LISTSERV - USDEBATE Archives

I'm writing about two important Worlds Council issues, the first of which is particularly time-sensitive. Please read carefully if the Berlin break or Worlds Council issues in general are of concern to you:

Pending a vote at pre-Council, it is possible that there will be a vote to reconsider the break at a special session held after pre-Council (any changes would affect the break at Berlin). As you may be aware, the current break is for all teams on 18+ points to break; England has proposed a 48-team break instead, but the other commonly floated alternatives (a return to the 32-team break or a larger expansion to a 64-team break) also will be up for consideration if this session is held. For reference, schools voted to support the 18+ teams break proposal from Canada (and originally, Steve) at caucus last year.

It may be difficult to meet as a group in Berlin prior to pre-Council, so we'll conduct an online vote, as we did earlier in the year when determining the US vote for the 2014 host of Worlds. I know some people ran into trouble with the forum last time (and there's no sense in making you register for another site to vote), so please vote through the Google form by December 25th at 11:59pm, Eastern time:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHYxRlNsc1VDLVYzSnl6cmNpanJFNVE6MQ#gid=0

Votes submitted after the deadline will not be counted, one vote per school, etc. For transparency, the results are viewable here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao1UYdwsq4cmdHYxRlNsc1VDLVYzSnl6cmNpanJFNVE#gid=0

As was the case last year in Manila, we'll meet for a US caucus at some point during the tournament to discuss the major issues that will come up at Council and what the US position should be on each of them. I've been in touch with the Auckland bid about attending the beginning of caucus to answer questions and better inform our decision, and I plan to extend the same invitation to Malaysia. Please bring your questions about the two bids to that meeting, so that (assuming things work out), we can clarify anything with the two bids before our internal discussion.

It's impossible to know now when and where this meeting will take place right now, so I'm writing also to encourage you to listen for an announcement between rounds (which is when we and most other countries communicated information about caucus times and locations). Obviously there's a risk that not everyone who's interested in attending will be in the room / be listening at the time, so please try to spread the word to other US teams once we finalize a time and place, so that everyone who is interested in contributing to the discussion and voting on likely topics can attend.