Debating Society Wins Team and Individual Awards at National Competition

The Duquesne Debating Society has continued its streak of success at the national level by winning four awards and seeing one team member named to the All-American Debate Team at the 2016 National Education Debate Association’s (NEDA) National Championship held earlier this month in Fullerton, Calif.

Sophomore Mary Halyama, freshman Noah Martens, freshman Chloe Mortenson, senior Janae Stacier and freshman Edward Stumm represented Duquesne at the competition. Stacier and Halyama and Martens and Mortenson each competed as respective two-person teams in the Open Policy Division. Stumm competed as an individual—also called competing as a maverick—in the Open Crossfire Division, which is an abbreviated version of the one-hour-plus Open Policy rounds.

Duquesne’s final results from the NEDA championship included:

• Stacier and Halyama won second place in the Open Policy division.
• Stacier won first place and Halyama won third place for their individual performances in the Open Policy division.
• The five University students won third place overall in the Team Sweepstakes competition in which they competed together.
• Stacier was named to the 2016 NEDA All-American Debate Team in recognition of her competitive results and leadership over the entire course of her debate career.

Martens and Mortenson narrowly missed the semi-finals, and Stumm was a semi-finalist in his division.

The topic for this year’s NEDA tournament was “The United States federal government should significantly raise the minimum wage.” Participants competed in six preliminary rounds of competition during which they had to argue both for and against the topic, which meant they had to switch tactics and arguments from one round to the next. The top teams after the preliminary rounds then competed to determine tournament champions in each division.

“Our students performed very well at NEDA nationals this year,” said Dr. John Rief, visiting professor in the communication and rhetorical studies department and coach of the Debate Society. “They demonstrated that practice and collaboration can take you to the highest levels of competition.”

In 2015, Duquesne had the top speaker in the Crossfire division, and in 2014, Duquesne won the national championship in the Open Policy division.