Scotch College

Debating successes - 2005

This year Scotch has again been a regional host school for the Debating Association of Victoria’s interschool competition.

What does being the host school mean? Five BIG nights, with all the debating teams from PLC, St Catherine’s, Ruyton, MLC, Trinity, Lauriston, Burke Hall, Loreto and Fintona coming to Scotch to take part in the inter-school competition. On each debating night, 60 debates take place, using all upstairs and downstairs rooms in the quadrangle.

Showcase debates take place in the Fraser-Smith Theatre, which is now affectionately known as ‘Centre Court’.

Scotch entered 23 teams of boys from Year 8 through to Year 12.

There were five rounds of debates with a diverse range of topics:

• That doctors should be able to override family
• wishes for patients who are unable to consent
• That a mission to Mars would be a waste of
• money
• That the war on terrorism is unnecessarily
• restricting our freedom

Years 11 and 12 debaters were put under extra pressure by undertaking secret topic debates in some of the rounds. This means that the teams had one hour only to prepare before the debate commenced.

The finals series

2005 was a good year for our debaters, with three teams going through the season undefeated and representing our Region in the state finals.

Congratulations to the finals teams who were :

• B6 (Year 11) Ð Ben Andrews, Luke Burgess, Navin Ranasinghe and Tian Tu
• C 1 (Year 10) Ð Conrad Banasik, Henry Hedinger, James Leung, Jun Qu
• D1 (Year 9) Ð Lachie Baird, Luke Dawson, David Dower, James Sutherland

The D1 team made it through to the semi-finals (the top four teams in the state), before being defeated by Ballarat High School who then went on to win the grand final.

ÔSwannie AwardsÕ for best speaker

These are regional awards, named after Australian debating champion Alan Swanwick. They are awarded to speakers with the highest average speaker score, having completed at least three debates in each grade and region. There are thousands of students in the competition, with only 100 speakers receiving Swannie Awards.

Congratulations to the three winners from Scotch this year: Andrew Trinh (Year 11), Henry Hedinger (Year 10) and Lachlan Baird (Year 9).

Congratulations to all the boys who represented Scotch debating in 2005. See you in 2006!

Ms Suzette Boyd
Teacher-in-charge of Debating