Candidate Statements

Candidate statements for the 2008-2009 elections are below. You can scroll down to see them, or use the following links to jump to particular statements:

President


Samantha Hynes


For those of you who do not know me, my name is Samantha Hynes, I am a junior from William and Mary, and I am running for President. I have been actively involved in APDA since I have been on the circuit. Over the past three years, I have been to over 60 tournaments, I was both an EOF and an Expansion Coordinator last year, and I am a Member at Large this year.

Whenever election time rolls around plenty of great ideas are discussed and many promises are made. All too often, those ideas are never realized and promises are forgotten soon after elections have passed. I have always believed this is a huge problem for the circuit and so I have made certain that I followed through on everything I said I would do this year as a board member.

I promised to work closely with the Expansion Coordinators, and this year I worked with Aram Boghosian to create a spreadsheet of target schools, wrote welcome letters for new schools to bring to their administrations, and directly contacted several new schools to offer them free registration at the William and Mary tournament. I promised to take equity and novice retention seriously not only by being approachable, but also by reaching out to novices on the circuit, organizing demo rounds, and participating in equity forums. I have also worked with Liz Zahler at the beginning of this year to implement the previously forgotten Code of Conduct that included tournament equity policies, allowing less active debaters to be aware that there is someone to talk to at every tournament if they have equity concerns. In addition to fulfilling my specific promises, I created the APDA Tab Program Committee to make a secure, open source, computer tab program available to schools free of charge, created the new APDA Logo, offered my help in tab at the Bucknell tournament, and have been working with John Hollwitz to compile a list that currently has contact information for over 250 dinos that can be used to help keep the league keep in touch with its' alumni. I promised to be an active and dedicated board member and I believe I was both of those things this year.

The bottom line is I am a candidate who does not just talk about what can be done to improve APDA, I actually work to improve it. If I am elected, I will continue to do everything I have been doing this year, and I have a few new projects to offer as well. First, I plan to make the oversight of the dino list a board responsibility. I believe this project is a great investment because it will allow the board to help improve small schools' access to dinos to help them run their tab rooms and augment their judging pools. I also plan to create a newsletter to mail out to dinos who wish to receive it to keep them updated on APDA activities and on what tournaments are offering to dinos who are available to judge. Second, I want to make APDA more well known to incoming college freshman. I am currently in contact with Victory Briefs (a popular high school debate web site) to get APDA featured on their website and give us more visibility to high school students. This will hopefully improve novice turnout for individual teams and give debaters that are planning on attending schools that are not on APDA information on how to start new teams. Third, I want to get the league focused on improving tournament quality by making tab observers standard practice at tournaments and by creating a way to more formally document and recognize schools that do an exceptional job hosting their tournaments.

As I said last year, I believe that with increased communication and by taking a more active leadership role within the APDA community, the APDA board can have a truly positive impact on the development of the league, and I have done my best to take on that role. I have truly enjoyed my time on the board this year, and it would be an honor to be chosen as your next president.

-Samantha Hynes
sfhyne@wm.edu

Cyrus Stoller


Dear friends,

For those of you I haven't had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Cyrus Stoller. I am a junior at Swarthmore, where I am President of our debate society. I am delighted to announce that I am running for President of APDA.

When considering whether to make a run for this position, I've been thinking a lot about our league and its purpose. Why do we have so many tournaments? What makes them worthwhile? I've been able to think of four main reasons:

  1. Have good debates/discussions with really smart people
  2. Do what we think we're good at or hope to become good at
  3. See old friends and make new ones
  4. Recognize excellence

These four purposes of the league have shaped my understanding of what I hope to accomplish for APDA and what I have to offer to the league. I believe I am in a strong position to help the APDA board facilitate high-quality debate and serve as an objective body that recognizes excellence. I would like to offer a few points to outline what I see as opportunities for improvement for the league.

High-Quality Debate

Though we serve (and ought to serve) a number of purposes, APDA is first and foremost a debate league. As such, I think there are a number of things that the APDA board can do to facilitate better debate without infringing upon the autonomy vested in each member institution.

Fair, Well-Informed Judging

We need to provide better educational materials for new judges so they can learn how to be effective and fair. We should post video judging tutorials on the APDA website, creating a manual and making many different types of rounds available (for example, loose-link cases, opp-choice cases, tight call rounds, etc ...). "Master judges" (qualified dinos or current debaters) could then make videos to accompany those rounds, explaining how they filled out their ballot and what they saw as strengths and weakness in the round and submitting their flows from the round to accompany the video. This way people that are new to judging can figure out what is expected of them. This also prevents member schools from having to prepare these materials individually before each tournament. I see this kind of project, which seeks to support clubs and improve the experience of all of our members, as the future of the APDA board.

I believe that stronger, better-trained judges would also be fairer judges. Unfortunately, reputation plays far too large of a role in adjudications. During my time on APDA, I've both benefited and suffered from this. Judging should not be based on the reputation of the debater or team--it should be based on the quality of the debating done in that particular round. The problem is reflected in speaker scores: no-name debaters tend to face an iron "point ceiling," no matter what the quality of their debating in a given round, while "name" debaters are often given unduly high scores when they don't debate particularly well in a given round. I believe that creating a fairer, more objective judging pool would help make speaks what they should be--a measure of the quality of speaking, analysis, and argument given by a debater in a round--rather than a name-recognition contest. To do otherwise is to overlook exceptional performance by new or unfamiliar debaters and to devalue the praise we offer to our stars when they earn exceptional speaks.

Judging is the linchpin of debate. And it has been neglected to the point where the very legitimacy of our league is being called into question.

Feedback

In line with fostering better judges, we should be working, as a Board, to help debaters grow. The only way that people can get better at debate is to get frequent, constructive feedback. Unfortunately, in the status quo, only people who have the guts or the reputation to talk to their judge after their round are getting this feedback. As a result, it is often our strongest and most experienced debaters who are getting the feedback they need to improve, while newer or less strong debaters, who need feedback and advice the most, are left out. As many of you know, I am in favor of having oral adjudications after every round. If elected, I would not use my position as APDA president to impose that view on clubs as policy. However, I think that we should certainly encourage brief oral adjudications after out-rounds and make it policy for out-rounds at Nats. I think everyone can learn from these explanations.

Novice Training

As I see it, the APDA board exists to help solve problems that schools can't solve on their own. As such, one role is to help train novices at schools that do not already have strong or experienced debaters, by providing materials and guidance for novice training. I was glad to see more effort put into novice training this year. It shows. The novice out-rounds that I've seen have been of much higher quality. I hope that we give this sort of attention to everyone throughout the entire year as opposed to only focusing on this for the first couple of months of the school year.

Objectivity

I feel that I am in a unique position with regards to two of the APDA board's key responsibilities: overseeing OTY awards and Nationals. On the one hand, I am an experienced debater who is familiar with the ins and outs of these issues. On the other, I have chosen to largely step out of competition for both and therefore see myself as a more objective voice than other debaters with similar experience. I'm not planning on making an -OTY run next year. I've debated with 9 different debaters from Swarthmore this year. I expect to be doing something similar next year. Additionally, as many of you know, Swarthmore is planning on bidding for Nationals. If we are successful, I will not be competing at Nationals either.

Transparency

In my view, the role of the APDA board is to represent the body as a whole. A key part of that representation, in my view, is transparency in our decision-making processes. In the past, there has been a lot of unrest and whispered discussion about the substance and reasoning behind certain decisions that might have been avoided with a more transparent and accountable process. As president, I would work hard to keep the body up to speed on the projects the board and I worked on. I think the board has taken a valuable step forward toward better transparency with the addition of the "State of the League" notices. I would hope to continue moving in that direction, such that debaters and schools can better understand the APDA board's decision making process and have their views represented.

In that spirit, I'd like to start by being transparent about my views and intentions. Please feel free to ask me about my personal views about debate and I'll be more than happy to share them with you. I have no intention of hiding anything nor do I have any intention of acting unilaterally--my goal is to be a thoughtful, fair, and accountable President of APDA, for APDA, not just for me or my school.

I hope you are all having a wonderful season and I look forward to working together to make next season even better. I wish you all the best of luck and welcome any and all comments and questions.

Sincerely yours,

Cyrus Stoller
Swarthmore '10
e-mail: cyrus.stoller@gmail.com
mobile: (415) 867-2705

Adam Goldstein


Disclaimer

Despite the fact that Andrew and I had intended to hold candidates very strictly to the deadline we had set for candidate statements we will be deviating from that intention. We received Adam's candidate statement after the deadline and in order to encourage the free flow of information and to have a better election we are posting his candidate statement.

-Childers & Rohrbach (in absentia)

I am running for APDA President on a single platform: effectiveness.

For years, candidates for APDA VP Finance promised they would set up a system to allow donations to the league. I did it the first month of this academic year.

For years, members of APDA made vague promises about how they would make it easier for new schools to get acquainted with the league. As the first Chief Expansion Coordinator, I wrote the first pamphlet to follow through on that promise.

For years, people on APDA believed that it wasn't possible to have a National Championships with the trifecta of convenience, great judging, and great entertainment. I spearheaded the hosting of MIT Nationals last year, considered by most to be the most effectively run Nationals in memory.

For years, people on APDA complained about the sorry state of tab programs. Many people claimed they would write a new one, and never did. I spent 100 hours to write a new one, and it's come to replace the 3-times-as-expensive Harvard tab program, making it easier for tournaments of all sizes to run their tournaments inexpensively and effectively.

How will I extend these successes if elected President? There are several ways:

1) Acting as an effective communicator to school administrations. When I ran for VP Finance, I promised to seek funding from corporations. What I discovered through more than a dozen phone conversations, however, is that corporations see very little benefit in sponsoring a league, especially in the current economic climate. I'm now convinced that the best role for the APDA President is to act as a persuader of individual school administrations. Thus, I promise the following: if elected President, I will place phone calls to members of any school's administration upon request, using my title as a tool to help persuade them to increase their teams' funding. Using the tools of persuasion I learned this year in convincing the MIT administration to increase our funding from 0 figures to 5 figures (despite an institute-wide budget cut), I will be an effective voice for teams that could use some extra funding-especially for teams that are just getting started.

2) Being an effective voice for APDA internationally. Unlike the other candidates running for President, I have a number of friends in the international debate community. This will give me the ability to advocate for APDA's interests without coming across as either a) too timid to be worth any serious attention or b) a boisterous American who should be ignored (both of which have been problems in the past).

3) Running APDA meetings effectively. I have an on-schedule fetish. As anyone who's been in tab at either Nationals or the regular MIT Debate Tournament can attest, I have no tolerance for people taking more time than they should to get their job done. This extends to APDA meetings as well, where I would ensure that clear agendas were prepared and posted in advance.

4) Being an effective, good-faith negotiator. It's no secret that many of my good friends on the league are from the north. It's also no secret that I am a fair dealer, even when my friends' interests are at stake. I have never traded votes for favors in any election, and have in fact explicitly rejected them. I specifically asked that other candidates for President not have to send me their candidate statements prior to this election, despite my being a member of the 3-person core of the board, so as not to give myself an unfair advantage. I have told judges in person that I thought the speaker scores they gave me were so high as to give me an undeserved advantage over others whose judges wouldn't consider being as generous. And I have been the only member of the board who has kept true to the promise I made last year: to recuse myself from scheduling decisions affecting tournaments that I've previously won. I enjoy the challenge of solving disputes without making either party upset, and I harbor no ill will towards any schools.

Now, some of you disagree with me on matters of policy (for example, an amendment I proposed at NYU to keep foreign teams and dinos from stealing OTY awards failed a vote). If this describes you, I'd ask it not to color your vote for President, since I intend fully to advocate for policies I believe in regardless of whether I become President.

Some of you may think the fact that I submitted my candidate statement late bodes poorly for my performance as President. I assure you it does not. When I first saw the forum post about deadlines, I wasn't wearing my glasses (seriously), and this past weekend, when I normally would have double-checked, I was preoccupied with helping run the MIT tournament. Neither of these is the normal state of affairs in my life; in fact, this is the first APDA-related deadline I've ever missed, and intend to keep it that way.

Finally, some of you have a slight discomfort envisioning a somewhat geeky technocrat as your President. If this describes you, I'd ask you to judge me by my results.

For three years, I have served APDA as effectively as possible in each position I've held. I humbly ask you for the opportunity to serve APDA in the most effective way possible overall.

-Adam Goldstein
agoldste@mit.edu

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Vice President of Operations


Alex Taubes


Hello APDA,

My name is Alex Taubes and I'm running for Vice President of Operations. If we've never met, I'm from Boston University, I've been going to tournaments practically every weekend since my novice year, and I'm currently the APDA Webmaster. I want to talk about two things in my candidate statement: the role of the Vice President of Operations and why I am most qualified for fulfilling that role.

The APDA By-Laws refer to the Vice President of Operations as the league's "secretary," with the official roles of tabulating OTYs, keeping minutes at APDA meetings, notifying the body of upcoming meetings, collecting agenda items, and buying the OTY trophies. I know I am well-suited for these duties for several reasons. First, I am committed to the league: I've attended a tournament nearly every weekend since I joined the circuit and I've put in many hours as Webmaster improving the website, moderating the forum, and updating the wiki. Second, I have experience, as I have input historical results into the OTY tracker in my role as Webmaster and have attended most APDA meetings since I joined the league.

In addition to being the league's "secretary," the Vice President of Operations is a member of the APDA board, and thus entrusted with the responsibility to be a leader on the circuit and a fair and neutral arbiter of conflicts. I feel I am uniquely suited for these roles because of my relationships with teams and individual debaters across the geographical regions of APDA and my record of commitment to the league as a whole. As Vice President of Operations, I will seek to coordinate mutually agreeable answers to problems, coordinate league efforts for goals like equity, expansion, and financial accessibility with leadership and hard work, and generally be an open and personable individual who anyone can talk to and trust.

More than anything else, I want the opportunity to work hard for APDA. If you feel that the Vice President of Operations should play a different role on the circuit, or you have any questions or concerns, send me an email at alextt@gmail.com. My email address also serves as my AIM screenname, feel free to contact me that way as well.

Thanks,
Alex Taubes
Boston University

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Vice President of Finance


Ali Boyle


Hey APDA,

My name's Ali Boyle, I'm from Johns Hopkins, and I want to be your VP-Finance for the 2009-2010 year.

I think I'm qualified for this position because I have experience managing large budgets. As the director of the Hopkins tournament this year, I managed the entire budget for all branches of the tournament. The job of tournament director actually mirrors the VP-Finance position in a lot of ways. First, it involved working with schools in financial hardship to arrange registration breaks. I also worked with new schools to the circuit to make sure that all teams that wanted to attend the tournament were able to attend. Second, it involved recruiting local sponsors to help raise capital for our tournament, an idea that I think APDA could tentatively broach. Third, being tournament director meant ordering and coordinating the order for our trophies. I was able to secure extremely nice trophies (including a mega gavel for top speaker and beautiful silver plates for top teams) at a reasonable price. A large part of the budget for APDA is spent on buying OTY trophies, and I know that I can balance everyone's desire for high quality trophies with budget concerns.

In addition to the experience I have managing the Hopkins tournament budget, I also have a lot of ideas for how to improve APDA's financial situation as a whole. Tournament fees are really expensive for a lot of teams, and it's important to me that high registration fees don't preclude teams in tight financial situations from attending tournaments. Most tournaments advertise their registration price to be between 100-120 dollars, and yet these same tournaments end up giving large discounts to teams traveling far away or teams willing to pay in cash. Clearly it doesn't actually cost the full 100-120 dollars per team to fund the tournament. I propose that tournaments cap registration fees based on how many tournaments their team attends during the year. This allows tournaments to use their surplus to fund their team's participation on the circuit for the rest of the year while not precluding smaller or less wealthy schools from attending tournaments. The system also encourages participation on the circuit and rewards active teams.

The tentative cap scheme would be as follows:

Lowest Reg Fee is $80 dollars per team

If your team attends 0-3 tournaments a year, you charge 80 dollars per team.
-4-8 = 85 dollars
-9-13 = 90 dollars
-14-18 = 95 dollars
-19-26 = 100 dollars

Another way to help new schools to the circuit is to try and institute a circuit wide reg break for new schools- if you've been on APDA for fewer than two years, tournaments should not be able to charge you more than 80 dollars per team.

Besides the specific ideas I have to help the financial situations of schools on the circuit, I think I'd be an asset to the APDA board in general. While Hopkins is a traditionally Southern school, I've been to several Northern tournaments this year and I think I can represent a diverse range of interests in scheduling. Besides representing Northern and Southern debaters, I also want to advocate for small schools. I think it's important that small schools are able to support themselves during the scheduling process, and I plan to do everything in my power to help facilitate their participation.

I also believe that the board should help schools run better and more efficient tournaments. While it's important that tournaments maintain autonomy, the board should offer resources to tournaments that reach out for help. Two ways the board can facilitate better tournaments are by putting schools that ask for help in touch with dinos that are willing to help run tab at these tournaments. Another way to improve tournament quality is by coordinating the co-hosting of tournaments, where a more established school is willing to help the tournament experiencing logistical problems with tab or with judging.

Most of all, I'm running for APDA board because I really want to be a resource to the league. I'm at tournaments every weekend because I truly love debate and I love the people I've met on APDA. The reason I decided to dedicate so much time to debate was because so many people made me feel welcome on the circuit from my very first weekend, and I hope I can help do the same for other debaters.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me Aboyle14 AT jhu DOT edu


Rich Boltizar


I'm running for VP Finance because I believe that the league could greatly benefit from my unique financial and bookkeeping skills and my APDA West perspective, and because I personally would enjoy the opportunity to give back to APDA in a tangible manner.

I personally have a great deal of experience in running large business operations and financial record keeping. In my time with the Stanford Debate Society, I have personally fulfilled nearly all of the officer positions on our team, including President, High School Tournament Director, College Tournament Director and Treasurer. In these positions, I have been personally responsible for the orderly operation, record keeping and collection of fees for events with over 1500 attendees. I have also had the responsibility of managing the finances for our Summer Debate camp, the travel budgets for our Parli and Policy teams and for our campus events. Throughout this process, I have gained a great deal of experience in working with campus administrators, communicating with individuals regarding best practices and establishing the correct incentive structures and running a smooth and orderly operation that allows others to enjoy their ability to participate in debate without being burdened by administrative issues. I also have a great deal of financial experience outside of the debate world, where I have worked as a bookkeeper at two separate businesses, been involved in directing budgets and collections in a company with revenues of approximately $2.5 million and am involved in marketing and business development.

I believe that as a whole, the league is headed in a positive direction at this point in time, but I still think that there are a few issues which deserve to be addressed. Some of the debate that has occurred on the forum recently seems to me to get at a deeper issue of how the league ought to be run. I think that philosophically our league should strive to allow for as much individual choice as is reasonably possible. I am a huge fan of unique and "special" traditions that make certain tournaments unique, and I strongly believe that schools should be given grounds to run their tournaments as they please, as long as they are within the guidelines mandated by the bylaws. I believe in having an APDA board that is ready and willing to provide assistance to teams and individuals when called upon, but which uses great restraint before ever forcing its opinion on the league as a whole or any individual tournament, school or member. Coming from Stanford, I understand fully that tournaments and teams can have drastically different realities when it comes to necessary tournament reg fees. When it comes to scheduling, I believe that there needs to be every attempt to uphold the best interests of all schools on the circuit, not just the large tournaments and schools.

I feel that coming from APDA West, I understand the issues from a much broader perspective than many others in the league. I've seen large tournaments, small tournaments and all of the issues in between. I understand that the concerns of different member institutions differ greatly. By no means do I consider this an end to my position-please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions for me. In the end, my greatest interest is in seeing APDA succeed and expand.


Rich Boltizar

rich [AT] Boltizar [dot] com


Zayn Siddique


Hey Everyone,

My name is Zayn Siddique and I am honored to be running for Vice President of Finance of the American Parliamentary Debate Association. For those of you that don't know me, I debate for Princeton University and am currently an Equal Opportunity Facilitator (EOF) on APDA. Over the past two years, I have been a very committed member of the APDA community and I believe that the experience and vision I hope to bring to the position will allow APDA to continue to be the exceptional league that it is.

As I understand it, the current role of VP Finance is one that is relatively limited. In terms of explicit duties, I have no doubt in my mind that any of the candidates for the position would be qualified to ensure that dues are collected, the account is managed, and OTY awards are paid for. It is my hope that the position of VP Finance can be expanded to deal with two closely related things-capital issues and small school expansion.

By capital issues, I mean two separate problems. One is APDA's general lack of funds to promote some very meaningful programs and the other is debt management. If elected, I hope to make the VP Finance responsible for routinely soliciting donations and applying for grants and fellowships, which are created for supporting programs like APDA. I believe I am uniquely qualified to pursue this position because of the contacts I have in the non-profit community from previous work experiences. I've worked with the Roosevelt Institution, the nation's only student run think-tank, where my main responsibility was to apply for grants and soliciting donations that were targeted specifically to organizations that promote free inquiry and critical thinking. Also, some of you may remember when Matt Scarola acquired cameras through a grant from the Soros Open Society Institute. I've previously worked at OSI as well and the person who approved the grant was my former high school debate coach. With these unique qualifications, I hope to vigorously pursue a capital accumulation campaign for APDA in hopes of being able to increase support for things like the Expansion Program. As far as debt management goes, I hope to pick up where Adam Goldstein left off. I think that the Debt Report proposed some very good ideas, which were not really implemented. In particular better publicizing of the fees unopposed tournaments plan to charge and the debt clearinghouse, which never really went online.

The other major issue I hope to devote my time to is promoting small school expansion. I think that most of our APDA experiences have been a fantastic social and educational experience and we ought to facilitate access to that experience as best we can. To that end, I believe that VP Finance should be responsible for helping smaller schools overcome monetary barriers to their participation in the league. While individual tournaments are a critical part of that effort, I think this position can be important for informing schools of the various ways in which they can reduce their monetary burdens. One simple solution might be developing a form letter that informs newer schools of the various APDA mechanisms already in place like the dues waivers and reg breaks and making myself available to negotiate reg breaks with schools on their behalf if they would rather not. Another would be revitalizing our program for getting corporate discounts on rentals cars and hotels.

Ultimately, my hope is that APDA can develop an institutionalized way of raising capital and, in turn, using that capital to facilitate access to the league. I believe that I will bring unique experiences to the position in hopes of realizing a vision for a more vibrant APDA. I think I have demonstrated myself to be dedicate, fair and approachable individual who will serve with integrity and so I humbly request your support for my candidacy.

If you have an questions or suggestions please feel free to contact me at zsiddiqu@princeton.edu.

Sincerely,
Zayn Siddique

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Member at Large


Elizabeth Tam


Hi, my name is Elizabeth Tam, I feel that I am very qualified or the position of Member at Large of APDA. I have been debating for the past 3 years on the Fordham Debate Society, and am very dedicated and care deeply about APDA. I feel that I can improve and transition the league into the hard economic times and the future. If elected I hope to increase interaction with dinos and diversity on APDA. The league has done a lot for me and I would love the opportunity to give back and help. I will go out of my way to assist people no matter what.

I love being able to go to tournaments and compete, but more importantly ADPA has given me amazing friends and interactions that I would not be able to have anywhere else. This is an experience I would like to help others have, whether it is through helping people get adjusted into the community, trying to increase APDA awareness, or even through helping new schools join the league.

I am currently an expansion coordinator for APDA, and have been successful in my attempts. I have been in touch with over a dozen schools, and am in frequent contact with 4 schools, Medgar Evers, RPI, UAlbany, and Washington and Lee, which have shown a huge interest. I have maintained good relationships with these schools, and am doing my best to help them grow their team, by teaching them the basics and vital APDA information. I hope to get them out to tournaments by next semester... at the latest.

After seeing how everything worked out this year, I know the methods that worked and did not work. I will use the knowledge I gained and apply this next year. I learned that it is best to try to get in touch with people you know at schools, find out who has an interest and contact them. If elected, in addition to trying to get these new schools to start attending APDA tournaments and holding practices together, I want to hold tutorials and socials for these new schools. I would like to teach the new schools how to debate, and other things such as how to register at a tournament or how to host a tournament. I would also like to hold a forum for the new schools, in which they can directly talk to APDA members, express their concerns, what assistance they need, and things that can be changed as they can provide a new view. I am also pretty good at trying to integrate new schools and debaters by introducing them to anyone and everyone that comes their way. I am also a frequent, known judge on the HS debate circuit, this will make it easier for me help these new debaters adjust, or start up teams if they are interested.

In addition to my experience with debate, I am involved in many activities on and off campus, have had 5 internships, and have a business background as I am in the College of Business Administration at Fordham University. Each of my internships have given me valuable skills and knowledge in many fields including marketing, promotion, finance, business development, corporate legal, administration, public relations, and merchandizing. I have great leadership, communication, networking, organizational, time management and social skills. Most importantly I am unbiased in all that I do, as I am not political, which will ensure that I will keep an open mind and will not be easily influenced. I am very open to new ideas, and am willing to listen to anyone, no matter how crazy an idea might be.

APDA is similar to a business in the sense that we could use all the funding that we can get to help subsidize costs, and like any business publicity and recognition is also very important. I feel that all of my experiences and skills can be applied to helping APDA get more recognition and help in trying to get more sponsorship. At my marketing internship, I learned the importance of viral marketing, being outgoing and persistent and was able to get over 500 users on to a new start-up site, and was put in contact with over 2000 people that I did not know. This skill, in addition to the PR skills I used to write press releases can be used to try to get people on board with APDA and eventually getting sponsorships, and new members. At my internship in corporate legal, I learned a lot in the law realm, and the structure of a large Fortune 15 company from an administrative level. Finally, as a business student, and having internships at both a stock brokerage firm and in business development (at the corporate level), I can understand the finances of the company, and determine how to allocate resources. All of these skills can be used to help APDA grow both in size and financially, all of the things one can hope to improve in any group.

I hope that you will provide me this opportunity to not only help you, novices, and new schools, but the ability to help APDA-the league that brings us all together and provides us the opportunity to do what we love best, DEBATE.


Pam Brown


Hi APDA,

My name is Pam, I'm a sophomore from Yale, and I'm running for Member at Large. I assume there will be ample opportunity to discuss specific policies on the forum, so in this statement I'm going to limit myself to discussing why I am qualified to be one of your Members at Large.

First, I would be a good representative on the APDA board. I'm a pretty friendly and approachable person in general, and am at a tournament almost every weekend. I have friends from all regions of APDA and so I can appreciate multiple perspectives on league issues. Equally important, when I commit to doing something, it gets done. I've run our High School Tournament and am currently the Vice President of our Urban Debate League. I am very good at organizing things and would be dedicated to fulfilling the responsibilities of Member. For example, the bylaws say the Members are responsible for taping outrounds; I would make sure this happened.

In addition, I have experience which makes me uniquely suited for the duties of coordinating the novice mentor and expansion programs. My only other extracurricular obligation is to the Urban Debate League, an organization which sends college students into local New Haven public schools to teach debate. I expanded the program to almost double the number of schools in the league, as well as helping to organize and guide coaching. Also, I've spent two summers teaching debate to high schoolers and have spent this year helping train the YDA novices. I would bring all of this experience, plus tons of energy, to all of the Member at Large projects.

I'm sure the most valuable thing I will take away from my experience on APDA is the friendships I've made and the good experiences I've had at tournaments. I want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to have a positive experience on the circuit. I hope you give me the opportunity to give back to the activity that has given me so much. Please email/IM me if you have thoughts / questions/ just want to lolz.

Thanks for your time,
Pam Brown
Yale 2011
email: pambrown11@gmail.com
AIM: inherentlyme89


Sean Robinson


How's your Spring Break APDA?

For those that don't know me, I'm Sean Robinson from the George Washington University, or 25 to my peers. You may have also heard something about Zombies and nuking NYU err...Manhattan.....I'm partially responsible for that gem of debate cases.

So there's a point to this, and I guess I should stick to it. If you've met me, you know that I'm easy going and am not the most competitively focused debater on the circuit. I enjoy the process of debate, learning from many of you about topics that I normally never get to engage with in my studies, and hope that, at the end of it all, I can greet you as friends once the debate is over. It is furthering this process that I want to do the most in my capacity as Member-At-Large. I truly believe that the different debate philosophies and styles held by our various Debate Societies/Organizations/Clubs make APDA unique from every other debate association across the globe. Our diversity forces us to be better debaters, to focus more not on mastering the style of debate, but on the argument itself. For this reason I'm firmly for giving each institution as much control in any question dealing with "debate rules" as possible.

The one issue outside of debate that our association needs to continue to push and strengthen is the EOF program. At GW 1, I had an equity complaint by a school I judged because they had thought I was too friendly to their opponents, despite the fact that I picked them up. But for a school that is new to APDA, it was absolutely vital for them to feel like the equity process would listen to them and treat them unbiasedly (which the wonderful EOF Facilitators did). Strengthening EOF isn't just about conduct in rounds or between individuals, but also about keeping APDA open for all newcomers, even if their school doesn't have a dino that was TOTY/SOTY a couple of years ago. You know, "equity." Thus, I look forward to working with the EOF officers, to listen to them in what they think worked, what didn't, and their collective opinions on the process. I'd like to try to organize these ideas in a type of "EOF Start-Up Kit" and allow it to grow each year. Better EOF Facilitators protects us, help retention by encouraging aspiring debaters, and are simply a good mission for APDA to take charge of as a whole.

As far as expansion is concerned, I know that on the West Coast, watching quality rounds was instrumental for smaller schools to learn and was popular. I approve of parlidebate.com, but think we need to get the cameras out to more tournaments, show more of the variety that APDA contains to entice those tired of rigid structure in CEDA & NPDA. I would promote this to next year's board and would volunteer myself to make this program something we can deliver to new schools.

In everything else, I'm willing to work with whatever board is elected. I'm an excellent team player and have no compunction about taking charge of projects that are assigned to me,or working with/under others to get something done. I look forward to seeing all of you throughout the year regardless of what happens at Princeton, but hope I can be your instrument next year.

Cheers, 25


Leah Storer


My name is Leah Storer, I'm from American University and I am happily announcing my candidacy for the position of Member-at-large. In my two years on the circuit, I have traveled both north and south with frequency. While my team has not always been financially capable of supporting my travels, the kindness of neighboring schools such as GW and William and Mary has allowed me and other members of my team to travel outside of our institutional means. Through these connections, I have developed some of my closest friends. It is this closeness and friendship on APDA that has functioned as the primary motivation for my run as member; I care very much about APDA, not just for the competition but because of the people on it.

While on APDA, I have retained several positions which make me particularly qualified for this position. I am currently both an E.O.F., a member of the Special Committee for Long Range Planning and the VP Operations for my own team. As an E.O.F., I have participated in Women's Forums, E.O.F. meetings and have actively sought to create a more comfortable environment for women and minorities on APDA through communications with tournament staff and offending persons. I care greatly about equality in the league as an E.O.F and former high school debate instructor for an all girls' camp and this is a sentiment I promise to carry with me should I be given the opportunity to become a member of the APDA board. As a member of the Special Committee for Long Range Planning, I have illustrated my genuine interest in APDA as a league and have worked closely with the other members of the committee to plan reforms and implement change; some of which you will hear presented at the APDA meeting before the election. While I cannot claim all of these ideas as my own, significant thought and input has been provided on my part in contributing to the overall creation of the proposals that will soon be shared with the rest of the league. Finally, as mentioned earlier, as Vice President of Operations on my own team, AU has seen a fast increase in novice recruitment, my primary responsibility. I am happy to be a part of strengthening my own team and am so proud of the achievements our novice class has made. In the time I have been a member of our debate society's e-board, we have had unprecedented success in almost every realm, both on campus and on the APDA circuit.

Beyond this experience, I believe I can provide positive change and innovation to the league. One of the issues I feel most passionately about is the lack of coherent procedure amongst various tournaments. When common practices like tab scratches are left so open to subjectivity and not objective standards, it leads to less fairness on the circuit. For this reason, I firmly believe that it is necessary to create standardized criteria for tab scratches. I have shared my ideas surrounding the harms of this variation with the Special Committee for Long Range Planning already and hope to make a unified rubric to evaluate justified tab scratches as soon as possible. Creating circuit-wide approved policies guarantees that tournaments, especially at small and new schools, can rely on concrete rather than subjective criteria.

Another issue that faces the league is having successful tab rooms. Often smaller, less connected schools are unable to procure the experienced help they need in order to run an effective tab room. I would suggest that a list be made of dinos willing to assist with tab rooms, organized by geographical location, made accessible to tournaments. Skidmore recently had to post on the forum for help and making this list would provide a more effective way of handling situations where help is needed. This list could be used not simply as a last resort but a first step in organizing a tournament. Establishing this connection by encouraging/helping schools to find experienced help is a very real way in which the APDA board can make competition more enjoyable for attendees and easier for the host school.

I care very deeply about this position and I believe the ideas and values I hold regarding the circuit will make me an ideal candidate. As such, if you have any further questions or concerns, I invite you to contact me personally or email me at leahstorer@gmail.com. I would be more than happy to respond. Thank you for your time in reading this and I hope to receive your vote.


Will Crocker


Greetings APDA, my name is Will Crocker and I'm running for Member at Large. When I began my APDA career, Northeastern University was in its first year of existence on the circuit and our team was very small. We didn't really know many people on the circuit but over the last 2 years, I have established some of the best friendships I will ever have. This is an activity I love, and I want to make sure that other people in the future will have the opportunity to enjoy it as much as I have.

Throughout my career, I've done everything I can to be as outgoing and approachable as possible at tournaments. This past year I assisted with the Novice Mentor program (which admittedly requires further expansion and organization), and offered advice and pointers on cases whenever possible. I currently serve as President of the Northeastern University Debate Team, and have seen it grow from the small program I described earlier into a sizable and stable APDA program. Furthermore, I've had the opportunity to attend tournaments in all three APDA regions (North, South, and West) which has allowed me to see issues from all sides. I think this is especially important as one region or another will always have their opinion on a given issue, but it is important to evaluate what is best for the league, rather than bending to partisan preference.

The league still faces many of the same problems we are all accustomed to hearing about such as equity, and novice retention. We have to continue to explore these issues through initiatives like the women's forum, as well as additional dino demo rounds. However, given my new school origins, one issue I understand especially well is expansion; which is central to the duties of a member at large. Over the last 12 months, we have made strides to improve and started several new programs such as RIC and UConn, to name a few. However, I think we can do better. Too often we as a league invite these schools to come out to tournaments then leave them to wallow in the down brackets without a lot of real instruction. If elected, I would make sure, in conjunction with the expansion committee, that we do more to reach out to these schools directly, through both live demo rounds and additional instructional material. Also, I recognize that as a new school it was very difficult to integrate into APDA culture to the point where we felt comfortable in trying to approach the board, or even talk about hosting a tournament. I would hope that new schools could use me as a point of reference, or at least someone they could trust to listen to their problems, knowing that I've dealt with many of them before.

If anyone has any questions about my candidacy, feel free to email me at crock99@gmail.com, IM me at will02123, call me @ 401-595-7599. I really do love this activity and want to make sure it continues to operate as smoothly as possible.

Thanks,
Will Crocker

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