September 20, 2011
This past weekend, students from St. John’s University’s
Award-Winning
Debate Society reached both the quarterfinal and semifinal
debate at the Northeastern U.S. season opening debate tournament
hosted at Binghamton
University.
Nipun Mahajan and Kamya Chandra
reached the semifinal round where they debated the motion: “This
House believes it is time for all EU members to only issue debt
bonds backed by all members, i.e. ‘Eurobonds.’”
Debating in the Quarterfinal round were the teams of
Shivika Naveen and Shreya Bansal,
Tong Tong Zhu and Josh Barnett,
and Tim Barr and Nelson Kezoh. In
the quarterfinal debate, the topic was “This House would allow the
creation of donor siblings.”
St. John’s students were honored with speaker awards for
outstanding individual performance during debates. Kamya
Chandra was the 8th place speaker, and Nelson
Kezoh was 9th.
The tournament was hosted by Binghamton University Speech &
Debate on their campus. Attending were 60 teams
from Cornell University, The University of Vermont, Grove City College, The University of Rochester,
The Rochester Institute of
Technology, Bard College,
and The King’s College.
Photo Gallery
The St. John’s Debate Society was honored with the third place
trophy from the Northeastern
Universities Debating Championship from the 2010-2011 season in
a ceremony during the tournament. Dr. Stephen M. Llano, Director of Debate, was
honored by the tournament with the top judge award, calculated
through feedback solicited by the competing students during the
course of the tournament.
The St. John’s Debate society next competes at the University of
Rochester invitational tournament to be held the first weekend in
October.
The St. John’s University Debate Society is an open, academic
program housed in the Department of Rhetoric, Communication, and
Theater in St. John’s College. It is open to any registered St.
John’s student who wishes to participate. No audition or fee is
required. Interested students should contact Dr. Stephen Llano at
x5606 or e-mail: llanos@stjohns.edu
Click here for more detailed tournament
results.