World Universities Debating Championship in Spanish
This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. (January 2014) |
The World Universities Debating Championship in Spanish or Campeonato Mundial Universitario de Debate en Español (CMUDE) is the world's largest debating tournament in Spanish.
It is a parliamentary debating event, held using the British Parliamentary Debate format. The tournament the winners of the open competition are acknowledged as the "World Champions" of debating in Spanish.
The last tournament was held at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the next edition will be hosted by the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Campus Estado de México) in Estado de México and Mexico City from July 26th to August 4th, 2014. Some of the innovations include a Nation's World Cup (mostly for judges or any participant of the tournament), an "Español como Segunda Lengua" (Spanish As Second Language) competition and two days of workshop geared towards the debaters but also for community service and outreach in Mexican communities. It may be the only debate tournament with that type of social impact as part of the agenda of the tournament.[1]
Format
The Championship is held in the Northern Hemisphere summer.
The competition involves nine preliminary rounds, which become power-paired as the tournament progresses, matching the strongest-performing teams against each other. Two teams form the government (proposition in the UK and North America) and two the opposition in each debate room. The process of scoring and pairing these teams is known as tabbing. The scoring of teams is done by judges, most of whom are students or former students from the competing institutions, who return ballots with their scores to the adjudication team, led by a Chief Adjudicator who is assisted by one or more deputies.
The nine preliminary rounds are followed by a break at which the teams proceeding to elimination rounds are announced. In the current tournament format, 16 teams proceed to the quarter-finals, with the best 2 from each debate qualifying for the semi-finals, and the best 2 of each semi-final subsequently proceed to the Grand Final.
In addition, a public speaking competition is also open to all participants in CMUDE.
World Universities Debating Championships in Spanish
Past Champions and Hosts
Best Speakers
Year | Hosts | Best Speaker | Runner-Up | Third place |
---|---|---|---|---|
2013[5] | Spain Universidad Complutense Madrid | Venezuela Universidad Central de Venezuela María Gabriela Vicent Allende | Spain Universidad de Extremadura
Carlos Seseńa Vaquero |
Chile Universidad Andrés Bello Ricardo Gómez |
2012[6] | Chile Universidad Andrés Bello Santiago | Chile Universidad de Chile Santiago
Daniel Iribarren Abarca |
Venezuela Universidad Central de Venezuela
Rita Sleiman |
Chile Universidad de Chile Santiago
Nicolás Palma |
2011[7] | Venezuela Universidad Central de Venezuela Caracas | Spain Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Camila Salazar-Simpson |
Chile Universidad Andrés Bello
Nicole Hansen Mexico ITESM Campus Estado de México David Alatorre López |
None |
Performance by country
Country | Wins | Finalists | Semifinalists | Quarter Finalists | Best Ever Ranked Team | Best Ever Ranked Speaker |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chile | 2 | 2 | 4 | 9 | 1st | 1st |
Venezuela | 1 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 1st | 1st |
Mexico | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2nd | 2nd |
Spain | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2nd | 1st |
Colombia | 0 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 2nd | 5th |
Peru | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9th | 13th |
United States | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26th | 38th |
Argentina | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28th | 26th |
Guatemala | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44th | 108th |
Polemics
The first critic of past tournament targeted the motions. Many debaters alleged that some motions were ridicule and hard to debate without tautological definitions.
During the tournament many observers and teams suspected that the local teams from Universidad Andrés Bello already knew the motions since their arguments had specific information and facts for special cases impossible to know under a 15 minute preparation without the chance to use devices. As well, in the final round many people said the motion wasn't good as a thesis for the great final, nevertheless, all teams from the hosting university, separately, gave the same approach on how they would have addressed the motion and define the concepts of the thesis given.
As well, there were some discrepancies between the rulings and the actions of certain judges, especially regarding the participation of swing teams in the absence of any team, where the judges applied different criteria in different cases, which represented an injustice to certain universities, considered those cases by the organizers as "the margin of error". In addition to these reviews, there was controversy over cases not covered in the rules, justified as positivised in the operating rules and procedures by the organizers, which later turned out not to be specified in the regulations manual.
See also
- World Universities Debating Championship
- European Universities Debating Championship
- North American Debating Championship
- Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships