1. Hi,
Attached is the specific proposal for the two tournaments in September. A more detailed
budget for the rest of the year will follow shortly.
I'll try and pull together some testimonials from current debaters and look into speech
tournament integration this week. I'm pretty flexible to meet during weekdays, from 10-5
Mon-Thur.
As for the general mission, this is the proposal we made last year about the future of the
program:
2005-2006 Members:
Nick Krebs
Cera Fiore
Casey Armstrong
Cole Larson
Joe Radosevich
Maria Hetman
Julia Davidson
Rebecca Pear
How we started?
The team started in Fall of 2003 in order to bring the first stable competitive activity to
Eugene Lang College and the University as a whole. It was rough going at first, with only a
couple hundred dollars allocated from the OSDA, but we networked with other colleges in
the area to secure funding and coaching for our team to immediately make our team a
success in the first year. Collectively in three years, we've attended over 20 different
tournaments all across the United States and won several individual and team awards.
Here is a list of the national tournaments we've attended:
Georgia State University
University of Kansas
University of Rochester
University of Vermont
Cornell University
NYU University
CSU Fullerton
USC
Richmond University
Catholic University
Bard University
Binghamton University
Columbia University
United States Military Academy
On campus work:
We have worked in cooperation with Tikkun in order to provide hosting for guest speakers
and help organize social events.
2. Cosponsored the 2006 Undergraduate Philosophy Conference.
Community work:
Many of our members coach and judge for the Urban Debate League. This consists of
dedicating weekends traveling to high schools in the city (sometimes
national travel) and working with junior high and high school students on argumentative
and research skills and also evaluating their debates. Our latest
cooperative effort will be sending myself and possibly one other New School debater to
Chicago for the Catholic Forensic League Grand National tournament to coach for Bronx Law
and other UDL schools.
Awards:
Unfortunately I don't have the extensive list available right now, but here are the ones I can
remember:
2005-2006
Quarterfinalist, Bard University, Varsity Division
11th individual speaker, Bard University, Varsity Division
Octofinalist, United States Military Academy, Varsity Division
(more for this year, need to contact a couple members) 2004-2005
Finalist, University of Rochester, Varsity Division
7th individual speaker, University of Rochester, Varsity Division
Octofinalist, United States Military Academy, Varsity Division
9th individual speaker, United States Military Academy, Varsity Division
Quarterfinalist, United States Military Academy, Novice Division
Finalist, Columbia University, Novice Division
1st speaker, Columbia University, Novice Division
3rd Place, Novice Nationals at Georgetown, Novice Division
Octofinalist, University of Richmond, Novice Division
2003-2004
Quarterfinalist (3rd overall seed), Kings, Junior Varsity
Top 5 speaker award, Kings, Junior Varsity
------------
3. Future for the team:
We need a coach. Badly. I'm very worn out trying to be a travel organizer, coach and
participant (not to mention my other leadership positions on campus!) and
as a result scaled back the team participation a great deal this year because there wasn't
anyone with enough expertise to step up and take over the administrative
tasks. To hire an assistant coach would likely cost about 5000-8000 a year. If funding can
be secured for this, I already have a shortlist of candidates to
propose in the NYC area. There really isn't a replacement for this among current faculty
and staff right now, as to be an effective coach requires both knowledge of the activity and
ability to travel on weekends to accompany the team.
I envision and really desire having a debate TEAM. A structured type of school or
departmental support that ensures the continuation of the program from year to
year. Right now as a student organization, funding varies vastly from year to year and
greatly determines our travel schedule. It also greatly limits the
amount of students who can participate. At most, on student organization funding, we can
send four debaters to an away tournament because of travel
costs. This makes it very hard to compete with other regional schools like Rochester,
Vermont, Bard, Dartmouth, Harvard who have budgets in the tens of
thousands of dollars and can often send 20-30 students to each tournament. Since we
currently compete at near the level of these teams, given the proper
resources we should be able to make the New School Debate team not only a regional
leader, but a national power as well.
I've already outlined the benefits of the debate program to the Board of Trustees in terms of
making The New School visible on a national level to tens of thousands of the brightest high
school students, attracting alumni donations, and also increasing the likelihood of public
advocacy of students after graduation, but if you need this again I can elaborate further.
Here are the tournaments we would like to attend next year:
Georgia State, 9/23-9/25 (national level tournament)
Rochester or Cornell, 9/30-10/1
Kentucky, 10/7-10/9 (national level tournament)
University of Richmond, 10/14-10/16
United States Military Academy, 10/27-10/29
Wake Forest University, November (date tba, national
level tournament)
Baruch College, 11/11-11/12
Vermont or Marist, 1/27-1/28
Binghamton, 2/10-2/11
University of Kansas, Feb (date tba)
Northwestern, (date tba, national level tournament)
Ceda Regionals at West Conn., 2/24-2/25
Ceda Nationals, Location and Date TBA
National Debate Tournament, Location and Date TBA
We wouldn't normally travel to all of these in one year, but those are the tournaments we
make available and choose accordingly based on student schedules. On average we go to 4
tournaments a semester, 2 regional, 2 national.
