Debating

Debating Report

It's been a fantastic start to the year for Debating as our Schools competition is well underway. In our largest ever group of debaters, we already have 99 students across 16 teams from just Years 9 to 12, and all are doing an awesome job representing our school. 

Notably, this is Huntingtower’s largest group of competing debaters ever! This just goes to show the incredible culture here at HT that ensures our students are well equipped to become capable and confident individuals as they grow up, and our ever growing numbers and accompanying victories are a sensational collective achievement.

Our teams top the ladders in all grades, with three teams in each B, C, and D grades yet to lose a single debate! The Schools Competition is a golden opportunity for our debaters to extend their skills, hone their teamwork and have fun the whole way through. But nevertheless, don’t forget to come to period 6 trainings!

In other news, we had the DAV Women’s competition held last Sunday at Loreto Mandeville Hall. The DAV Women's Competition is a debating tournament held exclusively for women, with the aim of supporting and encouraging female-identifying students. This was a unique opportunity for girls to further develop their skills in a friendly environment outside of the main Schools Competition. Each student was randomly assigned to a team of three, and completed three secret topic debates over the course of the day. The topics of the debates were a varied mix of empirical to regret topics, such as ‘this house would impose uniforms for teachers’, which produced mixed responses from the teachers present. Other topics included ‘that disruptive protest, such as throwing food, does more harm, than good.”

Overall, the day saw many of our debaters experimenting with speaker roles and trying new debate tactics that they can now bring into the schools competition and other debating endeavours.

Up next: four incredible public speakers and debaters take on international competitors at the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships in Canberra at the start of next term. Competing in a range of events including prepared speeches, debates, impromptus and interpretive readings, they will be competing against the best in the world. We wish Chloe D, Nihar P, Olivia W, and Sophie L all the very best!

We now also look forward to the rest of the year, where we continue the DAV debating rounds along with a variety of other exciting debating and public speaking competitions. We are sure Huntingtower will do spectacularly!

Josie M, Chloe D, Nihar P, Daniel L

Debating Captains