Debate Society
Once again this year, the Wednesday lunchtime debate was highly popular, with crowds of students from all years packing in to hear and join in the cutand-thrust of opinion – and to support their house. In fact, House was the key word this season, as Odin had previously won the shield for two years running, and debaters from Thor and Zeus were determined not to let them walk away with it three times in a row. This added an unusually taut sense of competition to what is always a tense series of encounters. The competition followed the traditional pattern of three sets of three debates, with Odin, Thor, and Zeus debating the other in turn, and the non-debating house every week providing chair and time-keeper. The series got off to an explosive start with the proposition‘ this house believes that school grades should be abolished,’ which raised great excitement, with students vying to make comments from the floor. The motion was passed to deafening acclaim. Zeus was knocked out early in a series of hard-fought defeats, over propositions including:‘ this house believes that polygamy and polyandry( having more than one wife or husband) should be allowed worldwide’;‘ robots should replace teachers in the classroom’ and‘ men are more emotional than women’. Though, as always, the teams of three students included one year 9, one Middle Schooler, and one Senior, Zeus were hard-pushed to field veteran debaters of the quality of Teigist Taye, Adam Parker and Najma Bishar( Odin), or Anya Gera( Thor). There were some remarkably eloquent year 9 novices, too, however, including Anya’ s younger sister, Nadia, who was speaking for the
first time.‘ Introducing Nadia to debating is what made this season different for me,’ Anya said.‘ One of the first debates she did was that‘ Donald Trump would make a good president.’ We were, luckily, on the opposing side. We spent all evening carefully sculpting a list of [ unflattering ] adjectives to describe Trump – as you can imagine, the list was long!’ The final, between Odin and Thor, with the proposition‘ this house believes that religion does more harm
40 2017 | Hillcrest Magazine