Senior Debating: Experience pays off in Karlsruhe
With yet another win and an overall promising performance debaters seem poised for upcoming finals in Würzburg.
Last Saturday our debaters went to Karlsruhe to join Rounds 3 and 4 of this year’s South League. The impromptu debate was based on a relatively simple motion for each side:
This House would ban bottled water.
Proposing this motion seemed easy, given the top priority the ecology and environmental issues have today. Nevertheless we had to tackle tough questions concerning logistics and matters of infrastructure before we could claim victory.
With this kick start into the venue expectations couldn’t have been higher for the following prepared debate. The motion for this one was not only highly controversial but also very topical:
This House would offer dictators immunity in return for leaving power.
Preparation in the weeks before was intense with good examples from recent history on either side of the motion and of course the dreadful reality of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Especially the latter demanded a thorough analysis of the matter: Who is This House? And how does it define a dictator? Truly a tough motion not only to debate on but also to define and locate. And being allocated proposition side, this burden of proof was on our side of the debate.
However, this was not our main problem. Unfortunately we had to face a lack of debaters at short notice. All Q1 debaters were gone on another school trip that day and of the remaining three Q4 students one had committed herself to the Haus der Demokratie event in Frankfurt. We were still allowed to debate and would most likely have won the debate too if it had not been for internal regulations. A team may take part with only two debaters (one of them has to give two of the main speeches), but one of these speeches gets the lowest score, regardless of the quality of the speech. We were certainly happy to debate anyway and fully appreciate this regulations. Nevertheless, needless to say. with this dummy score even the high scores of our actual speeches were not enough to win the debate at the end of the day.
Tired, but with a lot of confidence we returned to Frankfurt in the evening. With this confidence we are looking forward to the finals in Würzburg which will take place from March 10-12.
Congrats for their terrific commitment and effort go to Tillmann Bier, Chiara Spors and Mira Lange! Hear, Hear!
A special thanks to the Schulelternbeirat for supporting our membership in the Debating Society Germany and our train ride to Karlsruhe! Your financial help is very much appreciated.
Interested? Join us Wednesdays 6th and 7th period in A15 (E Phase upwards)!
