The Brooks Quimby Debate Council saw some of its best achievements in recent memory during the 2007-2008 season. The year started off with a bang as senior Brendan Jarboe and sophomore Matthew Marienthal finished 4th out of over 100 teams at the Harvard Debate Championships in the fall. The Jarboe/Marienthal team dominated throughout the year with breaks at every tournament they attended (Harvard, Stanford, NYU, Clark, Nationals at MIT). Jarboe and Marienthal won Stanford, which signaled the first varsity debate victory for Bates in the three years. The Jarboe/Marienthal team of Bates JM went 5-0 during in-rounds and Jarboe took the top speaker award for the tournament.

Jarboe also performed impressively with fellow senior Dan Berman at last year's Boston University Debate tournament, finishing in second place overall. Also, the freshman team of Peter Gault '11 and Nate Sweet '11 won the novice bracket of the Dartmouth debate tournament, which bodes well for the future of our team. However, they did not win the Bates novice tournament: two students--Ali Vingiano '11, and Joseph Kibe '11-- joined the team on the Monday of the tournament, and beat the Sweet/Gault on a unanimous judging decision during the final round that Saturday. Joe Kibe was also the top speaker of the Bates in-house tournament.

Last year's novice class proved to be incredibly well rounded: at Clark's debate tournament, Joseph Kibe and Spencer Holland '11 broke to out-rounds and finished second place in the novice division. Then-freshmen Isobel Moiles and Molly Nelson ranked 3rd best novice team at that tournament. Dan Berman '08 was among the finalists in speech at the World Debating Championships in Bangkok, Thailand. But perhaps the greatest success of the year was a newfound team unity and shared excitement of both individual and joint achievements. Undoubtedly, the past year was a great success and we have every reason to anticipate another stellar year from the Brooks Quimby Debate Council.