News in brief: Quiz time, Some things are not up for debate

5/16/10 7:00pm

Quiz time

What happens when you take three underclassmen and send them to nationals? If they are the new Rice quiz bowl team, then they emerge victorious.On April 10 in Chicago, the Rice University quiz bowl team, which is in its first year, placed third in Division II at the National Academic Quiz Tournaments Intercollegiate Championship, a national quiz bowl tournament for undergraduate teams that have not previously competed at the national level.

The team, which is comprised of Martel College junior Zachary Yeung and Wiess College sophomores Henry Gorman and Christopher White, finished behind Brown University and Clemson University and ahead of the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology.

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"Our team was very happy with our performance at ICT," Yeung, president of the team, said. "This is the first collegiate national tournament for all of us and Rice's first ICT, so making it to third place over some higher-seeded teams like Harvard and Chicago was a pleasant surprise."

Rice's quiz bowl team is young in both senses of the word - it has existed for only one year and also is likely the only quiz bowl team in the country consisting entirely of freshmen and sophomores, Yeung said.

More than 90 colleges have quiz bowl teams, Yeung said. Although Rice had a quiz bowl team in previous years, the team had not been active for some time until Yeung restarted it last year.

"We players really enjoy competing, so it was only logical to restart the team," Yeung said. "Plus we were one of the only top-tiered schools not to have a team. Rice needed the representation."

The team is also small compared to standard sizes; most quiz bowl teams have four players, and many schools support two or three teams at tournaments. Yeung said his team focused on establishing a strong foundation during its first year, but is looking to expand and recruit new members in the fall.

The team has had difficulty funding its activities and members had to pay their own way to the ICT tournament this year, but Yeung said he hopes to recruit enough members in the fall and raise revenue by hosting high school quiz bowl tournaments. Yeung said they were in contact with some interested prospective students who played quiz bowl in high school.

"Our team is a vibrant one and hopefully it will continue to be as it grows and continues to succeed at tournaments," Yeung said. "We would love for anyone who's interested to be a part of it," Yeung said.

- Katherine Hsu

Some things are not up for debate

There's no debating the facts. The George R. Brown Forensics Society, Rice's speech and debate team, improved their national standing by five places during the school year.

Although the team consists of mostly underclassmen, the Rice team won 21 debates, three individual awards and one team award at the National Parliamentary Debate Association Championship Tournament, the national competition organized by the largest intercollegiate debate organization in the country, on March 19-21, competing against 185 teams from 70 universities, Director of Forensics David Worth said.

Notable performers this year were Aparna Bhaduri (Jones '10), Jones College junior Kern Vijayvargiya, Brown College junior Shubha Soman and Martel College junior Katie Donovan, who placed in the top 64 for Varsity Parliamentary Debate.

The debate team was also invited to participate in the National Tournament of Parliamentary Excellence, an invitation-only competition that invites the top 64 pair teams in the nation out of thousands competing across the country, which was held on March 26-28. Rice was represented by two teams: Bhaduri and Vijayvargiya, and Lovett College senior Julie Duong and Will Rice College junior Paul Ernster.

Worth said the students prepared for this tournament like they prepare for all events.

"[There is] a great deal of hard work and sacrifice, in-depth research, argument development and revision and lots of time with the coaches," Worth said.

As for speech nationals, four students competed in the American Forensic Association National Individual Events Tournament held April 2-4 at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. To qualify for this prestigious national championship, teams must place in the top three at three regular season tournaments in one of 11 speaking events; most schools qualify for between two and four events, while Rice qualified for seven. The team will open next year with the "Hill Country Swing" invitational at the University of Texas in September.

"We feel awesome [about qualifying for seven events], especially since we are mostly a JV team, almost exclusively made up of sophomores and freshmen. It shows that Rice kids are among the most talented in the nation," Worth said.

The debate team was founded in 1984 and represents Rice by competing in speech and debate tournaments throughout the United States.

- Katherine Hsu

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