Carleton debaters Romeo Maione and Simon Cameron defeated a team from McGill University to win the North American Debating Championships at the University of Toronto Jan. 29.
“I think it’s the club’s most significant victory to date,” Cameron said. “We’ve won national championships in the past but never an international one. So obviously that’s something that we can take a lot of pride in.”
Sixty-four teams from across North America competed in the contest, which began Jan. 27. The competition saw Ivy League schools including Harvard, Princeton and Yale field teams, as well as universities across Canada.
Carleton sent three two-person teams to the competition. The top 16 after six rounds of debate advanced to the finals on Sunday.
Maione and Cameron had the second best record going into the finals. After ousting defending champion Yale in the semifinals, they debated the team from McGill University on a resolution that fathers be given preference in child-custody cases to capture the title.
When asked about his own team’s success, Cameron praised the skill of each of the other teams at the competition.
“Really, there were a large number of teams there that could have beaten us on any given day in any given round. So we were good but we were also, to a degree, lucky,” he said.
Maione, a fourth-year political science student, and Cameron, a fourth-year economics student, have been debating together for two years. They’ve attended the World University Debate Championships twice in the Philippines and Botswana.
“They’re really just a great team,” said teammate Sakshi Sharma.
