“The Literary & Debating Society of MSRIT hosted the Dr. MSR Memorial Parliamentary Debate between the 25th and 27th of April 2009”, reads the event report that I am compiling, largely for lack of anything better to do. For those of you that are currently unaware of that fact, I’m a part of the Literary & Debating Society. No, really, they think I can be useful. They sent me to this really cool third-world country and all, last year. Enough about that for now; let’s talk about the tournament. Bando, Nanda and Kalrav won it, FYI.
I, for one, learnt a lot of fairly interesting things from the tournament. These include:
1) Never Trust MS Excel completely: It gets its calculations alright, but sometimes, when you don’t have enough RAM to sort successively by four parameters, it’ll do the first two, and then just do an A-Z sort. So check and recheck. Had it not been for Eashan (May The Force Be With You), we’d have run a tournament with a faulty tab system. I’m not tabbing next year. That, however, is a bridge we will cross only when we come to it.
2) Shah is WAY cool: For starters, he knows how MPJ works. He can also make zero-matter speeches, and still keep crowds entertained (refer Masters’ Debate). Also, the thing he did in the semi-finals, where he got both teams to thank the runner, was just hot.
3) Agarwal’s Chairing Style is Entertaining: This one’s either an Oxford hangover, or just his love for PD oozing out of all his pores. But it’s great fun to watch how he goes around systematically thanking and inviting speakers. Some people love his feedback, some others (like in Rd4), don’t. The nice part is that he just says what he wants to, irrespective.
4) The DebSoc can host tournaments: Here’s where I’d miserably underestimated myself, and thoroughly misestimated most people in the Soc. I was terribly sceptical about whether at all we could pull this one off. I didn’t trust our abilities. What I learnt though, is that when people come together, everyone works, someone or the other covers up for the ones that don’t, and you always have someone to back you up, when you screw up, even, if nothing else, to simply palliate. Kudos, specially, to all the Freshmen who came in as logistics staff. We haven’t had a SINGLE complaint about runners. That, in itself, methinks, is fairly commendable.
5) UT was a good choice for DCA: She can run tabs, allocate judges, adjudicate debates, and pick the coolest motions, all with a bandaged-foot. Also, having done this a couple of times before, she’s quick on damage-control. :D
Her and I had this conversation about how the MSRIT DebSoc lacks quality adjudicators and she suggested a couple of things that we could perhaps do to increase the quality, and not just quantity of our pool. Heela, DN and Assi were the only MSR adjudicators that were eligible to break, and as far as I can see, none of ‘em is going to shift to adjudication. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t mean to sound high-handed, but the point is, there is an element of pressure on me to perform as an adjudicator, because the pool is lacking in some sense. We have good judges; they get their decisions right, but their feedback just doesn’t match-up at tournaments. (@Shah/Agarwal/Ravi: Any brainwaves?)
6) I need a break from judging NLS matches: This one goes back to the Asians semi-finals. I’ve judged far too many NLS-NLS matches for my own good. I must concede, thought, that the third round NLS1-NLS2 match was amongst the closest I’ve seen. Ranks second only to that Wadhwa/Baba (NLS!) vs. LUMS match at the Asians. What I really want to do, is to judge teams that I’ve never heard of before. Any charities that you know of that may be willing to get me tickets to Gaborone? One is considering a three-month sabbatical from adjudicating, so if there’s an inexpensive tournament in that period, I’m going to make an utter fool of myself, and my hapless, unfortunate team-mates, by speaking.
Alright. ‘nuff said. I had fun at the tournament, and I’m happy we chose to host it. A successful project, not without it’s fair share of setbacks, but successful nonetheless. I’ve just about started looking forward to next year’s MSR Memorial Debate. See you there.
