The Poison Ivy League

By this time, Metella and Lucan were long broken up. The issue became the topic of intense gossip in the North and South alike, for rumor had it that Metella had timed some stage of her exit to coincide with a hospital stay by her former lover, and many people suggested that she was something of a Jezebel for doing so. To Kimel, however, she always seemed friendly and earnest enough. Lucan was the one who conveyed a cold character, for all of his talent. Ultimately, though, private faces may not resemble public masks. The historian’s curse is that truth is wasted upon flies on the wall. The new celebrity couple from the South was soon Crassus and Antonina.

Kimel couldn’t help but wonder what Sulla A thought of these developments, since Metella had left him for Lucan almost exactly one year before. If schadenfreude ever got the best of him, he never revealed a trace of ill will or petty triumph in public or private. Perhaps he had moved on; he was by then dating a new girl—Marcella from Boston University, a minor player on APDA but the very personification of sweetness. Kimel enjoyed running into her now and then in the beautiful two bedroom apartment he shared with Sulla, equipped, to Kimel’s great satisfaction after a deprivation of three years, with cable television. Apuleius had long since moved to South America in an effort to help the underprivileged, so the common room was delightfully rid of his presence.

The Harvard tournament was large but largely dull. Metella and Sappho made it to semi-finals as Swarthmore A, losing out on a ticket to finals by one vote; someone stupidly told Josephus that his was the deciding ballot, and the weight of his decision seemed, to Kimel, to unhinge his wits. He voted incorrectly to most astute observers in a round about whether graduate students should be allowed to unionize. Sappho could have benefited by being a more forceful speaker, though—for all of her brilliance, she was too gentle and even-tempered an orator to truly win over the hearts of audiences in outrounds, which are more easily swayed by cocky self-assurance than quiet dignity.

In the final round, Cato lost to a competent but boring team from the University of Chicago. It was headed by the great Brian Fletcher’s younger brother, Fletcher the Younger. He ran the case that there should be no constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms, which Kimel thought a somewhat hackneyed topic. The judges’ votes were largely swayed by their personal politics. At the end of the competition, the boys from Chicago were joined in triumph by Vespasian, the top speaker, to Jason’s great satisfaction. He hoped that the memory of this victory would be remembered at the MIT tournament, as did Kimel.

The 2004 Columbia tournament was scheduled to overlap with Vassar’s competition. This was clearly an indignity to the honor of Columbia in revenge for the previous year’s disaster, since the school is a centrally located Ivy institution and traditionally enjoys an unopposed weekend. At 73 teams, it was decidedly less well attended than usual but still very large. The Sullas ventured north for the humbler Vassar competition, which they ultimately won over Hirtius and his partner. Kimel and Jason headed south to compete in New York. After a forgettable sequence of in-rounds, they broke to quarter-finals and faced Seneca from Princeton and Gregorius from Yale. Gregorius was a supremely confident speaker and only slightly less compelling than his brother before him, a former National Champion and a member of 2002’s TOTY.

Eager to win the round and aware of the fact that his idiosyncratic casebook was openly despised by some of the dino judges, Kimel deferred to Jason’s arsenal, which contained drier cases than his own but many that were nearly impossible to effectively oppose at first hearing. To disarm the Princeton/Yale hybrid, they ran the case that tradable pollution credits should be enacted. Every June, they proposed, auctions should be held at which companies would bid for the right to pollute. They could then trade the credits that they acquired. Kimel elaborated in his speech on why the plan was so effective; it made it an active expense to pollute and encouraged innovation in the form of cleaner technologies. Seneca and Gregorius proceeded to fold before the onslaught of the case. By the end of the round, Kimel was confident that he had won and was gratified to advance to semi-finals, particularly since this was his first official victory over Seneca. Now he and Jason were to face Alexander from Amherst.

Alexander was undoubtedly a dignified, well-respected debater. Nonetheless, after an impressive showing the previous season with Messalina, his senior year would prove to be largely disappointing for him. Ultimately, he had no partner on his team to match his strength or experience; only Marcia, Cato’s girlfriend, might have fit the bill, but for whatever reason, they seldom competed together. At Columbia, he was characteristically partnered with a smart classmate whose speeches nonetheless left one with the impression that his intelligence outshone his eloquence. Jason and Kimel ran their tightest case possible against them—that gerrymandering should be reformed. In other words, political interest groups should not be allowed to draw the lines of Congressional districts to ensure that their cronies were always elected. Instead of this, Harvard argued that impartial tribunals or, better yet, computer programs should do the job.

Kimel could think of no obvious points to oppose the case, and neither could Alexander or his partner; the only potential area of vulnerability was the unclear nature of the “impartial tribunals” (how would they be chosen, etc.) However, Kimel was confident at the end of the round that he and Jason had lost. Although he finished as seventh speaker at the tournament, matching his performance at Smith (he had, by the way, been the third place speaker at Wesleyan), he felt sloppy in general that weekend, burdened by the realization that this was likely a make it or break it competition in terms of his career with Jason. Fortunately, Jason was at his most dynamic and effective at Columbia. The dinos who judged him clearly respected the former tenth place SOTY and Nationals semi-finalist. As Kimel and he waited nervously for the results of their round, they happened to pass beside Cyrus, who whispered to them that they’d won and had better think of a better case for finals if they were on Government. Apparently, one of the judges was so furious with the decision that he stormed out of the deliberation room. Alexander must have been disappointed—the case really was unfair. Kimel, however, was dizzy with excitement and thrilled that an ambiguous out-round had finally gone his way.

In finals, Harvard again found themselves against Lepidus and Antony. Whichever team was assigned to Government usually lost in these matchups; now, it was Johns Hopkins’ turn. They ran the case Opp choice whether a 20th century Marxist should resort to violent means against bankers in order to bring about his goals. This case went on to become well established on the circuit and seems to have inspired numerous imitators, but Kimel intuitively felt that the peaceful side of the issue would more often than not win over judges. In his speech, however, he was rather inept. He argued too sweepingly that almost every communist Government preferred re-indoctrination to the death penalty, using the example of Puyi, the hapless last emperor of China whom Mao spared and re-molded rather than assassinated. But communist Governments were notorious for executions, so the point seemed over-generalizing and inelegantly presented.

Luckily, Jason saved the day. He memorably assured the judges that it would be a smear on the reputation of an infant ideology in search of new adherents to be associated with acts of terrorism. Would Hopkins want a picture of Karl Marx to be placed beside one of an explosion in the morning newspaper, he asked? The judges laughed at this, and Jason’s affability helped him and Kimel to achieve victory on a 9-2 decision. Harvard A’s adventure had officially begun.

The following week’s Brown tournament was just a bit more well-attended than Columbia, at 90 teams. To the enthusiasm of the crowd, the tournament director announced that he would be breaking to octo-finals. Today, this procedure has become established practice at several universities’ tournaments, but it was something of a novelty in 2004. In the earlier days of the circuit, competitions evidently often broke directly to semi-finals.

Fresh from their victory at Columbia, the members of Harvard A broke to outrounds and managed to carve their way through them one by one, always on Government. They defeated Alexander in octofinals and the terrifying combined forces of Antony and a fine debater from Cornell in quarter-finals; to their credit, they were armed with the confidence to run more open cases than they had at Columbia. They then found themselves hitting a team from the University of Chicago in semis. Scipio and Fabius had auctioned off their casebook to the class of rising seniors, and Kimel had inherited the gem about whether vote-selling was ethical. Jason and he ran it to great success against Chicago. The example of Scipio was strong in Kimel’s mind that round, particularly when he answered one of his opponents’ arguments with a direct retort from the former President. To the point that Immanuel Kant would look down on any action that couldn’t be successfully universalized, Kimel responded, “what does it matter what Immanuel Kant thought?” This was a fair enough question, since Chicago never showed the relevance of his philosophy to the round beyond asserting its importance. At their best, Kimel and Jason advanced to the final round of the tournament. The Sullas had fallen in quarter-finals, and Harvard C, Petronius and Josephus, in octo-finals.

In finals, hitting Cato and Titus, Kimel and Jason ran the case Opp choice whether someone founding a religion should teach that humankind is naturally good or stained with inherent evil. Cornell chose to defend the side of natural goodness. Kimel and Jason convincingly defeated their opponents after an interesting hour spent over-generalizing on the philosophies of several faiths. Cornell argued that religions should promote the fundamental benevolence of God, and that the problem of evil could be explained away by the presence of demons. Kimel successfully pointed out that if on his side of the House God deliberately created evil, Titus’s world was one in which an equally ill-tempered deity deliberately manufactured monsters. This was a flashy highlight of the round, as the catching of logical contradictions often is. In the minds of most judges, however, Harvard seized victory on the pragmatic argument that a religion could best win adherents by presenting itself as a unique means of cleansing the soul of inadequency—God might have made evil humans, but he also provided a potential exit for them through the unique vehicle of the religion. In the eyes of Jason, the nature of humankind’s wickedness could be equated with the cold self-interest of individualism. For his part, Kimel mentioned that a religion that taught that there was virtue in all men and women might as well be a pagan philosophy–only a faith that humbled someone before God could win true religious fervor and inspire followers to christen their children.

The round is available online, and since it was chosen as the demonstration round for a Nationals competition, it has been well analyzed by a variety of judges. A viewing will confirm Kimel’s popularity with the crowd, who groaned in sympathy with him when he so much as frowned; his off-handed affability and carefully affected shows of modesty had evidently won him many friends on APDA. Though he spoke well enough, his posture was hunched and ungainly, and careful observers can hear him abuse the word “right?” as a crutch throughout the round, an unfortunate verbal tic which he might have easily eliminated if he’d had the courage to watch himself debate on tape before his graduation. Other than this, Petronius delivers a delightful floor speech that shows off his style well. A halting subsequent effort by an anonymous speaker takes up so much of the video’s time, however, that Kimel’s PMR is unfortunately cut off. Nevertheless, in the eyes of most observers, what survives of it confirms that Harvard A merited its victory on a 9-2 decision, and, for the time being at least, the coveted honor of First Place TOTY.

It was around this time that marijuana made its appearance on the Harvard debate team. As a whole, APDA is by leaps and bounds more a drunk place than a high one, with alcohol ingrained into the very culture of the circuit. But there have always been notorious pot-heads, and the substance is readily available to those who know where to look for it; in fact, a member of a final round in 2003 once wanted to call the case tight that weed was a preferable drug to alcohol! Interestingly, during Kimel’s senior year, marijuana in many ways took center stage on HSPDS even more than liquor, enlivening the weekly social gatherings which the new President’s administration helped to organize. More than alcohol, the drug’s side effects provided lively opportunities for impromptu debates and complemented the characters of chatter-boxes well. The team was soon divided almost evenly among those who preferred drink, those who preferred smoke, those who were indifferent between the two, and those who abstained from either. (Ironically, several members of HSPDS were once stopped by the Harvard University Police Department for suspicion of smoking reefer on the sidewalk when it was the rare occasion when it was really cigars).

The team soon became more cohesive than ever before, and its ambience was much happier and more welcoming than in previous years. Thrilled by their position at the forefront of the circuit, its ambitious members enthusiastically blurred the lines between rivalries and friendships. Ursus and Attila, sophomores now, were the closest of friends, as were Arianna and Petronius, the Sullas, and Kimel and Scott. Kimel was also on very warm terms with Sulla C and Jason and soon became reacquainted with Sulla B’s witty charms; together with Scott, the five of them often got together for impromptu games of Mario Tennis by Rufuslight. Sulla A, though only a room away, did not participate in these games.

Just below the surface, however, the team was not without its tensions. There were perhaps two major problems. First, some of its members, like Porus, were denied good partners by the existence of three teams in the TOTY race. Second, besides the increasingly slim participation of Aemilia, HSPDS was almost totally devoid of girls and dominated by a cocky culture of nerdy men. In the case of Arianna, the two problems overlapped. She was by far the most talented member of the class of 2005 without a consistent partner. At the same time, there were many moments when the inadvertent callousness of her arrogant peers probably very deeply hurt her feelings, though she did her best to hide her discomfort when she felt it. Whatever the case, though, for all its faults, HSPDS was a remarkable group of people, and to spoil the surprise, it went on to set the all-time record that year for the most individuals to ever to qualify for Nationals, with fifteen. This was, however, at least partially thanks to the team’s unwritten policy of deliberately losing out-rounds to unqualified members to help them reach finals. Whatever one thinks of the custom, that some top TOTY teams were willing to sacrifice potential wins at major tournaments to do this shows the unity of spirit among the rank and file and their generals.

Kimel and Jason were pleased to break among the top teams at the all Opp-choice Brandeis tournament in November. Disappointingly, however their winning streak was broken when they lost a close quarter-final to a pair of eloquent nobodies from Yale. It was a 2-1 decision and Kimel was rather annoyed at the result, though he could console himself with a second place speaker award and the continued position of first place TOTY. He was also comforted when he heard that the winning team was to hit Arianna and Attila in semi-finals, since it would have been expected of him to throw the round even if he had progressed.

Yale presently ran the case whether it would be right for a hypothetical person to allow his or her decision to be swayed when, despite the obvious guilt of the accused, race was the only reason that fellow jury-members were voting the way they did—or it was at least some variant on this idea. Kimel greatly enjoyed the spectacle of Arianna slaughtering her opponents. He had never seen her so confident or so happy in a round and was duly impressed with the way that she avenged his loss. Without resorting to ad hominem attacks or even overt sarcasm, she made the other team look like a pair of fools.

Arianna and Attila ultimately won the tournament, but Kimel was disappointed for her when her victory was tarnished by an attention-stealing performance by a Yale novice in the final round. Yale had greatly decayed since the days of Livia, Tiberius, and Germanicus, but its members maintained a high opinion of themselves and what they believed good debate to be. Questions of policy, law, and world politics were worthy topics, but time-space historical cases or, worse yet, comedic ones were greatly frowned upon. Their ideology was based in longstanding “Northern” practice, but it was perhaps influenced at least in part by the team’s increasing interest in British Parliamentary and World debate, which adhere mostly to these sorts of topics; for Livia was now a graduate student in England and her presence helped to bridge the oceans between the leagues. (Gossip promptly affirmed that she began to debate in an affected accent). In the final round, Cato had the misfortune to run an off-the-wall case about whether a hypothetical Japan should declare war on a ghostly army of aborted fetuses who were out for revenge; in contrast to rounds which encourage raw analysis, this made finals a game of wit and rhetoric. Yale disapproved, though, and several of its members began to groan and mutter, not because they thought abortion a grave topic, but because the case seemed insubstantial. Alcohol, the consolation of the vanquished, soon exacerbated bad feelings.

Hannibal, a former high school champion, paraded to the front of the room when the time came for floor speeches and proceeded to deride Cato for running a ridiculous case, calling it a debacle and a waste of time. No wonder outrounds were losing audiences, he said—the disgrace of these sorts of antics were to blame. For the most part, the audience composed predominantly of Harvard students by this point did not take the upstart’s harangue in good part. He staggered angrily back to his seat after several minutes on this theme, and the entire round was ruined. The rebuttal speeches almost couldn’t help but be awkward and hollow following the novice’s condemnation.

MIT was to be the final competition of the semester. Vespasian, its puppet-master, had by now become Jason’s best friend, and Kimel knew that if there were ever a favorable field for battle, this was it. Openly immodest but seldom arrogant, he had come to greatly enjoy the prestige of his position at the head of the TOTY board and the admiration that the position entailed. When married to his general amiability, his celebrity was such that a large portion of the circuit, at least in the North, was almost as eager for him to win the award as he was to seize it. But he couldn’t take victory at MIT for granted by any means, and his competitors, conscious of their own accumulated victories, were out for blood. Lepidus and Antony had won Wesleyan, a 16 point contest out of a scale of 20, to say nothing of the 20 point Fordham tournament. Crassus and Pompey had won the less prestigious but still important GW (16 points) and American (12 points) competitions. Still, Kimel and Jason’s 18 point win at Columbia and 20 point win at Brown were nothing to sneeze at, and a 20 point victory at MIT would propel Harvard A to the greatest single semester point total in APDA history. For all of these reasons, Kimel knew that the stakes were high. In fact, the competition would prove to be the pinnacle of his success as a Harvard Debater.

The road through the tournament was by no means straight and narrow. Vespasian arranged for Kimel and Jason to have sympathetic judges, to be sure, but this only meant that they were inclined to reward strong performances when they were merited, as they usually were in Harvard A’s case during in-rounds; victory was by no means promised at any point, though. In fact, Vespasian accidentally worked against Kimel and Jason’s interests when he confused their order in the eight team break. At MIT, the teams which broke with the highest totals were to be allowed to pick their own opponents. Kimel and Jason should have had the second pick, but were accidentally placed down the list. Whatever the case, no one chose to face them, and they were left to debate Terentius and Tertius from Yale. Lepidus and Antony failed to break at all. Crassus and Pompey slipped into outrounds but were invariably chosen as early-targets when the time came for rounds to be paired, which was an insult to their dignity as speakers. Whatever the case, they proved the foolhardy teams who chose to face them wrong when, round after round, they defeated the best of the North and paraded triumphantly into finals over the bodies of Harvard B and Cato and Titus from Cornell.

Kimel’s performance in his quarter-final round against Tertius and Terentius was perhaps the best of his career; that it wasn’t taped was lamented more than once, particularly since there were few members from Harvard in the audience, everyone being preoccupied with their own rounds. Terentius was a quiet, dignified speaker with a calm and erudite charm about him. At the Worlds debating championship that year, he went on to partner with the redoubtable Livia and win a joint top-speaker award with her. This accolade, a great honor, seemed unexpected for Terentius, for while he invariably spoke well at APDA tournaments, he almost always faltered in outrounds when more aggressive, assured tones were in order. Though he hit Kimel half a dozen times in his career, he never managed to outmaneuver him. It was too easy for Kimel to make gentle fun of his quiet, musical voice and to drive his points home with greater élan than his somber Canadian peer. When Terentius and Tertius ran the case that the US should remove all of its troops from the Middle East, Kimel’s full arsenal of knowledge about the region of his fatherland was unleashed, combinined with his aforementioned advantages over his opponent. What about Red Sea ports and their submarine bases, he asked, to say nothing of small-scale stations designed to pick up cell phone and other signals from suspected terrorists? Tertius was reduced to maintaining that the Red Sea was not in the Middle East, all but assuring Harvard’s victory. Cassius, one of the dino judges, seemed particularly impressed by Kimel’s maturation as a debater.

In semi-finals, Harvard A hit Harvard C. Kimel ran what might have been in retrospect his most creative Opp-choice case: namely, if a savior figure like Jesus were to be crucified in a hypothetical world, would it be better for the Bible to cast blame on one dastardly individual for the death, or on society in general? Kimel knew that if one individual were signaled out for blame, it would undermine the world’s collective responsibility for the sin and undercut the death’s redemptive value. But if a group were signaled out for censure, it would mean that in the future, that specific ethnic or cultural unit might be oppressed. Essentially, the case explored the ambiguity of the Christian crucifixion narrative in terms of the relative fault of Judas, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, and the crowd of onlookers. Unfortunately, the round was muddled, with both teams claiming the historical case of Christianity for its side. Petronius and especially Josephus were fiercely determined to win, defending the side that an individual rather than a body of people should be accused of the evil. They drove home the point that blood-guilt on minority groups was an inherent danger of the case. It took all of Kimel’s eloquence to explain that collective guilt could be seen as a metaphor for the common inadequacy of all humanity compared to the brilliance of the child of God, and that shared responsibility implied the promise of shared forgiveness. He and Jason won the round on a 3-2 decision, with Vespasian casting the deciding vote. Kimel was greatly relieved at the news, because the debate truly could have gone either way, and he overheard one of the dino judges complaining about the case when it was over.

Kimel and Jason now found themselves against Pompey and Crassus in finals, that pair who defied the low-opinion that the cream of the North held of them by defeating them one by one. In the final round, they ran a hypothetical case Opp-choice. Suppose, said Crassus, that before the upcoming Beijing Olympics, a mass of demonstrators should begin to protest in Tiananmen Square—should the Government of China leave them alone or brutally crack down on them? To Kimel, the side of peaceful protest seemed so clear that he hesitated for a long while before choosing to defend it, fearing a trap. In fact, he and Jason defeated the case rather easily. Even Hitler, Kimel commented, held off on his oppression of the Jews before the Munich Olympics, wary of an international outcry. China’s attempt to seem modern and self-assured to the First World would be completely undermined by violent tactics more at home in a Maoist regime. Kimel’s performance was pitch-perfect, enlivened rather than undermined by his naming “jousting” as a summer Olympic sport. But Crassus was very much convinced by the point that large-scale protests could spell the end of communism in China as it had in Russia, and was clearly flustered when Harvard won the tournament on an 8-1 decision. All the way home, he evidently complained about the biased judging, and only a handful of honest voices dared to defy his interpretation of the round. The careers of Crassus and Kimel did not truly coincide until 2004-2005, and neither had much chance to see each other at their bests. Then, when they were at their bests, envy often muted praise. Until nearly the end of each other’s careers, they perhaps viewed one another as upstarts. For now, though, Kimel was completely triumphant, squarely at the head of the APDA pack and a newly crowned member of Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa besides. Little did he know what the gods of chance had in store for him, and what an ugly game the TOTY race, to say nothing of life in general, could truly be.

Kimel did not attend Dartmouth, which was 2005’s inaugural tournament. Jason and Hilaria placed second behind Hirtius. They made it so far because the Sullas deliberately lost their semi-final round to them to allow Hilaria to qualify for Nationals. Johns Hopkins failed to even break, and William and Mary stumbled somehow in quarter-finals after winning all five of their in-rounds.

This bizarre habit of throwing rounds would prove to be an ominous highlight of the season, and ultimately a destructive one. It was relatively widespread by now and long since virtually codified in Harvard tradition (though many say that the root of the contagion could be traced to prior practices at Yale). In his mind, Kimel justified the practice in this way. Many activities, including sumo wrestling, in fact possess a secret culture which involves throwing important rounds to ensure that junior members meet certain qualifications, and lesser ranked players likewise sometimes defer to more dominant competitors in the ring, either to bring glory to a specific dojo or to inspire the memory of a service owed. Every sport falls short of the ideal—the all American pastime itself is bathed in steroids. Ultimately, Kimel considered the art of throwing rounds a complex piece of theatre that should in no way be applied as a general rule. In this, his opinion differed from the majority’s on the Harvard team, which believed that rounds should always be thrown no matter what in order to qualify as many people as possible for Nationals. To Kimel, this was nonsensical, as if attendance at Nationals, a single competition subject to all the randomness of every other individual contest, was the be-all and end-all of APDA, even if it was a prestigious event. Readers will recall that Yale A had failed to even break at Nationals in 2002, and Princeton B, TOTY in 2004, similarly faltered at the year’s final tournament.

To be sure, Kimel was fond enough of his teammates enough to deliberately lose unimportant rounds to them, at least in theory. For example, he would have happily done so for Arianna and Attila during Brandeis semi-finals, though they little needed his help. However, by the same token, if TOTY came down to success at a single round or tournament, he would equally expect close friends to play soft-ball with him, realizing that a year’s worth of work was on the line and individual decisions at rival competitions were often highly politicized to the point of bias, with the South by no means favoring Northern interests, or vice versa. It soon became no secret that Harvard A was the darling of the North, with several teams offering to punt rounds to them if only to ensure that a pair of upstanding seniors would beat out a pack of precocious Southern juniors. After all, people still whispered about the conclusion of the 2001-2002 debate season, though the geographical designation was now reversed. All of this made the TOTY race a tortuous political mire. At the end of the day, however, only one round was ever legitimately punted to Kimel, though he was often disgusted at the hypocrisy of his peers on HSPDS when they did their level best to prevent him from winning the TOTY award while simultaneously throwing unimportant rounds to participants who hardly debated. The only excuse for this, in Kimel’s mind, was if the rival Harvard teammates were in competition for the TOTY award themselves, when punting would be absurd.

It was before this complex backdrop that Harvard A, B, and C played out the Amherst tournament. A terrible snowstorm drove off several participants before out-rounds, including Crassus, who happened to be debating with Vespasian that weekend. Vespasian was thus left to compete in quarter-finals alone, and when he heard that he was hitting Harvard A, he overtly agreed to throw the round to them. In preference to this, however, Kimel suggested that he would run a humorous case rather than choose a more lethal arrow from his quiver, and all participants agreed to the arrangement, with the understanding that Vespasian in no way hoped to win. At first, Kimel and Jason considered running the case that the Seven Dwarfs should turn Snow White out into the cold. In the end, however, Kimel selected a jewel which, in retrospect, he perhaps should have shown off more often.

On a trip to Constantinople as a teenager along with his Israeli grandmother, Kimel once acquired a mock-erudite book in a bazaar about the sex lives of the Ottoman Turks. The most fascinating story was that of Sikevar. Evidently, the mad Sultan Ibrahim II desired the most obese woman in the capital as an ornament for his Harem. The singular progress of the tale can only be related by the book’s author, one “Sema Nilgun Erdogan”:

“One day, this crazy Sultan told his men to search for to (sic) the fattest woman of Istanbul. They looked everywhere and found a chubby Armenian who weighed 130 kilos. The Sultan who was very pleased with this woman called her Sikevar and never favored the others. Her caresses became a shelter for his slight and feeble body. Perhaps he was cured of his psychosis when he got the feeling of being in her (sic) mother’s womb.” (Sexual Life in Ottoman Society, pp. 18)

Inspired by the anecdote, Kimel asked Vespasian, Opp choice, whether Sikevar should have accepted the Sultan’s offer to live in his Harem or refuse it, with the caveat that she wouldn’t lose her head should she choose not to join him. There were actually several layers of interesting, substantial arguments in this case. The Armenians were an oppressed community, for example, and Sikevar might use her influence with the Sultan to improve her nation’s lot. At the same time, the charms of being a princess were obvious. Then again, the Sultan was known to be mad and might at any moment turn on her, and the Harem was, in all reality, a euphemism for a gilded prison. All of these issues were discussed in the round, but the main debate centered on the feasibility of using cranes or a series of interconnected logs over which the woman could be rolled to transport her to the palace. Harvard A won quarter-finals on an uncontested decision, and to the round’s credit, Kimel never saw a more witty or biting sequence of speeches, insensitive though they were to the overweight. In retrospect, Crassus must have been furious when he found out about what happened—though no more irritated than Kimel was when William and Mary or, for that matter, Johns Hopkins racked up TOTY points at competitions that were often admittedly less competitive than their Northern counterparts.

Semi-finals were against Harvard C, and it proved to be a tough battle, for this was Josephus and Petronius’s last chance to have a realistic chance of finishing among the very top TOTY teams that year. Kimel and Jason ran a difficult case against them about the injustice of Presidential pardons. The panel of judges was extremely ill-disposed to the case, and Harvard C might have seized victory, had not Josephus and Petronius complained erroneously that the case was tight, to which Kimel had a whole battalion of pre-written responses. He delivered each of them with a growing sense of aggressive indignation, as if he were furious at his friends for questioning the purity of his motives.

The final round, against Harvard B, was perhaps the most balanced of the tournament. Cursed with a position on Government again, Kimel ran a case that all four debaters knew well, Opp-choice; should the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles to Greece? Kimel and Jason gave strong speeches in support of restoring a major national landmark on par with the torch on the Statue of Liberty. Sulla A faltered before the onslaught, but Sulla B, who knew the case well, gave what was undoubtedly the best speech of the round, pointing out that the Classical tradition belonged to the entire world, and that the return of great artworks was a slippery slope. Would the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo be next? Kimel and Jason lost the tournament by a single vote, with Sulla B being given a special award for his final oration. Kimel won fourth place speaker, and Arianna second, an exciting distinction. Irritatingly, the 5-4 verdict against Harvard A was evidently only reached when a junior member of the Amherst team learned that his was the deciding ballot, and changed his decision in favor of the Sullas, whom he idolized. Still, a ten point second-place finish at Amherst would certainly do no harm in the TOTY race, and Kimel and Jason remained securely at the top of the slippery pole.

The end of January saw the North American Championship at Cornell. Before we come to that memorable competition, however, something should be added to this account of Kimel’s social life on APDA, his position on the circuit by his senior year, and his inept attempts at romance.

Kimel seemed to be blankly friendly to everyone, treating his TOTY competitors and anonymous novices alike with equal respect. He had no enemies who were known to him and deliberately made friends with everyone he could meet, partly a reflection of his gregarious nature, and partly the result of his strategic hopes for success at future tournaments, when the votes of practical strangers to APDA could become important. Beloved in the North as a long-standing “character”—witty, energetic, and always smiling—he even became popular in the South over time, winning some positive press for his off-beat casebook and lively conversations with Antony, Piso, and Sappho. Everybody’s friendly acquaintance and nobody’s friend, he did his best not to step on any toes and soon found himself a figure of some regard.

Kimel was popular, yet he was no Casanova. Handsome but psoriatic, he was equally insecure about his complexion as his odd gait, marred by a slight, permanent limp from a childhood injury. Conveying a sort of asexual aura, he never showed interest in the drunken overtures of his junior admirers, and while he was voted the best looking man on APDA in an online poll before Josephus hacked into the database and ruined the results, he was never in a serious relationship while he was on the circuit.

Before his senior year, Kimel’s only romantic memory on APDA was when a girl at Middlebury, Camilla, saw that he was up all night writing a paper and spontaneously prepared a cup of hot tea for him. Slight gestures like this moved Kimel deeply, and he was equally charmed by the girl’s kindness as her ability to make conversation. Most people, Kimel found, were terrible conversationalists, but Camilla knew all the right tricks, asking questions about Kimel’s past, feigning interest or sincerely feeling it when he answered, and responding to questions about her own life with short, interesting anecdotes that never became taxing. Raven haired and pale, she was the most charming person Kimel ever met on APDA. But just as he had never seen her at a tournament before, would never see her again. He didn’t even have an opportunity to exchange emails before a more aggressive, senior teammate stole her away from him.

As a senior, Kimel fumbled toward romance three times. The second two incidents will be described in due course, but the first was when he invited Lucretia from Amherst to a formal dance at Harvard, just before the North American Championship. Lucretia was a picture of elegance, but though Kimel had a crush on her, they spent the night chastely together; she wore a green Egyptian house-gown her host had picked up over the summer. Ultimately, the thought of casual romance was as terrifying to Kimel as the thought of a relationship.

This sort of innocence stood in marked contrast to the social tone of APDA at that time. Members of a circuit dominated by weekly drunken parties, everyone was on edge when an accusation flew out that a young female participant was assaulted at a party. That the event was evidently witnessed by a roomful of spectators made the story all the more horrifying. When the girl’s boyfriend (who admittedly had only just begun to date her and thus didn’t know what he was about to face) complained that he found himself playing the part of the concerned lover, he gained some notoriety. These sorts of events seemed to happen once or twice every year, though they were always hushed up.

Though the title of North American Champion sounds more lofty than that of National Champion or TOTY, the award was in fact secondary in prestige to the latter badges of merit. Unlike Nationals, the contest was open to all participants rather than an exclusive set, and the fate of many rounds was decided before they were held by the existence of restrictive tight-links (forced topics) which often favored one side over the other. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, “NorthAms” was nothing but a large tournament with Canadian contenders thrown in for good measure. Still, the magic of a prospective title held its charms for those who participated in service to their thirst for glory, and as for the hoi polloi, merely making it to quarter-finals meant a qualification for Nationals.

The possibility of winning a Championship was not enough to tempt Jason to brave the long trip to Cornell, where the contest was to be held that year. Kimel consequently made arrangements to partner with Petronius, Josephus pairing up with Arianna. Although Cato and his entourage would be out of the running as hosts of the tournament, all of the best teams in the country would be there including Crassus and Pompey, Lepidus and Antony, the Sullas, and a reunited Piso and Plancinus. Along for the ride were Sulla C and Porus; the latter scarcely debated now. Much of the pre-tournament banter centered on the impending presence of Fabius and Livia at the contest among the organizers. It seemed strange to Kimel to encounter these figures after so much time. Fabius had in fact visited Harvard once before that school year and complained that his welcome seemed more muted than he would have hoped. Now it was his return to return the favor, for he stayed in the company of the other staff-members that weekend and scarcely fraternized with his old mess-mates.

On the way to the competition, Petronius and Kimel discussed the possibility of scratching Livia as a judge. Though she was more than a first-rate debater, she had something of a reputation for being a harsh adjudicator, and Kimel was afraid that she was not favorably disposed toward him. After all, they had little to unite them but the memory of shrill rounds where she had lorded it over him, to say nothing of the bitter recollection of the Fairfield tournament Kimel’s freshman year when he and Porus refused to support her during the pivotal floor vote that might have decided TOTY in her favor. Moreover, Kimel had seen Livia judge several rounds and consistently disagreed with her decisions. For example, he recalled that she had dropped Fabius and Scipio in quarter-finals of Nationals the previous year in preference to Vergil and his lackluster partner when it seemed clear to most observers that Harvard had won the debate. Nevertheless, Kimel and Petronius decided that the bad will they would incur by scraching her, which was sure to reach her ears in the tabulation room, was not worth the effort of doing so.

As it happened, the tournament proved to be a triumphant success for Kimel and Petronius. The combination of Kimel’s verbal agility and Petronius’s imposing, jovial presence disarmed their adversaries round after round, including a magnificent Lepidus and Antony after a particularly interesting, intense sequence of speeches. Their combined powers in fact won every in-round but one, when Livia happened to be among the judges. It was about whether lawyers should be required to perform pro-bono work. In answer to his Canadian opponent, Kimel pointed out that lawyers owed a great deal to the state—they made their very livelihoods on the foundations of the public court system and could thus be expected to support society in turn when duty and the greater good called upon them to do so. Livia herself nodded grudgingly at this argument, which Kimel counted as a singular honor.

Breaking among the top-scoring teams, Kimel and Petronius progressed smoothly from octo-finals to quarter-finals, where they were pitted against Crassus and Pompey. In a repeat of the previous year’s drama, Kimel again robbed his Southern counterparts of the opportunity at a title. This time, William and Mary ran the case that Belgium should be required to pay reparations to the Congo. Kimel pointed out that the guilt for African colonialism far transcended Belgium, but extended to every nation that had participated in the 19th century Berlin Conference which partitioned Africa. If anything, the EU should sponsor aid programs rather than individual countries doing so, and it should certainly take every precaution when dealing with the Congo, where aid could well fall into the hands of rebel soldiers. Kimel also mentioned that despite the evils of imperialism, the Belgians entered Africa with good intentions, and much of the infrastructure in the country, or what exists of it, owes a great deal to its colonial past. Finally, it was unclear why modern Beligium, a cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic society, should be forced to spend tax money for the guilt of past centuries. Kimel won the debate on a unianomous decision and came to consider it one of his finest rounds. It was promptly followed by one of his most disappointing.

To the shock of almost everyone, Kimel and Petronius’s opponents in semi-finals were Sulla C and Porus. They had by some miracle outlasted every other American team in the competition. Lepidus and Antony and the Sullas had fallen in octo-finals, and they themselves had defeated Piso and Plancinus in quarters. Sulla C was, in fairness, an orator of great capabilities who defeated Kimel on more than one occassion, but Porus had never progressed especially far in the activity and had rarely ever broken to outrounds. Their success at the competition suggested to many observers how surprising at best and arbitrary at worst even the largest and most well-judged competitions could be. Whatever the case, now Kimel, Petronius, Sulla C, and Porus were left to fight it out for a ticket to finals of the Championship. They knew that at stake was the opportunity to represent their nation, since the other round, interestingly enough, pitted one team from Hart House College, a Canadian institution, against another.

Finding themselves on Government on the motion that “this House would curb political extremism,” it was recommended to Petronius and Kimel that they run the case that homosexuals should be put into a special political class that mandated heightened scrutiny against discriminatory legislation, similar to what was once done to protect against unfair laws penalizing gender or race. The framework of the case was strongly grounded in American constitutional politics, which no one on either team knew especially much about. At the same time, the topic was perhaps inappropriate for a trans-national tournament judged in large part by Canadians. Pleading ignorance about the nuances of the case but with no better suggestions of his own, Kimel surrendered his position as Prime Minister to Petronius and crossed his fingers, badly underestimating the degree of bad feeling that the case would promptly cause. Indeed, some evidently felt that it scarcely fit the resolution.

The round, which was played out before virtually the entire APDA community, can best be described as a long sequence of mediocre speeches. Livia reigned over a panel of judges with a look of impatience and disgust on her face, evidently knowing more about the laws in question than any of the speakers. Her cool attitude was likely further chilled by the fact that her two old enemies from Fairfield were arguing it out against each other; perhaps she humored herself that they had little improved since their freshman year. Vipsania copied her older counterpart’s scowls, and they shared wry looks until the end of the round. The Canadian judges rolled their eyes from moment the case was announced. In fact, only Cato, Titus, and a third debater from Cornell seemed well-disposed to the proceedings after Petronius’s first speech.

In the estimation of many people, Kimel’s effort was the best of the round. He spoke at length about the responsibility of a nation to allow its citizens to undertake their respective life-projects in a supportive and non-discriminatory environment, and openly mocked Sulla C’s hastily-made point that pro-gay legislation might encourage more people to be gay (this at least sounded like what he was suggesting). But all of Kimel’s efforts were largely forgotten by the end of the round after eight long minutes of Porus’s complaining and a succinct, elegant rebuttal from Sulla C that more than made up for the inadequacies of his first speech.

The consensus of the spectators seemed to be that the round was a mess, but that Kimel’s speech was enough to give victory to the Government. Certain members of the audience, such as the dignified Antony, even took the time to preemptively congratulate Kimel on his success despite the disappointment of not making it deep into outrounds themselves. Unfortunately, Livia, Vipsania, and their Canadian counterparts did not agree with these sorts of opinions, and despite the strong opposition of Cato and his entourage, gave the round to Porus and Sulla C on a 4-3 decision so surprising that Fabius was forced to loudly confirm it with Livia before announcing the breaks to finals. Kimel was greatly irritated. After privately commiserating with Petronius, he asked Cato to destroy his tape of the round and flew off to sulk rather than help Harvard prepare for the finals. Sulla C and Porus were now to be Government on a motion defending moral relativism.

Fighting their way to finals of the North American Championship was perhaps the pinnacle of Sulla C and Porus’s careers as debaters. In the last round, they more than availed themselves against their counterpartsm two Canadian women who seemed like a low-key pair, giving unadorned and unmemorable speeches. That one of the participants would one day go on to win the World Championship was unbelievable to Kimel. Throughout the round, Sulla C insisted that moral obligations did not exist, giving all of the usual arguments for moral relativism. His Canadian opponents only asserted again and again that society was bound by common codes of decency. Kimel, along with a large portion of the room, considered Harvard the rightful winners of the round, but a panel led by Livia reached an almost instantaneous consensus decision that Hart House had won—the results came so quickly that the floor speeches which were scheduled to occupy the deliberation period were cancelled. Porus and Sulla C must have been bitterly disappointed at this hasty indifference on the part of the judges, but Kimel secretly rejoiced in their failure and took quiet comfort in the dubious honor of finishing third place two years in a row at Northams. At least he was consistent. Besides, he was still TOTY, though he was soon to learn that thrones collapse more readily than more humble seats.