Best performance in Texas Two-Step history, thanks to your help!

Thank you for supporting PDB during our crowdfunding campaign this fall! Check below for updates about the tournament you helped make possible, the gifts we’re sending to show our gratitude, and our 3rd consecutive nationals win!

Thanks to your donations, we sent 6 teams to the Texas Two Step, where we competed in 82 total rounds and had the most competitive success in the swing tournament’s history. Some major highlights:

• PDB MY (Amanda Miskell & Brian Yang) became the first team ever to win 1st place at both swings of the tournament. Yang won 1st place speaker for both swings — an unprecedented performance.

• PDB BR (Shannon Bonet & Ryan Rashid) advanced to quarterfinals of both swings.

• PDB KZ (Karthik Krishnan & Frances Zhuang) advanced to octafinals and quarterfinals, qualifying for NPTE.

• PDB MN (Olivia McCauley & Nika Nikoubin) advanced to octafinals in their first tournament as partners.

• Miskell, Bonet, and Rashid all placed in the top 10 speakers at both swings.

Additionally, for the 3rd year in a row, Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley finished the season with victories at 2 of the 3 NPDA national championships! PDB RY (Rashid & Yang) won the National Round Robin, PDB MY (Miskell & Yang) won the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence, and PDB won 1st in tournament sweepstakes at the NPDA National Tournament. 

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To express our gratitude, we’ve posted a list of donors on our website, www.parli.berkeley.edu. We're also sending signed photos and thank-you notes to select donors, and a thank-you video for our top 5 contributors. We plan to distribute these in the next 2 weeks, although there may be delays due to COVID-19 complications. 

Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley is student-run and self-funded, when most other NPDA teams have hired coaches and paid administrators. This year would clearly not have been possible without your help, and the same is even more true of next year. If you can, please set up a recurring donation for PDB, or help put us in contact with anyone who may be able to support the team, financially or otherwise! Donations can be made at our Berkeley Give page. 

Our infrastructure is all of you, so thank you again for your support!

Thank you again for everyone's support! We're just 4 days from our campaign closing (on Monday, November 18), and are currently just $1,800 short of our extended goal of $5,000!

Finances are even more difficult for the time being, due to recent fires and power outages that forced us to relocate our annual college tournament, the Golden Gate Invitational, the day before the tournament began. If you're able to help spread the word to help us close this gap before Monday, it would mean a lot to everyone from the team!

Thank you to everyone who helped us meet our initial goal! We've established a new reach goal for the rest of the campaign, can you help us get to $5,000?

Our team has expanded from around four competitive debaters to over 25 consistent members over the last five years. We rely on the student union for less than 5% of our annual funding, and are otherwise self-funded or rely on donations from alumni. Even with all the support we've already received, it'll be very difficult for us to travel all our members to nationals even if they qualify. 

We've also been hoping to establish a scholarship fund for the team, so that we can help debaters take weekends off from work to be able to travel with the team. Because we don't have any guaranteed spaces or resources from campus, we have to host all of our practices from 6PM onwards, which makes it pretty difficult for members with financial need to stay involved while balancing a job. 

Please share the campaign if you can, so that we can reach our extended goal. With your help, we can cover the entirety of the Two-Step cost for even more members, and reward the debaters of Parli at Berkeley for all the work that they're already doing to keep the team alive!