PULLMAN, Wash. – Five students at Washington State University were crowned champions of the sixth annual Global Case Competition last week.
The winning team, Dignity Before Detention, consists of team chair Madeleine Hunter, a junior history major, senior chemical engineering majors Kasey Markland and Margaret Wyckoff, senior humanities major Kari Whitney from WSU’s Global Campus, and graduate student Kiana Yektansani, who is studying economics. The faculty advisor is Ken Faunce, a history instructor in the College of Arts and Sciences.
This year’s case focused on arbitrary detention in the United States. Teams were asked to identify cases in which deprivation of liberty has occurred and provide reasonable solutions for the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to consider.
Five finalist teams were selected from 14 entries. Roland Adjovi, the second vice chair of the WGAD, traveled from Philadelphia to hear their solutions and provide opening remarks at the event.
The victorious group voiced the concerns of indigent people and offered the ideas of education and community outreach as well as economic policy reform as the keys to providing relief from debtors prisons.
I was very impressed with all the teams’ work, but the winning team really provided something that is a realistic solution,” Adjovi said. “You can educate a judge, a lawyer, and an officer, as well as the offender.”
Members of the winning team have the opportunity to travel to Geneva, Switzerland later this year.
“Our team really worked well together,” Hunter said. “We each researched individual components of the case and we kept coming back to the same topic. We were successful because we respected each other’s ideas and found the best information we could.”
Along with the top prize, the teams that placed second and third each received a scholarship to be divided among their members.
Contact:
Craig Lawson, 509-335-3346, craigl@wsu.edu
