There is plenty of athletic rivalry on the Hill with the winter sports season starting up and fall championships underway. But off the playing fields, there are a number of student groups that are also representing Tufts in competitions.
Three such groups are Tufts Mock Trial, the Debate Society and Tufts Quiz Bowl. The clubs have all been competing in various tournaments throughout the semester. Like athletic teams, most of the groups hold practices throughout the week.
The Mock Trial team, for example, meets anywhere from two to seven days a week in order to prepare for a tournament. Each August, the American Mock Trial Association announces the highly complicated case that will serve as the basis for all tournaments throughout the year. This year's case involves the murder of a founder of a major movie studio. Because the documents for the cases are usually longer than 100 pages, team members often put in work outside standard meetings.
Tufts Mock Trial is comprised of four different teams that are each captained by two students. Junior Jon Lautin and senior Rebekah Sokol (who is also a photo editor for the Daily) are the co-presidents of Tufts Mock Trial and oversee the broader operations of the organization. According to Lautin, team members are encouraged to pitch ideas as their teams formulate strategies and witnesses for tournaments.
"While the captains are in charge and have the final say, the practices are very collaborative and we always bounce ideas off each other," Lautin said.
Members view mock trial as more than just an academic group. If Tufts teams do well in local tournaments, they have the opportunity to compete on the national level.
"Mock trial is a lot more like a sport than an academic group," Lautin said. "If we do well enough, we advance to the next tournament."
Individual Tufst teams have come in third and fourth places at tournaments this year, and next semester the group will have the opportunity to compete in regionals and earn a trip to the national stage. Last year, three of the four Tufts teams made it to nationals.
"Everything this semester is like pre-season," Lautin said. "What happens this semester doesn't matter too much in terms of if we go on because second semester we go to one tourney and the [top teams in] that move on."
After months of planning on the part of Lautin, Sokol and others, the Mock Trial team recently hosted its second straight "Mumbo Jumbo" tournament on the weekend of Nov. 14 and 15.
According to Lautin, the event involved coordinating practicing attorneys to act as judges as well as organizing the logistics of holding the tournament in Anderson Hall. Eleven schools and 18 teams competed for close to 12 hours over the two-day period.
The Debate Society also held its own tournament at Tufts this semester. Over Halloween weekend, 150 people from schools as far away as Stanford and the University of Chicago traveled to the Hill. The Debate Society holds meetings twice a week, during which members practice debating issues and also brainstorm topics for events.
"The sort of practice we put in is pretty intensive," said sophomore Daniel Rosenblum, the president of the Debate Society. "We meet two times a week and do a lot of practice rounds."
The society competes in the parliamentary debate style, which features two sides: the Government, which proposes a topic, and the Opposition, which has to argue without knowing what the subject will be ahead of time. While teams can write cases on any topic they wish — ranging from academic subjects to movies or history — sometimes teams try to write cases for something that is essentially inarguable.
"There are teams that stretch the system — teams that run what is called tight cases or snug cases that are very difficult to argue against," Rosenblum said.
"If you look at the percentages of rounds won, the opposition has a statistical advantage even though they don't know the topic going in," he continued. "It is a lot easier to poke holes in something and say why it is problematic."
With the possible reward of winning Team of the Year, Speaker of the Year or Novice of the Year as well as chances to go to Nationals, the team attempts to be as strategic as possible against tough competition.
"Obviously there is a lot of room to have fun, but truth be told, most of us are extremely competitive about this and we really go in to win," Rosenblum said. "Sometimes it is difficult because there is a lot of backstabbing strategy that goes into this. You sort of have to balance enjoyment of the activity because at the same time we want to be able to win."
"I think the best teams are the ones that can run an open case and at the same time win those rounds because they are good debaters," he continued.
The Tufts Quiz Bowl team is another non-athletic Tufts team that competes in tournaments, though the group does not have a set roster. Anyone interested can attend meetings and compete in tournaments in teams of four.
According to Quiz Bowl president, sophomore Andrew Paseltiner, a consistent group of students attend tournaments. The group tends to select less prevalent, pop-culture tournaments because it is focused on winning individual tournaments rather than on succeeding on a national scale. More serious teams tend to compete in exclusively academic trivia.
"There are a couple of organizations that administer national tournaments that have qualifying tournaments throughout the year and culminate in a championship in the spring," Paseltiner said. "We are trying to build up a solid foundation for the club before we go beyond individual tournaments."
Though the team wants to win and do its best, members don't set lofty goals like some of their peers.
"We are really more about having fun," Paseltiner said. "We meet every Wednesday and people come and relax for an hour with some trivia. Tournaments are more of a side note for most of us … The current members are more interested in having a good time."
Eventually, the team would like to compete at higher levels, though this is easier said than done.
"One way that a lot of schools [become more competitive] is they host a tournament, and that involves writing our own questions," Paseltiner said. "It is difficult, but that is our goal and hopefully it will happen next year and get us some quiz bowl street cred."
