The main responsibility of the hosts of a tournament are to guarantee the running of a fair and efficient tournament.  This usually involves the following:

• Organising sufficient and appropriate accommodation
• Organising sufficient and appropriate debate venues
• Organising sufficient and appropriate food and drink for the tournament, including taking into account special requirements, such as religious dietary requirements (in particular, a significant number of the representatives at Australs are Muslim, and require halal food), allergies (e.g. nuts), vegetarians and other medical requirements.
• Ensuring a high quality of debating, which involves setting appropriate topics.
• Ensuring everyone receives a high quality of adjudicating, which involves taking the quality of the adjudication pool into account when allocating adjudicators.
• Ensuring the debates run on time, which involves an efficient result gathering and draw generating process.
• Making sure all complaints, in particular complaints relating to the code of conduct, are taken seriously and investigated appropriately.
• Making sure everyone has fun.  This involves treating all participants with respect.

To do all of this, most universities form organising committees with a large number of people involved in the running of a tournament.  While every organising committee is different, usually they involve the following positions:

• Convenor (mandatory)
• Deputies convenor(s)
• Treasurer
• Secretary
• Chief Adjudicator (mandatory)
• Deputy Chief Adjudicator(s)
• Tournament Director (aka ‘the tab person’)
• Female and Male Equity Officers (mandatory)
• Social Convenor(s)
• Food
• Accommodation
• Transport
• Publications and Communications

Formal responsibilities during the tournament

Apart from the fair and efficient running of the relevant tournament, host universities have a number of duties prescribed by the AIDA Constitution.

A full list of these duties is contained in Part V of the AIDA Constitution “Duties of Championship Host Universities”. Host university organising committees are strongly encouraged to become familiar with these duties.

Some major areas of responsibility include:

• financial accounting
• reporting on breaches of Affirmative Action, n-1, and other eligibility requirements
• presenting a briefing on the code of conduct at the beginning of the tournament
• compliance with all Constitutional rules
• proper conduct of the draw generation process
• reporting to Council
• implementation of policy (such as alcohol policy)
• provision of information to future hosts

Formal responsibilities after the tournament is finished

The duties of a host university do not end at the conclusion of the Championship. There are several constitutional duties which hosts must abide by, in addition to tying up the loose ends after a Championship has concluded.

The most important of these duties are to:

1. pass all surplus monies onto the next host (or where a host has not been selected, to the AIDA Treasurer), within 6 months of the conclusion of the tournament
2. present a full financial and expenditure statement
   1. to the AIDA President and Treasurer within 6 months of the end of the tournament (the financial statement should be accompanied by receipts for all expenditure)
   2. to the following year’s Council meeting
3. provide the next host with a list of universities which attended the tournament and their contact details

It is hoped that former organising committees will also make themselves available to help future hosts.

Ian Lising, former Chair of Worlds Council, developed a guide to hosting Worlds that is useful for anyone cosidering hosting an IV.  It can be found on Colm Flynn's website, or by clicking here.