A year of experiencing "things new"

Junior Debating 2016

Where to begin? 2016 was in fact my first year of debating and I found it extremely fun and interesting. We started off the year with our fresh new Junior Debating team consisting of Myself (1st Speaker), Daniel Fogarty (3rd Speaker) and William Abela (2nd Speaker), all of whiom had never actually debated before (Daniel and I had only observed senior debates at Bishop Lyons earlier in the year). We began debating in term 2 with the first round (for us at least) being held at Saint Margaret’s. Our first debate itself was centred on Nuclear Free New Zealand with our team having to affirm the banning of such a policy. Our opponents Saint Margaret’s came out with a win but we had learned a lot and had enjoyed ourselves.

As the fortnights went on (as Debates were held every 2nd week) we kept improving, learning more and more techniques. Though this was the case 2nd week after 2nd week we still came up short and lost all of our debates (by small margins, or so they say). It was a tough time as every adjudicator would tell us his/her way of doing things and one often contradicted the other. Later in the debating season we were even lucky enough to head down to Timaru to debate against Roncalli in an annual sports exchange. To tell you the truth we felt quite out of place with all the rugby and football players, but at least we got the chance to represent STC. The Moot for this Timaru debate was as follows: This House Believes New Zealand should solve its own problems before attempting to solve those of other nations and we were negating this. After a tough and entertaining debate Roncalli came out on top by ‘1 Point’ and sadly we left with nothing (except for the fact that STC won the Roncalli Exchange Shield…).

Many debates preceded this one and we even gained ourselves a new Debater by the name of Jack Cunniffe (who swapped out for Will at 2nd Speaker). At first Jack seemed like a good luck omen with his first debate being our first win. The moot for this was: This house would place restrictions on books (which we did negate). Things were looking up as we were now one debate away from the Junior Regionals. The next debate on the Agenda was held at Saint Andrews College and was an extremely strange moot….This House believes Disney Princess Movies are harmful to children in which we were affirming. This would seem like an easy moot to agree with right? Strangely not as in a turn of events our opponents Lincoln High came out and took the win.

We had mixed feelings as we headed into the last set of Debates for the year of 2016: The Junior Regional Tournament…

On Sunday the 11th of September 9 students (3 Teams) from STC attended the Canterbury Debating Junior Regionals. In attendance were multiple schools from Christchurch and the wider Canterbury area such as Timaru and Greymouth.

The Tournament started at 9:15am and that meant we had to give up our Sunday sleep-in in the name of Debating. We arrived at the University’s Kirkwood Village and waited a solid 30 minutes or so before the Adjudicators told us our opposition and what rooms we were debating in. The First two debates of the day were Pre-prepared. The Moots for both were given to us during the week. Our first debate of the Morning was This House Would Ban the Burkini and all the Saint Thomas teams were negating this. The two year 11 teams came out on top and were awarded their debates, but sadly the Year 9 Team did not fare as well as they lost the debate by a close margin of 3 points (or say they say). It was now time for Morning tea. We got together as a group and discussed the results of previous debates. Once again the University students were behind schedule and the second debate started late. All 3 Saint Thomas Teams were debating for the legalization of Performance Enhancing Substances (an extremely hard topic) and sadly in the end the 3 Saint Thomas Teams lost. The two year 11 teams were 1 from two debates while the Year 9s had not won a single debate so far. Hope was not lost as there was still one debate left in the competition…..A limited Prep Debate. We were given the moot a bit late (as per usual with Uni Students) after lunch. The Moot for our last debate of the day was as follows: This House would Ban Private Schools, it seemed rather controversial as STAC and St Margaret’s were in attendance. The Year 9 debating team was given the affirmative while the two year 11 teams were given the hard task of Debating in favour of the private schools, against Saint Margaret’s.

Sadly the adjudicator (a senior STAC Student) informed us that we had lost the debate on private schools… but the next week we found out we had actually won that debate (based on points) so we could rest easy, more or less.

That was the last debate of the day as sadly we did not get through to the finals. It may have been disappointing but we came away feeling like we had improved immensely over the day. Over all it was a fairly good tournament and we hope Saint Thomas has better luck in ones to come.

Though we may have only won two whole debates I believe 2016 has been an extremely successful year for Junior Debating at STC as we have learned so much that will hopefully aid us in future years debating for the College. I can surely say (and I know my team will agree with me) that have found Debating a fun and very useful experience and will definitely be returning for a better (and more successful) year in 2017.

By Cormac Gallagher