Moser's Hall declared champions of Junior House Debating

Moser’s Hall were recently declared winners of the Junior House Debating competition.

Fourth former Sara W from the winning team has written about her experience of the competition…

The Junior House Debating competition consisted of 6 debates, of which 2 were seeding rounds before 4 knockout rounds. Over the duration of the competition, as a team, we faced a variety of motions ranging from relatively straightforward to those that required imagining alternate realities and how our world would be shaped by different limitations.

For instance, on one week we considered whether or not people should have the ability to lie. As Proposition we were arguing that we agree that we should live in a world without the ability to lie. This was one of the first motions we encountered, and it encouraged us to consider the idea that although it is a fundamental belief by many that lying is wrong, and something we are taught against throughout our childhoods, lying can in fact be justified in many circumstances. We stepped into the oppositions shoes and thought about reasons why people lie and in what ways lying can at times be fundamental to protecting yourself.

On top of this, we had to work out how to incorporate statistics into debates that were based in alternate realities. In order to do this, we had to consider how these worlds were similar and how they differed from ours. Once we had worked out what was the same, we could incorporate real world statistics into our speeches and points; for example, if we lived in a world where everyone was incapable of lying, we could incorporate how the statistics of those who falsely accused others of crimes would reduce.

One of the key lessons we had early on in the competition was how think about both sides of each debate in order to prepare ourselves better for rebuttal and possible counter arguments to our points. This proved fundamental, specifically within our debate about whether or not teachers’ pay should be contingent on their pupils’ success, as the strength our arguments lay in the fact we had considered counter arguments and could firmly stand by our points if needed, introducing additional statistics and further reasoning to justify our points if asked.

Throughout the course of the competition, the skills that we learned and the ways that we learned to communicate as a team all led us to the finals. Before every debate we would do a team meeting in which we worked together to create fluidity within our speeches and that was probably the most challenging thing to do, and it required teamwork and trusting each other. We had to ensure that over the whole process we were communicating as communication is fundamental within debate.

The final debate posed as our most difficult motion to unpack. The motion we received was "This House believes that privilege has more bearing than merit upon one's outcomes in the world of today’’ to which we were opposing. The most difficult thing about this motion was to figure out how not to overlook the actual wording of the motion and what it really meant.

As a team, we tried to look at the motion from a different perspective, thinking about the fact that the motion does not state that you cannot have both merit and privilege and therefore we used that as the foundation of our arguments. We pushed the idea that anyone in life who makes it far in whatever they choose to pursue does it based on their merit and their determination not their privilege. We focused on the fact that privilege does not provide you with the ability to pursue your dreams which is itself what provides you with merit and that ultimately merit is what allows you to drive yourself and allows you to achieve your life aspirations, whatever they may be. 

On the opposite side of the motion were Queen’s, who tackled the motion in a very clear and deliberate way. They provided story points and provided a challenging debate.  Queen’s found a way to include many statistics and real day to day examples, which proved difficult to rebut. Their whip did a very good job of summarising the debate, showing us a new style to whipping and providing insightful views into the complex motion.

The competition provided new challenges each week and taught everyone in our team perseverance, teamwork and communication allowing us to focus on quick thinking and clear public speaking. House debating is a fun way to step out of your comfort zone which many of the people who debated for the first time did. The competition allowed people to find a passion they may not have known they had for debating, and everyone is excited to get involved again next year.