Written by Huyen Nguyen
After a month of relaxing holiday and getting started again with debating for 2018, last week Monday in the port city of Rotterdam, Dutch Debating League 3rd edition is back in full motion, this time under the CA-ship of the talented rising stars of EDS & Leiden – Fenna ten Haaf and David Metz! Participating on behalf of the societies this time are:
Leiden Debating Union: Floris Holstege & Roel Becker
Utrecht Debating Society: Jelte Schievels & Alex Klein
ASDV Bonaparte: Marike Breed & Zeno Glastra van Loon
Erasmus Debating Society: Jeroen Heun & Lucien de Bruin
NSDV Trivium: Daan Welling & Daan Spackler
TU Delft Debating Club: Sacheendra Talluri & Cian Jansen
TDV Cicero: Roel Schoenmakers & Lotte Claassen
GDS unfortunately could not send any team this time.
Once again, almost all societies are represented by different debaters compared to last time, yet massively gender imbalanced (missing the mighty Groningen team is in fact a huge contributory factor – sad reacts only to our northernmost society, you were dearly missed). This time, many societies up the gear by bringing in many new “dinosaurs”, so we expect nothing less than a heatedly gezellig night ahead – and indeed it was!
Starting first with our host society EDS, the “dinosaur” duo: Jeroen Heun & Lucien de Bruin! Jeroen Heun, an EDS debate giant, has won 12 prestigious competitions and was voted as the best ESL speaker in EUDC 2010, is currently a trainer and coach in the field of effective and convincing communication. As a trainer, he helped many municipalities improve the council debate and as a coach he helped many professionals in the preparation of important presentations. Lucien de Bruin, another name in the EDS hall of fame, is also no stranger name the Dutch debating community, who has won multiple prestigious competitions during his active debate time, and most recently, was a trainer in the DAPDI 2017. Their well-reasoned and hilarious cases did not show any rust in their lack of debate practices together, putting EDS only one team point behind Trivium and even one speaker point ahead of the UDS – well on spot for the next race!
Moving on to the neighboring little town of Delft, we have the new faces: Sacheenra Talluri & Cian Jansen! Sacheen is currently the treasurer of TUDDC, while Cian has just started debating a little while ago – and already showed lots of commitment and talent in this gruesome debate game – so much so that he is the co-convenor of our upcoming 2nd Delft Open in late May 2018! Fons stepped down to cheer the team this time, though unfortunately, facing the incredibly tough giants from other societies, they did not manage to boost TUDDC standing in the league. But they very much appreciated the learning experience from facing more experienced speakers and the valuable feedback from the judges!
UDS in this 3rd edition also brought back one of its very own giant – Alex Klein, fighting side by side with Jelte Schievels, 720 chief-editor and DDL tabmaster! They proved to be a very successful duo, breaking the ‘always-finishing-second-curse’ of UDS, by winning a debate and climbing up to the second spot in the league.
LDU this time brought to us, none other their very own Leiden A team of EUDC 2017 – Floris Holstege & Roel Becker. You shall need no further introduction about who these duo are – the best & 5th best ESL speaker of EUDC 2017, and in short, the pride ( and to some extent, thorn) in the eyes of the Dutch Debating Community! They did not disappoint us with compacted speeches, convincing cases with here-and-there distorted historical facts – aptly pointed out by Lucien from EDS in the Dutch demilitarization debate, and maintaining the Lion’s Den top-of-the tab-position as usual.
The one and only LDU-nemesis Bonaparte is represented, once again, Marike Breed and Zeno Glastra van Loon. Sadly, this night LDU had an upper hand against Bona (yet again), and Bona took a tiny dive to the 4th place on the League. Could this have to do with the missing entourage of supporters and the Bona song this time? Let us hope that the meme-and-confession archrival between Bona and LDU fire up the Bona debaters next time!
NSDV Trivium is proudly represented by the DoubleD – Daan Duo: the more than well-known Daan Welling and 720 very own enthusiastic reporter “vegan self-aware privilege boy”(as he noted himself from Ike) – Daan Spackler. This time, Trivium is well on their path to beating “the Lion’s den” this time – as Daan puts it in his last article, the Daan Duo has improved their standing to the 3rd place on the League! Way to go and close the gap Trivium!
And our very last team of the night, TDV Cicero, is represented by Roel Schoenmakers and Lotte Claassen. After his tropical exchange retreat in Hong Kong, where he also got to the semi-final of the Hong Kong Open 2017, Roel is back, better trained and rested than ever, to join forces with Lotte, the Oxford Women’s finalist, at this 3rd edition! After putting up a great fight this time, unfortunately they have not managed to push Cicero very much up the tab, ending at 3rd place from the bottom up for now. But no spirit dulled ever at Cicero, that determinism will definitely get them up in the upcoming battles!
Finally, here are the motions and team allocations for Round 5 and Round 6 of DDL # 3:
R5: THR the demilitarization of the Netherlands after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
OG: Delft, OO: UDS, CG: Trivium, CO: Cicero
OG: LDU, OO, Swing, CG: EDS, CO: Bonaparte
R6: THBT governments should dedicate significant amounts of resources to reducing the risk of total human extinction (even if this goes against the wish of the electorate).
OG: Cicero, OO: Trivium, CG: LDU, CO: Bonaparte
OG: Swing, OO: Delft, CG: UDS, CO: EDS
After two rounds of combat in this 3rd edition, here are the most up-to-date cumulative team points for all societies:
| Society | Cumulative team points |
| LDU | 21 |
| UDS | 19 |
| Trivium | 18 |
| EDS | 17 |
| Bonaparte | 16 |
| TDV Cicero | 12 |
| TUDCC | 8 |
| GDS | 6 |
Till the next edition, in the beautiful city of Utrecht on Wednesday 21st of February – be there or be square!
De Nederlandse Debatbond (NDB) stelt zich als doel het wedstrijddebat te bevorderen en ondersteunen in Nederland. Als nationaal overkoepelend orgaan vertegenwoordigt de NDB ongeveer 1.000 leden waarvan de meesten lid zijn van één van de debatverenigingen die Nederland rijk is.
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