As the New Year dawns a number of exciting things are happening behind the scenes at the Debating Society. First, as you'll know, Cork Worlds has now wound up. The Debsoc sent two teams this year (Auckland A: Max Harris & Akif Malik and Auckland B: Ben Milsom & Mark Tushingham). As usual the Society performed well and the teams had a stellar time. After hard fought preliminary rounds in which our teams defeated teams from universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, Auckland A 'broke' to the Octo-Finals.
In the Octo Final the team were Opening Government against Victoria A, Seattle A and Helsinki A. They debated the moot 'This house would arm mitia's in Afghanistan'. A video of the debate can be found here. Unfortunately the team did not progress to the Quarter Finals but this is nevertheless an outstanding result. It is added to by the fact our speakers performed exceptionally well in the individual speaker tab as well: Max ranked 22nd out of over 600 speakers from around the world while Akif came a commendable 42nd. Full more information on Worlds you can visit the team's blog here. Alternatively we will have a full report for you when they return.
Second, you'll see that our website has lost many pages from its usual menu on the left. We've taken them offline for now while we refresh and renew their content (as well as adding some brand new stuff). You may not notice much difference to the overall design but hopefully the changes being made and the new content will help us provide you with more information faster in 2009.
Third, we're pleased to announce our 2009 calendar which can be accessed from the links to the left. The calendar represents our best estimates of what we will be doing and when. It notes down all the major tournmanets and trial dates as well. As each event gets closer we'll provide more details about times and locations via this website. In the meantime, have a browse through and get excited.
Finally, as well as revamping the website and the calendar we're also revamping the way we operate. In 2009 expect a number of changes to our events and even how Thursday nights are organized. We'll be announcing a lot of those changes when we re-launch the rest of the website.
Hope everyone has been having a great break and is looking forward to the debating year kicking off again soon.
