John Ashbourne and Anser Aftab from the London School of Economics (LSE A) won the Oxford IV on the past weekend. ESL, the category for those who speak “English as a Second Language”, was won by Daniel Springer and Jeroen Heun from Erasmus Rotterdam, ranked 1 and 2 on the ESL tab of this year’s Euros in Amsterdam. The tab of the Oxford IV can be found online.

Teams breaking to semis (main break):

• Cambridge A
• Cambridge B
• Yale C
• Manchester SR
• Durham A
• Manchester AJ
• Yale A
• Stanford B
• Monash
• Sydney
• TCD Hist B
• ULU C
• Princeton AL
• UBC A
• LSE A
• St Andrews

ESL Break to semis:

• Groningen B
• MGMIO A
• (Helmut Kohl and East Germany; team broke third but missed semis)
• Erasmus A
• Leiden
• BBU C
• Utrecht B
• Mykolas Romerus
• UCU WH (team moved up)

Motions

• Round 1: This House believes that adoption agencies that receive state funding should give priority to same sex couples and infertile couples.
• Round 2: This House would ban the use of armed combat drones.
• Round 3: This House would tax those who use expensive lawyers in order to fund state prosecutors and legal aid.
• Round 4: This House would require large online social networks to be controlled democratically by their users.
• Round 5: This House would hold the state liable for injuries or deaths due to being homeless.
• Quarter Final:  This house believes that the UN should offer large bounties for the capture of pirates and the destruction of pirate ships.
• Semi Final: This house believes that, compared to a planned economy, the free market does not make ordinary workers more free.
• Final: This house believes that democracies should conscript citizens by lottery when facing any prolonged military intervention.
• ESL Semi: This house would abolish state funding of all arts degrees.
• ESL Final: This house would alter WTO rules to allow poor countries to erect protectionist barriers against rich countries.

A first review by German debaters can be found on the web site of Debattierclub Stuttgart (DCS). Andreas Lazar and Michael Saliba were ranked 11 and 18 out of 64 ESL speakers. They saw it as a good opportunity to practice for this year’s Worlds in Botswana.

apf / glx