MSU’s top debate team vied against 138 teams nationwide to take the win at a debate tournament hosted by Northwestern University last week.

The Owen L. Coon Memorial Debate Tournament, one of four major tournaments, was won by international relations senior Austin Carson and social relations junior Calum Matheson, who won seven of eight preliminary debates before going into the single-elimination round.

International relations junior Greta Stahl and no-preference sophomore David Strauss also had success at the debate. The two qualified for the elimination rounds and defeated students from Gonzaga University and the University of California-Fullerton but fell to students from Wake Forest University.

For the first time, four MSU students were named in the top 20 speakers of the tournament.

Top tournament Global warming conference features nature activist
By AARON JOHNSON

MSU will host a student-organized conference to discuss global warming this weekend.

Students from the University of Michigan, Northern Michigan University, Iowa State University, Purdue University, the University of Kansas and Cornell University will gather at MSU to attend the meeting, organized by ECO, a student group concerned with environmental issues.

“We’re looking to our university to set an example,” said Jill Nichols, environmental sciences and general management junior and member of ECO.

The conference begins at 5 p.m. Friday in Conrad Hall with speaker Julia Butterfly Hill.

Hill gained attention by sitting in a tree in California for more than a year, preventing the logging of 2.9 acres of redwood forest.

The conference also includes workshops on grass-roots organizing and activism, a topic Hill is expected to provide some insight into.

“I expect she’ll give us some encouragement,” Nichols said. “Let us know that in what we’re doing it may not seem like it will make a change but it will do something.”

ECO members said they hope a platform will be developed that visiting students can take back to their universities by the end of the weekend.

“We are just trying to get ideas going,” Nichols said.