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Korea WUDC 2021

Dear members of the global debate community,

Over the past few months, our team has closely monitored the growing impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic both internationally and locally. Our first priority is to ensure the health and well-being of everyone in the debate community, while also making sure that communication regarding our response to the outbreak is transparent and maintaining the integrity and quality of the World Universities Debating Championships that we all adore and love.

Below please find our suggested response to the situation. As we have promised earlier, we once again commit to adhere to two principles: 1. The safety of members comes first; 2. All information will be communicated openly to the community. Before starting to dive into the details of the plan we wish to thank the debate community for the numerous messages of support and also share the same concerns regarding issues that may arise in this new era that we are forced to face. We send our best wishes to everyone affected by the coronavirus in insurmountable ways. We realise that we took more time with our statement than we had initially announced, but we wanted to make sure all aspects of the tournament are thoroughly discussed and evaluated before we make any decisions bringing about significant changes to the tournament.

As some of you may be well aware, South Korea has led a very aggressive, overarching national response to the COVID-19 outbreak in all aspects of life and as an outcome, the country is nearing a careful return to everyday life. We recognize that this brings optimism about the possibilities of being able to eventually host a large-scale debate tournament in Korea with strict social distancing measures put in place. However, we must also face the reality that there are parts of the world that are nowhere close to being done with the virus yet, meaning that there is no clear timeline for when safe international travel will be cleared up again. Even if travel does become reality relatively soon, there will likely still be mandatory 14-day quarantine measures for initial period of travel. We expect that due to these circumstances it will be too risky to host Korea WUDC 2021 in its originally scheduled dates of December 27th to January 4th.

We are determined however to still be able successfully host Korea WUDC 2021 and have placed a lot of effort into creating feasible alternatives. We propose a new set of dates for Korea WUDC 2021 to be held early summer - the beginning of July. We had multiple discussions and meetings with our venue, hotel, and sponsors to ensure that this change to our schedule would not affect most details from our original bid, including the main tournament hotel, debate venue, and registration costs. In this scenario, we expect the registration process to begin in September of this year.

After discussions with the WUDC Council Executive, we wish to immediately call for online session of council where we will highlight detailed aspects of the new dates though the community should expect the same plan that was already ratified with mostly the dates changing.

We will invite questions regarding this plan in council and present adequate responses as necessary. We ask for this session of council to be immediate so that we can give confirmation for the venue and hotel for the revised dates that we are currently keeping on-hold.

For full disclosure, we have thoroughly considered both sticking with the original dates and having an online edition of Worlds before coming to the conclusion of a summer WUDC. While we believe that an online version of WUDC is potentially feasible we strongly urge the community to be in favor of a later in-person edition for several reasons: 1) there are multiple areas in the world in which stable internet infrastructure is lacking, these areas may suffer a significant decline in participation even when factoring in reducing some of the cost-barriers associated with WUDC (also unlike cost-barriers this issue cannot be mitigated via sponsorship or otherwise); 2) time-zones will pose a barrier for some people to participate and will make it harder for many to debate while benefiting others; 3) judges show less willingness to judge online. The evidence so far suggests that the expected reduction in our ability to recruit judges will likely force us to scale down the size of the tournament, thus shutting out many teams; 4) multiple debate societies find the transition online problematic for their ability to recruit and maintain members (this is less of an issue for those who are already hooked on debating). Many of which indicated that the travel for Worlds is a key-selling point that helps to sustain people's interest in the activity; 5) there are some elements of the WUDC experience that so far do not translate well online. While debating is the core of Worlds, WUDC is also a symbolic global gathering of cultures, ideas, and people. The ability to have in depth conversations and cultural exchanges are part of the mission Worlds carries; an online setting makes it harder to cater to this mission.

In the event that a global tragedy happens and travel is still in jeopardy next summer we will move WUDC online in its entirety in the new dates. However, due to the above we think it should be our last resort.

We recognise that some members of the community may have an appetite for an online activity in the original dates even when taking all of the above into account. To that end we also suggest to host a smaller tournament or an international training camp in some of the original dates of WUDC. The Korea Team will manage this event and we will keep some of the spots for participants that may not have access to WUDC, whether due logistical reasons, financial ones, or otherwise. We are also considering to use this event as a fundraiser i.e. using the profits as aid to judges or teams that will want to attend the summer edition but face a financial barrier.

After surveying members of the community and consulting with many we strongly believe this dual approach is the most beneficial for most of members of our community and guards the activity in the long-term. We intend to accompany it with the many other online programs we already started and with ones that will be revealed in the upcoming months.

On a personal note from all of us social distancing, health risks, increased financial hardship, and high levels of uncertainty is causing a lot of difficulty which affects us all on many levels. The situation we are facing is challenging and requires a lot of flexibility. We thank you all for your understanding the attached difficulties. We remain strong and committed in making sure the WUDC tradition safely continues despite such adversities.

In such uncertain times, we are confident in our community’s ability to come together with kindness, care and concern for the common good. With your backing we are certain that we can successfully host. We genuinely hope to see you all safely in Korea once this calamity settles.

Keep safe,
The Korea WUDC team