Alon's Blog

Today was the second day of the preliminary rounds of the European Universities Debating Championships 2007. The first motion for the day was “This house will require a prescription for the morning-after pill“. We were in second opposition. We tried to analyze why the proposition will overall make safe sex less safe, while not reducing the occurrence of unsafe sex, but I failed to provide the arguments coherently enough and Mark failed to give a coherent summation. We got third place for that debate.

In the last two rounds of the tournament we were not told what our positions were. We knew we had 8 points, and 12 should be enough to break to the next round, so we needed two second places (or one first and one third).

The motion for the next round was “This house will introduce a time limit on prosecutions for genocide“. We were in second proposition. The first proposition gave an absurd definition with a time limit of only 5 years, without clearly defining when this time begins and when it ends. I tried to pull them into a coherent definition, but we got none from them. We decided on a time frame that was good for us and tried to prove that it is possible to conduct trials that fast, while showing that even if these trials fail, the situation is still positive. However, it turned out that the judges didn’t like the fact that we defined the time frame differently from what might have been implied by first prop, so they gave us fourth place, even below the horrible first prop team.

In the last round we were second prop again on the motion “This house will prosecute parents who take their children to another legal jurisdiction in order to carry out an act which is illegal in their country“, yes that long. First prop defined the motion well as applying to forced marriage and FGM. Their main problem was that they failed to cover the important jurisdictional aspects of the motion, while first opposition simply asserted a “territory principle” without proving why it exists and that it applies. We decided to take that clash and analyze the origins of jurisdiction and international law and prove that in this case the crime is committed in the context of the social contract of the original jurisdiction and thus should be tried and prosecuted there. We do not know how much points we got in that round, but we heard a rumor that we have not won this round. I assume we got second place, but I cannot be sure.

In the evening we had a boat tour in the Bosporus strait where the breaking teams were announced. It turned out that 11 points with high speaker points were sufficient for an ESL break, however we got at most 10. I was very disappointed as I thought we deserved at least second place in the last two rounds.

Tomorrow there will be the quarter finals and semi finals, where several Israeli teams will participate. More news will be posted then.

Today was the first day of actual debating. There were four rounds, and the results are listed on the right (3 means first place, 0 means last). An average of two points per round ensures breaking to the quarterfinals, probably less.

In the first round we were assigned as first opposition on the motion that “This house will take lifestyle choices into account in the allocation of scarce medical resources.” We were up against to EFL (English First Language) teams, one of them quite good, but we still got first place due to our brilliant analysis, and due to fundamental errors on the part of the second government team.

In the second round we were up against two outstanding EFL teams, that routinely break and participate in finals (Cambridge B and Middle Temple) and a very good ESL (English Second Language) team — Berlin A. We were assigned the worst position in debating — first proposition and the motion was “This house believes that the state should prohibit all items of clothing that cover the face“. This case is clearly opposition-skewed, so we had a really tough job in front of us. Unsurprisingly, we came fourth, however the judge did comment that this was a very good debate and we have done our job very well. We got fourth simply because the other teams were even better.

In the next round we were again against more average teams, and we were assigned (again) to first opposition. The motion was “This house believes that democracy is a necessary condition for economic growth and stability“. This was a new type of debate: An analysis debate. We should debate the question of whether or not the motion is true. Our main example was China and have shown that the Government have chosen the wrong criteria and that China does in fact have economic growth and stability. Furthermore, we have shown that economic growth and stability can in principle be attained in non-democratic regimes, even though the population might not be as happy. We won that debate as well, after a long adjudication.

At this point we had 6 points out of a possible 9 and were the best Israeli team in the competition. No other Israeli team had  6 or more points, including the EFL speakers from RRIS.  We knew the next debate was going to be tough. However, we were disappointed to learn that we were assigned (again) to first proposition (which means the tab sucks) and furthermore had to debate again against two EFL teams and one German team. To make matters worse, this time the motion required knowledge we don’t really have, and was again opposition-skewed. The motion was “This house  believes that Turkey should invade Northern Iraq to fight Kurdish terrorist organizations“. We thought we were about to lose again. Luckily Mark had little information about the subject matter and I managed to build the logic of the case in the sense of what we have to prove in order to make this point. Our actual substantive matter was very weak, but we did make the correct analysis of the issue. It turned out this was enough to bring us above the second government team from Germany and put us in third place.

Thus, after four debates we are now at seven points. If we get six points in the three debates tomorrow we will probably break to the quarterfinals. In any case, expect an update tomorrow night. Now, I’m off to either a “relax party” or the pre-council, where issues regarding this competition are being decided.