US Universities Debating Championship

The US Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) is the largest British Parliamentary debating tournament in the United States, and one of the largest debate tournaments in the world. The event is held for college and university students attending school in the United States, and is hosted by a different university each year. The host is selected by the member schools of the US Universities Debate Association. The event determines the National Champions for the year.^[1]

Most recently the tournament was hosted by Hobart and William Smith Colleges in October 2023. The current National Champions are Xiao-ke Lu and Jacquelynn Lin from Princeton University. The Novice (first year) division was won by Cayden Pocrass and Ellena Kim from the University of California, Los Angeles. ^[2]

USUDC is held in a format based on the World Universities Debating Championship. The tournament is held in April, before most American colleges hold their final exams. In recent years about 180 teams have competed at the tournament.^[1] Since 2015, only students registered at an American college or university may compete in playoff rounds and be made National Champion, but students from foreign schools can still compete. Before 2015, foreign schools were allowed to compete in playoffs, resulting in a 2012 championship where separate tournament champions and national champions were crowned.

Each team consists of two students from the same college or university. In a given debate they will compete against three other teams simultaneously. A motion, or proposition, is given to the teams fifteen minutes before the debate. Two teams are assigned to defend the motion while the other two teams are to oppose it. The teams are judged by a panel of judges, who rank them from first place to fourth place based on respective contributions and assign scores to each person based on the quality of their speech. In a debate, teams typically go against teams with a similar record as themselves, based on a scoring system where coming first, second, third, or fourth in a round is awarded with progressively fewer points. For example, if a team had six points after three rounds, then they would expect to compete against other teams with six points in the fourth round.^[3]

After six or eight preliminary rounds there is a "break," announced at the banquet on the second day, where the top thirty-two teams progress to the third day. On day three, rounds are elimination rounds, where the bottom two teams in a round do not progress. Rounds progress through octofinals, then quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals, where the National Champion is named. Seeding for octofinals is based on the cumulative points the team had at the end of preliminary rounds.

Novices, teams consisting of students in their first year of collegiate debate, have a separate break to novice quarterfinals or semifinals should they not make the open octofinals. A subsequent novice final then crowns the Novice Champion.

In contrast with most major BP tournaments, such as WUDC, USUDC is notable in that since 2020 it has used a tapered scoring system awarding different multiples of the "3, 2, 1, 0" point scheme depending on the round.^[4] For instance, in some preliminary rounds first place receives six points, second place receives four points, third place receives two points, and fourth place receives none, whereas in other rounds, first receives three points, second, two, third, one, and fourth, zero. This system seeks to remedy an inherent flaw in the standard BP points and matchup system, formally analyzed in a 2020 paper by Barnes et. al:

Because of the scoring in BP, teams competing in lower rooms often score enough points to advance on the tab above a large number of teams who were competing in higher rooms. This leap-frogging over other teams in higher rooms is widely acknowledged, though people may not fully understand how disruptive this is to getting an accurate ordering on the tab.

— R. Eric Barnes, Paul Kehle, Nick McKenny, and Chuan-Zheng Lee, "Break Accuracy: Optimizing the Sorting Power of Preliminary Rounds Using Tapered Points", International Debate Magazine (2020)

The problem of sorting teams based on skill in order to generate a fair break is compared by the authors to the Brazil nut effect, where the largest nuts in a package of mixed nuts rise to the top of the container during transport because of shaking. Laboratory experiments have shown that shaking equally vigorously throughout the process is less efficient than gradually decreasing the vigorousness over time, because applying as much force at a nearly-sorted state as was used initially ends up disrupting the sort.^[5] Barnes et al.'s analysis shows that this phenomenon is similarly present in standard BP scoring, and that many different tapered scoring systems, where the amount of points awarded decreases each preliminary round, significantly outperform the standard equal round point system in producing skill-accurate breaks.

The US Universities Debate Association (USUDA) is the body which governs USUDC. It was founded in 2013 in order to organize the British Parliamentary debate circuit in the United States.^[1] They select the host for the next USUDC each year. Membership in the USUDA is open to all colleges and universities in the United States.

Harvard has won the Championship five times, Yale and Princeton twice, and no other school more than once. In 2018, Harvard became the first school to successfully defend the title. In 2023, Xiao-ke Lu became the first person to win the Championship more than once. ^[1]

• World Universities Debating Championship
• North American Debating Championship