American University Debate Society

Thank you to everyone who showed up tonight for our first practice of the season! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone again for practice next week at 8:20 PM, Kerwin Hall, on Monday and Thursday

Hey yall, heres some information about some upcoming events through CSI. We look forward to meeting yall!

Hey everyone, we will be hosting our first virtual meeting of the semester this upcoming Monday, August 10th at 7PM EST. This will be an intro meeting just explaining what debate is to see if you are interested and to explain how this year is going to operate. Whether you will be home this year or in DC, you will be able to participate in the debate season, so stop by if you are interested!

We have an AUDS discord server for team members, which is where the meeting will take place. Join here: https://discord.gg/eVzrgAU
Tournaments for the season will be held over Discord, so we highly encourage you to make an account and join!

Please message us on FB or email us at [email protected] with any questions prior!

Looking forward to (virtually) seeing you there!

Join the American University Debate Society Discord Server! Check out the American University Debate Society community on Discord - hang out with 2 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Congrats to our debaters at Georgetown this weekend! We had two full AU teams, Zara and Dan, and Mason and Josh, who both did great— Zara even got 3rd overall Novice Speaker! Thank you and congrats to the hybrid teams: Sergio with Tierney from UVA, Jared with Jacob from Columbia, Megha with Adam from UMD, Will with Caitlin from UMD, and Selma with Mario from JHU. We look forward to future tournaments! 🦅

Hey y'all, a big shout out to our team at UVA last weekend. Congratulations to our team for making semi finals, for winning speaker awards and Sergio for winning Top Speaker!! We look forward to seeing them do it again this weekend at Georgetown!

Join us for practice in Kerwin 101!

This weekend AUDS attended the Hopkins tournament. All 5 members of our team who attended Hopkins hybridded and Jared Stone judged. Josh Brook was lame and ran off with Jacob Atkins before this picture was taken. Perhaps he learned from Jacob that one should always clean their robot. Our very own Sergio Valente won the tournament! Thanks to Yixuan Liu for carrying Sergio all weekend. This is AUDS's first tournament win of the year! We are so proud of everyone who competed: Jonah Goldman, Zara Memon, Megha Prasad, Sergio, Josh, and all their respective hybrids. Thanks Johns Hopkins Undergraduate Debate Council for hosting a great tournament and even greater social :)

AUDS had another great weekend at Penn! Jared Stone and Sergio Valente and Jonah Goldman and his GU hybrid Maxwell Sheremeta got to quarterfinals. Additionally, Megha Prasad got 8th novice speaker and Zara Memon got 9th novice speaker. Nice job to everyone who attended and debated including Daniel Falkovic, Brennan McDermott, Mason Buonadonna. Additionally, we loved seeing big lad Jacob Atkins. We continue the trend of forgetting to take full team photos, so here are just 3 people who stayed through finals. Looking forward to seeing you all at AU Proams Nov. 1st!

It's been a great start to the year for the AUDS!

At the William & Mary tournament, el Presidente Sergio Valente, got the 7th varsity speaker award and was a finalist alongside Parker Kelly from GW.
At Haverford College, Victoria Opperman was 7th novice speaker and Sergio did a little better than the week before with 4th varsity speaker.

This past weekend at UMD Jared Stone and Sergio made it to the finals (then lost the coinflip). Additionally Megha Prasad and Will Brown were 2nd and 7th novice speakers, and Will and Zara Memon--even without Will's lucky Capitals tshirt-- broke to novice semifinals!

Congratulations to everyone!

BIG DOGS GOTTA EAT!

Additionally, we attended the American Parliamentary Debate Association National Championship a while ago and people are mad at me (Josh Brook) for not posting earlier. This mans here in the photo earned 17th place varsity speaker award, a whole one point more than last time. This is what we call improvement. Jared Stone and Sergio Valente placed in 11th in the tournament overall. Our two graduating members Jacob Atkins and Nena Gallegos also competed and had a great weekend together (sorry Gabe Benavides) along with Jon Mann and X.

The weekend prior Selma Tabakovic and X represented AU the gender minority tournament at George Washington University Selma earned 7th novice speaker award and won novice finals!

As we come towards the end of our season AUDS is still having a blast. Last weekend we competed at The College of New Jersey where Jonah Goldman made it to novice semifinals with his partner Andrew Choi from NYU before running off with Selma Tabakovic and Jon Mann to 6 flags. More importantly, Sergio Valente was reunited with his long-time love James Zhang. They may have only won 6th cutest couple, but we all know The Swarthmore College Amos J. Peaslee Debate Society rigs the vote, and they deserved 1st place (suck it Nate Sumimoto and Ellie Singer).

Speaking of Swarthmore, the prior weekend we competed at their tournament! Our novices killed it with Aarushi Sahejpal taking the 10th novice speaker award and making it to novice semifinals with Jonah Goldman. Jared got 6th speaker. Meanwhile, Jacob "The Biggest Dog" Atkins carried Sergio Valente to a 9th place varsity finish.

Great weekends overall, thank you to the Peaslee Debate Society and TCNJ for hosting.

In March, AUDS stayed true to form and killed the debate game while failing epically at taking team pictures. First AU split up with some of our member's attending Franklin and Marshal's tournament and other meeting up with alumni and Stanford's annual tournament.

At F&M Jonah Goldman achieved his first varsity break with his Georgetown partner Maxwell Sheremeta and made it to semi-finals. Jonah also was the 1st novice speaker of the tournament and 10th varsity speaker. Selma Tabakovic and Mason Buonadonna broke to novice semi-finals. Meanwhile, at Stanford, Jared Stone and Sergio Valente made it to partial octo-finals to contribute a total of 0 coty points to our yearly team count. However, they got to eat in-n-out, so who really won? Special shout-out to Zoe Morgan and Isaac Klipstein for making the weekend awesome and for coming out to judge the tournament.

The next weekend AU attended William and Mary's second tournament of the year. Jared made it to varsity semi-finals with his partner Tiffany Yuan from JHU. However, Jared only earned 10th varsity speaker while Sergio won 8th varsity speaker (get rekt nerd). In the novice division AU closed out novice semi-finals with Mara Snap Dygert and Mason going up against Selma and Jonah. Jonah was the 3rd novice speaker, Selma was 4th novice speaker, and Mason was 5th novice speaker.

Finally, AUDS attended the Princeton Adalai where Jared took a hybrid partner once again, in this case the beloved Anish Hoskote Welde, and made it to octo-finals.

AUDS spent the last two weekends up in New York competing at an American Parliamentary tournament and then at a British Parliamentary one.

The first weekend we travelled up the CUNY to compete at a special proams tournament where a varsity competitor accompanied each novice. Three of our teams broke with both Selma Tabakovic, Jacob Atkins, Jonah Goldman, and Nathan Master making it to partial octofinals, while X and Yixuan Liu made it to quarterfinals. Meanwhile, Selma Tabakovic and Jared Stone twinned their way to 9th place speaker awards in the novice and varsity division respectively. Meanwhile Aarushi Sahejpal won the 5th place novice speaker award, making clear who was the pro in her partnership. A special shoutout to Yixuan from UVA who competed with us at CUNY and earned the 5th place varsity speaker award.

And last weekend we sent a contingent to Kings College's BP tournament because trying different formats is fun! Daniel Falkovic and Cady Dawald placed as the 3rd Novice Team, however, due to a registration mixup/miscommunication were unable to compete in novice out rounds. Mason Buonadonna placed as the 9th varsity speaker!

Thank you to both CUNY and Kings College for hosting tournaments!

PC to Alex Johnson and some rando on the streets of NYC

AUDS has had a great couple of weekends. Last Weekend at Villanova University's tournament Aarushi Sahejpal earned the 10th Novice Speaker Award. Mason Buonadonna earned the same award this weekend at Georgetown University's Government Shutdown tournament and Jonah Goldman earned the 4th Novice Speaker Award. Also at Georgetown Sergio Valente placed as 10th Varsity Speaker, only to be outshone by Nena Gallegos who made it to 4th Varsity Speaker.

Nena then went on to win the entire Georgetown tournament with Anish Welde and qualify for Nationals! At the same time, Jonah and Daniel/Frank Falkovic IV won the novice division for the first AU novice victory of the year!

We also wanted to give Tanay Patri from Northeastern a special shoutout for being an amazing hybrid and carrying the ever-burdensome Jared Stone to a partial octos finish, as well as commend Anish from the University of Pennsylvania for his amazing case choice in finals.

And finally, thank you Georgetown Parliamentary Debate Team for an amazing tournament; there's no weekend we'd rather sweep.

Side note: I have no explanation for Sam Pascal's expression in this photo.

PC: Haseeb Waseem

After two tournaments and a newly elected E-board AUDS is starting off second semester strong. We first competed at the West Point Invitational with Jared Stone achieving 7th varsity speaker and making it to semi-finals with his recently returned partner, Sergio Valente.

Next we travelled to Pittsburgh, where we almost got snowed in, to compete at Carnegie Mellon University. We want to congratulate Mason Buonadonna and Jonah Goldman for receiving 9th and 7th novice speaker awards respectively as well Jared Stone for receiving the 2nd varsity speaker award. Jared Stone and Sergio Valente also managed to underachieve their way to a first place finish by goving in all three out rounds and relentlessly pandering to the judges.

A special thanks to West Point and CMU for hosting these great events.

Finally, we would like to welcome our new E-board. Jared "tyrant" Stone was re-elected to president while Katelynn Warmbold was re-elected to VP Admin. Josh Brook joined the ranks as VP of finance along with Sergio Valente as Director of Novice Outreach and Selma Tabakovic as Tournament Director.