By Isha Trivedi '18

This past weekend, Notre Dame hosted its first parliamentary debate tournament of the school year, with teams coming from 20 schools around the Bay Area. In total, 90 teams (28 novice and 62 varsity teams), with 180 students overall participated in this event. Many of ND’s own debaters participated or volunteered during the tournament as well. With so many students on campus, even the infirmary had to be used!

In parliamentary debate, each round involves a new topic that each team only has 20 minutes to prepare for. After each round, parent or teacher volunteer judges determine which team had the best argument, and give the students a score for their performance in that round. On Saturday, all of the competitors debated in five initial rounds, and five novice teams as well as three novice speakers were given awards. On Sunday, 16 varsity level teams came back for elimination rounds (similar to tournaments played by sports teams).

Amongst the ND debaters, Madeleine Wong ‘21 and Ananya Thapar ‘21 (both novices) won all of the rounds that they debated, so they were ranked in first place. Wong ‘21 also had the highest novice speaker score in the tournament.

Sahithi Madireddy ‘19, who volunteered at the tournament and had the opportunity to judge a novice round, said it was “a great experience” for her, and that “it was definitely great to see a lot of familiar faces in the debate community” while she was there.

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