by Matisse Reed and Zoe Wei
Emmanuel’s debaters Matisse Reed (1st Speaker), Zoe Wei (2nd Speaker), James Gover (3rd Speaker), and Andries Armes-Venter (Prep Helper) — with the assistance of Matthew Diamond and alumnus Ryan Minuti (EMC 2014-16) as Debating Convenor and Debating Coach respectively — had a brilliant season, culminating with a win in the Inter-College Competition Debating grand-final on 21 May 2018.
As first-year students and the first permanent female debaters to make the team, Matisse and Zoe, along with second-year student Andries, had no university debating experience, so the team participated in some pre-season sessions to learn the ins and outs of ICC Debating. With the guidance of seasoned debaters Ryan and James, we quickly gained the skills and experience we needed.
As the excitement grew for the first debate, we walked into the prep room nervous, but ready to show the other colleges what we were made of. It was a successful first debate against St John’s, arguing against the taxing of companies who used robotics instead of human labour. This was followed by another win against Grace, with Juhi Malhotra stepping in as Prep Helper for the night. Our first loss came the next week against The Women’s College followed by another disappointing round against Cromwell. Luckily, we made our way into quarter-finals and redeemed ourselves against Cromwell, as we argued negative to the motion “we should make university education free”. For the semi-finals, we found ourselves against Duchesne and emerged with a hard-won victory and a place in the grand-final against Women’s.
As the UQ lecture hall filled with both Wooza and Blue Dog supporters, the atmosphere was rife with tension and anticipation. Women’s had distinguished themselves in the competition this year, and the high quality of the debate was a testament to this. The topic was by far the most challenging of the season, as we championed the motion “we regret the balloon propaganda initiative” regarding the recent events between South Korea and North Korea. After an intense and very close debate, the Emmanuel team edged out Women’s to claim our 6th grand-final win in the past 7 years of ICC Debating.
