With the privilege of the Hon Justice Francois Kunc attending the Grand Final of the ADC Schools Debating Competition 2017, our participating Year 10 students capped off another amazing six-week program.
The competition is run annually as part of ADC’s Corporate Social Responsibility.
In 2017 our participants had a lot of fun developing their team-work (collaborating in teams with students from other schools), putting their heads together to brainstorm an array of persuasive arguments on various challenging topics, executing their debates with increasingly impressive skills and developing many new friends along the way. Our congratulations to all participants and their respective schools.
At the finals, we had the pleasure of welcoming Justice Kunc onto the adjudicating panel. Students were asked to debate the topic:
This house would resolve that all court proceedings should be live streamed over the internet for the benefit of students and the public.
The debate displayed the skills of seasoned debaters and those who were taking to the debating floor for only the fifth time. The arguments were sharp and fierce. Congratulations to team KYJ who won the final: Katie Walsh, Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College; Yasmin Momem, Burwood Girls High School, and Jack Linton, The Scots College.
Our warm thanks to Justice Kunc and ADC Chairman John Wakefield for your kind words of encouragement and presentation of the awards.
What was a smoothly run and highly compelling Competition could not have been such a great success without the dedication and tireless effort of our volunteer coaches and adjudicators; Tracey Tran, Nicole Sung, Matthew Kwan and Lucy McNamara and our Chief Adjudicator, Michael Swanson. Their experience ranged from competitors of international debating tournaments to members of the legal profession. Each was able to bring a unique set of skills, and under their guidance and energetic evaluations they proudly watched all the students developing their debating skills and gaining a real taste for the art of persuasive argument.
Thank you also to all of our ADC interns and staff who were involved behind the scenes in making sure everything ran as planned!
Finally a big thank you to each of the schools, teachers and support staff who were involved in organising and accompanying the students. Without your cooperation and efforts we could not hold this debating competition. We hope to see you all participating in the future as we grow the program, to give more students the opportunity of this unique competition on the Sydney debating calendar.