Another Pitt Student Qualifies to Compete at The National Tournament!

The William Pitt Debating Union (WPDU) traveled to St. Louis, MO last weekend to compete at the 26^th annual Gorlok Gala, one of the most competitive tournaments of the regular debate season. The tournament featured thirty different colleges and universities from eighteen different states, including some of this year’s top speakers and debaters. The WPDU selected three Pitt students competing in their first year of collegiate speech and debate, with the goal of showing less-experienced speakers and debaters what high level speech and debate looks like.

Natalie Rose competed in impromptu and persuasive speaking categories. Impromptu speaking is a category where students receive randomly selected prompts or quotations and have a maximum of two minutes to prepare a five-minute speech. Persuasive speaking is an event where students memorize an 8–10-minute persuasive speech and attempt to demonstrate excellent speech writing and delivery skills. Although she is in her first year of competition, she went nearly perfect in her preliminary rounds for impromptu and earned a semifinalist award while competing at the highest “open” level division, which featured 64 students. Natalie’s success qualified her to compete at the national tournament in the impromptu event.

Rosalind Dong and Wenhao “Dannie” Lyu competed in Lincoln Douglas Debate – a one-vs-one style of debate where students research and argue both sides of a policy related topic all year. The topic for this year asks whether the United States Federal Government should substantially reduce the number and/or role of its nuclear weapons. Despite having joined only a few weeks ago, Rosalind and Dannie performed well. Each won several preliminary rounds in the novice division.

Last semester, three Pitt debaters, Liam Nyburg, Hunter Foster, and Sebastiano Rabbini, qualified for the highest level of debate at the national tournament after they respectively went 1^st, 3^rd, and 4^th at a tournament in September. One novice, Avinash Kunde, also qualified for the novice division of debate at the national tournament after earning a perfect record and winning all elimination rounds at a tournament in California last November.