News Briefs
The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · April 19, 2006
Hopkins debaters take top honors at nat'l tournament
The Johns Hopkins University Woodrow Wilson Debate Council garnered top honors from the American Parliamentary Debate Association at the National Debate Tournament held at Fordham University on April 7, 8 and 9.
Senior Jon Bateman was awarded Speaker of the Year, the highest cumulative rank in the debate circuit. Bateman and senior Michael Mayernick finished at third place in the Team of the Year category and second among Varsity Teams at the National Tournament; junior Ivana Deyrup and senior Travis Crum received fourth place in Team of the Year. Freshmen Rena Barch and Christine Higgins won second in Novice Team at the National Tournament.
Bateman was pleased with the results of the tournament and expressed enthusiasm over the Debate Council's success.
"It's really gratifying to watch Hopkins be on the top of all the measures of debate success. We were a dynasty back in the late and fell onto hard times. Just the thought that debating against a Hopkins debater will strike fear into hearts of other debaters is satisfying," Bateman said. "Our current team has and will continue to create a legacy and fulfill itself in the future."
Junior Michelle Tellock, president of Debate Council, commented on the influence of outgoing seniors on the novices currently on the team.
"There is going to be a powerful impact left by Mike, Jon and all of our departing seniors. Being able to see them in final and high profile rounds has been helpful for all of this year's novices. They, especially Jon, exemplify what our team is about: making their own style with cutting-edge cases. That's why they've been successful," she said.
"People on our team are really committed to the activity and have a very wide knowledge of current events and philosophical ideologies. This success is fantastic for our team because we don't have that huge of debaters and still do a good job of promoting excellence on all levels of our team," she added.
-- Ravi Gupta
Three students win fellowship in journalism
Junior Zach Goodman and sophomores Sal Gentile and Patrice Hutton were each awarded the annual Azrael Fellowship this past week.
The winners each received $5,000 for demonstrating excellence in journalism, radio, television or other forms of public communication. Goodman and Gentile are both members of the News-Letter Editorial Board as Sports and News Editor, respectively; Hutton is a staff writer for the News-Letter.
The fellowship was created in memory of Louis Azrael, who served as a Baltimore journalist for close to 60 years and received recognition for his coverage of World War II and particularly D-Day. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for his work.
Awarded through the Writing Seminars Department and judged by Professor Wayne Biddle, the fellowship is open to applications from any student considering a media-related career.
Rules stipulate that applicants must be Hopkins sophomores or juniors and must receive a nomination from a faculty member or a letter of recommendation if self-nominated.
Applicants are judged based on a 15 to 30-page portfolio of published work, a brief autobiography including future plans and a letter of sponsorship.
-- Ravi Gupta
Registration glitch forces delay in class elections
Student Council announced Monday that it was facing technical difficulties in its online-based class elections voting system.
The elections were set to begin on Sunday night at 12:01 a.m. but encountered problems with students reporting difficulty in logging into the appropriate class on StuCo's voting Web site.
An e-mail was sent out on Monday acknowledging the matter and announcing StuCo's decision to hold off elections until it was resolved, citing students who had not yet cleared their holds for fall '06 course registration as the root of the glitch.
The issue was settled on Tuesday with another e-mail that was sent out informing students of the reopening of the elections and instructing those who had voted on the night of April 16 to re-submit their votes.
The e-mail revealed the problems to have arisen from "the way the Registrar's Office classifies people based on the hold they have released and the number of credits they have accumulated at any point in a given year."
Another e-mail was sent yesterday encouraging students to help advance a high voter turnout in the elections.
StuCo President Atin Agarwal was optimistic about turnout despite the hitch.
"So far, voter turnout has been great, and there's still 24 hours left in the election," he said. "The problem had nothing to do with the Student Council -- the election was set up smoothly without any issues. The matter just involved some students who had different numbers of accumulated credits because of registration this week and thus couldn't log in," Agarwal said.
-- Ravi Gupta