Mascq Debate

Last wednesday and thursday I participated at a Student Debate Tournament. The meaning of this assembly is all about showing each other your skills in debating, in other words: win arguments.
It was a learning experience as it also was a failure. Prior to the tournament I was pretty secure of my own debating skills. Unfortunatly I was wrong. My teammate, Arne Klarenberg is a skillful negotiator and we had no problem coming up with arguments. In the first debate we had to defend the statement that 'windmills are out'. We managed to ensure the audience it was clean, cheap, dynamic and the energy source of the future. We won this debate. In the next debate we managed to come up with 8 arguments for the destruction of The Hague. But our opponent convinced the jury with clever populism.

Then the finals were held in the Acadamy Building in Leiden, where we had to argue against the abolation of student society membership in the first year of the study. Again, our arguments lost to presentation and structure.

So....I have learned I am not a debater...oh well