Orange County Debate League Announcements

Digital Tournament, May 23, 2020

We will be holding a digital tournament via Zoom to end the 2019-2020 season.

Here is some preliminary information to help you begin planning for this tournament:

Name: OCDL End of Year Online Tournament
Date: Saturday, May 23rd
Time: 8am-4pm
Platform: Zoom
Number of Rounds: 4
Topics:
Keeping endangered species in captivity does more good than harm.
USMCA is better than NAFTA.
The internet should be a public utility.
On balance, distance learning is better than traditional learning.

Changes – Because of the digital format, the following changes from standard OCDL tournaments will occur:

  1. No judge training will occur at the tournament
  2. No preparation time, beyond the time it takes to distribute students into various debate rooms, will be given
  3. Students will not be required to copy their arguments/cases to colored paper and will be allowed to read directly from printed papers or electronic devices if they choose
  4. Students will be encouraged to self-time
  5. A modified rubric has been created and will be distributed.  The presentation column of the rubric will state expectations for online presentation skills
  6. There will be no awards ceremony
  7. Awards will be reduced and announced by email or published to the OCDL website
  8. Ballot distribution and return will require judges to submit their scores directly to Tabroom

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Mark Hobbs at mhobbs@ocdl.org or Bora Oztekin at boztekin@ocdl.org.

Orange County Debate League Tournaments

Big Apple Meets Big Orange

On Saturday, November 2nd, eighteen OCDL students (and a few of their parents) attended the New York Debate League’s Fall Tournament at West Side Secondary School in Manhattan. The tournament featured roughly 120 students from local schools including Dalton, Nightingale and the Hackley School debating the following topics:

  • Schools should be year round
  • Adolescents should have the right to make their own medical decisions
  • Museums should return artifacts to their country of origin

For this tournament, the OCDL students were part of a conglomerate squad comprised of debaters from five different schools. The individual debaters included Kha-han D, Chloette H, Courtney H, Sina E, Sabina S, CJ S, Lance Y, Luca S, Kion M, Ryan M. Deema J, Iris S, Naomi T, Sasha C, Noelle K, Stavan S, Christian J, and Erik U. And in keeping with the spirit of travel tournament success, the group took home a first place squad award for both total wins and percetage wins! 

Not only did the students have a great day debating, they also took in some of the sites of New York including a visit to the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The group even went to see Wicked, the muscial.  

These students will be staying a bit closer to home at our next competiton on Saturday, December 14th at Buena Park High School. See below for specific results from New York! 

School Awards
1st Place Overall Wins – Orange County Debate League
1st Place Percentage Wins – Orange County Debate League

Team Awards
2nd Place – Team HYS (Courtney, Lance, CJ)
3rd Place – Team KST (Noelle, Naomi, Stavan)
5th Place – MHM (Ryan, Chloette, Kion)

Speaker Awards
2nd Place – (Top OCDL Speaker) Kion M
8th Place – CJ S
10th Place – Courtney H
12th Place – Lance Y
13th Place – Luca S
15th Place – Chloette H