The ANU Debating Society has succeeded on the world stage once again, with the team “ANU A” ranking in the top 16 teams and reaching the octo-finals of the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC) 2015.

Team success was accompanied by individual successes with Callum McCrow ranked in the top 100 speakers at the tournament and Thomas Goldie ranking in the top 50.

When asked about his performance at Worlds, Goldie instead deferred to that of his teammate.

“Callum was absolutely amazing, ranking 70th in the world as a speaker despite being a first year.”

Goldie on the other hand is a seasoned debater having participated in many tournaments last year, “I think I went to 10 [tournaments]”, he said, “but I might have missed a couple [in my count].” He has also been appointed the Deputy Chief Adjudicator of the Australian Championships.

ANU also performed remarkably on the other side of the podium. Two ANU adjudicators, Vincent Chiang and alumni Yi-An Shih were asked to judge the finals series, confirming them as being in the top cohort of judges at the tournament.

The ANU Debating Society boasted over 250 members in 2014 and is one of the largest debating organisations in Australia. Its members compete domestically and internationally in many competitions every year, seeing plenty of success on the way – in 2014, ANU Debating reached the grand finals of the Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships.

All of this debating culminates every year with attendance at the WUDC (this year held in Malaysia), a tournament featuring over 1000 participants from all over the world. The tournament contains nine preliminary rounds conducted across a week, followed by a series of finals for victorious teams.

The ANU sent three teams, as well as four adjudicators, many of whom received funding to travel overseas for the society. Impressively, more than half of these attendees were first year students, some of whom gave noteworthy performances.

“Jessica Elliot and Matt Jacob [in particular] did an amazing job, beating more than half the teams as ANU C despite both being in their first year at ANU”, praised Goldie.

“We value not only success, but also development and diversity,” reported Vincent Chiang, who was the society’s president in 2014, “We’re pleased to have a contingent made up of people from all ages, genders and races.”

“This has truly been a fantastic set of results for ANU Debating,” he added.  “We’ve been going from success to success, and capping it all off with being finalists at the debating Olympics is something that means a lot to us.”

When asked about the society’s plans for 2015, Chiang answered that ANU Debating “will be sending teams to Sydney, Korea and then Greece at the end this year.”

The ANU Debating Society trains on Tuesday nights, and will be signing up members throughout O-Week in Union Court.