King’s Debate Society Brings Record Number of Students to Yale

 

Last weekend, the King’s Debate Society headed out to Yale for their largest tournament of the fall semester, bringing ten teams and four judges—one of the highest numbers of teams KDS has ever brought to a tournament in the past.

Over the weekend, 10 percent of the teams broke, meaning that of the 160 teams present, only 16 broke out of the preliminaries. KDS broke 12th place out of the 160, debating teams such as those from Harvard, Brown and UPenn.

This tournament is one of the top three most internationally competitive tournaments in North America, according to debater Josiah Peterson (’13). KDS brought seven novices to Yale, four of which came close to breaking—Yale being an especially difficult tournament.

Stanford won the overall tournament, and KDS started and ended the tournament with debates against Stanford.

Peterson and Burk Obayashi (’12) were successful in the semi-finals until they were knocked out.

The teams left the city around noon last Friday (Oct 21) to embark on the two-hour trip to New Haven for the debates, which ran Friday through Saturday.

Ray Davison (’13) and Sarah Hicks (’14) both judged for their first time last weekend. Ray said he enjoyed judging for the first time, although he disagreed with the last round.

“We had some good discussions,” Hicks said. “There were a couple rounds when it came down to values-weighing. It came down to figuring out which questions they addressed but didn’t fully answer.”

Overall, KDS members were excited about the outcome of the event, and look forward to more debates in the future. “Debate has been one of the most transforming experiences of my time at King’s,” Peterson said.