High School Debate TournamentOn Nov. 26, the NYU Abu Dhabi Debate Union convened a high school debate tournament. 30 students from three high schools around the UAE came to NYU Abu Dhabi to attend coaching workshops, also led by members of the Debate Union. The tournament started with three debates during the day, and narrowed into a grand final and third place final.Sophomore Chris Wheeler, member of the Debate Union, spoke to The Gazelle about the event.“So basically, this is hopefully the start of a bigger project to develop school debating in Abu Dhabi,” Wheeler said .

Ultra Violet LiveOn Nov. 25, the Inter Residence Hall Council organized the fifth annual talent competition Ultra Violet Live. It was the last event organized by the IRHC this semester. The winner of the competition is selected every year to represent the NYU Abu Dhabi community at UVL at NYU New York. This year, the judges for the competition at NYU Abu Dhabi included Alexander S. Onassis, Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization Phillip Mitsis, sophomore Raghav Kumar and junior Gaby Flores. The winner was freshman Ana Karneža. Flores shared her thoughts about the turnout of the event with The Gazelle. “The West Forum looked amazing,” said Flores.“The people who performed were insanely talented and also super brave.”

Arab Voices — Here/There/Then/NowThe Arab Voices festival, starting on Nov. 25 and ending on Nov. 28, was held at the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center, in cooperation with the Theater Program. The festival consisted of dramatic readings of plays written by Arab and Arab-U.S. American authors. On Nov. 25, there was a dramatic reading of the play She, He, Me, written by Amahl Khouri, and The Boatman, written by Sameh Mahran. The next day, the event included a presentation of Oh My Sweet Land by Amir Nizar Zuabi and The Hour of Feeling, by Mona Mansour. After some of the presentations, the audience had the opportunity to engage in a Skype call with the playwrights. Freshman Daniel Rey, who attended the stage reading of Oh My Sweet Land, shared his views on the event.“Arab Voices has been a unique experience for understanding migration stories from the Middle East,” Rey said . “The audience was really impacted by what we saw, and the silence in the room spoke louder than our words or applauses could.”Freshman Sara Pan was also positively impacted by the festival. “I left the Black Box with tears I couldn’t contain,” Pan said . “[The experience] expanded and enlightened my perception of gender; why is it that there are only these binary constructs of being a woman or a man?”

NYU Abu Dhabi Students Win Cognit-Etihad Airways HackathonNYU Abu Dhabi’s hackathon team of junior Brooke Hopkins, junior Megan Moore, junior Zane Mountcastle, sophomore Emil Goldsmith Olesen, and sophomore William Held won the Cognit-Etihad Airways Hackathon hosted at NYU Abu Dhabi this past week from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23. This year’s competition saw 30 competitors selected from Emirati universities including the Institute of Applied Technology, Higher Colleges of Technology, Khalifa University and NYU Abu Dhabi.The hackathon task to use IBM Watson, a question answering program that responds in natural speech, to improve the travel experience.Students were guided and evaluated by IBM Watson’s chief developer, Sam Richard. Ultimately both a team of students from the Higher Colleges of Technology and NYUAD won the Cognit-Etihad Airways Hackathon. In a statement to the Gazelle, NYU Abu Dhabi’s team collectively described their winning design as, “a personal travel assistant that guides users through the travel journey, seeking to make travel more accessible by providing personal advice and information with speech to text and translation features.”As a reward for winning the hackathon, both winning teams are receiving free business class tickets to New York City with Etihad to visit IBM’s headquarters. This article was written by Thomas Justin Klein. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: The Gazelle