Speech & Debate Qualifies Team for National Tournament

The Cornell University Speech and Debate program, sponsored by the ILR School, qualified the varsity team of Praveen Gunendran, CALS ’24 and Devansh Jotsinghani, Brooks ’24 for the National Debate Tournament, to be held from April 4-8 at Emory University.

The duo earned their spot among the top 78 teams in the nation after securing a bid at the Northeast district championship, held Feb. 24-25 at

Suffolk University. In the final debate for the varsity division, Gunendran and Jotsinghani beat the team from the United States Military Academy by arguing that the United States should restrict its nuclear forces by eliminating the land-based leg of its nuclear triad.

Suffolk University also hosted the Northeast Regional Championship for junior varsity and novice debaters that same weekend. Cornell had a strong showing by advancing a team to the semifinals in the junior varsity division and winning the novice division in a “close out,” meaning that the final two novice teams remaining in the tournament were both from Cornell.

The junior varsity team of Jenna Lea ’26 and Hyun Lim, HE ’27 advanced to the semifinals, where they fell to the United States Military Academy on a 2-1 decision. Army argued that the United States should restrict its nuclear forces by eliminating the air-based leg of its nuclear triad (i.e. bomber airplanes). Cornell argued the negative position.

In the novice division, Cornell saw four novice teams make it to the elimination rounds, which began with octafinals (eight rounds of debate featuring the final 16 teams). Not a single novice debate was lost in the elimination rounds by any Cornell debaters, resulting in a “close out” in which Matthew Dye ’26 and Bryan Kim, Eng. ’27 were declared the winners, based on seeding, over Mia Barratt, A&S ’26 and Absa Diop, A&S ’27. The other two novice teams consisted of Benjamin Casella, A&S ’27, Sarah Thacker, AAP ’26, Sean Sung ‘27 and Oscar Zhuo, A&S ’27.

“We are very proud of the success of the Cornell policy debate team at the Suffolk tournament,” said Armands Revelins, coach for the policy debate team and the assistant director of the Speech and Debate program. “Our teams worked very hard in practice debates leading up to the tournament, and I’m proud of how well the debaters performed in all divisions. Cornell Speech and Debate Program membership is open to Cornell undergraduate students with any skill level. So I encourage undergraduate students to seek us out to find out more about the team.”