in the Rutgers and New Brunswick communities. She was a founding member of Food for Thought, a group meant to foster dialogue between residents of New Brunswick through the sharing of free and nutritious meals, and an active member of Verbal Mayhem, Rutgers’ slam poetry team. After graduation, Shireen will begin doctoral studies at Harvard University in the history of science. She is an avid mountain hiker, with a greater affinity for hiking up than hiking down.

Minnal Kunnan
Minnal joined RUDU this year while on an exchange program with Rutgers from his home university of Cal Poly. Despite being new to American Parliamentary debate, Minnal was able to utilize his past experience on the BP, CEDA, and NPDA circuits to break multiple times, including a tournament win at Swarthmore ProAms (2015). In addition, he had success on the NOTY board, finishing as 20^th NOTY (2015) and winning 1^st Novice Speaker at Vassar (2014). After leaving RUDU, he will finish his 5 year computer science program at Cal Poly. A proud Californian, Minnal arrived at Rutgers during the start of NJ’s brutal 2014-2015 winter without a coat of any kind and a single pair of flip flops.

Quinn Maingi
Quinn joined RUDU in 2011 at the urging of his high school friend and RUDU President emeritus Chris Bergman. He is leaving the team as the most successful debater in RUDU history. Quinn’s debate accomplishments include finaling at Nationals (2014), back-to-back Nationals semis appearances (2014-2015), 4^th TOTY (2015), 5^th SOTY (2015), 3rd NOTY (2012), and 10 career final round appearances (2011-2015). Quinn also served the team as President (2014) and Treasurer (2013). After graduation, Quinn will work at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. When not debating, Quinn can be seen fraternizing with his stuffed animals and a pet cactus he named “Cobos”.

Rachel Moon
Rachel Moon, colloquially referred to as “Moon”, joined RUDU in 2012 as a freshman. Moon broke to several varsity out-rounds while on RUDU, including a final-round appearance at the University at Albany (2014). Moon also served as the Public Relations Chair of RUDU in 2013. Rachel was active throughout the Rutgers community, serving as the chairwoman of the RUSA allocations board and as a Gardner Fellow. After graduation, Moon will be moving to Pueblo, Colorado as a Teach for America corps member. Her enthusiasm for most things is eclipsed by her enthusiasm for spaghetti.

Russell Potter
Russell joined RUDU in 2011 as a freshman. Since then, Russell has racked up many debate successes to his name, such as 16^th TOTY (2013) and tournament wins at Vassar (2012) and Dartmouth (2014). In 2015, Russell served as Tournament Director of the largest tournament ever held by RUDU. After graduation, Russell hopes to pursue a career in business and coach debate. Over the span of his debate career, he has come up with approximately 72,673 case ideas and counting.

Congratulations to the graduating and outgoing RUDU class of 2015! We appreciate everything you all have contributed to the team and look forward to seeing what you all will accomplish as alumni of the Rutgers University Debate Union.

This past weekend, the Rutgers University Debate Union ushered in the 2015-2016 season with great success at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

Returning team members Sean Leonard ’16, Nick Hansen ’16, Pasha Temkin ’18, and Naeem Hossain ’18 paired respectively. Leonard ’16 and Hansen ’16 broke into quarterfinals and finished the tournament as 5th Team of the Year while Temkin ’18 returned as 1st Novice Speaker. Leonard ’16 also placed as 6th Speaker overall. Congratulations to all the members and look forward to another great season!

This weekend, RUDU is taking a long drive to compete at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

This past weekend, the Rutgers University Debate Union visited New York City and brought home great success. The team sent four teams, including Sean Leonard ’16 and Nick Hansen ’16, Elise Zhou ’18 and Larry Feltz ’17, and novices Pasha Temkin ’18 and Max Albert ’19, and Mohammad Arif’18 and Mahaksh Kotdawala ’18.

Both novice teams performed extremely well as Temkin ’18 and Albert ’19 won the novice section of the tournament and Arif ’18 and Kotdawala ’18 made it to semifinals. Despite this being their first year on the circuit, Kotdawala ’18 was top novice speaker, Arif ’18 was 4th novice, and Albert ’19 was 7th novice. Varsity team Leonard ’16 and Hansen ’16 placed as 9th team overall and Leonard ’16 placed as 4th speaker. Congratulations to all the new and returning members on their success!

Next week RUDU will be attending a special tournament at Swarthmore College, where all the competing debaters will be novices.

Last month, RUDU sent four teams to Swarthmore for a novice tournament. As the name suggests, the tournament is hosted specifically to introduce novices to APDA debate. All of the participating teams are exclusively novices as the varsity takes a back seat judging and cheering them on.

Attending the tournament were Pasha Temkin ’18 and Mohammad Arif ’18, Adarsh Rangan ’19 and Nick Pellitta ’19, Daniel Ferioli ’19 and Rahul Flaego ’19, and Max Albert ’19 and Jeremy Kritz ’19. Albert ’19 and Kritz ’19 pair placed fourth team overall and Temkin ’18 placed as third Novice Speaker. Congratulations to all the novices and look forward to seeing them around this season!

This past weekend, RUDU had a very successful weekend in Vassar College in New York. Attending teams included Pasha Temkin ’18 and Max Albert ’19, Jeremy Kritz ’19 and Adarsh Rangan ’19, and Sean Leonard ’16 hybrid with Geneva Kropper from University of Maryland.

Temkin ’18 and Albert ’19 placed as third novice team and Kritz ’19 and Rangan ’19 placed as fourth novice team. Leonard ’16 hybrid with Kropper placed as second varsity team.

Individually, RUDU performed extremely well, placing Albert ’19 as top novice speaker, Temkin ’18 as second novice speaker, Kritz ’19 as third novice speaker, and Rangan ’19 as tenth novice speaker. Leonard ’16 was top varsity speaker. With these historic rankings, RUDU currently holds the positions of top Speaker of the Year (Leonard ’16), top Novice of the Year (Albert ’19), second Novice of the Year (Temkin ’18), and third Novice of the Year (Kritz ’19).

Congratulations to everyone for their achievements! This weekend, RUDU visits Harvard for a special motions tournament, where each round will have a topic dictated by the host school.

This past weekend, RUDU visited Harvard University in Boston and competed at a motions tournament. At a motions tournament, all of the topics are chosen by the host school before the start of each debate and everyone competing at the tournament debates the same resolution. Team preparation is not allowed and each round allots 15 minutes of preparation time for the teams to gather their best arguments.

Representing Rutgers Debate were varsity Sean Leonard ’16, Vidhaath Sripathi ’17, and novices Mohammad Arif ’18 and Mahaksh Kotdawala ’18, and Pasha Temkin ’18 and Max Albert ’19. Temkin ’18 and Albert ’19 broke into novice out rounds and finished the tournament as top and third novice speaker respectively. Following this success, Temkin ’18 is currently top Novice of the Year and Albert ’19 is second Novice of the Year. Congratulations to all participating debaters!

Next week, RUDU will be debating at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

This past weekend, the Rutgers debate team had a great time competing at the beautiful University of Maryland. Debating at the tournament were Sean Leonard ’16, Pasha Temkin ’18 and Max Albert ’19, Mohammad Arif ’19, and Adarsh Rangan ’19. The team also sent two judges, Jamie DiVito ’16 and Elise Zhou ’18.

Every RUDU team that attended the tournament made it to out rounds, as Arif ’19 and Rangan ’19 broke to novice out rounds while Temkin ’18 and Albert ’19 broke to varsity out rounds despite being novices. Arif ’19 and Rangan ’19 made it to novice finals while Leonard ’16 went on to compete in the final varsity round of the tournament.

Individually, Leonard ’16 was third varsity speaker, Temkin ’18 was second novice speaker, and Albert ’19 was fifth novice speaker.

Congratulations to all of the debaters! This weekend, the team goes into NYC to compete at Fordham University.

Awards and Rankings – Rutgers University Debate Union 2014-2015

3rd Place at Nationals

8th Club of the Year

Team of the Year:
Quinn Maingi & Sean Leonard  – 4th
Russel Potter & Nick Hansen – 53rd
Russel Potter & Kurt Falk – 55th

Speaker of the Year:
Quinn Maingi – 5th
Sean Leonard – 7th
Russel Potter – 51st
Nick Hansen – 69th

Novice of the Year:
Minnal Kunnan – 20th
Naeem Hossain – 55th

Previous Years:
2010-2011
2011-2012
2012-2013
2013-2014

Last weekend, members of the Rutgers University Debate Team took time out of their winter break to compete at City University of New York. Debating at the tournament were Sean Leonard ’16, Pasha Temkin ’18, and Max Albert ’19. RUDU alumnus, George Alukal ’15, also came to support the team.

Leonard ’16 won the entire tournament by winning first place as Varsity Team with Eric Tannenbaum from TCNJ and getting first-place for Varsity Speaker! He continues to make Rutgers proud with his achievements.

Temkin ’18 and Albert ’19 also conquered the novice division by placing as the third best Novice Team! Individually, they were ranked 6th Novice Speaker and 7th Novice Speaker, respectively.

Congratulations to all of the debaters! Next weekend, the team will be going to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

Classes start again this Tuesday at Rutgers, and members of the debate union spent their last weekend of winter break competing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Debating at the tournament were Sean Leonard ’16, Naeem Hossain ’18, Pasha Temkin ’18, Elise Zhou ’18 and Max Albert ’19. Larry Feltz ’17 also came along to judge rounds.

Our President and Vice President, Temkin ’18 and Albert ’19, performed remarkably as a novice team, having an impeccable record of 5 – 0 before breaking and making it to quarter finals. Temkin ’18 was awarded 3^rd Novice Speaker and Albert ’19 was named 4^th Novice Speaker. They both performed so well that they moved up to the varsity level and were named 7^th Varsity Speaker and 10^th Varsity Speaker, respectively!

Just like last week, Leonard ’16 outperformed at the tournament and placed as Top Varsity Speaker! He also paired up with Geneva Kropper from University of Maryland and together they conquered the final rounds and placed as Top Varsity Team of the tournament!

Finally, Hossain ’18 and Zhou ’18 also had an admirable record of 3 – 2! RUDU had a great tournament, congratulations to all of the debaters at Rutgers and the other schools! Next weekend, a few of our members are crossing the US/Canadian border to debate at the North American Championships Tournament at Queens College in Kingston, Ontario. This is a very prestigious gathering of debaters and there is no doubt that RUDU deserves to be there.

In addition, RUDU will have a spot at the Spring Involvement Fair this Monday at the College Avenue Gym from 1pm to 4pm. Feel free to join us!

The team poses victoriously outside of a Cracker Barrel in Albany, NY, following their triumph

Even though the Rutgers Debate Union wasn’t able to attend NorthAms in Ontario last week due to inclement weather, the successes of last weekend’s tournament at University at Albany, SUNY on January 29 and 30 certainly compensated for whatever feelings of regret or disappointment that our members were perhaps harboring. For the first time in Rutgers history, our debaters closed out the tournament: Top Varsity Team went to Pasha Temkin ’18 and Max Albert ’19, who are two novices and our current President and Vice President respectively. Second place went to Sean Leonard ’16 and Nick Hansen ’16, the former holders of the aforementioned offices. Our worthy competitors were from Swarthmore (beat four times!), Dartmouth, Brandeis, Yale (beat twice!), and many other universities. The Temkin-Albert feat is especially exceptional when considering that they, being a novice team, triumphed over actual varsity teams by attaining the title of Top Varsity Team, and are now tied for Fourth Top Team in the country! This is the first time in APDA (American Parliamentary Debate Association) history that a novice team has ever made the top ten for varsity. Rutgers has also risen to 6th College of the Year (still being the only public school in the top ten), following a lead ahead of Stanford, American, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins.  More information on current rankings can be seen here.

Our complete rankings at University of Albany, SUNY:

• Top Varsity Team: Pasha Temkin* ’18 and Max Albert ’19*
• Second Varsity Team: Sean Leonard ’16 and Nick Hansen ’16
• Second Varsity Speaker: Pasha Temkin ’18*
• Third Varsity Speaker: Sean Leonard ’16
• Ninth Varsity Speaker: Max Albert ’19*
• Top Novice Team: Pasha Temkin ’18 and Max Albert ’19
• Top Novice Speaker: Max Albert ’19
• Second Novice Speaker: Pasha Temkin ’18

 * signifies a novice getting a varsity award

Also debating at the tournament were Treasurer Larry Feltz ’17 and Jeremy “Jimmy” Kritz ’19, and PR Chair Andrea Vacchiano ’19 with David Vlnarov ’19. Judging with us was our new novice, David Blanco ’18. RUDU was also delightfully reunited with our former President, Quinn Maingi ’15, at the tournament.

This past weekend was an excellent way to wrap things up before we host our own tournament on February 5 and 6. We are looking forward to hosting an APDA meeting and will be expecting over 100 teams!