The GPS debating season commenced on Friday the 31st of July with a debate against Newington, with joeys negating the topic, That the world health organisation (WHO) should be able to issue binding resolutions to member states. At the end of the night, the year 10 A’s won and the 10B’s lost. On the following Friday, in the second round of the season, we were debating against Kings on the topic, That sporting leagues should ban players who make offensive public statements, with the joeys’ teams on the affirmative, this was our only face to face debate so far. At the end of the debates, the 10A’s lost and the 10B’s won. Facing off against Shore in the third round, now back on zoom. Joeys was negating the topic That schools should encourage and facilitate their students in social movements e.g. School strike for climate. With the 10A’s winning and the 10B’s leaving with a loss. In the most recent debate last Friday, we were against Scots on the topic, That Twitter should never censor world leaders’ Tweets. With joeys on the negative the 10A’s won and the 10B’s lost. This leaves the 10A’s on 3 of 4 wins and the 10B’s on 1 of 4 wins, with these results it is likely that the 10A’s are at the top of the table, tying with some other GPS schools.

This seasons debates have been different to others as the majority of our debates have occurred over zoom. When zoom debating, each team has a laptop along with the adjudicator who acts as the timekeeper and chairperson. Zoom debates have numerous positives and negatives, the main positives are that it allows us to speak to each other as loud as we want as we have the ability to place ourselves on mute, when in a normal debate we would have had to whisper. Along with this, we no longer have to travel to debates giving us more time to train before prep starts. Zoom debates also carry with them the negatives of being open to the possibility of connection issues, something that was prevalent in the Newington debate. In addition, we no longer have a live audience, this leaves us speaking to an empty classroom which would typically be filled by coaches, parents and the adjudicator. However, we have found zoom debating to be an overall positive experience and, in some aspects, we enjoy it more than face to face, specifically the ability to speak normally to each other, It has also had a positive effect on our results as can be seen in the 10A’s where our only loss occurred during the face to face debate with Kings.