nan | 楠木

So, we finally get to the point where we actually get to debate!
Well, that was what I thought when I woke up in the morning. I was rather excited, after seeing yesterday’s masters. I thought I could bring some new ideas to the debate, and it would be an interesting experience sharing them with peers from other countries. The interaction would be very enlightening.
Of course, the fun part only starts when the debating starts. So meanwhile, we had to wait. And wait. And wait.
The waiting starts right after we get off the bus. Because we have so many people, we jammed the whole dining facility up right away. It was probably a 45 minute wait to finally get to the serving area. And then there was no food. Which lead to more wait. There’s probably a host of things the organizers can do to have prevented this, but I’m not going to get into that argument.
Then we moved to a fine sports hall, which was the main convention grounds where the motions are announced. Not enough seats were laid out for everyone, and the 3 projector screens were not really big enough. But enough of this moaning. We waited another hour while the organizers kept reminding us to sign in. Then the first round started.
The motion was whether state funding for religious schools should be banned. We were Closing Opposition. I thought it could have been a close debate, but we made quite a number of mistakes, which lead to us being last. But since it was our first ever British Parliamentary style debate, I didn’t really mind. I just wanted to get myself familiarized with the style and format. The Opening Opposition was quite solid: basically they had a clear structure and some very good ideas. They deserve to be first.
Lunch, and things were more smoothly done this time. Then more wait.
Second round was whether the UK should abolish its nuclear arsenal or not. We were Closing Government. Since the second half teams have to make extensions, I tried to make that my focus as I prepared. Unfortunately the Opening Government had a lot of the same arguments, and I think I was quite unclear myself which points I really wanted to talk about. That lead to my speech not really having clear extensions. Oh well, last place again.
More wait. We became literally quite exhausted at this stage. But I badly wanted to salvage something out of this day.
Which we did. The 3rd round of the day was over whether South Africa should support accelerated land redistribution. We were Closing Opposition. Well, frankly, we knew nothing about the background of this debate (and there’s a big big background apparently, as I researched it just now). Lucky for us, nobody else in the debate knew either. The Korean Opening Government and the Japanese Closing Government probably had a hard time preparing. To make things even more interesting, the Opening Opposition decided to quit, and we had a temporary swing team, which only had one person. She talked twice.
Anyways, because of all those twists and turns, I did feel like it was a comfortable win. We had some good arguments, and I think I did a better job organizing them.
After dinner, it was supposed to be a women’s night, with some theme activities, but most of us were too tired for that I guess. We hopped on a bus and got back to the hotel, where I crashed into the bed immediately.