Last Saturday on the 29th of September, our debating society decided to hold a tournament, which we titled Milestone Debate Qualifiers. The goal of our tournament was to put together a team of the most capable debaters at Milestone, to form a team whom we could take to international tournaments.
Eighteen students participated in our tournament accompanied by seven judges. The seven judges included former Milestone alumni debaters, Daniella Walsh, Gergely Horváth and Tamás Hermann, the Head of Lower House, Olivia Fero, Student Life Coordinator, Eszter Jókay, Momentum’s spokesperson, Miklós Hajnal, and journalist Máté Kaló.
The eager debaters had three rounds of debates, where they were allocated to random groups. This allowed our judges to assess debaters individually, and create an authentic reflection of individual debate skills. The three rounds were impromptu, debaters had forty minutes of preparation time. Motions were decided by the team of judges and turned out to be the following: This House Believes that politicians should be judged on the professional achievements and not their personal lives, This House Believes in positive discrimination and This House Believes that ignorance is bliss.
The last quite unorthodox motion made the tournaments fun and full of giggles. However, my personal favorite was the motion regarding the judgment of politicians which allowed us to have intense and heated debates.
As an outcome of the qualifiers, we now have a list of debaters who were in the top six, thus made the team. The list goes as following: Samu Marosi, David Zheng, László Dolgos, Gréti Mile, Márk Mészárik and myself, Sophie Dara.
As a presidency, we are immensely excited about the new chapter that is to come in the life of our society. To be able to prepare for the upcoming tournament in Zagreb this December with our coaches. Furthermore, we would like to encourage individuals who did not make it this year in the top six to not get discouraged, rather see it as an opportunity to come to our weekly session and improve.
A huge thank you goes to everyone who came and participated and especially to our judges and Eszter Jókay who assisted us in organising the event.
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