As an avid debate-lover, I always wanted to get an official debate platform to enhance my debate skills. Before this club, the only official platforms we got were inter-house debate competitions by the school. Although it was fun, it came once a year, which in my opinion was very slow. So, one of my friends had an idea to make a debate club, where people can come together and put our thoughts. After co-founding this club, we divided responsibilities on who does what. For example, two of my friends formed a constitution for the club, whereas I and two others made a debate rule book after researching on various types of debates. The evidence for the same can be found below:
We rotated responsibilities for the organization of debates fortnightly. This way, everyone got a chance to participate. My most memorable moments in this debate club include the mock trial, where the organizing committee made up a situation of sexual assault case, and the lawyers had to fight for their clients. I was an attorney, and we had to defend the man falsely framed for assault, which we ended up winning. The second moment was in the very first debate, revolving around the legalization of marijuana. I conducted an extensive research on the effects of marijuana, which I was against. My research can be found below:
The CAS components catered are as follows:
Creativity: Coming up with debate topics, making up arguments helped us use and enhance our creative thinking skills.
Service: The school approached us with tasks to organize different debates for young children and also hold workshops to teach them about debating, which we gladly proceeded with.
The Learning Outcomes catered are as follows:
LO1: I could put to use my fluency of language and wit, which I consider are my strengths. I realized I need to work on the organization of my research, which my groupmates helped me with.
LO2: Organizing a club itself was a challenge, while getting everyone to work together and coordinating. We also learned about new debating formats and techniques.
LO3: Since I helped co-found the club, I was divided responsibilities, which according to my groupmates, I fulfilled really well.
LO4: When organizing and researching about the debate, we had to allot a fair amount of time from our schedules to this task.
LO5: Since organizing and debating was with groupmates, we learned to work together and coordinate our research to best represent our point of view.
LO6: We debates on issues of global significance, like terrorism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Kashmir issue, and also conducted a mock MUN style debate.