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Juniors upset the seniors in Veritas debate

Veritas — For the first time ever the junior class overcomes the seniors in their annual match up

By: Laurent Bonczijk (The Newberg Graphic)
Published: 4/28/2010 12:00:00 PM newberggraphic.com

Veritas School’s junior class scored a major upset when they defeated the senior class for the first time in the annual debate contest.

The topic of this year’s debate was the question: Is the use of racial profiling for airline security justified? According to the rules, the seniors came up with a series of subjects and the juniors chose the theme, while the seniors chose the side they would argue.

In this case the seniors chose to agree with the proposition and based their debating strategy on appealing to the audience’s emotions. The juniors took a data-driven tack, arguing that racial profiling wasn’t justified because it isn’t effective.

The juniors stuck to their strategy and quickly seemed to gain the upper hand by defining “justified” as what is practical; the seniors kept trying to define it as what is just.

The winner is determined by vote and the students who watched the debate were fairly evenly split, but the adults voted en masse for the juniors, allowing them to carry the day with an eight vote margin.

“We were pretty excited; this is the first time the juniors won,” said Hannah Rosenbohm, 17.
Chris Lee 17, and Joseph Pia, 18, chalked their loss up to a lack of preparation on the seniors’ side, which they attributed to their preparation for their capstone projects.

Pia added that while he thought his team made a strong showing during the opening salvos of the debate, they didn’t do as well during the middle game and conclusion, too easily surrendering the definition of justified to the juniors.

“We really wanted to use a lot of examples,” Rosenbohm said of the juniors’ tactics, emphasizing that people who deviated from the Arab stereotype had been successful at committing act of terrorism and that racial profiling was less expedient and down right distracting. Their goal, she quipped, was to appeal to “the thinking people” instead of making an emotional argument.

As usual, Veritas headmaster Bryan Lynch coached the junior class and officiated the debate. “He was pretty impartial,” Lee said.

“I think the debate was very close,” Lynch said, adding that the purpose is to help students clearly articulate their point of view and respond to the opposition. He helped the juniors prepare by asking them to debate on which topic to choose and having them choose which strategy to pursue to appeal to the public.

While Lynch was happy he’d finally won, he added, “I feel sorry for the seniors of course, not to have won their senior year.”

Photo By: Laurent Bonczijk

The topic and which side of the issue they would argue was chosen by Veritas’s seniors, while the juniors chose the theme.