Policy Wins Big at Suffolk
While in Boston, Cornell Policy dominated.
The first tournament was the Districts tournament for the northeast U.S. region, which is used to determine teams that qualify for the National Debate Tournament in the spring. The first National Debate Tournament occurred in 1947. It is a varsity-only tournament that only allows the top 78 varsity teams in the United States to register for competition. Cornell’s varsity team of Praveen Gunendran and Devansh Jotsinghani qualified for the 2024 National Debate Tournament by securing a bid based on their competitive success at the Suffolk University districts tournament.
The second tournament was the regionals tournament for novice and junior-varsity (jv) debaters. In the JV division, Jenna Lea and Hyun Lim were semifinalists. Hyun and Jenna also received speaker awards: Hyun was 4th speaker, Jenna was 5th speaker. In the novice division, the following four novice teams all made it to elimination rounds: Mia Barratt & Absa Diop, Matthew Dye & Bryan Kim, Benjamin Casella & Sarah Thacker, Sean Sung & Oscar Zhuo. Elimination rounds began with octafinals, and Cornell novices did not lose any elimination round debates to any challengers from other universities. This culminated in a closeout of finals, securing the regionals championship. Novice debaters also received speaker awards as follows: Sean 1st (i.e. top speaker), Oscar 2nd, Matthew 3rd, Ben 4th, Absa 8th, Sarah 9th.
