D75 Debates

Competing in the Middle School Championships this year on May 30 will be: The 226 Debate Crew vs 352X BxDebatesAllDay. Congratulations to both teams for advancing to the finals!

Competing in the 3rd Pl/ Honorable Mention debate on June 4 will be the 25R Panthers vs the 169M Rising Stars. We can’t wait to see how it plays out.

The High School Finals are set! Debating in the Championship match this year will be The 721M Cityhawks Revolutionaries (undefeated) against The 751 MSCD Eagles. This will be a battle of Manhattan for the title!

Debating for the 3rd Place and Honorable Mention awards this year will be The 373K Fire Debaters versus 368K Brooklyn’s Finest Debate Team, a battle of Brooklyn. Congratulations to all four teams (and the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan) for an incredible regular season and playoffs, and good luck in your final debate!

We almost forgot to publicly congratulate all of the High School teams that made it to this year’s playoffs! They are:

The 721M Cityhawks Revolutionaries
368K Brooklyn’s Finest Debate Team
The 373K Fire Debaters
The 993Q Rat Pack
The 751M MSCD Eagles

The topic for this year’s Championship Debates is: The Second Amendment Should be Repealed.

The top two teams in each bracket (winners of the playoff matches) will debate this topic on May 30 and 31 at 751M. The teams that do not do not go on to the finals will debate online on June 4 and 5 for 3rd Place and Honorable Mention titles.

Let the research begin!

Congratulations to this year’s Middle School Final Four teams! They are:

The 25R Panthers
The 169M Rising Scholars
The 226M Debate Crew
352X Bx Debates All Day

Stay tuned for the High School announcement and team match-ups, coming soon.

Round 3 is well underway this week with teams presenting convincing arguments on both sides of the single use plastics debate. One question that has come up is how the moderator determines which team was “logged in first” to call the coin toss. For the record, when the moderator signs on at 9am, they will prompt you to start the tech check. The first team to activate their video feed for the tech check gets to call the coin toss (heads or tails). The winner of the toss then gets to decide which side they choose for the debate- Pro or Con.

Here is an interesting video from the BBC about a start-up company that is using plastic to make roads: Can plastic roads help save the planet?

Can one aisle lead to a more sustainable future? Check out this video from CNN to learn more.

This short video from PBS Nova explains:

The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is one place where a lot of discarded plastic ends up. A study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports discovered that the “patch” is actually much larger than scientists had thought. So what does this have to do with single use plastic and our latest debate topic? This article from The New York Times adds some information for both sides of the debate.

https://nyti.ms/2G1awRj