Saturday, March 28, 2009

Princeton Tournament & APDA Elections

This past weekend was Princeton and APDA Elections.

The tournament was a lot of fun. We got to travel with the lovely Stanford boys. Rich Boltizar was nice enough to pick us (Gareth, Jayme and myself) Friday morning in his minivan. We chilled for a little while, in my room, then headed to Newark Airport to pick up Anish and the rest of the Stanford Team. When we got there, it turned out that one of the kids had poison oak... which was contagious.

We then dropped the boys off at the hotel, and Rich then dropped us off at the tournament. We got there super early, around 3-ish? in fact we were the first people there! Crazy huh?

This weekend I debated w/ Gareth, who was surprisingly quite calm this weekend. The tournament was loose linked (Dan Rauch had come up with the links)

As round 1 was about to be released, my new expansion school UAlbany came!!! Crystal, who I had been emailing, and I sorta gave each other that "are you her..." look and sure enough we were right! The UAlbany kids were super nice, and very willing to learn. I took them around to meet everyone, which they seemed to enjoy.

Round 1
We hit Jake (Campbell) and his partner Evelyn, with Dan Rauch as our judge
THW ban the bomb (we would ban cluster emissions)
This round was a lot of fun, Jake and I had talked a lot over the week, and it was nice to finally debate him. UAlbany watched our round, and really liked it - I even got to teach them how to flow before the round.

In round 2, we hit a MIT/Brown(Josh Lo's hybrid from NYU) hybrid
Over turn the courts decision in the 2000 election between Gore and Bush
This round was pretty awful as it was so unclear and just boring

In Round 3, we hit Jordan (from NYU) and his partner w/ Jason Herron as our judge
Beauty - allow graffitti in designated public places
This round was fun, Jordan and his partner were really good, and it was awesome having Jason as our judge. This was his 2nd time judging me at the tournament (he had judged me and frank my freshman year)

Round 4
We hit MIT Novices w/ "Marty" as our judge (apparently he was TD of the Princeton Tournmaent last year)
THB that we should save the schools - abolish no child left behind
Meh, that's all I'll say about the round

Round 5
We hit Jim and Tyger (who apparently likes to be called Tuff) from WP w/ Treavor Gleason as our judge
Get rid of indefinite detention
This round was really fun, I got to debate with some of my really good friends on the circuit. I had never hit a WP team, so that was cool. The case was stereotypical WP, but it was a good round, but I guess Treavor didn't think so - he was falling asleep in the round.

In between rounds, I got to see and hang out w/ everyone. This is one of the few tournaments that everyone goes to, because APDA weekends were this weekend.

Elections
Elections went on til 5AM!!! How? No idea, we startd at 1:30 ish, however VP Operations was unopposed, and no Member speeches/questions were given/asked (which annoyed me since I had been freaking out about my speech all night and had spent a lot of time on it).

The first election was for president between Adam, Sam and Cyrus. Cyrus was very ill with Mono, it was hard core as he was in the hospital and on mandatory bed rest. Goldstein had surprisngly won... Sam had won the house, however Goldstein had all of the proxy votes, thus outnumbering the in house votes, winning presidency.

Next was VP Ops, in which Alex Taubes was unopposed, remained unopposed and won the position.

VP Finance was up next, it was a race between Sam who had dropped down, Zayn, Rich, and Ali. This was an interesting race. Sam won this position.

Next was the Member race, it was me against Will, Pam, Leah, 25, Rich, Ali, and Cyrus. All of the candidates had agreed not to give speeches, so not wanting to be "that girl" had to comply, which I think hurt my chances.

Unfortunately I did not win. :( However my team was there to support me, dinos included, which really meant a lot to me (unlike the WP boys... cough cough). Not to mention that I had WP's full support. Ben said if I had a shirt he would wear it, and Lupo said he would only go to elections to vote for me! :) Unfortunately Adam was being mean and wouldn't let them vote. They had paid on Friday, they just did not email him in time, so they couldnt vote; meanwhile other teams who had emailed him by Thursday and paid on Friday could vote.... not fair.

The next day everyone was exhausted to say the least. I got to hang out w/ Jason Herron, and he claimed that he was really mean, which is a complete LIE. I also got to hang out w/ my favorite boys on the cirucit. They were mean to me on Friday for some weird reason, but it was all resolved when we chilled.

More of UAlbany came on Saturday, the rest of them were super nice.

Funny story: This was a conversation between me and Sarah Hom, yes I was lucky enough to see Sarah, when she had saw my team.

Sarah: "you have some really good looking boys on your team, you should date one of them"
Me (shocked): "WHAT?!? who?"
Sarah points at the UAlbany Team - LOL
As soon as breaks were annonced, I bounced outta there w/ JH, Boma, Sean and Rudy, and picked up Shinjini (one of Stanford's novices). And later picked up Liz Holmes and Treavor Gleason. I just wantd to get outta there ASAP.

That essentially wraps up the whole tournament.

No comments: