For the second consecutive year, USU One has won the Australian Intervarsity Debating Championship (Easters), held over the recent Easter Break at the University of Queensland. USU One: Elle Jones, Dan Swain and Eliza Forsyth defended our title from last year. The USU has now won four of the last six ‘Easters’.
To top it off, USU Two (Mel Brooks, Ed Miller and Heydon Letcher) were Semi-Finalists, and USU Three (Paul Karp, Michael Coutts and Julia Baine) were Quarter-Finalists. USU Four (Dom Bowes, Nina Ubaldi and Jess Bloom), Five (Michael Koziol, Alison Hammond and Ben Coles), Six (Josh Tarrant-Windt, Bec Barrett and Spill Kingston) and Nine (Lucian Tan, Glenn Kembrey and Laura Wilde) all broke, but were ineligible to debate in the finals because of a cap that disallows more than four teams per institution going through to the finals rounds. USU Four and Five were particularly unlucky, breaking fifth and seventh respectively, but being denied by the cap.
Dan Swain was named the Best Novice Speaker (the sixth USU speaker to win the title in the last nine years), Paul Karp was the 3rd best Novice, Elle Jones was 5th, Michael Coutts 8th and Dom Bowes 10th.
"Congratulations go to our breaking adjudicators Naomi Oreb, Julia Bowes, Steve Hind, Tim Mooney, Michael Falk, Steph D’Souza and Kelvin Yu," said USU Director of Student Programs Alistair Cowie.
"But bigger congratulations are owed to all of the USU teams that competed, as well as all of the adjudicators who came along to represent the world’s premier debating association! The tournament was a great success, and more importantly, great fun," said Mr. Cowie.