This year saw the emergence of a terrifying new entity, a united debating society.

The schools of Dunedin formed a Dunedin schools’ debating society and, in a fit of imagination, named it Dunedin Schools Debating. How original. Anyone who has met a debater will vouch that they are an argumentative race, not prone to agreeing on things, so the mere fact that they were all made to agree long enough was a minor miracle, possibly brought about by the iron will of Ms Robins. As it turned out, this new Dunedin superpower was a force for good rather than evil, though it came pretty close. A competition was arranged between Dunedin schools and the three senior and three junior Logan Park teams had to argue everything from animal testing to civil rights to why slavery is actually a really good thing. In the end one senior Logan team (Matthew Scaddon, Connor Seddon, Charlie Ruffman, supported by our 4th speaker, Meran Campbell-Hood, who had spoken in a number of the debates that helped us attain this giddy height) was left to slug it out with Columba for the title of best debaters in Dunedin. The subject was the conflict between privacy and security that America seems to have so much trouble with lately. Logan Park represented the voiceless proletariat masses while Columba argued for the corrupt bourgeoisie. Of course Logan Park won… of course. This was due in part to the immortal line “Yo bro, going to blow up parliament today #bomb” (you had to be there). The day was won, justice and liberty prevailed and Columba was soundly beaten.
Speakers in the DSD Senior Competition were:
LPHS 1 - Hanna Ott, Jacobi Kohu-Morris, Peter Barnett
LPHS 2 (the winners) - Matthew Scadden, Connor Seddon, Meran Campbell-Hood, Charlie Ruffman
LPHS 3 - Helen Prime, Islay Benham, Sam Burnside-Woods, Nick Adams
Speakers in the DSD Junior Competition were:
LPHS 1 - Oscar LaDell, Grant McNaughton, Oliver Robson, Ruari Griffin
LPHS 2 - Ben Clayton, Oscar McGuire, Claire Caird, Rachael Molteno
LPHS 3 - Naomi Ashby-Ryan, Aria Nadar-Turner, Desiree Heinz-Familton, David Prime
Overall, there were two Logan Park students in the Top Ten list for juniors: congratulations to Ben Clayton (Year 9) and Grant McNaughton (Year 10). Charlie Ruffman can be congratulated on making the Top Ten for the senior competition.
A fun debating year was had by all and I look forward to next year when I will have some of the junior debaters in my vice-like grip (with Helen Prime probably being kinder to the other team). You have been warned.