IUB Open Kick Off PDF Print E-mail
By Axel Domeyer   
Friday, 11 February 2005
The first debating tournament of IUB will start tonight at 19:00 with the opening ceremonies in the cinema. This marks the end of five months of intensive preparations by the IUB Debating Society. At the organizers final meeting on Thursday, tournament convenor Bastian Laubner reminded his team: " In the end we'll be judged on the debates, the impression the debaters get of our campus, and of course the parties." Competitive debating is an anglo-saxon tradition, which more recently has also reached continental Europe. In Germany, tournaments in both the German and English languages have become increasingly popular in the last years. The most important tournaments on the national calendar are sponsored by the newspaper 'Die ZEIT". "It is both an honor and an obligation," said Bastian on the fact that the IUB Open is part of the tournament series supported by the prestigious weekly.

The debates at the IUB Open will follow the rules of the traditional British Parliamentary Style. Four teams of two debaters each will compete for the best arguments pro and contra the 'motion' defended by the two government teams. The topic range extends from political themes to more philosophical and humoristic ones, whereby the challenge is that there are only 15 minutes to prepare after the motion has been announced. In the end, the decision about who wins the verbal battle lies with a panel of adjudicators, who judge the debaters on arguments, structure, and style of their seven-minute speeches.

The participants of the IUB Open await a tight schedule. Still in the evening today the competition will start off with the first preliminary debate round. On Saturday, four further debates are scheduled, after which it will be clear which teams advance to the semi-finals on Sunday morning in the Campus Center. On Sunday afternoon the tournament reaches its climax with the Grand Final, which will take place in the Buergerschaft (Bremen's state parliament) in downtown Bremen. The keynote speech of this event will be delivered by future IUB President Joachim Treusch. Honorary guests include Bremen's Mayor Henning Scherf and Vice-President of the Buergerschaft, Karin Mathes.

Beside the debates there will also be an elaborate social program. After a pub-crawl in downtown Bremen on Friday and a city tour on Saturday afternoon, the participants will be introduced to the IUB style of partying on Saturday night. Sebastian Hirsch, the IUB Open social events manager, bursted: "The Valentine's Day Party will be one of the few that we'll remember in years still."

In order to make this happen, the Debating Society has joined teams with Krupp College and student bar The OtherSide. Free cocktails will be provided from 10 to 11 pm, and the party goers may look forward to a lot of Valentine's specials, including a brief live performance by 'Nighttrain to Jazzville' (Anastasia Abramova/ Serkan Kulaksisz).

Event overview: Opening ceremonies (Friday 7pm/ Cinema), Preliminary Rounds (Friday 8pm, Saturday 9 am, 11 am, 5:30 pm, 8pm/
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