{"id":28789,"date":"2016-04-27T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/?p=28789"},"modified":"2016-08-25T21:22:25","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T19:22:25","slug":"die-wudc-wealthy-uptown-debaters-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.achteminute.de\/en\/20160427\/die-wudc-wealthy-uptown-debaters-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"The WUDC – Wealthy Uptown Debaters’ Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WUDC – World Universities Debating Championship – are hosted annually around New Year and decide, who will become the english speaking university debating champions in one of three language categories.
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An Komfort v\u00f6llig ausreichend? Jugendherberge in T\u00fcbingen \/\/ Sufficient comfort? Youth hostel in T\u00fcbingen \/\/ \u00a9 Lennart Lokstein<\/p><\/div>\n

In the German (in this article meaning: German speaking language region – primarily Germany, Austria and Switzerland) debate szene international tournaments aren’t really important. The WUDC 2013 in Berlin and the EUDC 2015 in Vienna may have risen attention and as far as I’m informed the number of VDCH (German debate societies’ umbrella organization) teams sent to international tournaments has steadily grown, but generally international tournaments only hold a small share of probably below 5% – not because we ignore them but because of the VDCH region being large enough to offer plenty of tournaments within small distance and low participation fees.<\/p>\n

At German tournaments there usually is no interest for profit: Tournaments are hosted under the maxim of being broadly accessible and therefore as cheap as securing basic comfort for the participants allows. This means: Acceptable but not luxurious food, Crash accomodation and sometimes (e.g. at the very big ZEIT DEBATTEN tournaments) a youth hostel. Accomodation in hotels is really rare. In the few cases where tournaments are allocated by the VDCH (the mentioned ZEIT DEBATTEN), the members’ council asks rather for size, number of rounds and participation fee than for socials, alcohol prices and hotels.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that the opposite is true for international tournaments. I’ve visited two EUDCs and one WUDC so far and witnessed the complete tournament experience as well as announcements of tournaments’ promo videos, which often rivaled for the same date, as well as videos for tournament bids.<\/p>\n

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WUDC 2014 in Malysia \u00a9 Matthias Carcasona<\/p><\/div>\n

I realized that a tournament’s accessibility played basically no role there. Not a single video explicitly advertised with being economically reasonable. Prices were shortly mentioned at the start or ending of the video. Instead there always were the introduction of the chief adjudicator panel followed by luxus hotels, exclusive socials and endless streams of alcohol. Whilst the meaning of the selection of chief adjudicators is fully understandably important, I’m highly irritated by the latter. If decisions for and against a tournament are internationally determined by primarily these factors – which is to assume, if advertised on them without exception – then those are obviously more important to today’s international debate szene than good accessibility. This peaks in the WUDC, where it seems obligatory to have huge socials in ostentatious places with delicate food.<\/p>\n

Knowing the alternative and being someone who believes in debating being a good which we should promote and spread, I’m asking myself: Why?<\/p>\n

Is it really necessary to have lobster or couldn’t bread be enough for most evenings? Does it have to be an expensive club each time or wouldn’t the participants be happy having a social in a sports hall, too – or maybe to simply go out by themselves individually to a place with their preferred price level? (I’m aware that this option is only available for countries with the necessary security standards in night life, but at least there it is.) And is alcohol really that essential that it has to be advertised and guaranteed in large amounts?<\/p>\n

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Diner WUDC 2014 \u00a9 Matthias Carcasona<\/p><\/div>\n

In my opinion, it isn’t. I believe that especially the WUDC but also (only minimally better) the EUDC share a massive problem of exclusiveness. Both events are more party journeys for the rich and privileged – singularly infiltrated by scholarship holders – and are damaged as institutions by their striving for comfort. Each tournament has a certain budget from sponsoring – the rest comes from the participation fees. Of course, for participants there are travel expenses on top of that, no doubt. But for many students it still is a difference whether you pay 2500\u20ac or 2200\u20ac. This is especially the case if the WUDC is close to you once, e.g. Europe – North Africa\/Arabian Peninsula, North America\/South America – Mexico, Australia – South East Asia, because here it is a huge difference whether on top of a 300\u20ac flight you have to pay 350\u20ac or 600\u20ac participation fee. I’m sure – and I’ve organized enough tournaments to have an idea about expenses – that there could be WUDC for half the current participation fees if we took youth hostels instead of hotels and lowered the exclusivity of the socials. Not always, of course – smaller cities might simply not have enough youth hostel capacity and some regions on earth might not have enough security for their guests in youth hostels. What is possible in terms of reduction and what isn’t depends on the invidual case. My point is that it would gradually be possible everywhere, if it was wanted.<\/p>\n

But it isn’t even tried today – because it is not wanted<\/span>. Instead of lower participation fees and more accessibility, as many luxuries as possible get demanded. If we take debating as a good serious and really want to promote it, we should fight this. Tournament hosts, by being aware of this problem and taking the courage to break with the tradition of luxury bids by creating a dedicated basic comfort bid with a low participation fee. (This could lead to more societies having the courage to create a bid, too – although I think the reason for the current almost-no-bid situation is primarily a result of other factors, so probably this won’t change much on that situation.) But in the first place, the participant and representatives themselves – because at the end of the day those decide about the bids – have to ask themselves which is more important to them: A party journey, which they can afford because they are the children of wealthy parents, or an event with debating at its heart, accessible to more people, for the sake of promoting debating and for the sake of a better competition.<\/p>\n

Lennart Lokstein<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mittwochs-Feature\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lennart Lokstein<\/strong> is chief editor of the Achte Minute<\/em>. He was president of Streitkultur e.V.,\u00a0 T\u00fcbingen’s debate society, from 2013 to 2015 and is rule commisioner for the German OPD-format since 2014. He won many tournaments, got awarded for the best final speech at the German Speaking Debating Championship (Deutschsprachige Debattiermeisterschaft) 2015 and also was chief adjudicator of some tournaments. He is VDCH-Counsellor for adjudication seminars and currently works on his master thesis in General Rhetoric about university debating in Europe.<\/p>\n

Das Mittwochs-Feature:<\/strong> Every Wednesday at 10.00 a.m. the Mittwochs-Feature features some idea, interview or book regarding debate – usually in German, sometimes in English, sometimes both. If you would like to start a debate please mail us your idea to team [at] achteminute [dot] de<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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