The local chapter of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) is set to open up the year with a healthy academic battle among students through their annual debate championship.
The 2014 debate competition will see the usual six traditional halls including the international students slug it out through the power of writing, public speaking and presentation skills.
The theme for the debate is, ‘Multilingual and Ethnic Diversity, Indispensable Tools for Nation Building’.
The debate will employ the British parliamentary style which has become the international standardized style for academic debate championships.
With this, speakers are given only fifteen minutes notice of the motion. Speeches are usually between five and seven minutes in duration. It consists of four teams of two speakers, with two teams on either side of the case. The competition would also include the public speaking contest to give it more of the international bite.
As KNUST eyes this year’s African championship to be staged in South Africa, leadership of the University has decided to provide all necessary resources needed to adequately equip the local competition.
KNUST debate team last year made the University proud by reaching the penultimate round of the African championship in addition to amassing six awards at the event.
The school as a result qualifies for the world championship to be staged in Malaysia in December this year where they would meet the likes of Harvard, M.I.T, Stanford and London School of Economics.
This has propelled organizers of this year’s event to inject more feed from the experience gathered from last year’s competition into the local one.
Experts in the debate circles have been coaching the various teams since the beginning of the semester. Winners of the competition will get some cash prize and will be given opportunity to audition for the school’s debate team.
The competition is set for Saturday,15, and Sunday, 16, of February 2014 at the Dining Hall of the Independence Hall, KNUST.
Speaking on FOCUS FM, Public Relations Officer of the NUGS-KNUST local, Edem Ativor promised this year’s debate competition will be devoid of violence.
The local debate competition over the years have seen University Hall (Katanga) and Unity Hall (Conti) exchange punches after the academic fight over who really deserved to have won on the day.
On certain occasions, the winners of the competition are not announced at the event grounds.
Edem Ativor explained security for this year’s will be highly intensified to make it a memorable one and better than previous ones.
President of the NUGS-KNUST local, Paul Worlanyo believes no thread would be overlooked in ensuring a successful competition this year.
President of the debate team, Duke Aaron Sasu believes the local competition could unearth some good talents to beef up the already strong school’s debate team.
Meanwhile, members of the current KNUST debate team will form the adjudicating core of the local competition.
