By Brendan Lin
It is difficult to describe debating to those outside of the tight-knit debate community. Contrary to what many people believe, “debate” is not a synonym for “yelling at people who disagree with you”. Rather, it is a highly structured team competition with all the fun of DECA but none of the mind-numbing rote memorization. Woodlands debate has contributed to this underappreciated art form far more than most people at our school realize.
Last year was one of our strongest ever, with Alan Ma (who was also editor-in-chief of the Woodstock), Jason Liu, Emily Tao, Amanda Plotnik, Yinuo Wang, and Eric Zhao serving as execs, with the latter two being co-presidents. To list all the accomplishments of just these six individuals would literally fill this entire page, but to get an idea of their calibre, Eric alone managed to win the high school debate tournaments of Queens, McGill, and York University, among others. Eric and Amanda are now members of Hart House, the debate society of the University of Toronto.
In 2019, Woods debate continued their legacy. Reana Yan, along with Simren Sharma and Amy Zaharia, respectively, won the Hart House (co-hosted by our very own Eric Zhao) and the Senior Provincials tournament. Reana has also become the first Woodlands debater to make Team Canada. Our members have also broken at a number of tournaments throughout the year, including Ameen Parthab and a debater who does not wish to be named, who broke 4th at the Harvard World Schools Invitational. Other tournaments where our debaters broke include Queens, Western, McGill, York Women’s, and Waterloo. And all of this is not even counting the numerous high school tournaments! This is just a glimpse of the wonderful world that is debate - I apologize to all the extremely skilled and hard-working debaters who were not mentioned.
Our debate executives for next year are Jacob Liu and Reana Yan as co-presidents, James Yang as VP of team, Amy Zaharia as VP of club, Ameen Parthab and Nyla Syed as Executives of Events, Vicky Bui as Marketing Executive, and Malaika Mitra as Internal Logistics Executive. Each of these students has dedicated a large portion of their high school experience to debate, and each of them is amazing in their own right. They plan to host our very own full-fledged debate tournament next year.
Join debate club - it’s more fun than you might think. And don’t be put off by the fact that our current and past execs are “debate gods”. Reana only started doing debate in grade ten, and by grade eleven she’s on the national team. Besides, debate is useful in all areas of life. Try to convince me otherwise - we can take it up on Friday in room 212.
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