The Fulton Debating Society advanced to the semi-finals in the Junior Varsity division at the Sixth Annual Dr. George W. Ziegelmueller Invitational Tournament hosted online by Wayne State University during October 22-24, 2021.
A partial list of teams competing at the tournament included Cornell, Harvard, Indiana, Wake Forest, U of Minnesota, U of Miami and U of Michigan.
The debate resolution for this year is increasing enforcement of antitrust laws. The topic wording is. “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase prohibitions on anticompetitive business practices by the private sector by at least expanding the scope of its core antitrust laws.”
Boston College teams advocate a plan to repeal baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws. In 1922, in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. Professional Baseball Clubs, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, held that baseball was exempt from antitrust laws because it did not constitute interstate travel. In two later decisions in 1953 (Toolson v. New York Yankees) and in 1972 (Flood v. Kuhn), the Supreme Court acknowledged that baseball involved interstate travel, yet refused to revoke the exemption based on specious arguments grounded in stare decisis and nebulous claims about how baseball was somehow different from other professional sports teams.
Boston College claims several advantages to revoking the baseball exemption, including forcing MLB to pay minor league players higher wages and preventing MLB from coercing cities to provide subsidies for building new stadiums.
At Wayne State, Louis Gleason, IV, ’23 and Katie McCaffrey, ’25 competing in JV compiled a 4-2 record during the preliminary rounds defeating teams from Cornell, The New School, Wyoming and Wichita.
In the quarter-finals, Gleason & McCaffrey were locked negative against Indiana, who advocated a plan to prohibit predatory and limit pricing by Amazon and drug companies. In a 3-0 decision, BC defeated Indiana.
That set up a semi-final debate against the top seed from Samford. BC was locked affirmative, and Samford prevailed in a 3-0 decision.
Louis Gleason received 10th place speaker honors.
In the varsity division, Sophia Carter ’22 & Christopher Cheek, ’25 were 3-3, defeating Western Washington, University of Texas (Dallas), and Harvard.
For additional information about Fulton Debate, contact John Katsulas at katsulas@bc.edu.