Debate team enjoys successful season

Most notably, the team’s president emeritus Dan Rauch ’10 and current president Zayn Siddique ’11 won the American Parliamentary Debate Association’s (APDA) Team of the Year Award, the APDA’s highest honor.

Rauch and Siddique are the youngest team ever to take home the award, and they also won the prize by the largest margin ever in the award’s nearly 30-year history.

Rauch and Siddique are also both members of The Daily Princetonian Editorial Board.

Siddique attributed the debate team’s successful season to a variety of factors. “I think it was a combination of several things: a lot of hard work and preparation, a bit of good luck, and a lot of desire to come out week after week and keep trying,” he said.

“It’s [also] a great thing that a lot of our success had come from our freshman class,” he added.

Rauch echoed Siddique’s sentiment, explaining, “We have a fantastic novice class this year, one of our strongest classes yet.”

Rauch also won the ADPA’s Speaker of the Year award, breaking the record for highest absolute score.

“It was a great year,” Rauch said. “We were really lucky.”

The Princeton debate team includes about 50 members who compete in weekly tournaments across the country and in occasional international tournaments. The team finished ninth in the World Debating Championships in Cork, Ireland in January.

Rauch said that the World Championships were his most memorable moment on the team, explaining that he loved “representing America, and having the support of our entire country.”

He added that the finish is even more impressive considering that the championships are held in a completely different style from the American Parliamentary Debate style that the Princeton team typically uses.

It’s “sort of like if you took a tennis team and had them play squash at a tournament,” Rauch explained.

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He added that his good chemistry with Siddique was a crucial factor in their success this year.

“Zayn has been a fabulous partner: absolutely brilliant, unbelievably talented, and we’re friends,” Rauch said. “I think we just have very compatible personalities, and that we both saw debate in a very similar way in that we have a good balance between wanting to have fun and wanting to win. Some teams have one member who is more geared toward winning than the other.”

Siddique also said his partnership with Rauch has made their success a “great experience.”

“Dan is one of my good friends on campus, and we’ve always gotten along really well, which is important,” he explained. “Not to mention he’s a top debater, which makes it all the easier.”

Rauch explained that the environment created in debate can often make friendship and compatibility hard to find. “There’s a lot of drama associated with debate. A lot of type-A personalities; a lot of big egos. There’s potential for a lot of conflict there,” he said.

He cited a past season, when problems were created by “an internal team-of-the-year race where two Princeton teams were competing.” He explained, however, “since then, central to the Princeton team has been this sense of community, which I think is shown by the fact that we’re all friends outside of debate.”

Jason Anton ’10, who has been a member of debate since his freshman year and has served as the team’s financial vice president, echoed this sentiment. “We’re all friends, and we’re all pretty good at debate — when you both want to hang out with your team and practicing is mutually beneficial, the team aspect naturally works well,” he said.

“I think, on the whole, the Princeton team has an ethos that discourages infighting and encourages team spirit,” Rauch added.

But despite this past season’s success, the team is determined to continue improving.

Last year, Princeton also won the APDA’s College of the Year award, which Anton described as “the highest honor any full team can receive.”

“I think to reclaim that title would be a very good way to cap off my career, to develop young talent, because that award recognizes the strength of young members,” Rauch said.

Anton also cited the importance of strengthening the novice members of the team. “There was a bit of a trade-off in helping our top team make their successful Team of the Year run; next year, we need to work harder on training our newest debaters as well,” he said.

The team will also continue to work on its world-style debate skills to try to improve their finish at the next championships, Rauch explained.

Siddique, who began his term as president last month, said he is also hoping to help more members of the team succeed next year. “I think that, while we had a fantastic season, next year I want to have more and more people do even better,” he said. “This year the success was loaded to a few people.”