Interschool Debating Champions
In the last week of last term, Darwin High School hosted the Interschool Debating Finals in the STEAM Theatre.
DHS Teacher, Phoebe Allen said that
The Interschool Debating Final culminates a semester of our students committing to school debating. In term 1 we ran an internal friendly DHS competition where students refreshed and honed their skills by debating against each other weekly. With some natural attrition between the terms, we then entered two teams into the Interschool competition in term 2. I would like to congratulate the following students for their weekly commitment to this extra-curricular activity this semester.
by Year 11 student Eli Bacher
Over the semester, the DHS debating club were hard at work, first during the internal competition held in term 1, and then in the NTDU comp in term 2.
The term 1 competition saw four teams compete for bragging rights as Ms. Allen gave us topics to debate. While it was challenging dealing with COVID-19 cases within teams (with one debater even having to connect via Microsoft Teams for a debate), it was a good experience to sharpen our skills and create bonds as teams.
Then in the latter half of Term 2 came the big comp, five teams from the Darwin area (Casuarina Senior College, Essington, Haileybury and two DHS teams) competed in the NTDU interschool competition held at Darwin High's A block. It was a fun competition and both DHS teams performed exceptionally well.
On Tuesday 21st June, DHS 1 (consisting of Year 12 students Trudy Francis and Clarissa Blum, Year 11 student Eli Bacher and Year 10 student Shane West) debated the topic “that we should have affirmative action quotas for minorities at awards shows” against the exceptional CSC team, who were fantastic competitors. In the end, Darwin High School, represented by Clarissa, Eli and Trudy, WON THE COMPETITION! DHS 2 placed joint second on the competition ladder.
Congratulations must be given as well to Trudy Francis who won best speaker of the night.
Big thanks to the following people:
- Ms. Allen
- Shane West
- Clarissa Blum
- Trudy Francis
- Myshka Spalding
- Upani Muthumala
- Gabby Francis
…and anyone else who debated with us this year!
