Smoked meat and poutine (of conduct)

Tuesday, 23 March 2004 — 11:52pm | Debate

Last weekend I attended my first CUSID National Debating Championships, hosted this year by the McGill Debating Union. The competition itself was less than stellar in terms of my own performance, but overall, the event was well run. Alberta won the Nationals bid for 2005, so hopefully we run it as well. From an entirely biased perspective, I would still call the elimination of Alberta Law (Wanke/Adhihetty) in the quarter-final opposing Carleton one of the more egregious decisions I have witnessed, but as someone who finished with a 2-4 record I have no right to talk. Unlike the “Nick vs. Portland and pretending to know jack about economics” of UBC’s Pacific Cup two weeks previously, Nationals was “Nick vs. Marionopolis and pretending to know jack about where Marionopolis is located” – and somewhat less successful in that respect.

On another front entirely, I won the election for the CUSID Executive Director on a status quo, “I promise not to break anything” platform. Unbeknownst to myself, this was a direct contravention of the delicate equilibrium maintained under Murphy’s Law, which responded in force with the revocation of service to CUSID.ca. Without divulging anything that is not already in the minutes, Concordia took issue with a potential enforcement stipulation of the proposed Code of Conduct Bylaw, which subsequently passed. Concordia alumnus and CUSID.ca web space donor Gordon Buchan then withdrew his support for CUSID. The entire issue is complex to the point that nobody really has a clear understanding of it yet, though outgoing CUSID President Konrad Koncewicz has more than a little to say about the concerns regarding club sovereignty.

Has anybody else noticed that the acronym “CUSID” is redundant for the ostensive sake of being pronounceable? It stands for the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate. First of all, one would contest that it is strictly bound to universities alone; secondly, the redundancy lies in “University” and “Intercollegiate”. It would follow that the ‘U’ is up for elimination, the result being “CSID”, pronounced “see-sid”, but not to be confused with CSIS. Debaters are only spooks in the literal sense.

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