HWS Round Robin

The HWS Round Robin is an invitational British Parliamentary debate tournament hosted annually by the Hobart and [William Smith Colleges] in Geneva, New York. Participation in the HWS RR is considered prestigious among BP debaters as it is limited to exactly 16 teams that qualify via either an automatic bid given to the champions of major debate tournaments that happen throughout the year, or a competitive application to the tournament's selections committee, with auto-bid teams given priority.
Unlike most parliamentary debate tournaments, such as the World Universities Debating Championship, which use power-pairing to determine preliminary round matches, the HWS RR uses round-robin scheduling to determine team pairings for each of its five preliminary rounds, before advancing the top four teams to the final. The tournament is also notable for its use of dual judging panels, in contrast to the established practice of allocating just one panel of judges per room.

History

The HWS RR was started in 2007 by the HWS Debate Team, with the intent of designing an annual tournament of champions for BP debate. While the World Universities Debating Championship had already long been established at the time, its open nature meant allowing a significant variation in skill among teams. From 2009 to 2013 the tournament was funded by the Open Society Foundations.

Selection

Each year, invitations are sent to all four teams that make it to the Open Grand Final of the WUDC, as well as to the winning team of each of the following 12 major tournaments:

European Universities Debating Championship
US Universities Debating Championship
North American Universities Debating Championship
Asian British Parliamentary Debating Championship
United Asian Debating Championship
Pan African Universities Debating Championship
Australian British Parliamentary Debating Championships
Oxford Intervarsity
Hart House Intervarsity
Yale Intervarsity
Cambridge Intervarsity
Cambridge Women's

This means an automatic bid goes to a total of 16 teams, the exact number required for a five-round round robin BP tournament to work. If a team qualifies for more than one auto-bid or decides not to attend the tournament, then any extra slot is opened up for an at-large bid, where teams that apply are selected based on their achievements in debating.

Structure

The HWS RR is conducted in the British Parliamentary format, the same one used by the WUDC. In BP, there are four teams, of two debaters each, that compete in a single round.
At the end of the round a panel of judges deliberates and ranks each team from first to fourth, with the first-placer receiving the full 3 points and the last-placer receiving no point. Uniquely, the HWS RR uses two panels, which means the maximum number of points a team can theoretically win in a single round is 6 points. Dual rooms began to see use in 2016 as part of research on the reliability of judge decisions.
The tournament has five preliminary rounds and one final round. During the preliminaries, teams are matched in such a way that they are never in the same room as a team they have faced before. The four teams that accrue the most number of points by the end of the fifth round are advanced to the final round. The winners and runners-up of the final are considered winners and runners-up of the HWS RR for that year.

Past Tournaments

Year	Winners	Runners-up	Finalists	Best Speaker	Topic of Final
2025	Manchester	Princeton	Oxford, Cambridge	Max Rosen	"Assuming a peaceful and democratic transition, this house supports the United States of America being separated into several, more politically-homogeneous, sovereign states."
2024	Cambridge/Stanford	Chicago/Sydney	McGill, Chicago/Princeton	Tejas Subramaniam	"This House, as the chemist, would take the chemical weapons job."
2023	Stanford	London [School of Economics and Political Science\|LSE]	Princeton, Princeton	Tejas Subramaniam	"This House believes that feminist movements in developing nations should prioritize the strategy of advocating for carceral feminism."
2022	McGill	Oxford	Harvard, Princeton	Hamza Chaudhry	"This House supports increased military spending and rearmament plans announced by Germany and other EU countries."
2021	Zagreb	LSE	Ateneo, Harvard	Abhinav Bathula	"This House believes that the legacy of historical figures should not suffer due to those figures' immoral actions, if those actions were generally seen as morally unproblematic by their own society."
2020	Yale	Cambridge	IBA Dhaka, Harvard	Lucía Arce	"This House believes that individuals have a moral obligation to not have biological children."
2019	Oxford	Melbourne	Harvard, Harvard	Danny DeBois	"This House believes that the Black Lives Matter movement should embrace open carry gun laws and engage in armed community patrols."
2018	Cambridge	Oxford	Stanford, Tel Aviv	Lee Chin Wee	"This House believes that the interests of the Chinese people would be better served by a peaceful transition into a democracy, rather than a continuation of the one-party rule."
2017	Tel Aviv	Harvard	Cornell, Yale	Danny DeBois	"This House believes that governments should abandon the strategy of decapitation in fighting terrorism."
2016	Cambridge	Tel Aviv	Cambridge, Yale	Michael Dunn-Goekjian	"This House supports health insurance companies offering optional lump sum payments to terminally ill patients who choose to forgo expensive life extending medical treatments."
2015	Hart House	Cambridge	Harvard, Hart House	Michael Dunn-Goekjian	"This House believes that prominent civil society activists should choose not to run for elected office."
2014	Sydney	Yale	Cambridge, Cambridge	Daniel Swain	"This House believes that, within broad budgetary constraints, environmental policy should be decided by unelected scientific experts selected by their peers."
2013	Lincoln's Inn	Cornell	Loyola Marymount, Yale	Harish Natarajan	"This House would use diversity quotas for university admissions."
2012	Stanford	Oxford	Sydney, Yale	Ben Woolgar	"This House believes that the government should subsidise newspapers."
2011	Stanford	Oxford	Hart House, MIT	Ben Woolgar	"This House believes that whenever individuals have a choice between spending money on luxuries or donating it to ameliorating suffering, morality demands donating."
2010	TCD Hist	Queen's	Sydney, Cornell	Tim Mooney	"This House would ban parents from genetically selecting children who lack a predisposition to homosexuality."
2009	Oxford	Hart House	Loyola Marymount, Middle Temple	Jonathan Leader Maynard	"This House would eliminate executive pardons."
2008	Harvard	Claremont	Hart House, Oxford	Lewis Turner	"This House would establish an international force to arrest those indicted by the International Criminal Court."
2007	Yale	Harvard	Harvard, McGill	Adam Chilton	"This House supports requiring community service for graduation from high school."