*Originally printed in The Bates Student.
By Gardiner Nardini ’12 and Ally Mandra ‘12

The Brooks Quimby Debate Council, currently ranked 9th in the world by the International Debate Education Association (IDEA), has had continued success since the end of fall semester.

During winter break, three BQDC teams flew to Manila in the Philippines to take part in the World Universities Debating Championship. All three teams performed exceptionally well, bumping the BQDC up to 9th in the world from their previous No. 11 ranking. Seniors Colin Etnire and Ian Mahmud had outstanding individual performances, with Etnire ranking 33rd best speaker and Mahmud ranking 45th best speaker out of nearly 800 debaters.

The IDEA world standings are based on 33 tournaments around the globe. Debate clubs are rewarded points according to the performance of their individual teams, so clubs that enter more teams have more opportunities to accrue points. The BQDC’s standing worldwide is particularly impressive, since of the top ten clubs, they have the lowest number of teams. Sydney Union, Monash, and McGill, the first, second, and fourth ranked clubs in the world, respectively, all have more than 50 teams. Cornell, Oxford Union, Ateneo de Manila University and Cambridge, the fifth through eighth teams, respectively, all have 30 or more teams. At No. 9, Bates has 22 teams.

Domestically, the BQDC has maintained its spot as 5th best club in the nation according to the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA). Etnire and Mahmud rank 6th best Team of the Year, while Etnire ranks 4th best Speaker of the Year.

The biggest jump in the standings was made by first year Taylor Blackburn, who moved up from 21st to 10th in the Novice of the Year standings due to successful showings during the winter semester. At a recent Dartmouth College tournament, the team of Matt Summers ‘15 and Blackburn won the Novice Division, while a hybrid team of Etnire and a Yale debater won the entire varsity division. One week later Etnire and Blackburn flew to a tournament at Stanford University, where as a team they reached the quarterfinals of the varsity bracket. Blackburn ranked both as the No. 1 novice speaker and No. 5 varsity speaker at the tournament.

The team has also been busy at home hosting both its annual in-house novice tournament and the annual MLK Day debate with students from Morehouse College. Keeping with the theme of this year’s MLK Day, Etnire and Summers opposed the resolution, “This house believes environmental sustainability and social equality are incompatible.” There was a great turnout for the event and quite a bit of audience participation including cries of “Shame!” and “Here! Here!” when viewers wanted to voice their agreement or disagreement with a speaker, and many floor speeches which allowed the audience to stand up and say a few words in favor of one side or the other.

At the in-house novice tournament last weekend twenty novices competed. In the final round, Jarron Brady ’15 and Ben Claeson ’15 faced off against Blackburn and Summers. Brady and Claeson defended the motion, “This house would institute a carbon tax of $5 per ton of carbon emitted on all businesses in the United States.” The opposition won the round and the title of top novice team.

With these early successes the team is looking forward to the rest of the season, which will include tournaments at colleges and universities around the northeast as well as the inter-collegiate tournament Bates will be hosting in March.