{"id":14048,"date":"2013-01-02T16:01:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T15:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/?p=14048"},"modified":"2013-02-06T13:45:19","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T12:45:19","slug":"alfred-snider-i-would-first-of-all-strengthen-the-basis-for-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/20130102\/alfred-snider-i-would-first-of-all-strengthen-the-basis-for-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Alfred Snider: “I would first of all strengthen the basis for debate”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Achte Minute had the chance to talk to Alfred Snider, called Tuna in the debaters\u2019 world. Tuna is a debating veteran, having served on many many tournaments as adjudicator and trainer throughout the world. In his normal live, he is a professor of Forensics at the University of Vermont. We talked with him about his WUDC Berlin experience.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\"WUDC<\/a>

Alfred “Tuna” Snider answers the questions of Philipp Stiel, President of the VDCH.<\/p><\/div>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong> Hi Tuna, thanks for your time. How are you and your teams doing here at WUDC?
\nSnider<\/strong>: Unfortunately, none of my teams broke. But they were all alive on the third day. This is great work. Yet, we haven\u2019t broken since Botswana. But it happened twice that after 9 rounds, we were at 17 points but then took a 4th in round 9.<\/p>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong>\u00a0You are a frequent reader of our magazine, Achte Minute. Any comments?
\nSnider<\/strong>: I like your work – it\u2019s very ambitious to publish in two languages. I myself am trying to get some of my material into Spanish to support the Spanish speaking debating community.\u00a0 We came a long way since the establishment of the Spanish speaking debating championships some years ago. They started with 44 teams, now they are at 72 and this year in Madrid we expect it to become even bigger – we are only waiting for the dates to be confirmed.<\/p>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong>\u00a0You got into contact with the WUDC organizers right on the first day – what are your thoughts about the tournament?
\nSnider<\/strong>: I was very impressed that the organizers read my blog<\/a> and responses came directly, even before the tournament started. And all responses were so helpful – nobody said \u201cYou bastard, why are you criticising our tournament\u201d.<\/p>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong>\u00a0So everything is fine here in Berlin?
\nSnider<\/strong>: Yesterday, I was talking to the org com and asked them: \u201cDo you have a never ending flow of small shit you have to deal with?\u201d And they told me, \u201cYes, we do\u201d. So I said, \u201cThat\u2019s great, so there\u2019s no big shit you have to cope with.\u201d Of course, there are always some problems, but they seem to handle them well. And by the way, concerning food, you will never satisfy everybody. There were too much potatoes, that\u2019s what other participants told me. Hell yes, but we are in Germany!<\/p>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong> Yes, we are in Germany – and the way debating is organized here works a bit different than elsewhere.
\nSnider<\/strong>: That\u2019s why I like the German debating scene with its small and regional tournaments. That\u2019s how people actually come to debating. People don\u2019t buy plane tickets for 200 dollars to go to their first tournament. So you have to bring tournaments to their communities. And you have many young debaters here at WUDC aswell – this is great, as much of the learning takes place in your early years of debating.<\/p>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong>\u00a0So, you\u2019ll keep at good memory of your stay here?
\nSnider<\/strong>: Oh yes, and I\u2019ll also go to some of the museums once this is over. I am a fanatic of museums. And all the rest – people complaining about missing free alcohol or other stuff – just forget it. \u201cI came here for free alcohol\u201d – that\u2019s absurd. If you do think so, stay at home and drink. I actually do want to know that no cent of my reg fee was spent on alcohol.<\/p>\n

Achte Minute:<\/strong>\u00a0Is there anything else you would tell the organizers?
\nSnider<\/strong>: After Belgrade Euros, the organizers said to me: “and now, we are applying for Worlds.” But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the right thing to do after you organized such a big competition. I would first of all strengthen the basis for debate: more schools, more universities, get more government support. That\u2019s what I hope Germany will do, too. You should use all the support, new connections and achievements made so far in order to strengthen the basis.<\/p>\n

Achte Minute<\/strong>: Thank you for this talk. And enjoy the museums!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Achte Minute had the chance to talk to Alfred Snider, called Tuna in the debaters\u2019 world. Tuna is a debating veteran, having served on many many tournaments as adjudicator and trainer throughout the world. In his normal live, he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017],"tags":[1037],"class_list":["post-14048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-2","tag-wudc-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14048"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14720,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14048\/revisions\/14720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}