motion can be tackled, whether the motion is a balanced one, and some
experiences in the event that I adjudicated the actual debate. Some of the
motions would seem immediately difficult ones to the general reader, but in an
Asian, or Australasian tournament, debating teams typically are presented with a
number of options which they will choose from. Hence, a number of the more
difficult motions are generally passed over mutually between both teams in the
spirit of ensuring a fair fight is possible. And besides, debaters are trained to do
this sorta stuff- in local language, "talk until white become black and black
become white"... :)
Motions
Commentary
I remember Dorothy Cheung quite well from my student debating days in NTU; and was sad to hear of
her passing some years after I graduated. A yearly tournament has since been organised in her
memory, and pits together teams from the pre-tertiary to tertiary institutions in Singapore. This
tournament was held on the 2nd and 9th March 2002, and saw the participation of 40 teams from 11
institutions. The motions are below, and in each case, I adjudicated the debate on the third motion of
each round.
Round 1: This house believes that Arafat is integral to the peace process.
This house would look to China to lead Asia.
This house believes the US needs to rethink its foreign policies.
On the first glance, given the current attention and awareness being put on tension in the middle-east
in the aftermath of 9-11, one would have taught the proposing teams engaging in this motion would
have chosen this issue as the main battleground. Surprisingly, the proposing team from NUS didn't -
they centered their attention on environmental concerns, and in particular the US pull out of the Kyoto
treaty. Certainly not an unreasonable thing to do, but it put the responding team from Hwa Chong JC
in a tight corner, and they had to do quick thinking on their feet to recover from this. The NUS team
proposed that non-participation from the US would have severely diminished the overall effectiveness
of a global issue that concerns us all, and for so large a force to pull out would certainly give moral
legitimacy to other nations - whose very contribution would be as significant to the treaty - to similarly
pull out and only implement environmentally-friendly policies based on (naturally) their own
self-interests and needs first. The Hwa Chong team clearly struggled through, particularly after
receiving the initial shock, but came up bravely to contend whether the treaty had in reality become
significantly less effective by the US pull out, and that the US already had their own
environmentally-sound policies and their own pressure groups to remind them of their dues and
responsibilities to the larger world; and to say that an abandonment from this one Kyoto treaty would
result in an abandonment of all environmental treaties was just plain absurd. On the overall though,
the debaters from the NUS team were clearly more experienced and better equipped with speaking
skills in every technical sense, and thus they fairly took the debate, and I awarded a fairly large
margin for their skill in this round. Even then, though there were three excellent speakers in this round
- two from NUS - I awarded the best speaker to the Hwa Chong JC first's speaker, not something that
the NUS team was pleased about when they came after the debate post-mortem to query me on my
decision: P. In my assessment, the HWJC debater stood toe to toe in speaking ability with the NUS
debaters in argumentative ability - perhaps just lacking the final polish in language and confidence
that will come through a few more years of debating - and also, he had the immensely large job of
facing up to a different-than-expected definition of the motion and still could successfully retort back,
and give his team a (new) basic strategy to follow for the rest of the debate.
Round 2: This house would ban criminals from voting.
This house believes that patenting of medical findings is justified.
This house believes that the war on drugs is not worth fighting.
The proposing team (from Nanyang Polytechnic) had a pretty unusual set up for the last motion, while
not completely unreasonable was still nonetheless a deviation from what teams would generally have
done. Specifically, after declaring their intent to debate about the drug war around the Latin-American
region, the proposing team proposed that the current war of drugs in Columbia needed to be
extended to include Peru and Bolivia to increase its overall effectiveness. Because of this, the
"current" war as it is being fought right now in Columbia was not worth fighting, and needed to be
waged on a larger scale. The opposing team (from NTU) was clearly surprised at the strategy adopted
by their opponents, and contended that wasn't this tantamount to firstly accepting that the drug war in
principle was indeed worth fighting, and secondly therefore deserving an extension to include other
drug producing countries? Their main stance included a particularly interesting argument (one I
haven't heard for a long time) - that it wasn't so simple a matter for the ruling government in the
United States to drop the drug war when the going gets hard. They had already been given the
mandate by the public to fight the drug war, and thus could not make a unilateral decision to give up
the fight. The strategy taken up by the NYP team was certainly unique, and I confess I really squeezed
my brain juices to give them the benefit of doubt that they knew what they were doing. Their stance
evolved and grew depth that by the time it'd reached their third speaker, I could see where they were
coming from, although the NTU team was still demonstrating amazement that the NYP team had
"crossed" the floor, so as to speak. Ultimately, I gave the debate to the NTU team. The proposing
stance could had been more effective and reasonable if they had some how shown that the current
war as it is in Columbia was failing - which they didn't show so, since they accepted largely the
statistics showing a decrease in drug production put up by the opposing team - but instead simply left
it that the war needed to be improved through extension, which wasn't quite the same thing as
concluding that the war was not worth fighting.
Round 3: This house will not allow the government to decide dress codes for students.
This house believes that immigrant workers do more harm than good to a society.
This house would close all religious schools.
This debate saw an NTU team versus a team from NUS. At this current moment of writing the decision
is still confidential, so I write this from a neutral perspective. The set up proposed by the proposing
team from NUS stated the premise rather clearly right from the start - that they would be discussing
only publicly funded schools in a secular nation that taught only religious education, and the NTU
team jumped up and said since when do these schools exist in reality - and in the event they did, they
were certainly erring and needed massive realignment from the secular government. Both teams
comprised very eloquent Indian speakers. More on the debate will come after the announcement of
results on the 9th March.
The following are the motions that we had for the 20th World Debates hosted at the University of
Sydney in January 2000. I adjudicated in the first nine rounds. I made copious notes during my
assessment, and where I can find the time, I'll be putting in various comments based on the cases
presented by each side of the house.
World Masters:
That we should club baby seals.
That women should apply lipstick.
World Debates:
That this house believes that election campaigns should be fully financed by the state.
That this house demands work for welfare.
That this house would alter its genetic code.
That this house would put worker's rights before trade rights.
That this house would have lots of sex. (Yes, there are motions like these in the World Debates. This
one was for the pseudo-humour round we had in round 5.)
That this house would ignore the war in Chechnya.
That this house believes religious doctrines are more important than women's rights.
That this house likes its environmentalists radical.
That this house would put corporate profits before individual privacy.
That Asia should take the liberal path. (Octo-finals)
That this house would shut down Macdonalds. (Quarter-finals)
That Marx would have approved of the Internet. (Grand-Finals)
That women in politics do not have a real chance.
Against the affirmative, that is. The natural tendency for the affirmative would be to point out that
there aren't too many women politicians when compared to the male ones, but the negative need only
point out the ones that have made it to politics have often done spectacularly well, e.g. Margaret
Thatcher, and have by and large improved the lots of people in their nations. The debate could then
result in a wrestle between the affirming side proposing commonality and the norm, versus the
negative side putting forward the many (but scattered?) exceptions, which would then bring about
points of argument indicating that an exception does not make a rule (for the affirmative), or that an
exception by its very existence will prove that there is a real chance (for the negative).
That sex tourism is a legitimate industry.
Against the affirmative, simply because of the overwhelming connotations with the sex industry.
Although this is not to mean that the debate cannot be won for an affirming team, for an "aye" team to
win this one would clearly indicate a world class team. A possible variation of this motion into a more
balanced one could be like this: "That sex tourism is a legitimate industry for third-world countries."
That migrant labour should be stopped.
Against the negative, for the same reason as above.
That child labour is justifiable.
Ditto.
That we should not upset the applecart.
On the surface, this could seem like a fair debate, but it really isn't. The illustrative nature of the
motion can really be distilled into a simpler point of argument: on whether one should maintain the
status quo, or continually break out from norms. I've had the opportunity to debate over this motion on
three instances, and my impression is that the motion is somewhat weighted against the affirmative.
History shows clearly the many instances when humans have chosen to break free from societal
norms of their times, often with surprising results. It would be naturally easy for the negative team to
continually harp on these instances.
Hellishly difficult motions
The notion of Asian Values is a poor excuse.
This one could be difficult given the current volatility of Asian friendliness in this region in the midst of
the economic crisis and downturn. There are examples aplenty that can be used to support the
motion either way, only that these examples would have to be well-researched out; unless this is one's
area of specialisation, for most debaters, political events that stretch over any protracted length of
time are by their nature then difficult to distil into a singular or more obvious trend.
That daughters should lock up their mothers.
How does one debate on this? This I remember was one of the motions for the preliminary rounds of
the Australasian debates in Melbourne. None of the participating teams took up this motion though.
That sustainable development is an oxymoron.
In my opinion, the difficulty here isn't in debating on whether development can be sustained over a fair
length of time; but the oxymoron characteristic leads one to believe that this is a question of absolutes
here. E.g. that development can never be sustained, and that they are mutually opposing forces to
begin with.
That gender is a state of mind.
I like this motion as well, as it will draw heavily upon what one gender can/cannot do when compared
to the other. It's a wide, open field to which the motion can be debated upon, so it would be
advantageous in the interests of maintaining a focused debate that the affirming team somewhat limits
the scope of argument in the opening affirming speech.
That Switzerland should pay.
This one could be difficult, particularly due for the negative team, due to the open nature to which the
affirming team can define the motion.
That tobacco companies should not be made to take the rap.
This was the motion for the climatic semi-finals of the 4th Asians debates 1997 between speakers
from the Attenuo De Manila University (negative), and University of San Tomas (I think), both of the
Philippines- arguably the two best teams I adjudicated in the entire tournament. In my experience, this
was still the most closely fought debate I've adjudicated or watched, and the panel of five adjudicators
had a serious split of 3-2 in the final verdict. The adjudicator's verdict, which I was requested to
present, was a difficult one, as the margin of victory for the affirmative side was a narrow one. The
overwhelming evidence on the harmful effects of tobacco smoking seemed to nearly win the day for
the negative, until the affirmative came back with a strong case arguing that tobacco companies were
(publicly) ignorant of these harmful effects, citing examples and such, and therefore could not be
taken to task for this. In retrospect now, the verdict could have gone either way, as demonstrated by
the close decision to finally award the debate to the affirmative.
Humourous motions
Beam me up, Scotty.
An obvious reference to Star Trek. Could be impossibly difficulty for one not familiar with American TV
culture of the 1960s, if it wasn't for the generally open nature of the motion.
That bans and limitations are idiot responses.
Taken in a local (Singaporean) context, there are examples galore of this that would easily make the
motion a lively one. I remember adjudicating this one in the Asians Intervarsity debates, and it was
amusing to see how speakers from other Universities (particularly from those across that causeway)
perceive the many tough laws on social behaviour in Singapore.
That we should make first contact.
Also from the 4th Asians, I thoroughly enjoyed adjudicating this debate between the all male team
from a Malaysian University, and an all ladies team from the Philippines. True to the spirit of the
occasion, the Malaysian team defined the motion in the context of male-female relationships, and
needless to say, the motion became one akin to a man-women brawl over relationships, marriage and
coitus (really!). This was certainly the most thrilling (and definitely off-colour) debate I've had the
pleasure of judging. Interestingly, other teams of the tournament having a similar motion defined it in
much less adventurous ways- one debate had the affirming team proposing that we should make first
contact with aliens.
That we shouldn't trust men with a centre parting.
Another humourous motion, but horrendously difficult to debate upon, since history has not provided
us with too many famous figures with this kind of hair-style. The closest one, Adolf Hitler, did not have
a centre parting even.
That deep blue has put us in deep shit.
This is a good motion to debate upon, as at its most empirical level, the motion is really about how
machines have, and will continue to change our lives. A team with some specialist knowledge, for
example in the areas of Artificial Intelligence searching techniques, or expert systems will almost
certainly have a distinct edge though, as these areas clearly point to some limitations of what
technology can really do for us. A lesser-equipped team in this domain will not be able to
counter-argue against such techniques already created and specified in the computing world.
That the Internet does not interlink.
A popular motion made so by the pervasiveness of the Internet. At the most basic level, the motion
asks whether the virtual environment in which we now lead our lives will truly replace our human need
to physically see, hear and feel. This motion can be easily used at all levels of debating expertise.
That thou shalt not done.
Both of the two motions above can prove difficult debating motions can go as there isn't a clear,
immediately obvious way in which either motion can be defined. Although one may quickly point out
that the negative team would have thus have a naturally more difficult time, one should not forget that
in a debate, the onus is on the affirming team to define, but yet still present the scope of the motion in
a logical yet debatable manner. This would be particularly true for such motions where there is great
ambiguity. Interestingly, in my impression (and from conversations from other fellow adjudicators too)
that there seems to be some implicit sympathy usually for the opposing team.
Generally ok motions
That the state should legalise assisted suicide.
That classic debate on whether euthanasia should be supported by the state. Slight possibility that
this motion could be too over-used (read: boring).
That we are no longer capable of moral indignation.
Could make for an interesting debate. The affirmative could propose that the pervasion of information
and media has turned the entire world into a global village, and that truly isolated nations are no
longer the norm (very true). The negative could quickly then point out that precisely because no one
can hide too much anymore, there must be mechanisms existent to ensure that we don't start poking
our noses into everyone's backyard (issues of sovereignty?). The debate could therefore possibly
hinge not so much whether we are, but whether we should continually be morally indignant. Does this
make sense?
That Pauline Hanson should be given equal time.
I liked this motion as well, as the way I would debate it would be to distil it into whether naysayers
should be given equal air time. The progress of the debate could easily result in a swinging match
where the affirmative will propose (and probably extrapolate) the dire consequences of social turmoil,
unrest and strife that could result- and the negative would reply on the right to be heard, and the
need for opposing counterchecks in any sort of establishment.
That the human rights issue is but a song and dance.
This is a fair motion, with both sides evened out. There is evidence that the human rights have been
more flash and bang (many examples to prove this- consider only the recent notions from third world
countries that the advent of human rights is really a "plaything" of the rich in the west )- versus the
existence of true human rights advocates, often martyrs in their own ways (e.g. Nelson Mandela?).
Should make for a good debate.
