Berkeley eligibility

[Erica Paige Grosjean <erica@uclink.berkeley.edu>]

We are a completely student-run team, but we work with an advisor through
the school who helps facilitate official matters with the University.  At
the end of last year, a member of our team reported rumors of eligibility
violations concerning students debating without being registered.  We
responded by having everyone self-report any possible violations to our
advisor.  This summer, we met with the Office of Student Conduct, the
University group in charge of violations of club rules.  At the end of the
meetings, they decided that some violations of school and CEDA policy had
occurred.  The majority of these violations happened in years past at a
time when our regulatory knowledge and enforcement ability was much
smaller than it is today.  Most of the violations concerned students who,
for various reasons, were not officially registered at the time of
debating.  Most were attending classes and taking tests throughout this
time but had financial aid blocks or other extraneous circumstances which
prevented them from being officially registered.  With our teamUs previous
policy of trusting a personUs word that he/she was registered, these
exceptions were especially hard to detect.

In the last few years, we have substantially increased the checks
regarding the eligibility of our debaters.  We now regularly check the
registration status of all people interested in debating through the
office of the registrar and we submit these results to our University
advisor.  These policies are now written into our constitution and our
agreement with the Office of Student Conduct.  In fact, during our last
year, when it was discovered that people were competing ineligibly, our
governing body immediately took action to stop those people from debating.
No one debated whom we discovered to be ineligible.

The Office of Student Conduct concluded that our team should continue
debating fully.  The office was impressed by our measures to correct the
problem and displayed understanding for our circumstances.  Officially, we
are on probation at Berkeley, and any further problems will cause a
reinvestigation and greater sanction. We also agreed to disclose all past
violations to the CEDA executive council, which we did at the beginning of
this debate season.  After corresponding with the national committee, we
agreed to submit official documentation for all debaters to the national
secretary for this year to confirm our eligibility.

The Berkeley debate team is very aware of the importance of fielding only
eligible debaters for competition and we are doing everything to assure
the community of adherence to CEDA rules.  We are able to debate and would
appreciate the continued support that we have enjoyed over the past years.

If you have any further questions please e-mail me.  Our squad looks
forward to competing with all of you this year.

Erica Grosjean
Cal Debate

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