Sign up for the Osterweis Tournament (April 7th)

Hey UDL schools! As your head coaches have notified you, the Yale Debate Association (the UDL’s sister organization at Yale) is hosting its annual Osterweis Debate Tournament next Sunday. You are encouraged to sign up! Please let us know if you have any questions. Here is the official invite.

To the Debate Community of Connecticut,

The Yale Debate Association is pleased to invite you to the 33rd Annual Rollin G. Osterweis Debate Tournament on Sunday, April 7, 2013.  This year’s theme is “Insight through Inquiry.”   For those of you unfamiliar with the tournament, Osterweis is a free tournament for Connecticut high school students to experience the collegiate style of parliamentary debate.  Participants will learn about parliamentary procedure in the morning with a demonstration round, and then debate with a partner for three preliminary rounds, before breaking to Semifinals and a Final Round to decide this year’s champion.  Debates will focus on issues familiar to the average student, including American and international politics, ethics, and justice.  With that said, given the level of competition at Osterweis in recent years, we highly recommend that students selected to attend have some prior experience with debate.  Novices are welcome, but many find the experience most fulfilling having previously attended at least a couple of tournaments.  Students will be given a free lunch and breakfast, and Yale debaters will judge and offer feedback.  Coaches will have the opportunity to participate in coaching workshops during the day if they wish.  Awards will be given to top varsity and teams and speakers.

Please register teams by filling out this form.  We intend to cap the size of our tournament at 50 teams this year, and will therefore set a soft cap of two teams accepted per school before April 1st.  We encourage you to register up to as many as five teams, because should we not reach our cap, we will be admitting additional teams, with final notification sent out after 11:59 PM on April 4th. We will try to accommodate any changes made to registration prior to this deadline, but ask that you notify us as soon as you can.

For more information on the schedule as well as other information, feel free to visit our website (which will be updated soon) or email us at osterweis@gmail.com.  Feel free to pass this information on to other schools who might be interested.

We look forward to seeing you in April!

Best,
Nathaniel Rubin, Tournament Director (nathaniel.rubin@yale.edu)
Joanna Zheng, Tournament Director (joanna.zheng@yale.edu)
Ben Della Rocca, Assistant Tournament Director (benjamin.dellarocca@yale.edu)
Adira Levine, Assistant Tournament Director (adira.levine@yale.edu)