The city tournament featured 186 debaters from 15 schools, and Dalton’s debaters succeeded spectacularly, debating 11 different topics over the two days.

Following preliminary debates on Saturday, the top 16 teams returned on Sunday for an elimination bracket. Dalton represented six of those teams.

Ameneh Vaskio '25, Ava Rubinstein '25, Sophia Davis '25, Aiden Leathers '25, Efe Ilgar '25, and Alex Kim '25 all advanced into the octafinal elimination round. In addition, Efe was the top-rated speaker in the field, Aiden was eighth, Alex 13th, and Ava finished 15th overall.

Austin Gordon '26 and Sam Worthington '26 each won their octafinal match and advanced to the quarterfinals. Austin finished ranked as the seventh speaker overall.

In the semifinal round, Dalton accounted for three out of four remaining teams. The team of Anysa Bickici '25, Nilomi Weerakkody '25, Aida Kasparova '25, Ollie Feder '25, Maxwell Massiah '25, and Vihaan Kotahwala '25 concluded their remarkable run in the final four and, Vihaan ranked 12th individually.
 

In the championship round, the Dalton team of Cole Corper '25, Aminata Diallo '25, and Arav Mehta '25 faced off against students from the Blessed Sacrament School (Washington, DC). With the level of competition increasing each round, the two teams each won six consecutive debates to reach the final.

The final topic was “whether or not the U.S. should ban lethal autonomous weapons.”

Cole opened the debate with three fatal flaws of lethal autonomous weapons: their facial recognition software is unreliable with respect to people of color, making them unable to distinguish civilians from soldiers on the battlefield; they will invite more war by posing a moral hazard and sparking a global arms race, and they have no capacity for mercy or conscience. He finished with a chilling warning: It is far easier to program a machine that kills innocent people than to kill an innocent person in cold blood. “This is violence we are exposing our society to,” he concluded ominously.

Aminata rose to dismantle the opposition’s case piece-by-piece. She rebuked the opposition’s elevation of U.S. interests by declaring, “The lives of foreigners do not count less than American lives; all lives have equal value.” Drawing on history, Aminata answered the specter of terrorists developing lethal autonomous weapons by pointing out how the U.S. has historically sold its weapons, leading to their uncontrolled global proliferation. Facing the argument that lethal autonomous weapons would save money, Aminata defeated it simply by explaining: “They are saying it would become more cost-effective to kill people.”

After 10 minutes of responses by Blessed Sacrament, it was Arav’s turn to rise, closing out Dalton’s case, the debate, and the tournament. “We live in a world where machines are given machine guns,” he began. “Where we’re trusting the safety of our society to robots who don’t have compassion.” In five minutes, Arav surveyed the breadth of the debate and brought it all together into a clear picture: If the U.S. had access to lethal autonomous weapons for its recent wars, casualties would have been even higher. Deadly mistakes would be multiplied, and in time, we would find ourselves drawn into new conflicts by the illusory superiority of a mechanical military.

When it was over, the panel of five judges retired for an extended deliberation before finally returning with their verdict: Dalton won, making Cole, Aminata, and Arav the new champions of the New York Debate League!

Two weeks later, Dalton’s debate team was reunited at the state championship of the Connecticut debate association.
 

Maxwell Massiah, Alex Kim, Efe Ilgar, Ava Rubinstein, Nilomi Weerakkody, and Aida Kasparova earned the votes of five judges, tying them with two other teams for the highest number of ballots. This record was enough to make Maxwell, Alex, and Efe third team overall and Ava, Nilomi, and Aida's fourth team overall. Efe was also the second speaker overall, and Aida was sixth.

Debate Coach Evan Streams was quoted as saying, “In the final analysis, the worth of debate is not measured in awards. But they stand as a public record of those things we value most: discovery, dedication, and most of all, fun. Our students have a lot to celebrate.”