The champions of the St Petersburg Online Open are LSE A (Hamza Chaudhry, Ciara Mitchell). In the grand final, they spoke in Closing Opposition on the motion “THBT the scientific community should reject the notion of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ “. Speaking against them were Bristol (Timothy Lo, Ron Leizrowice) in Opening Government, Edinburgh (C)lutchies (Jason Woods, Cerys Walsh) in Opening Opposition, and TCD Hist Ayyy lmao (Caoimhin Hamill, Jack Synnott) in Closing Government. The Grand Final was chaired by Alicja Filbier together with Anasuya Narasimhan, Dani Georgiev, Olja Bosnjak and Suzanne Elliott. 

The top speaker was Ciara Mitchell with an average of 82.4 speaker points.
The top ESL speakers were Helena Hecke and Alisher Juzgenbayev with both reaching an average of 79.2 speaker points.

The Break:
1. LSE A (Hamza Chaudhry, Ciara Mitchell), 15 points
2. Bristol (Timothy Lo, Ron Leizrowice), 12 points
3. TCD Hist B (Aodh O Laoide, Jack Williams)
4. Durham A (Hannah Cook, George Filippopoulos)
5. Disapproving Corgis’ (Naomi Panovka, Ruth Silcoff), 11 points
6. TCD Hist Ayyy lmao (Caoimhin Hamill, Jack Synnott)
7. NU A (Mukhtar Tashkenbayev, Alisher Juzgenbayev)
8. Edinburgh A (Jamie Beverstock, Sara Brdnik)
9. Edinburgh (C)lutchies (Jason Woods, Cerys Walsh), 10 points
10. He(lena), (Lena Kolle, Helena Helle) 
11. Athens Bitches Return (Franka Boender, Fabian Beitsma) 
12. Edinburgh B (Georgia Bentley, Adam Mallis)
13. GUU B (Matilda Handley, Benedict Anslow), 9 points
14. CLU A (Maurice Coutiel, Przemek Stolarski)
15. Improvisation is our forte (Joris Graff, Natalija Ljubic)
16. GUU A (Julie Nyerges, Emma Chan)

Breaking Adjudicators (in alphabetical order):
Alexander Fraser, Abhinav Bathula, Alicja Filbier, Emily Frizell, Dan Wood, Fionuala McCarron, Anasuya Narasimhan, Dani Georgiev, Francois Brits, Hadar Goldberg, Imogen Edwards-Lawrence, Jacklin Kwan, Jonas No Sjolund, Josef Moscovici, Lucía Arce Cubas, Nikola Michaylov, Milla Huuskonen, Olja Bosnjak, Reed, Sameer Shaikh, Shudipto Ahmed, Suzanne Elliott, Tudor Musat, Rachel O’Nunain, Vaishnav Rajkumar. 

Speaker Awards:
1. Ciara Mitchell, LSE A, 82.4 avg speaks, 412 total speaks
2. Hamza Chaudhry, LSE A, 82.2 avg speaks, 411 total speaks
3. Ron Leizrowice, Bristol, 80.8 avg speaks, 404 total speaks
4. Aodh O Laoide, TCD Hist B, 80.2 avg speaks, 401 total speaks
4. Naomi Panovka, Disapproving Corgis’, 80.2 avg speaks, 401 total speaks
6. Timothy Lo, Bristol, 79.8 avg speaks, 399 total speaks
7. Jason Woods, Edinburgh (C)lutchies, 79.6 avg speaks, 398 total speaks
7. Jack Williams, TCD Hist B, 79.6 avg speaks, 398 total speaks
7. Jack Synnott, TCD Hist Ayyy lmao, 79.6 avg speaks, 398 total speaks
10. Caoimhin Hamill, TCD Hist Ayyy lmao, 79.4 avg speaks, 397 total speaks
10. Cerys Walsh, Edinburgh (C)lutchies, 79.4 avg speaks, 397 total speaks

ESL Speaker Awards:
1. Helena Hecke, He(lena), 79.2 avg speaks, 396 total speaks
1. Alisher Juzgenbayev, NU A, 79.2 avg speaks, 396 total speaks
3. Lena Kolle, He(lena), 78.6 avg speaks, 393 total speaks
4. Franka Boender, Athens Bitches Return, 78.4 avg speaks, 392 total speaks
4. Luci Slamova, Warwick A, 78.4 avg speaks, 392 total speaks

The St Petersburg Online Open was convened by the St Petersburg Debate Foundation and hosted July 4 – July 5th 2020 over Google Meet & Discord. 60 teams competed, breaking to Open Quarterfinals. The outrounds were filmed and are currently being uploaded to Youtube. The Chief Adjudication Panel included Hadar Goldberg, Tudor Musat, Milla Huuskonen, and Rachel O’Nunain. Tab was run by Marthe Wijfjes and Sasha Baltashova and is available here. 

Motions:

R1: THR the narrative that in times of crisis (for example: major natural disasters, war, pandemics) frontline workers are national heroes

R2: THP a world where significantly more women are cast in lead villain roles by film and TV studios

R3: THW require policing budgets and policy to be decided by local referenda

R4: THR the glorification of youth

R5: THBT it would be in the interest of the Russian state to pivot away from China and towards the West

QF: THR the focus on the personal identity and private actions of politicians

SF: TH prefers, as a means of enrolling people in the army, conscription by lottery rather than aggressive recruitment of volunteers

F: Infoslide: “Non-overlapping magisteria” is the belief that science and religion describe fundamentally distinct aspects of human experience, and thus represent two different and equally valid modes of inquiry.

THBT the scientific community should reject the notion of “non-overlapping magisteria”