Parliamentary Debate Finals—2012 Georgiana Hays Invitational
Channel: Prospect Speech and Debate Team
Date: 2012-05-21

The Open Parliamentary Finals from the 2012 Georgiana Hays Invitational at Prospect High School, Saratoga, CA featured "Legitarius" (Irvington High School/homeschool combo) Eswar Dhinakaran and Firoz Gill against Mountain View High School's Vikram Sivaraja and Daniel Leybzon.

Dhinakaran and Gill affirmed the resolution "The United States Federal Government should privatize Social Security." Sivaraja and Leybzon negated and won on a panel decision.

Twenty minutes before the round, the teams had been given three "resolutions", or debate topics. Dhinakaran/Gill removed one and Sivaraja/Leybzon removed another, leaving "The USFG should privatize Social Security" as the resolution. For the following twenty minutes, they used all resources available to them to prepare for a forty-minute debate.

All four debaters in the room saw plenty of success in the 2011-2012 season. Eswar Dhinakaran was individually ranked as the 27th best Parliamentary debater in the nation,  having qualified for the Tournament of Champions (and going 7-7 there), reached the quarterfinals at the Santa Clara University Philalethic Invitational, qualified as a distant alternate for the CA state championships in the Golden Gate Speech Association qualifiers, and broken to octofinals at the Dempsey-Cronin Invitational. Firoz Gill was partnered with him for the TOC, Philalethic, and Dempsey-Cronin. Daniel Leybzon went 4-1 at the first Prospect Debate Invitational, and when partnered with Vikram Sivaraja, he broke to octofinals at the Philalethic and qualified as an immediate alternate for states at the Coast Forensic League qualifier. 

Clearly, these debaters were experienced and skilled, as evidenced in this competitive finals round from the Hays Invitational. In addition to winning the tournament, Daniel Leybzon was also named the top speaker based on his H/L speaker points, beating teammate Zoe Morgan by 0.3 points.

Information about the Hays Invitational is online at http://phsdebate.weebly.com/georgiana-hays-invitational.html . Prospect will hold the second annual Prospect Debate Invitational in October 2012.