Having Faith!

We had our debate this evening at Auckland Grammar School. If the room which we debated in is supposed to represent the sort of buildings AGS have then it really isn't that much better than our school! A window was tagged/scratched. They had those plastic desks that you usually have at primary schools with those removeable trays, only at Auckland Grammar there aren't trays (obviously!). At least there was a good view of Mt Eden prison!

We were up against Corran School, an all girls school, with the moot

"that we should impose sanctions on Iran" with us being the negating team. The girls were all in their fancy blazers with their ties. Their head girl was even in their team, up against ours with our school's head boy, deputy head boy and head girl! We looked a lot better in our formal uniform with ties! After seeing the other schools we're now going to try push to get our blazers early!

Heather was first speaker and she was kinda freaking out a little bit after hearing the first speaker of the affirmative team speak I think because she wasn't sure if her speech was even relevant. She managed to get through her speech and did really well! Fortunately no one made any points of information during her speech, and nor did we during their first speaker's speech (we couldn't think of anything that quick!) It was only when the second speaker of the affirmative team gave her speech that I decided to make a point of information. The second speaker stumbled a bit after my question and when I raised another point of information later on in her speech again she just shouted

"DECLINED!"

During my speech the girls must've decided to retaliate as one of the opposing team raised a point of information in the middle of my speech but fortunately all she asked me to do was define 'diplomacy' which wasn't too bad. I spoke over time and so Christine our timekeeper ended up dinging that bell throughout final few sentences! The fire alarm during my speech didn't help either!

Patrick our third speaker did pretty well with rebuttal he managed to fill up heaps of time with rebuttal. A point of information was made regarding 'Anglo-Saxons' That was interesting...

Throughout the debate the affirmative team kept on going about how Iran was a threat and that sanctions were an effective answer but never explained how they would be effective, and kept saying that our team never gave an alternative when we kept going on about how diplomacy was the answer!

Anyway fast-foward to the end we had a lawyer as our judge and she declared us the winners which proved Heather wrong! She thought it was all doom and gloom so I hope she'll have a bit of faith in herself and our team next time round because we can do it! We won only by two points and I managed to get speaker of the day but a win's a win and especially in the advanced grade (where apparently margins are slim) it ain't too bad!

Our next debate is related to the failure of the prison system so that'll be interesting and as long as we're affirmative then that'll be good!

One of my favourite private comments within our team that we were passing around while listening to the opposing team's speaker was

"What's wrong with this school?"

"Maybe it's Corran School for the Deaf"