LAHORE: Students discussed a wide range of topics from homosexuality to law at the Lahore School Debate and Declamations 2011 held at the Lahore School of Economics (LSE) on Sunday.
The semi finals of the English debates will be held today. With the end of round three, four and five, the names of the institutions that made it to the semi finals are yet to be announced. Besides this, the results of the Urdu debates semi finals, also held on Sunday, will be announced.
While students from 70 teams debated over topics of law and sexuality in the third and fourth round, the topics of the fifth round were rather casual.
In the third round, the participants spoke on jury trials, conviction of expecting mothers and favouring litigation or mitigation.
The audience found the government, the teams in favour of the topics, more convincing. The held that people should not take the law in their hands and that a higher authority was made to provide justice to the people. They maintained that mitigation was not at all persuasive. The theme of the fourth round was based on homosexuality and sex education. Participants talked about gay parades in the community, sex education at high school levels and funding of sex change operations.
Syed Ali Akbar, president of LSEAD, LSE debating society, said that sexuality was not frequently talked about and the social stigma attached to it needed to be removed. “It has to be discussed.
That was our aim behind the theme. Although some participants were not comfortable with the topic, they came up with convincing arguments,” he said.
The government from the University College Lahore held that the number of honour killing cases in the coutry was on the rise. “It’s time to break the shells and step into the world where people would know about taboos,” they said.
G Rhydian Morgan, the chief adjudicator, said, “Sex issues are always tricky to handle, but the participants handled them well.” He said that the students shared the same views about such controversial topics as the liberal countries around the world. “I found it quite similar to the arguments the participants had during a debate in South Africa which is very liberal when it comes to homosexuality,” he added.
Round four was made a free speech round where the participants were allowed to communicate in any language and use casual language. Light topics helped ease the tension built by serious topics in the preceding rounds. The debates were conducted on three topics: ‘Brides should wear black’, ‘teaching an old dog a new trick’ and ‘doing things to people because of stuff’.
Semi finals for Urdu debates were conducted on the subject of blasphemy.
Faiza Ahsan, a senior adjudicator and the Lahore Grammar School debating coach, said, “Religious element should not be brought to the debates. Especially with children under 19 years of age, since they are they are not mature enough to understand the core effects and lack the required knowledge.”
Both the English and Urdu debates will continue today at the same venue.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 7th, 2011.
COMMENTS (1)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ