Just a week after becoming the first place novice team at Stanford University's debate tournament, the team of Ian Mahmud and Colin Etnire took first again at MIT. The pair beat a hybrid novice team from Harvard University and Brown University in a unanimous 5-0 decision to become the top novices at the MIT tournament. Mahmud and Etnire debated the resolution, "You're Ted Turner in the early 90s, you just made the show Captain Planet to promote environmental issues, this house believes you should remove captain planet from the show," in the final round.

The pair also walked away from the MIT tournament with individual awards. Once again, Etnire was the first place novice speaker. Mahmud was ranked the eight place novice speaker.

Mahmud and Etnire beat a Harvard novice team in the novice semi-finals on a unanimous 3-0 decision, debating, "The Chinese government should revoke the teaching license of a teacher who ran out of his classroom during the szechuan earthquake without helping his students."

The tournament was, "Easily twice the size of Stanford," commented Etnire. Yet the novice pair even managed to best some of the best varsity debate teams in the country, beating a top-ranked team from Amherst College during the preliminary rounds, where novices and varsity members compete in the same pool.