The Bristol Inter-Varsity debating tournament has a strong reputation for high standards and marks the opening of a new debating season. The event took place at Bristol Grammar School on October 26th and 27th with a total of sixty-eight different teams, each comprising of two members.

While most universities send around two teams to an IV, law-based establishments like Cambridge sent four. Bath, always a maverick in debating circles, decided to enter one team, consisting of Hadleigh Roberts, a first year French & Spanish student, and Alex Vakil, a third year studying Politics and Economics.

In an IV of this size, every team performs in the first five rounds. In each round, teams are allocated to rooms, with four teams to a room. Then in each room, two teams are placed on either side of the debate at random, either proposition or opposition. Then the top eight teams “break” to the semi-finals to decide which four will be in the final.

Bath gave a very respectable performance overall, winning one room- proposing “This House would allow airmen, seamen and soldiers to sue the crown for negligence.” As the proposition, our team had to define the motion (in this case, to clarify ‘negligence’) and then to set out the subsequent policy (i.e. how the process of suing could be implemented). At this point Mr. Vakil declared, “This does not, of course, mean that the Queen will be placed in the dock.” The Opposition had a great deal of trouble and claimed that a definition had been omitted. In response to this, Mr. Roberts was emphatically clear, citing three criteria: “faulty equipment, incompetent orders and break-downs in communication.”

Unfortunately, Bath was narrowly denied a further first place by a duo of incredibly haughty girls from Middle Temple, who were proposing, “This House would privatise all UK universities”. They failed to explain the extent of privatisation, forcing Bath to attack on all fronts. By the fifth round, most teams had a good idea whether they were going to break, which took away most of the pressure to succeed. This lead to increasingly ludicrous arguments against the idea that “This House would give all the artefacts in the British Museum back to where they were plundered.”As such, Bath had to face ridiculous onslaughts like “Most countries don’t need their artefacts, you can’t go to Greece without tripping over a coliseum” and “If we gave back all the treasure to where they came from, why don’t we send back all the immigrants as well?”

This year Bath is holding their own IV, which will take place on Saturday December 1st at the BRLSI in Queen Square and all members of the university are invited (to watch or act as judges). This will be very different to typical IVs, as the motions are much less specific, “This House would use the force” and “This House believes the plant should be potted”. The Bath University Debating Society (BUDS) holds informal meetings every Thursday at 18.30 in 8W 2.13 and even non-members are welcome to view a debate. If you have a motion that you believe the society should discuss, please forward it to the chairman, Chris Spencer, via cs281@bath.ac.uk