The West Virginia University Debate Team and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will play host to the third annual John A. Jacobsohn Memorial Mountaineer Classic Debate Tournament Feb. 7-9.
The tournament is sanctioned by both the Cross Examination Debate Association and the American Debate Association. Some 20 colleges and universities from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia will join together for a weekend packed with several debates, which will begin Friday afternoon, continue throughout Saturday and conclude Sunday afternoon. Teams will be competing in the novice, junior varsity and varsity levels.
“Were pleased to once again be hosting competitors from around the region and country for such a wonderful event,”said Debate Team faculty adviser Neil Berch, an associate professor of political science.”The level of competition promises to be quite high.”
Each year a new subject is chosen as the topic for collegiate teams nationwide to research and debate. This years topic asks students to form a resolution arguing that the U.S. government should ratify or accede one or more of the following: the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court, the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty and the treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions.
Students participating in the tournament must be prepared to argue in favor of at least one of the treaties and argue against all of them. In the course of a tournament, each two-person team argues in favor of the resolution half the time and against the resolution the other half.
Saturday evening the schools will join together for an awards reception in the Blue&Gold Ballroom of the Towers Residence Hall, where individual speaker awards will be presented and the list of qualifying teams will be announced for the final debates on Sunday.
The tournament has been named in memory of the WVU Debate Teams long-time adviser, John Jacobsohn, a Department of Political Science faculty member who taught courses in Latin American politics and government, international law, and international human rights. He authored several articles for academic journals and a book, Introduction to Political Science , published in 1997. Jacobsohn served as the coach of the WVU Debate Team from 1990 until his death in 1997.
“Professor Jacobsohn would be pleased to see all the education going on in his name,”Berch said.
The WVU Debate Team has been nationally ranked during most of the past four and one-half years of competition. The team includes about 15 undergraduate students, from numerous majors, who complete as twosomes.
Several of the Universitys top students compete in debate. Three years ago Joshua Whitehair, who graduated in May 2001 with a degree in political science and philosophy, was named a Truman Scholar, and last year, Mary Ellen Bess, who graduate last May with a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy and coached first-year debaters her senior year, was named a 2002-03 Rotary Ambassador. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in England.
Last year the WVU Debate Team was voted Best Debate Program in the East.