About
Our coach is Noel Selegzi. Our officers are Zuokun Yu (President), Zach Plyam (Vice-President), Bram Wasti, Charlie Lasswell, Emma Smith, and Nina Jaffe-Geffner (Novice Directors), Karen Chen (Treasurer) and Rachel Kaly (Secretary). We are completely student run, and have daily prep meetings in rm 220 Monday-Thursday after school. We participate in Lincoln Douglas and Public Forum (for more information about these formats see “Judging Guide”). We attend two types of tournaments– local tournaments, and away tournaments:
LOCAL TOURNAMENTS
We are a member of the Manhattan Debate League and participate regularly in near-weekly local tournaments against neighboring schools like Regis, Collegiate, Stuyvesant, Poly Prep, Bronx Science, and Baruch. Called MDLs, they are held at Regis High School at 55 East 84th Street, a short walk away from Hunter. Since Regis is very close to Hunter and the tournament starts in the afternoon at 4:00, we never have to miss school for a local tournament. At these tournaments, only members of the team in their first or second year debate, while senior members of the team accompany them to judge for the tournament. Each debater debates 2 rounds, and proceeds to a third if they do well in the first two. These rounds are judged by senior members of other teams. The last round usually ends at around 7-8pm, after which the team usually eats dinner.
AWAY TOURNAMENTS
We also compete at away tournaments, which are tournaments that span 2-3 days. Most of these tournaments are located in colleges or large high schools in the Northeast; we travel by train, bus, or car to attend. Noel usually accompanies us, and in situations where he cannot, parents or teachers chaperone. In all cases, we try to bring as many parents as possible to ensure that the trip runs smoothly. Furthermore, due to some tournament regulations, we are required to bring parents to help cover our judging obligations at the tournament, which may be as high as 1 parent per 3 debaters. These parents help judge rounds at the tournament, as other parents from other schools judge rounds that we debate in.
Spots are mostly limited for the away tournaments because their hosts puts caps on the number of debaters that each school can bring. They want to accommodate as many schools as possible to encourage a wide, diverse group of debaters.
