This article is not yet available in English. Please read the German version of this to learn more about how S.A.E.C.L.O. Greifswald hosted a public debate between representitives of the students and members of various fraternities. Angela Westphal / apf

The Jacobs University Bremen Debating Society announced on the tournament website of Jacobs Open 2011 that the competition has to be postponed to the late spring of 2011 "due to several obstacles from different sides". Therefore the Jacobs Open 2011 will not take place from January 28th to 30th as originally scheduled. Natasha Ovchar, convenor of the tournament, is asking all participants not to be discouraged and offers an even better organized tournament in Bremen instead. If you still have any questions, feel free to send Natasha an e-mail via n.ovchar[at]jacobs-university.de. vro / apf

Read more on Tübingen's Streitkultur Cup in the German version of this article and find out how Marcus Ewald won the audience, how Natalie Wieseotte won a version of "Who wants to be a millionaire" on OPD (the German format of open parliamentary debate) and how Pauline Leopold won in a competition on the rules of OPD but still felt ashamed. ...

Combining pleasant things with even more pleasant things - that is what Eva Schlindwein (Debattiergesellschaft Jena) experienced when she travelled to the Balkans for the Zagreb Open 2010. Read more on that in the German version of this article. ...

Candlelight instead of electric light: The Dresden Debating Union (DDU) turns off the electric light for its Christmas party on 21st December and debates just with candlelight. The debating society not only offers debates with Christmassy fun motions in the Open Parliamentary Style (OPD) but also hot spiced wine and biscuits. Usually DDU publishes two days before each debate three motions, but this time the motions will be presented and chosen on the evening of the event itself. Originally thought as St Nicholas Debate, the Christmassy Debate in the Dark takes place since 2005 yearly in the Advent season. The event ...

Only two weeks until Christimas Eve: The debating societies in Berlin and Jena are very curious and arranged on Tuesday 14th December Christmas parties for their members. ...

Nothing less than the most prestigious club title is at stake: This weekend, over 100 debaters from Germany, Switzerland and Austria will converge on the small college-town of Tübingen for the Streitkultur-Cup, the open club championship of Streitkultur Tübingen. On Saturday, 27 teams of three debaters will face off in three preliminary rounds to take one of the two spots in the final (or one of the three spots for single speakers), taking place in the evening. Traditionally, the final takes place in the Old Anatomical Building. Streitkultur-Cup uses the Open Parliamentary Debate (OPD) format developed in Tübingen. Particularly the widely ...

You want to become a deputy chief adjudicator at World Universities Debating Championhips (WUDC a.k.a. Worlds) 2012 in Manila, Philippines? Good for you, the deadline for application has been extended until 13 December 2010. On the Manila Worlds website, you find an application form. Please send that and your CV to the chief adjudicators Sam Block and Lucinda David via sam.block[at]dlsuworlds.com and lucinda.david[at]dlsuworlds.com respectively. You may supply them with your docs until 20. December, but make sure you express your intend to apply beforehand. Since 1981, debaters from all over the world have been competing at the World Universities Debating ...

In the ancient Japanese art of archery, kyudo, it is common for students to shoot the bow and arrow for many years without a target. In some cases, the student is not given the target until 10 or 20 years into their practice. They spend countless hours knocking arrows, drawing the bow, and firing seemingly without purpose. ...

It’s fairly simple: Either you have a “boss” partner like Richard Robinson or you are from Leiden. In the latter case you can even win it as Ali Al Khatib and Rob Honig did from 2nd proposition against teams from Cambridge (1st proposition, Doug Cochran and Maria English), University College Dublin Law (1st opposition Christine Simpson and Mark Haughton) and Manchester (2nd opposition, Richard Robinson and Niels Schröter) on the motion “This house believes that Irish sovereignty can never be truly realized.” Due to their outstanding performance during the tournament as a whole I asked the two Dutch a question that ...

The Achte Minute has a new baby: This week, we are starting a monthly section called ZEITGEIST. Jens Fischer will be editing the column. Below, you can find Jens’s explanation of the ideas behind ZEITGEIST, and he invites you to help us develop it. On Wednesday, December 8th, the first piece will be published – and we are anxiously awaiting ZEITGEIST! ...

A limerick is not just a witty five-line poem, but also the name of an Irish town that hosts the University of Limerick (UL) where the UL Open 2011 will take place on 11 and 12 March. This competition is intended to be “undoubtedly the most fun IV of the year,” as is reported on the Facebook website of that Irish open. The team cap is 32 teams, format will be British Parliamentary Style, language of the debates is English. Chief adjudicators are Niall Sherry, winner of the Irish Times Debate 2010, and Patrick Rooney, octo-finalist of Worlds 2010 and winner ...

Reaching a broad public, debating controversial social topics, provoke thoughts – that’s the idea behind the Masters’ Debate. In this way the Berlin Debating Union (BDU) wants to perform its sociopolitical role. Furthermore the members of BDU want to show what is possible in a really good debate and that even difficult, controversial and contra intuitive motions can be discussed in a reasonable, ambitious and entertaining way. So early December's motion was a heavy one: “This house would allow disabled parents (in countries where pre-implantation diagnostics are allowed) to choose embryos with the same disability.” The Opening Government with Annette Kirste and ...

Please read the German version of this article if you want to learn more on the requirements for the qualification of judges for the German debating championship (DDM) of 2011. The German debating Championship will be staged in Heidelberg from 9 to 12 June 2011. Format will be OPD, the open parliamentary debate widely spread on the German speaking debating circuit. The Debating Club Heidelberg (DCH), then German debating champion in 2004, will now be host to Germany’s largest tournament where at least 45 teams will participate. The ZEIT DEBATTEN series is convened by VDCH in ...

Being a great success, the International Debate Academy Slovenia (IDAS) 2010 showcased what most European debaters will know already: that debating in the Balkans is a force to be reckoned with. Most Slovenes do not consider themselves part of the Balkan, so I hope that they forgive me their temporary inclusion for the sake of alliteration and simplicity. The International Debate Academy Slovenia offered a boot camp with five days of debate trainings in Kransjka Gora (a ski resort in the Alps), and three tournament days in Ljubljana. IDAS, like Worlds, is one of the few debating events that truly bring ...

The gods by the river Rhine invite debaters to their "Rheingötter-Debattierwettstreit". It will be held in the OPD-style (three-speaker-teams) in Bonn from 12 to 13 of Februar. The chief adjudicators are Southers German Champion 2008 Volker Tjaden and German Champion 2007 Gudrun Lux. Welcome are mixed teams of all shades - experienced and unexperienced, male and female, old stagers and debutants on the German speaking debating circuit! Read the German poem which the initiators made up for welcoming debaters. sol / apf

Fairy-tale romantic, business-like activity and ambitious ideas: all of this and even more offers the Hanseatic City of Bremen. If you want to experience more of this city, you are invited to participate in the Jacobs Open of Jacobs University Bremen Debating Society (JUB Debating Society). The tournament in English takes place from 28 to 30 January 2011 and will be held in British Parliamentary Style (BPS). Chief Adjudicator (CA) is Jens Fischer (Berlin Debating Union), who won the Jacobs Open 2010 together with Henrik Maedler (JUB Debating Society). Jens already served as CA at the European Championships 2006 in Berlin, ...

The Debating Club Heidelberg announced the German Debating Championship's complete CA team.  Former VDCH-president and Western German Champion of 2008 Tim Richter from the Debattierclub Bonn will join the already announced Chief adjudicators Gudrun Lux (Debattierclub Bonn), Jan Lüken (WFI Debattierclub Ingolstadt) and Marcus Ewald (DCJG Mainz). The German debating Championship will be staged in Heidelberg from 9 to 12 June 2011. Format will be OPD, the open parliamentary debate widely spread in the German speaking debating circuit. The Debating Club Heidelberg, then German debating champion in 2004, will now be host to Germany’s largest tournament. The ZEIT ...

Berlin Debating Union (BDU) hosts its first masters’ debate on 2 December. The society's best speakers compete with each other in a public debate. Interested people may copy arguments and tricks from the pros. It is very particular for this event that the speakers have to leave the room after the debate and the audience may follow the process of adjudication. Usually the evaluation of a debate happens exclusively in the circle of adjudicators, so now there is the rare possibility to get an insight in the assessment criteria. That is helpful for speakers as well as other adjudicators. The ...

This article is not available in English. Please read the German version of this article to see what various debating societies say about the BaWü 2010 on their websites! ...

In the grand final on Saturday evening, Victor Finkel and Fiona Prowse of Monash A won the Cambridge IV 2010 as opening opposition in the final debate on the motion “This house believes in the virtue of a disproportional military response”. Monash A prevailed over Durham A (Pam Cohn and Guy Miscampbell), Manchester A (Sam Block and James Dixon) and Sydney Union A (Tim Mooney and Naomi Hart). Monash University is based in Melbourne, Australia. Shortly before, Rob Honig and Ali Al Khatib as Leiden B had won the ESL final (i.e. the category for speakers of “English as ...

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The Wortkombinat Ilmenau elected a new executive board on November 18. Martin Zielinski is the newly elected president, Joel Stoy his deputy. Felix Grimm is now treasurer. Congratulations and good luck with your work! vro / glx

Pubs, comedians and potato salad: These things and even more were provided during the debating workshop of Debattiergesellschaft Jena (DGJ) from 12 till 14 November. Originally thought of as an internal event, the non-competitive debaters’ meeting did not only attract speakers from DGJ but also especially debating novices from other clubs like Dresden, Magdeburg and Munich. In a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere the debates were held in the established formats Open Parliamentary Debate (OPD) and British Parliamentary Style (BPS) but also in Wartburg style. Some speakers even tried to discuss under the rules of Disputation. It was very particular for this ...

For the Baden-Württembergian Championship (BaWü), teams from Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Tübingen and Stuttgart flock to Heidelberg. But since BaWü is an open competition, teams from Bayreuth, Frankfurt/Main, Göttingen, Jena, Mainz, München and St. Gallen followed the invitation of Debating Club Heidelberg (DCH) - 21 teams are going to be fighting for the championship. The format will be Offene Parlamentarische Debatte, a set of debating rules widely spread in Germany, espacially in the South. Sunday might see two winning teams: Only teams from the federal state of Baden-Württemberg are eligible for the title BaWü champion, but any team may win ...

On 4 November, the Debattiergesellschaft Jena (DGJ) organised its annual ZEIT DEBATTEN evening, which is a public debating contest between students and professors. In the last years, the exhibition debate that is generously supported by the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT had inspired a lot of spectators and made them familiar with debating in general. This year the team of professors consisted of Eberhard Eichenhofer (Law), Alfred Fahr (Biology/Pharmaceutics) and Andreas Freytag (Economics). Speaking for DGJ were Clemens Lechner, Friederike Meyer zu Wendischhoff and Jonathan Scholbach - Clemens being a German Debating Championship finalist of three times, Friederike and Jonathan finalists ...

Irish Interruption and a bid from Berlin: Last weekend LSE (John Ashbourne and Anser Aftab) won the Oxford IV, with Erasmus (Daniel Springer and Jeroen Heun) taking home the ESL title. Over 120 teams had come to take part in one of the most prestigious debating competition of the year. This year's CA's Ben Jasper (EUDC finalist 2008 in Tallinn) and Shengwu Li (EUDC champion 2009 in Newcastle), with DCA Jo Farmer (EUDC finalist 2009) set interesting motions and topics for debate, and despite the usual Oxford difficulties of a last minute dash to Wadham College for your round, the ...

To celebrate the date of 50 days until the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC a.k.a. Worlds) start the organizing committee held a dinner in early November that was addressed by the Attorney General of Botswana and Advocate George Bizos, the lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela during his Apartheid-era trial. While Worlds financial officer Taylor Tebogo Mogotsi admitted that they still face some major needs, convenor Justice Motlhabani is sure that after all the obstacles they have already overcome they will also manage that. Up to date, 333 teams have registered for WUDC in Gaborone, Botswana – that’s over 100 more than the ...

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 ...