Fulton Debate advances to quarter-finals at Navy

Ben Dewhurst & Nick Wong reached the quarter-finals at the 59 th annual Crowe-Warken debate tournament held at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland during January 13-15, 2018.

A partial list of schools competing at Navy included Cornell, Dartmouth, Indiana, Georgetown, George Mason, Navy, University of Georgia, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Miami, Wake Forest and West Point.

During the preliminary rounds, Dewhurst & Wong achieved a 5-3 record defeating teams from the University of Minnesota, George Mason, Liberty (twice), and Navy. They were the 8th seeded team going into the elimination debates.

In the octa-finals, Boston College faced Cornell, who won the coin flip and opted to debate on the negative. This was a poor decision as Dewhurst & Wong knew what arguments the Cornell team was going to advance, as BC previously met and lost to a higher seeded Cornell team. Predictably, Cornell ran the same arguments and was defeated by BC in a 3-0 decision.

In the quarter-finals, Dewhurst & Wong met the top seed from the University of Georgia. BC was locked negative, having already faced Georgia during round 1. Georgia advocated a plan to adopt single payer health insurance in the United States. Boston College argued that single-payer would harm the economy by increasing taxes and eliminating the private insurance industry. In a split decision (2-1), BC lost to Georgia.