A Busy Month for Hackley Debate

In the US, the Public Forum team had a great January debating whether Spain should grant Catalonia independence. The first competition was in Lexington, Massachusetts, where juniors Philip Bonanno and Tucker Wilke reached the round of 32 in varsity and freshmen Ben Aybar and Ben Kirsch reached the round of 32 in novice! Junior Max Mallett and sophomores Alex Evangelidis, Max Rosenblum, Neil Singh, Jared Tilliss, and Madeline Zuckerman also gave strong performances!

The second competition was at Columbia University, where Philip Bonanno and Tucker Wilke advanced to the runoff round, and Max Mallett, Alex Evangelidis, Max Rosenblum, and Madeline Zuckerman advanced to the round of 32.  Elimination rounds have three judges, and all three teams lost their final rounds on 2-1 decisions, showing how well they performed. Additionally, out of the 260 debaters, Madeline was named 7th speaker overall. Neil Singh and Jared Tilliss also gave a strong performance and came close to advancing.

All in all, January was a great month for the US Public Forum team and the team is already are preparing for our February competitions in which we will consider if the United States should abolish the capital gains tax.

In the MS program, Hackley sent 34 debaters to two separate locations on January 20th, debating whether professional athletes should participate in the Olympic Games, whether hate speech should be protected by the first amendment, and whether libraries are obsolete. Our 5th and 6th grade debaters traveled to the East New York Middle School of Excellence where multiple debaters won both individual and team awards. At the other event at the Nightingale-Bamford school, three of our 7th and 8th grade teams went 4-1 and Catherine L. came in second place overall as a top speaker. Hackley earned both a school award and a tournament award.

Our next HS Parli tournament will take place at Hackley on February 10th. The next MS tournament will take place on March 3rd at multiple locations in the city. Contact Mr. Fitzpatrick to register for either of these two events.