Preview of Dutch Debating League #1: Delft!

doorHoofdredacteur Seventwenty

Preview of Dutch Debating League #1: Delft!

Geschreven door: Jos Buijvoets

The first matchday of the Dutch Debating League will take place today! In this preview you’ll find all the predictions, statistics and analysis you need to get warmed up for this exciting day!

Participating on behalf of the societies will be:
Utrecht: Florine Rombach & Pieter van der Veere
Cicero: Lotte Claassen & Jos Buijvoets
Bonaparte: Zeno Glastra van Loon & Lana Moss
Delft: Fons van der Beek & Tanya Srivastava
Groningen: Joris Graff & Bjorn Bleumink
Erasmus: Jelle van Eijk & Joeri Willems
Trivium: Simone Landman & Ellen Goltstein
Leiden: Roel Becker & Gigi Gil

With close to perfect gender balance, these teams represent the best the Dutch debating scene has to offer. We’ll look at each of the teams and what they bring to the table. First however we would like to present to you the consensus predictions of the Dutch Debating Society as voted on by its members.

1. Leiden
2. Bonaparte
3. Erasmus
4. Utrecht
5. Trivium
6. Cicero
7. Delft
8. Groningen

Note that Erasmus and Utrecht tied in these predictions, and therefore we gave the win to Erasmus for [reasons], which seemed the fairest solution.

Now on to the teams!

Representing Utrecht will be Florine and Pieter. Florine is known for advocating on behalf of her actual debating society, UCU, to be part of the Dutch Debating League. She has taken up quite the cause as within the current set of rules this not only does this require the elimination of one of the participating societies, but also for UCU to be given preference over (potential) members of the debating union such as Eindhoven, Maastricht and Wageningen. Pieter is known for being one of the best debaters of the Netherlands, breaking at a number of tournaments and doing really well at both EUDC 2016 and 2017, coming close to an ESL break twice. He’s also studying to be a doctor!

Representing organizational heavyweight Cicero will be Lotte and Jos, Cicero A. Lotte is an Oxford Women’s finalist, the Tilburg University campus poet and will be going to exchange on Japan in a few months, and you will be missed! She is also the Convenor of Cicero 2017, the most enjoyable debating tournament of The Netherlands. Jos is the founder of a bunch of stuff, we don’t really know what he does all day; and he also a number of speaker and judge breaks at debate tournaments, good for you Jos! He will be a CA at Maastricht Novice 2017, which you should attend.

Representing Bonaparte will be DAPDI 2017 champions, Bonaparte B: Zeno & Lana. Zeno is known for having a bunch of novice breaks and pursues two degrees, one of which is biology, I think? Lana is the chairwoman of Bonaparte and tasked with challenges such as managing Axel, Tom and Josse. You people know what I’m talking about. Sorry for including you Tom. The pressure is on for these two as they are considered the 2nd strongest team present by the Dutch Debating Community!

Home team Delft will be represented by Fons and Tanya. Fons is of course known as the founder of Delft and will have the audience rooting for him. He is also an aerospace engineer, making Pieter feel what other people feel when he tells them he’s going to be a doctor. Tanya is the only non-Dutch person participating, which now becomes awkward as it is pointed out explicitly. She is one of the key people behind Delft and would have showed some remarkable skill at EUDC 2017, if she had actually made the tournament.

Groningen will be represented by Joris and Bjorn. Joris is a philosopher, ranks 93th on the Dutch debating rankings and is as a board member one of the pillars of the Groningen Debating Society. Bjorn studies public administration and uses his debating skills for the greater good, teaching children on behalf of the organization known as Socrates. He is from Winterswijk which is officially the coldest place in The Netherlands, so expect him to bring the heat.

Erasmus will be represented by Jelle and Joeri. Jelle is known for his organizational contributions to debating such as being DAPDI convenor or a Dutch Worlds org com member. His self-professed biggest accomplishment in debating is beating Jos at tournaments! He also has some speaker breaks. Joeri is known for having a number of speaker breaks, reaching the finals of Bonaparte 2017. He also has a bunch of pets and there was a fire in his building recently. Hopefully the pets are alright!

Trivium will be sending Simone and Ellen. Simone is known for breaking at a bunch of tournaments as both speaker and judge. She was a judge at EUDC 2017 and an org com member at WUDC 2017. Ellen is a Trivium board member and known for getting tagged in memes a lot.

Gigi and Roel will be representing Leiden, the society that will shame them for not winning every round. Gigi broke open at WUDC 2017, is Dutch national debating champion and a EUDC 2018 CA, so she’s pretty good. Roel was 2nd best ESL speaker at EUDC 2015 and reached the open quarter-finals of EUDC 2017, using an extension he stole from Cicero A. He has retired multiple times from debating, but still shows up for this, what a character!

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