Fulton Debate places 2 nd at US Naval Academy Tournament,

Boston College reached the final round in junior varsity at the 60th annual Crowe-Warken Debate Tournament held at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland during 19-21 January 2019.

A partial list of teams competing at the tournament included Army, Cornell, Dartmouth, Emory, Georgetown, Indiana University, Trinity (San Antonio), University of Michigan, and Wake Forest.

Nicholas Wong, ’20 and Daniel Moyer, ’20 competed in JV at Navy. During the preliminary rounds, Wong & Moyer compiled a 5-3 record defeating teams from the University of Minnesota, West Point, the University of Houston, and Liberty.

In the quarter finals, BC won the coin flip and opted to debate on the negative side against Navy, who advocated a plan to require the United States to adopt a no-first use of nuclear weapons (NFU) declaratory policy. Wong & Moyer argued that NFU would erode our nuclear deterrent that protected Asian allies and Israel from security threats. BC defeated Navy in a 3-0 decision. In the semi-finals, BC had a re-match with the top seed from Liberty, who BC had defeated when it was affirmative during the preliminary rounds. On the affirmative, Liberty also advocated for NFU and BC defeated them in a split decision.

In the final round, Wong & Moyer were locked on the affirmative side versus George Mason. On the affirmative side, BC advocated a plan that narrowed the definition of foreign intelligence information under section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Act. This affirmative argued that the overly broad definition of foreign intelligence allowed the government to spy on groups and individual who were not security threats.

In a split decision, the judges voted for George Mason.

Fulton Debate next travels to James Madison University during January 25-27, 2019.