The Pulteney StreetSurvey
Representing HWS at the world’s largest debate tournament were Matt Nusom ‘23, Lamia Nur Rahman ’26, Kayla Powers ’23, Sreyan Kanungo ’23 and Trias Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Schonning ’16, who was honored as one of the competition’s best judges.
The Hosts with the Most
After hosting the nation’s premier collegiate tournament this fall, HWS debaters began 2023 with one of the team’s best performances ever at the world championships in Spain.
In January, after three days of tough competition at the World Universities Debating Championship in Madrid, Sreyan Kanungo ’23 and Kayla Powers ’23 became the first HWS team to win an elimination round in the tournament’s open division and advance to the octofinals. Kanungo and Powers had the best results of any U.S. liberal arts college and placed ahead of 56 other U.S. teams, including Yale, Harvard and Cornell Universities. These results follow strong performances by the Debate Team at fall tournaments, including the United States Universities Debating Championship, which HWS hosted in November.
“'Breaking' into the elimination rounds at Worlds is a major accomplishment… often the high point of a debating career… although HWS has broken at Worlds three other times, we’ve never won an elimination round. This year, we did!” —ERIC BARNES, Professor of Philosophy and HWS Debate Head Coach