ACSers Become Vice-Champions in the World Schools Debating Championship

On July 16, 2024, the Bulgarian national student debate team, featuring the presidents of the ACS Debate Club, Valentin Katzarov '26 and Kaloyan Kotzev '25, traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, to participate in the World Schools Debating Championship 2024. Teams representing 68 countries competed in the tournament, among them the United States, England, China, Canada, India, Scotland, Qatar, and Singapore. For the first time in the history of Bulgarian debate, our country's representative team with members Kaloyan, Valentin and teammates Tanya and Adelina reached the elimination rounds of the championship after defeating the teams of the Philippines, Germany, and Argentina. In the semi-finals our team faced Canada, one of the most successful teams in the history of the competition and multiple champions. Along the way, they also faced the teams of Greece, Singapore, South Africa, won and successfully reached the final of the World Championships, where they debated against the national team of Scotland, did a good job, and won second place. This is a record achievement for a non-native English speaking team. 

Congratulations to Kaloyan, Valentin, Tanya and Adelina for their success! 

More details from the road to the final:

The Bulgarian national team started with two consecutive victories against Argentina and the Philippines, the debate topics being ,,for or against the complete ban on the display of religious symbols and rituals in public places" and ,,whether an alternative method should have been created by the International War Crimes Tribunal for ethnic tensions de-escalation in Yugoslavia." The team then suffered a loss to Poland on the subject of "for or against the ban on sports betting." This was followed by two more victories, against Bangladesh and Germany, on the topics “for or against imposing a limit on how many tourists can visit major tourist destinations” and "for or against a self-help culture.” Our debaters lost momentum at the end of the groups and ended up with three consecutive losses to the USA, Qatar, and Japan on the topics of ,,to give a minimum income to every artist versus giving more only to the prominent ones", ,,for or against France's exit from West Africa" and ,,for or against the feminist movement to start portraying traditional female roles and behaviors such as wearing make-up and high heels, and doing housework as strong and empowering." With their four wins, however, our team was able to qualify for the knockout rounds, for the first time ever in the history of Bulgarian international debating!

In the sixteenth-final, the Bulgarian debaters faced the team from Canada, the most successful team in World Schools Debating history, and won outright on the topic of "for or against a 60-year limit on running for political office." In the semifinals they faced South Africa, the team demonstrating the best shape before the championships, which had managed to win every single one of their preparation battles ahead of the championship. Our debaters won that debate with topic "for or against the social notion money cannot buy happiness." In the quarter finals, the challenge was just as tough, against the second best team in history, Singapore. There our team managed to win again in a debate on the topic "whether Serbia should seek closer relations with the European Union or with China". On the last stage before the grand final, Bulgaria faced our neighbor Greece, who has been competing in this format for a long time - as a comparison, it was the Bulgarian team’s third time around only. Our debaters won by a unanimous 7-0 from the judges in a debate on the topic “if it were possible, should violent offenders be able to opt into Pavlovian conditioning as a substitution for prison time every time they consider committing an act of violence.” And so it came to the grand final, where our national team had to debate against Scotland, a distinguished team internationally, on the topic of “for or against the glorification of champions.” Our team did good but did not win and got silver medals.

Format Details:

The format of the debate is known as "World Schools". It is a debate in English, in which each of the two teams ("for" and "against") makes four speeches, three of them with duration of 8 minutes and the fourth one four minutes, starting with presenting the arguments to then refute those of the opponents. There is one hour of preparation before each round, the use of electronic devices and the internet strictly prohibited during the preparation and the debate itself

One can think of the World Schools Debating Championships as a football World Cup, with a group stage and knockout rounds. In the first part, each team debates four times “for” and four times “'against,” the sides determined by a toss-up before each debate. The group phase is a grand ranking format for all teams, with each team debating a total of eight times and collecting points, one for each win and zero for a loss. Finally, the top 32 ranked nations move on to the sixteenth-final. Then comes the knockout phase, one team eliminated in each phase until only two teams remain and face each other in the grand final.