Debating

On Tuesday the 28th of July, the Staughton Grade C debating team had our third round debate for the Debater’s Association of Victoria (DAV) competition. Our C Grade team is made up of Year 10 students and Caitlin Hopkins, Kaley Roe and Sergei Grigorovitch were our speakers for this debate. 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Staughton’s debate teams have had to move to online debates through the meeting platform Zoom for the DAV competition. The debate was a very different experience being online than being face to face with the other team, the adjudicator and the audience. We were only able to see people’s faces via a computer screen when it was their turn to speak or when the adjudicator was talking. 

The topic for the evening’s debate was a secret topic that was revealed an hour before the debate via email. Our topic was revealed to be “Social media does more harm than good” and our side was on the affirmative side to the debate. Before the debate started at 7pm, our team had a Google meeting to discuss and plan our debate against the Bacchus Marsh Grammar C Grade Team. We also kept the meet going during the debate so we could pass on ideas for rebuttals and help in any way throughout the debate. With the debate being on Zoom we had to have our cameras on the whole time during the debate but only had our microphones on when we were delivering our rebuttals and points. Unfortunately, Caitlin and Sergei had camera troubles so they had to record themselves when they were presenting and send it to Ms Clancy who forwarded the recordings to the adjudicator for feedback. It was a tough competition, with both teams coming up with great ideas and argument points. 

Our speakers did a great job, speaking with voices full of confidence and ended up pulling out a well-deserved win, which is the first win for our C grade team this year. We want to give a huge congratulations to Caitlin Hopkins for winning Best Speaker on the night. It was a tremendous effort by everyone involved. The night was a great success, even though we could not be face to face with our teammates. We look forward to when we can have our traditional debating celebrations, which is jamming out to music the whole trip back and singing our hearts out before getting some McDonalds and enjoying it together as a team. 

GO TEAM STAUGHTON!!! 

By Kaley Roe and Caitlin Hopkins

Year 10 Debating