Seawolf Debate Team follows tournaments around the globe

The Seawolf Debate Team is in the middle of a three-week run of tournaments, having traveled to Oxford University and to Linfield College over the last two weekends. As usual, the teams representing UAA posted strong performances, particularly in last weekend's event.

On Nov. 7 and 8, the Seawolf Debate Team traveled to Oxford, England, for the Oxford Intervarsity debating tournament. Over the weekend, 280 of the world's top debaters from Europe and North America debated topics ranging from whether Western democracies should negotiate with Al Qaeda to whether elected officials should be required to work in the public service sector prior to holding a position in the federal government. Making the trip for UAA were Ben Ferguson (Sr, Philosophy) and Severin Randall (Sr, Philosophy) and James Stinson (Sr, History) and Michaela Hernandez (So, Philosophy). Both teams posted strong showings; Stinson and Hernandez were in contention to advance to elimination rounds until they ran up against a tough team from Cambridge in the fourth preliminary round of the competition.

Click here for tournament details.

Other members of the Seawolf team dominated the Mahaffey Invitational hosted by Linfiled College in McMinville, OR last weekend. The Seawolves traveled six teams to the tournament and, after six preliminary rounds of competition, the top eight teams at the tournament featured six teams from Alaska. The teams of Colin Haughey (Sr, Philosophy) and Sarah Carpenter (Fr, International Studies); Zac Johnson (So, Aviation Technology) and Matt Sargent (So, Political Science); and Jacit Conright (Jr, Undeclared) and Jonathan Sanchez (Jr, Psychology) all posted double-digit records in the preliminary rounds of the competition. Of the four teams in the Final Round, three were from UAA: Jenni Lucas (Gr, English) and Vasilios Gialopsos (Jr, International Studies); Amie Stanley (So, Political Science) and Nick Byrne (Sr, English); and Drew Cason (So, Environment and Society) and Michelle Hart (So, Political Science and English) were the top three teams in the tournament after preliminary rounds and advanced to the Final Round.

In that round, Lucas and Gialopsos defended cross-border raids into Pakistan with another team from Willamette University, while the teams of Stanley and Byrne and Cason and Hart opposed. From what was a very hotly-contested round, the team of Cason and Hart emerged as the tournament Champions, the second year in a row that Seawolf debaters have taken top honors at the Mahaffey tournament.

The Seawolves were also recognized for their individual speaking skills. Seawolf debaters took 8 of the top 10 speaker awards: Johnson, 10th speaker; Haughey, 9th speaker; Hart, 8th speaker; Lucas, 7th speaker; Stanley, 5th speaker; Cason, 4th speaker; Byrne, 2nd speaker; and Gialopsos, top speaker. Gialopsos was also recognized as the Top Novice speaker at the tournament and the team of Johnson and Sargent were the Top Novice team.

All told, the Seawolf Debate team took eleven of the fourteen awards given out by the tournament.

The varsity squad travels again next weekend to the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate British Parliamentary Debating Championships hosted by Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. Following that, the squad will return to Portland for the Portland State University Intervarsity and then on to the University College Cork in Ireland for the World Universities Debating Championships. For more information, please contact Steve Johnson (907) 786-4391 or Shawn Briscoe (907) 786-4354.