The tournament will be held entirely in the Westfields Marriott Hotel located in Chantilly, Virginia (10 miles from Dulles Airport). Wake Forest decided to hold the tournament in a Virginia hotel because several states have prohibited travel to North Carolina due to that state’s discriminatory bathroom policy toward transgender people.
The NDT is the oldest and most prestigious national tournament. There are three ways to qualify for the NDT. During the second week of February, the NDT Committee extends an invitation to the top sixteen teams. Another forty-six teams are selected through district qualifying tournaments. To fill out the field, sixteen teams that have not qualified apply and receive “second round” bids.
Boston College is part of District 8 which includes the five New England states and New York. Along with BC, colleges with active varsity debate programs in District 8 include Army, Binghamton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, NYU, New School, Rochester, Suffolk, Tufts, and UMass (Amherst).
For this year’s NDT, one Harvard and two Dartmouth teams received first-round at-large bids. At the District 8 qualifying tournament held in Binghamton, seven additional teams qualified including Army, Binghamton (2 teams), New York University, Harvard, Tufts, and UMass (Amherst).
Gleason & Cheek missed out qualifying at the district tournament due to an unexpected loss to Army.
In the second round process, Boston College and New School received bids to the NDT. That means district 8 will have 12 teams competing at the NDT, which is the second highest total among the districts.
Boston College first qualified to attend the NDT in 1962. Cheek & Gleason became the 43rd team to qualify for the NDT.
For additional information about the debate program, contact John Katsulas, <katsulas@bc.edu>