INTI International University was a hive of activity as students and staff of this and other campuses of INTI Education Group made a beeline for College Day, a carnival-like annual extravaganza for students and staff of the Group.
While activities were many and games aplenty, the participants, in particular those from INTI International College Subang (IICS), were drawn to a fiery debate competition pitting two student teams from IICS against each other in the final round.
Kajendran a/l Subramaniam, Shaza Scherazade Alauddin Onn and Hau Han Sen were winners of the grueling 2-day competition. “I have never debated thrice in a day before,” said Kajendran, an A-Level final semester student. “It was a complete mental workout as we not only had to know how to handle the topics but scope the issues as well. In fact, I never knew that scoping is very important especially when you need to expect what the opposition would do. It was very tiring but rewarding nonetheless.”
Johnathan Lai Weng Jin and his teammates Justin Chow Hoong Wai and Wong Soong Kit came second in the competition. “It was an amazing eye-opener for me as the debate was different from your typical high school debate,” said Lai. “The chief adjudicator introduced new rules and regulations which we were not familiar with and elevated the entire debate to international standard. It made us learn to be flexible and really tested our abilities.”
IICS’s debate advisor and coach Kalai Vaani echoed this sentiment, saying that “the entire debating task is daunting when each year a different chief adjudicator is appointed which means our teams have to be flexible and adaptive to various styles and expectations. They need to re-strategise at a moment’s notice.” Kalai and her fellow advisors, M Kamala and Mathuri Subramaniam, spent two to fours hours daily to coach the teams.
“Debates taught me to be sly, so to speak,” said Hau of the winning team. “You need to know how to ‘attack’ the judges and appeal to the people you are speaking to. Some people like your manner while others prefer a different manner. You need to be able to change at a split second to impress the judges.”
Some of the IICS debaters have since moved on to further education overseas, and the task of identifying and training new members is a challenging one.
“Building teams is not easy,” said advisor Mathuri. “We try to identify potential debaters among the students we teach through their public speaking skills and existing team members may know of other potential debaters. But yes, it is not easy to find students to participate and be committed.”
Commitment, however, is not lacking where Shaza Scherazade is concerned. The veteran of inter-school debates is working on creating a strong debating club on campus and elevating debate teams to national and international circuits. “Ideally, we should begin our search for debaters at secondary school level,” she said.
INTI promotes an array of student activities to develop students’ interests and skills beyond the classroom.
Shaza, Kajendran and Hau make an eloquent trio
