Conferral Judging defeated, Break expanded

An Online Ballot concerning two motions on the introduction of Conferral Judging for a one-year trial period at WSDC 2017 in Bali, Indonesia, as well as expanding the break to 32 teams, has taken place between 16th and 19th April 2017.

Proposal A (Conferral Judging) can be viewed here.
Proposal B (Break Expansion) can be viewed here.

Mark Gabriel (Singapore), Chair of the WSDC Tournament Executive Committee, has released the results on 19th APR to the WSDC community.

It reads as follows:

“The online ballot of the World Schools Debating Championships Tournament Committee has now closed.

53 nations were eligible to vote in the ballot.

39 nations cast their votes. The 39 nations which voted were:  Argentina, Barbados, Bermuda, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States and Wales.

The results of the ballot were as follows –

Proposal A:  Conferral Judging for WSDC 2017  –  DEFEATED

     Votes in favour  –  16
     Votes against  –  21
     Abstentions  –  2

Therefore there will NOT be conferral judging at WSDC 2017. (Debates will be judged in the same way as they have a previous WSDCs.)

 

Proposal B:  Expansion of the break for WSDC 2017  –  PASSED
     Votes in favour  –  29
     Votes against  –  10

     Abstentions  –  0

Therefore the break at WSDC 2017 will be further expanded for a 1-year trial period.

The key things to note are:
     –  There will be a Partial Double Octo-Final round.
     –  The overall number of teams which break will be a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 32. All teams which win at least 5 preliminary round debates should break (unless more than 32 teams win at least 5 debates – which is unlikely).
     –  The number of teams participating in the Partial Double Octo-Final round will depend on the number of teams which break, but at least 16 teams will participate in the Partial Double Octo-Final round (and it’s at least theoretically possible that all 32 breaking teams could be involved in the Partial Double Octo-Final round if a very large number of teams win at least 5 debates).

     –  All of this is dependent on there being at least 48 teams competing in the championship. (If less than 48 teams participate, then there will be a 16-team break with no Partial Double Oct-Final round.)

Question 3

There was a 3rd question in the online ballot asking what delegates would like to do if Proposal B was not passed – but since Proposal B was passed, the responses to this 3rd question are now irrelevant. (Nevertheless if anyone is curious, there were 36 votes for the 24-team break option, 2 votes for the 16-team break option and 1 abstention.)

Mark Gabriel
Chair, WSDC Tournament Committee Executive”

 

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