AUDC Exco Updates on the Union Session & Other Matters

Dear all,

I am pleased to tell you that we have already set-up the messageboard. :) However, we will only send private invitations to union reps once we have completed gathering all union reps' contact info. This is because we want to follow and strictly implement the 1-week notification, 2-weeks discussion and 1-week voting rule, as stated in the constitution. I hope everyone understands. :)

Currently, we only have the contact info of 11 institutions. These are: ADMU, DLSU, IMU, Mahidol, NTU, NUS, SMU, UI, UST, UPM and UPD. May we therefore request for the e-mail addresses of the following institutions' union reps so that we can already start asap:

Assumption, Atma Jakarta, Atma Yogya, BNU, CSB, EWU, IIU, IIU Mat, ITB, IIU Medicine, Padjadjaran, San Beda, Siliman, STTT, Taman Harapan, UGM, UKSW, UNY, UPI, USM, USU.

Lastly, it was brought to our attention that no Indian institution would have any votes in the coming online union session. This is because they weren't able to send participants during the ITB AUDC. The exco has reviewed the constitution and we arrived at this conclusion: (a) only institutions that could vote during the ITB Union Session can vote during the online Union Session. This means that only institutions that sent participants who paid the reg fee, which would serve as our membership fee) to ITB--whether as observers, adjudicators, or debaters--can vote during our online union session. (b) however, institutions that don't qualify for a vote but have a stake in the online discussions (because they plan to attend the IIU AUDC or for other reasons) *will be allowed* to participate in the online union session discussions. They will *not* have a vote, but they can make their voices heard.

If you are one of those institutions- -those who can't vote, but would like to participate- -please ask your proposed representative to send an e-mail to our Deputy Chair, Mark Cordiner (mjcordiner@gmail. com). Please include in your e-mail what university you are representing and why you'd like to participate in the online discussions.It is important that you give us the e-mail address of your union rep because our message boards are locked. Only those that gave us their e-mail address will be sent an invitation.

Our deadline for starting the online union discussions was supposed to be this week
(ending Sunday, dec. 2) but due to problems with getting the contact info of union reps, we are extending that deadline to Dec. 8. Hopefully, with your cooperation, we can finish well before then. :)

Thank you very much everyone!

Sincerely,
Estelle Osorio
Chair, Asian Universities Debating Executive Committee
Email: hunichi@yahoo.com

Cork Worlds 2009 Ratification report

As you may know every Worlds Council meeting looks for a report from the next host on their progress for hosting the tournament and then council votes on ratification of the bid.

Cork are hosting in 2009 and the document they are presenting to council this year can be found here

Agenda for World Council 2008

Agenda for World Council 2008

Preliminary Council Meeting 12.28.2007

• Distribution of Meeting Minutes from Council meeting of Worlds 2007
• Roll Call
  Delegate Names
  Voting status
• Institution review
  N-1 Review
• Speaker Review
  4 year rule
  ESL participants
  EFL participants
• Distribution of 2010 Bid Materials

=============================

Council Meeting 01.01.2008

• Roll Call
  Delegate Names
  Voting status

• Worlds 2007 Minutes
  Vote to accept minutes

• UBC Report & Accounts
  UBC Rep to report on Tournament
  UBC Rep to present final accounts

• Assumption Report & Accounts
  Assumption Rep to report on Tournament
  Assumption Rep to present initial accounts

• Worlds 2009 Bid Defense
  Bid Defense Presentation
  Questions from council members
  Vote to Confirm UCC as 2009 hosts

• Bids for Worlds 2010
  Botswana, NTU, and Koç present bids (order to be determined by random draw)
  Questions from Council Members
  Vote on hosts for Worlds 2010

• Order of Distinction/World Council Member Emeritus

• Lunch Break

• Constitution Review
  ESL/EFL
  Eligibility Requirements
  N-1
  Regional Representation

• Committee Reports
  Chair
  Registrar
  Secretary
  Women’s Officer
  Equity Officer
  Regional Reports

• Other Business

• 2009 World Executive Committee Elections

• END

Smooth Tournament

Smooth Tournament, a site for online Tabbing using Tabbie, has been extended with overviews and statistics of past tournaments. For participants, this means they can see a overview of the entire tournament - who did you meet in every round, who took which position in round 4, how many speakers points did everyone get and what's the name of that Chair that gave us that undeserved win again?
Take a look for yourself: http://www.smoothtournament.com/showcase/yaleiv07/team_overview?team_id=14

For Bangkok Worlds, we'll be hosting the results of the preliminaries as soon as the embargo is lifted ( i.e. right after all the prizes have been handed out). We expect to offer results for previous year's Vancouver Worlds in a couple of weeks as well.

Depending on the approval of the CA's (per tournament) we also want to disclose the "Motion Fairness" of various tournaments, per motion (Motion Fairness reflects the amounts of times the different positions in a debate take firsts/seconds/thirds/fourths. (In fact, many 'unfair motions' turn out to be pretty balanced after inspection of statistics)

The main site for Smooth Tournament can be found at http://www.smoothtournament.com/

Sydney Mini 2007 Results

The Australian British Parliamentary Debating Championships ("Sydney Mini") has just concluded at the University of Sydney.

Winners: Melbourne/Monash (Amit Golder and Elizabeth Sheargold)

Runners-up: Sydney 1 (Chris Croke and Dom Thurbon), Sydney 4 (James Simonian and Bronwyn Cowell), Sydney Old-Hacks (Sam Greenland and Paul Barnsley)

Best Speaker: Bronwyn Cowell

Topics:

1. TH supports an immediate transition to democracy in Pakistan
2. TH would restrict access of the poor to credit
3. TH would end all aid and trade to Palestine and Israel until a peace deal is signed
4. TH would place a cap on the spending promises of candidates during election campaigns
5. TH would make Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide a precondition of its entry to the EU
6. TH would not send people convicted of infanticide to prison
Semis: TH would destroy the data gained from all unethically conducted research
Final: TH would decriminalise incest.