The Brandeis Academic Debate and Speech Society (BADASS) will send eight students to the American Parliamentary Debate Associations (APDA) National Championships. The three-day competition is the final tournament of the season, and will be held at Vassar College from April 20 to April 22.

Evan Green-Lowe 10, Alex Levine 08, Jackie Saffir 10, Mark Samburg 07 and Joel Todoroff 09 all qualified to compete in the national championships. Since schools are allowed to send two or three additional debaters to the competition, Dan Blynn 09, Shoshana Gordon Ginsburg 07 and Rebecca Sivitz 09 will join the five students who qualified for championships.

With eight students, there will be a big Brandeis contingent, said Saffir, who is also the teams Public Relations Coordinator. There are only a few teams in the nation that have qualified more students, and they are Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Princeton and Stanford only beat us by 1.

This year, the Brandeis team won debate tournaments at Clark University and West Point, and placed second at tournaments at Boston University, University of Chicago, Tufts University, Wellesley College and Providence College.

According to our team's alums, this is one of the most successful years so far. Its really exciting, said Saffir.

At last years National Championships, Brandeis had the 10th and 11th Varsity teams, 6th Varsity Speaker and 2nd Novice Speaker. Novice debaters are students who have been debating one year while Varsity debaters have more than one year of experience.
Last year we did very well at the national championships. Were among an elite group of schools and this is a very big deal for Brandeis, said Levine.