 Amer
Ahmed, Stanford University
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 A lot
of people have told me I shouldn't wear scarves inside…
The
thought of writing a candidate statement chills me though, so I'm
wearing one right now!
It
seems that declarations of selfless dedication, promises of sweeping
reform, and suggestions of alleged priceless value precede every
APDA election. Obviously, as I did last year and always have since
my entry onto the circuit, I strongly support the numerous programs
that the Board is able to institute in an effort to increase novice-retention
and outreach among debaters. However, it would be dishonest for
me to claim that I have a master plan ready in the wings to revolutionize
the APDA world. As I have seen over the last few years, the Board
does not exist for the purpose of drafting new policies or resolutions
that can then be voted on. It plays a more passive role; guiding
discussion, absorbing suggestions, and dealing with contingencies
when and if they arise. The Board is composed of debaters with nothing
more than a fierce commitment to seeing the body flourish, and the
dedication to see this goal realized. I would rather see ideas offered
at general meetings and then discussed-much like the judging issue
this year-than hollow claims by people desiring election.
Much
as that previous paragraph would imply, my goal in writing this
piece is not to prove my qualifications for achieving beneficial
change on the circuit. Rather, it is to convince you that my personal
character is uniquely suited to working in a team, to listening
without prejudice, to accepting criticism, and-above all else-to
representing you faithfully no matter which debate society you hail
from. When I sat down to compose an evaluation of my candidacy for
the APDA Board last year, I laid out the reasons-both personal and
professional-why I felt that I would serve you well. I don't think
I've changed that much since then. It is difficult therefore to
describe these again without a hint of redundancy, but I'm going
to give it my best shot.
I think
that my continued presence on the circuit-despite being 3 time-zones
and a whole lot of schoolwork away-lays testament to my passion
for this activity. If there has been any opportunity to attend a
tournament and see people I truly consider friends, I have thrown
caution to the wind and leapt on a plane, be it finals week or Halloween.
Not only do I attend tournament as far North as Providence, I have
reportedly been spotted in the deep South at Hopkins and UVA! Moreover,
I think that I make myself extremely accessible when I do fly to
the East coast. To date, I have not missed a tournament party; in
fact, I usually convince my team to help the hosts clean up! I try
not to restrict within one group of people, and am always ready
to discuss issues ranging from the politics in Pakistan to Banana
Republic's new line. Indeed, if ever there were a problem that required
confidentiality or tact, I hope you would feel comfortable approaching
me at any time. Also, even prior to joining APDA, I have firmly
believed that debate should inherently be a supportive activity.
After rounds, I have always been ready to discuss speaking style
and argumentation with teams, giving tips where I think they may
help, and listening to criticism from the other side too.
Additionally,
as I stated last year, my hailing from a school so far away that
was considered small has provided me with a unique perspective on
debate. Of course, no one could label Stanford Debate a fledgling
society anymore, but that does not mean our team is free of issues
relating to number-crunches, and making financial ends meet. I would
be more than willing to talk to any school about their problems
as a small society with limited funds, and give them advice on how
to get their college's administration firmly on their side.
As
Captain of the Stanford Debate Society for the past year, and a
Member-at-Large on the Board, I believe I have gained two valuable
skills that would lend to my aptness for your vote. Firstly, I have
learned the red-tape ropes as it were. Having to coordinate 3 different
debate squads (yes, APDA is not the only circuit we participate
on!), deal with the fussy administration at our school, and organize
one of the largest High School Debate Tournaments in the country
(1200 kids), I have gained the savvy that any administrative official
should have. In a nutshell, I believe that-as Vice-President of
Operations-I could deal with any contingencies that may arise, and
organize any event I am asked to. Secondly, I believe I have gained
an insight into how the Board operates, what it represents, and
what its agenda is for the body as a whole. Those skills, combined
with other characteristics such as extensive Worlds experience and
connections with NPDA, convince me at least that I would represent
your interests faithfully.
So
can that silly Pakistani really live up to the task? Seeing that
I risk my life every weekend traveling sketchy airlines like American
Trans Air (don't ask), and suffer gobs of jetlag purely because
of APDA, I think I've shown you that my passion for this circuit
runs strong. But, as I've said before and will say again, the Board
should not exist to exert its will on the body-representation is
what its function is. I hope I've shown you that I possess the personal
fiber to help guide APDA in beneficial directions. Please contact
me if you have any questions at (650) 497-1450 or asahmed@stanford.edu.
I look
forward to serving you…together, I hope we can make APDA better
(and the APDA Board better-dressed) next year!
Sincerely,
Amer S. Ahmed
Candidate, VP-Ops |
Kevin
Cleveland, University of Maryland, College Park
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It
is my pleasure to announce my candidacy for Vice President of Operations.
I have enjoyed my time on APDA and hope that you’ll consider
giving me this chance to give back to the APDA community. Many of
you know me and I’m proud to call many of you my friends. I
try to be highly visible on the circuit and take the initiative
in meeting as many people as I can. After all if we’re going
to spend so much time together every year it only seems to make
sense that we all get to know each other a little. I believe that
this sort of accessibility combined with my qualifications and love
of debate (29 tournaments in my two years) makes me a good candidate
for the job.
In
my two years on the University of Maryland team I have served as
team treasurer and am the current team president. While on the team
our active membership has nearly doubled. Our novice class this
year has had a 75% retention rate from the beginning of the year
and new members are still joining the team. The current novice class
of our team is three times bigger than the one that we had last
year. I think that getting and keeping novices might be much easier
than we make it out to be on APDA. On our team we
welcome them and encourage them to immediately start participating
in our practice rounds. This immediate training with veterans has
produced not only some very talented novice classes but has also
allowed them to feel that they are part of the team. Since the best
training really does seem to be in actually debating we also encourage
them to go to as many tournaments as possible. I realize that this
idea sounds like a strain on many teams’ budgets. I realize
this because this year our SGA gave us about one third the money
that we needed to feasibly go to the amount of tournaments that
we wanted to this year. During my time as president and treasurer
my team has begun to undertake measures to drastically increase
our budget and
consequently send more teams to tournaments. We’re currently
seeking corporate sponsorship for our tournaments as well as seeking
private donations for our team. Through these sorts of measures
our team budget has been steadily increasing though like many small
teams on APDA we also rely heavily on our tournament to provide
us with enough money to keep us debating all year long.
It
seems to me that all the member schools might actually be the best
solution for many of the problems that we always talk about as being
problems for APDA. Take my previous example of novice retention
and how retaining novices is largely dependent on their feeling
comfortable with their own team and feeling prepared to compete
on APDA. I think that increasing the numbers of women on APDA starts
with schools making sure that they create a comfortable on their
own teams and then we as a circuit need
to make sure that we treat women fairly in not only the way that
we score and decide rounds but also in the way we treat women outside
of rounds. It is unacceptable for women to be treated as anything
but equals on the circuit. In terms of expansion I think that individual
schools also make this much easier. Lots of people have friends
that would consider starting teams at schools not yet on APDA. We
should form close school connections using these personal connections
in order to draw new schools in and provide them with a sort of
mentor school at the same time.
Ladies
and Gentlemen, the University of Maryland is a growing team in size
and accomplishments. I understand what smaller schools with financial
problems are going through. My team has been there and in some respects
still is. I understand problems with recruitment and retention.
Yet Maryland is reaching new levels every semester now in these
categories. We can solve many of APDA’s problems by micro-managing
things with our own teams. I would be proud to serve this body,
that I have devoted so much of my time and energy to, as next year’s
Vice President of Operations. Please give me the chance; I will
not let you down. If you have any questions that I have not answered
or would just like to let me know your thoughts on what I have to
say please feel free to email. I’ll see you all at a tournament
soon.
Sincerely,
Kevin Cleveland |
Andrew
Grossman, Cornell University
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Hello.
For those of you who don't know me and my intentions, my name is
Andrew Grossman and I am running for VP-Operations for the APDA
board. I tried to keep this statement as brief as possible. I hope
many of you wind up actually reading it and considering it.
Next
year (God and Cornell willing) I will be a senior at Cornell. I
have been the most active member of the Cornell team since I was
a freshman. As a freshman I would routinely walk two miles to the
car rental agency to rent a car for the weekend's travel. And I
was the only member of the Cornell team to attend many tournaments
that year (we had a total of eight members on the team that year).
I debated my sophomore year and then took a year off of debate and
school for health reasons. Last year, while I was on leave, I am
told the Cornell team went to a total of three tournaments. Upon
my return to school and debate I became the president of the Cornell
Debate Association and we now have a contingent going to a tournament
virtually every weekend. We have eighteen active members and we
typically send four teams to a tournament. I maintain that this
dramatic increase in APDA participation is not merely correlated
with my stint as President, but actually a result. The truth is,
I am obscenely dedicated to debate and APDA. As president of the
Cornell Debate Association, I have done everything imaginable to
retain novices and motivate people to go to tournaments. While the
duties of VP-Operations are obviously different from my current
duties, the one thing everyone can be sure of is that I will be
astoundingly dedicated and work as hard as possible to serve and
better APDA.
My
background and passion out of the way, I think there are other legitimate
reasons that you may want to consider me for the position of VP-Operations.
First, accessibility. When I was a freshman there was a large geographic
split on APDA between the North and South. This split has been greatly
diminished over the past few years, but around this time of the
year, people start talking about it anyway. To that end, Ithaca
is located in the middle of nowhere, but it is also located in the
middle of the APDA map. Washington, DC is about fifteen miles farther
from us than Boston (and when you are traveling nearly four hundred
miles, the extra fifteen just doesn't matter). Because of this I
go to many Northern and to many Southern tournaments. Frankly, even
if I wasn't centrally located I think I would still split my weekends
because I actually like people in all regions of APDA. But, on this
subject, a necessary by-product of my geography is that I would
be very accessible to all members of the APDA community. If I didn't
go to the northern tournament one weekend, I would likely be there
the following weekend. I debate just about every weekend, so anyone
who would want to speak to me in person would have ample opportunity.
While I may be known to some as the neurotic guy who anxiously paces
and chain smokes, I also believe that I am very approachable and
I can guarantee that I will make myself available to anyone who
wants to discuss anything - APDA or otherwise. Honestly, I think
I do this now, and I'll be quite approachable regardless of whether
you elect me; but you can trust that I will always give you my ear.
In fact, I will actively engage people who I do not know in conversation
to get a feel for what they think the APDA board and APDA body ought
to be doing.
The
second reason, other than passion, that I think you ought to consider
voting for me is that I am quite sympathetic to the needs of a 'typical'
APDA school. The Cornell team is not a powerhouse, but we do actually
show up, bring multiple teams, and win rounds. We don't get an amazing
amount of money, but we get enough to almost sorta get by. Given
that I am the President of the team, I understand how recruiting
and retention for an under-funded, non-established, APDA school
can be a problem. But I also, from experience, can offer a somewhat
unique perspective on how to solve problems like these, as these
are actually problems that I've made significant headway on at Cornell.
Normally
a candidate statement includes some grand vision of APDA and ten
laws that we could introduce that would make APDA a much better
place. My grand vision of APDA is simply that it ought to be an
organization of friends who enjoy debating one another. To that
end, I think the only purpose of the APDA board is to facilitate
this vision. I'm not going to list every opinion I have because
I just haven't formed all of them yet, and I don't know what issues
are going to be contentious next year. That being said, I want to
make a brief quasi-ideological comment about my view of the APDA
board. Irrespective of whether I am elected, it will be my stance
that the board, and the APDA body, should be as non-intrusive as
reasonably possible. Just to give you an idea what I mean by this:
I think all of the discussion we had at Yale about the lack of qualified
judges was great and helpful. I definitely think it is part of the
board's role to facilitate such a discussion. However, unless I
am forgetting about a proposed amendment, I would have voted against
every single possible resolution mentioned at the meeting because
I, ultimately, believe that the question of qualified judging should
be left to the host school and its participants. I applaud UMBC
for instituting the (n-1)/2 rule, but I would never vote to have
such a rule mandated on APDA. I hope that everyone who qualifies
for Nationals judges at least three tournaments per year, but I
would never make attending Nationals contingent upon something other
than debate.
Clearly
there are things which the APDA body (or board in some very limited
cases) ought to intrude upon. The most obvious example of this would
be tournament scheduling. But, to the extent that we are discussing
issues of preference or values, I will voice my opposition loudly,
no matter which seat I'm sitting in. I will voice my position loudly
because I care about APDA. I love APDA, I promise I will devote
myself to it if you allow me. |
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