News from the Debate Club

- Anna H.

(photo by Anna H.)

Since the beginning of the year, the EJM debate club has tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy given the current situation. It has continued to organize in-house tournaments and model UNs. This continuity has been extremely important to all its members as it is an opportunity to keep up skills and morale, as well as debate topics of interest. Below is the latest news from the debate club.

HMCE:

This year, the EJM debate club has once again performed extremely well at HMCE (Harvard Model Congress Europe)! Although the online conditions were far from perfect, the event was a great success. Many had doubts about how it would work online, but it ended up going very smoothly. This event was much awaited as it had been canceled last year due to Covid, and is likely to be the only international conference the school will be attending this year. The American ones - such as HMUN - are in a different time zone, making attendance much more difficult. The delegates adapted extremely well and brought EJM a great number of awards. The school won 3 “best delegate” awards thanks to Tamara B., Jade J. and Nicholas W. as well as 15 Honorable mentions. A huge congratulations to all the delegates who attended the conference from the entire community!

In house tournaments:

The month of March is a month to celebrate diversity. The debate club therefore chose to include relevant and interesting topics relating to diversity in the debate tournament that took place between March 15th and March 22nd. These topics included the highly controversial issue of Affirmative Action, as the issue of reparations for slavery, as well as the difference between Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism.

The School’s model UN (JMUN) was supposed to happen before the break but it seems as though that will not be happening, it may be delayed but it is not looking like it will happen soon if it does. This event is always a great opportunity to practice debate skills in a conference setting but with less pressure than in larger conferences, and is much appreciated by members of the debate club.

Overall, the debate club is holding up very well to Covid and although the situation is far from ideal, life goes on with the dedication and courage of the entire school community. However as all school clubs it does seem unlikely that it can continue during the distance learning period